We propose that people typically reason about realistic situations using neither content-free syntactic inference rules nor representations of specific experiences. Rather, people reason using knowledge structures that we term pragmatic reasoning schemas, which are generalized sets of rules defined in relation to classes of goals. Three experiments examined the impact of a “permission schema” on deductive reasoning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that by evoking the permission schema it is possible to facilitate performance in Wason's selection paradigm for subjects who have had (...) no experience with the specific content of the problems. Experiment 2 showed that a selection problem worded in terms of an abstract permission elicited better performance than one worded in terms of a concrete but arbitrary situation, providing evidence for an abstract permission schema that is free of domain-specific content. Experiment 3 provided evidence that evocation of a permission schema affects not only tasks requiring procedural knowledge, but also a linguistic rephrasing task requiring declarative knowledge. In particular, statements in the form if p then q were rephrased into the form p only if q with greater frequency for permission than for arbitrary statements, and rephrasings of permission statements produced a pattern of introduction of modals totally unlike that observed for arbitrary conditional statements. Other pragmatic schemas, such as “causal” and “evidence” schemas can account for both linguistic and reasoning phenomena that alternative hypotheses fail to explain. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2022.

Evidence of risk aversion in laboratory settings over small stakes leads to a priori implausible levels of risk aversion over large stakes under certain assumptions. One core assumption in statements of this calibration puzzle is that small-stakes risk aversion is observed over all levels of wealth, or over a â sufficiently largeâ range of wealth. Although this assumption is viewed as self-evident from the vast experimental literature showing risk aversion over laboratory stakes, it actually requires that lab wealth be varied (...) for a given subject as one evaluates the risk attitudes of the subject. We consider evidence from a simple design that tests this assumption, and find that the assumption is strikingly rejected for a large sample of subjects from a population of college students. We conclude that the implausible predictions that flow from these assumptions do not apply to one specialized population widely used to study economic behavior in laboratory experiments. (shrink)

The discovery of conjunctive causes--factors that act in concert to produce or prevent an effect--has been explained by purely covariational theories. Such theories assume that concomitant variations in observable events directly license causal inferences, without postulating the existence of unobservable causal relations. This article discusses problems with these theories, proposes a causal-power theory that overcomes the problems, and reports empirical evidence favoring the new theory. Unlike earlier models, the new theory derives (a) the conditions under which covariation implies conjunctive causation (...) and (b) functions relating observable events to unobservable conjunctive causal strength. This psychological theory, which concerns simple cases involving 2 binary candidate causes and a binary effect, raises questions about normative statistics for testing causal hypotheses regarding categorical data resulting from discrete variables. (shrink)

Numerous evaluations of the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) have documented CRSP contributions to food production and availability with impacts valued in the millions of dollars in developing countries as well as in the US. These reports emphasized collaboration as a critical factor in the success that emanated from CRSP research and training. Real collaboration among males and females across disciplinary, national, ethnic, cultural, and language differences is not easy. This review of CRSP experiences in building productive collaborations gives (...) actual case studies, including some failures, and discusses lessons learned in the process. The importance of wide participation, shared resources, and facilitated interpersonal relations to back up the dedication and commitment of the participants in emphasized. The program represents an investment of the US Agency for International Development with contributions in excess of 25 percent from participating US and Host Country institutions. (shrink)

We question the behavioral premise underlying Ainslie's claims about hyperbolic discounting theory. The alleged evidence for humans can be easily explained as an artefact of experimental procedures that do not control for the credibility of payment over different time horizons. In appropriately controlled and financially motivated settings, human behavior is consistent with conventional exponential preferences.

We are big fans of propositions. But we are not big fans of the proposed by Mitchell et al. The authors ignore the critical role played by implicit, non-inferential processes in biological cognition, overestimate the work that propositions alone can do, and gloss over substantial differences in how different kinds of animals and different kinds of cognitive processes approximate propositional representations.

To understand how small business entrepreneurs respond to government policy one has to know their risk and time preferences. Are they risk averse, or have high discount rates, such that they are hard to motivate? We have conducted a set of field experiments in Denmark that will allow a direct characterization of small business entrepreneurs in terms of these traits. We build on experimental tasks that are well established in the literature. The results do not suggest that small business entrepreneurs (...) are more or less risk averse than the general population under the assumption of Expected Utility Theory. However, we generally find an S-shaped probability weighting function for both small business entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, with entrepreneurs being more optimistic about the chance of occurrence for the best outcome in lotteries with real monetary outcomes. The results also point to a significant difference in individual discount rates between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs: entrepreneurs are willing to wait longer for certain rewards than the general population. (shrink)

An alternative to objectifying approaches to understanding Post-traumatic Stress Disorder grounded in hermeneutic phenomenology is presented. Nurses who provided care for soldiers injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and sixty-seven wounded male servicemen in the rehabilitation phase of their recovery were interviewed. PTSD is the one major psychiatric diagnosis where social causation is established, yet PTSD is predominantly viewed in terms of the usual neuro-physiological causal models with traumatic social events viewed as pathogens with dose related effects. Biologic models (...) of causation are applied reductively to both predisposing personal vulnerabilities and strengths that prevent PTSD, such as resiliency. However, framing PTSD as an objective disease state separates it from narrative historical details of the trauma. Personal stories and cultural meanings of the traumatic events are seen as epiphenomenal, unrelated to the understanding of, and ultimately, the therapeutic treatment of PTSD. Most wounded service members described classic symptoms of PTSD: flashbacks, insomnia, anxiety etc. All experienced disturbance in their sense of time and place. Rather than see the occurrence of these symptoms as decontextualized mechanistic reverberations of war, we consider how these symptoms meaningfully reflect actual war experiences and sense of displacement experienced by service members. (shrink)

This handbook brings together leading international scholars to study the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute Presocratic philosophy.

We develop an extension of the familiar linear mixed logit model to allow for the direct estimation of parametric non-linear functions defined over structural parameters. Classic applications include the estimation of coefficients of utility functions to characterize risk attitudes and discounting functions to characterize impatience. There are several unexpected benefits of this extension, apart from the ability to directly estimate structural parameters of theoretical interest.

ABSTRACT In the ‘Cook Ding cutting up an ox’ parable, Zhuangzi advanced a doctrine on craft and its relationship with Dao. With reference to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in conjunction with an analysis of Zhuangzi’s epistemological position, we argue that Zhuangzi understood craft as involving the supersession of the cognitive. In craft, the relationship between human and world is non-cognitive and ‘pre-objective’, the living of this kind of relationship gives rise to a non-cognitive ‘practical sense’ which enables the craftsman’s movements to spontaneously (...) constitute wuwei. Zhuangzi’s ideal is that this kind of relationship is generalized to life as a whole, thereby enabling human actions to spontaneously constitute wuwei generally. This is why he stipulated ‘doing away with knowing’ as a self-cultivation technique required for attaining Dao. Thus, craft constitutes an embodiment of Dao in the double-sense of wuwei and the non-cognitive and ‘pre-objective’ relationship between human and world which enables wuwei. (shrink)

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that overexpression of p25, an activator of cdk5, led to increased levels of BACE1 mRNA and protein in vitro and in vivo. A p25/cdk5 responsive region containing multiple sites for signal transducer and activator of transcription was identified in the BACE1 promoter. STAT3 interacts with the BACE1 promoter, and p25-overexpressing mice had elevated levels of pSTAT3 and BACE1, whereas cdk5-deficient mice had reduced levels. Furthermore, mice with a (...) targeted mutation in the STAT3 cdk5 responsive site had lower levels of BACE1. Increased BACE levels in p25 overexpressing mice correlated with enhanced amyloidogenic processing that could be reversed by a cdk5 inhibitor. These data demonstrate a pathway by which p25/cdk5 increases the amyloidogenic processing of APP through STAT3-mediated transcriptional control of BACE1 that could have implications for AD pathogenesis. (shrink)

Gap junction intercellular communication channels permit the exchange of small regulatory molecules and ions between neighbouring cells and coordinate cellular activity in diverse tissue and organ systems. These channels have short half‐lives and complex assembly and degradation pathways. Much of the recent work elucidating gap junction biogenesis has featured the use of connexins (Cx), the constituent proteins of gap junctions, tagged with reporter proteins such as Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and has illuminated the dynamics of channel assembly in live cells (...) by high‐resolution time‐lapse microscopy. With some studies, however, there are potential short‐comings associated with the GFP chimeric protein technologies. A recent report by Gaietta et al., has highlighted the use of recombinant proteins with tetracysteine tags attached to the carboxyl terminus of Cx43, which differentially labels ‘old’ and ‘new’ connexins thus opening up new avenues for studying temporal and spatial localisation of proteins and in situ trafficking events.1 BioEssays 24:876–880, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)