Effect of Skill on Visual Laterality: Now You See It - Now You Dont (Comments on Clancy and Hoyer, 1993)

Clancy and Hoyer (1993) have recently investigated the effects of domain-specific expertise and hemispheric asymmetry on detecting featural differences in visual patterns. Based on the pattern of reaction time results, they concluded that there is a left-hemisphere advantage for making difficult, domain-relevant visual discriminations in skilled experts but not in unskilled control subjects. However, response accuracy data from the same experiment contradict their conclusions about the relationship of skill to the pattern of hemispheric asymmetry and favor an alternative interpretation in terms of the specific aspects of visual information needed to make different types of discrimination.     

Words,You, and Me

It is tempting to explicate the mastery of language, as many philosophers have, with how we come to learn language. Interpreting how we come to learn a language necessarily involves saying what the mind's relevant capacities are. Too long we have been told that those capacities are adaptive to, as well as within, a social context; it seemed plausible to argue that we learn to have (propositional) thoughts as we learn and use the language conatively. This essay tries to persuade the reader that there is something else besides, something that cannot be taught. That something, elusive as it is, is caught in one of the phrases with which the OED defines passion , 'An eager outreaching of the mind towards something'. Passion understood in this way is conceptually indispensable to human language.     

If You Can't Change What You Believe,You Don't Believe It

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one's rational character, whether or not those activities are under one's voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle.     

Every Breath You Take,Every Move You Make

Slow Reckoning: The Ecology of a Divided Planet by Tom Athanasiou, published by Seeker &; Warburg, London, 1997, 385 pp., £12.99 (published in the United States as Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, by Little, Brown &; Company, New York, 1996, $25).     

Fission May Kill You (But Not for the Reasons You Thought)

If a person, A, branches into B and C, then it is widely held that B and C are not identical to one another. Many think that this is because B and C have contradictory properties at the same time. In this paper, I show why this explanation cannot be right. I argue that contradictory properties at times are not necessary for non‐identity between descendants, and that contradictory properties at times are not sufficient for non‐identity. I also argue that the standard explanation cannot be salvaged by a shift to personal time. Appeals to a lack of continuity, or to the absence of unity of consciousness likewise fail. Rather, B and C are non‐identical simply because A branched into B and C. Why branching should be problematic for personal identity remains a deep puzzle though I offer some tentative suggestions.     

认知越灵活，句子理解越快?

采用威斯康星卡片分类测验、语法–语义灵活性任务和语义肯定性任务,以47名大学生为研究对象,考察一般认知灵活性、语法–语义灵活性与句子理解的关系。控制性别作用后,回归分析结果显示：（1）一般认知灵活性只显著预测一般肯定句理解速度,语法–语义灵活性显著预测一般肯定、一般否定、肯定反问、否定反问、双重否定和三重否定句理解速度;（2）语法–语义灵活性比一般认知灵活性对一般肯定句理解速度的预测作用更大;（3）语法–语义灵活性对肯定反问句比对否定反问句理解速度的预测作用更大。这表明语法–语义灵活性比一般认知灵活性对句子理解速度的贡献更大,且认知灵活性对不同句式句子理解速度的影响不同。