Artifact and Essence

An essential property is a property that an object possesses in every possible world in which that object exists. An individual essence is a property (or set of properties) that an object possesses in every world in which that object exists, and that no other object possesses in any possible world. Call the claim that some artifacts possess an individual essence ‘artifactual essentialism’. I will argue that artifactual essentialism is true. In doing so, I will be responding to two recent arguments by Penelope Mackie against artifactual essentialism (Mackie (2006), esp. ch. 3.). In “Individual Essence Properties”, I will rehearse the qualifications that any property must meet if it is to constitute an individual essence, and in “Artifacts and the Recycling Problem” and “Artifacts and the Tolerance Problem”, I will rehearse Mackie’s arguments against artifactual essentialism. In “Artifacts and Weak Unshareability?” and “Artifacts and Strong Unshareability?”, I will show why both of these arguments fail. In “Mona Lisa’s Essence”, I will defend the interesting claim that some artifacts possess an individual essence. In the final section I will entertain some objections to my proposal.     

Induction and Natural Necessities

Some philosophers who believe that there are necessary connections in nature take it that an advantage of their commitment is that the problem of induction is solved. This paper aims to offer a comprehensive refutation of the arguments necessitarians use to show that if natural necessities are posited, then there is no problem of induction. In section 2, two models of natural necessity are presented. The “Contingent Natural Necessity” section examines David Armstrong’s explanationist ‘solution’ to the problem of induction. The “Natural Necessity and IBE” section looks in detail into the claim that natural necessity is the best explanation of observed regularity. The “Dispositional Essentialism to the Rescue?” section moves on to Brian Ellis’s dispositional essentialist ‘solution’. The “Sankey’s Helping Hand” section examines Howard Sankey’s attempt to blend dispositional essentialism and explanationism.     

Perspectivism Versus a Completed Copernican Revolution

I discuss changes of perspective of four kinds in science and about science. Section 2 defends a perspectival nonrealism—something akin to Giere’s perspectival realism but not a realism—against the idea of complete, “Copernican” objectivity. Section 3 contends that there is an inverse relationship between epistemological conservatism and scientific progress. Section 4 casts doubt on strong forms of scientific realism by taking a long-term historical perspective that includes future history. Section 5 defends a partial reversal in the status of so-called context of discovery and context of justification. Section 6 addresses the question of how we can have scientific progress without scientific realism—how progress is possible without the accumulation of representational truth. The overall result (Sect. 7) is a pragmatic instrumentalist perspective on the sciences and how to study them philosophically, one that contains a kernel of realism—instrumental realism.     

Cue quality and criterion setting in recognition memory

Previous studies on how people set and modify decision criteria in old-new recognition tasks (in which they have to decide whether or not a stimulus was seen in a study phase) have almost exclusively focused on properties of the study items, such as presentation frequency or study list length. In contrast, in the three studies reported here, we manipulated the quality of the test cues in a scene-recognition task, either by degrading through Gaussian blurring (Experiment 1) or by limiting presentation duration (Experiment 2 and 3). In Experiments 1 and 2, degradation of the test cue led to worse old-new discrimination. Most importantly, however, participants were more liberal in their responses to degraded cues (i.e., more likely to call the cue “old”), demonstrating strong within-list, item-by-item, criterion shifts. This liberal response bias toward degraded stimuli came at the cost of increasing the false alarm rate while maintaining a constant hit rate. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 with additional stimulus types (words and faces) but did not provide accuracy feedback to participants. The criterion shifts in Experiment 3 were smaller in magnitude than Experiments 1 and 2 and varied in consistency across stimulus type, suggesting, in line with previous studies, that feedback is important for participants to shift their criteria.     

Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future

When people rapidly judge the truth of claims about the present or the past, a related but nonprobative photo can produce “truthiness,” an increase in the perceived truth of those claims (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). What we do not know is the extent to which nonprobative photos cause truthiness for the future. We addressed this issue in four experiments. In each experiment, people judged the truth of claims that the price of certain commodities (such as manganese) would increase (or decrease). Half of the time, subjects saw a photo of the commodity paired with the claim. Experiments 1A and 1B produced a “rosiness” bias: Photos led people to believe positive claims about the future but had very little effect on people’s belief in negative claims. In Experiment 2, rosiness occurred for both close and distant future claims. In Experiments 3A and 3B, we tested whether rosiness was tied to the perceived positivity of a claim. Finally, in Experiments 4A and 4B, we tested the rosiness hypothesis and found that rosiness was unique to claims about the future: When people made the same judgments about the past, photos produced the usual truthiness pattern for both positive and negative claims. Considered all together, our data fit with the idea that photos may operate as hypothesis-confirming evidence for people’s tendency to anticipate rosy future outcomes.     

Exclusion Problems and the Cardinality of Logical Space

Wittgenstein’s atomist picture, as embodied in his Tractatus, is initially very appealing. However, it faces the famous colour-exclusion problem. In this paper, I shall explain when the atomist picture can be defended (in principle) in the face of that problem; and, in the light of this, why the atomist picture should be rejected. I outline the atomist picture in Section 1. In Section 2, I present a very simple necessary and sufficient condition for the tenability (in principle) of the atomist picture. The condition is: logical space is a power of two. In Sections 3 and 4, I outline the colour-exclusion problem, and then show how the cardinality-condition supplies a response to exclusion problems. In Section 5, I explain how this amounts to a distillation of a proposal due to Moss (2012), which goes back to Carruthers (1990: 144–7). And in Section 6, I show how all this vindicates Wittgenstein’s ultimate rejection of the atomist picture. The brief reason is that we have no guarantee that there are any solutions to a given exclusion problem but, if there are any, then there are far too many.     

The metaphysics of goodness in the ethics of Aristotle

Kraut (Against absolute goodness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) and other neo-Aristotelians have argued that there is no such thing as absolute goodness. They admit only good in a kind, e.g. a good sculptor, and good for something, e.g. good for fish. What is the view of Aristotle? Mostly limiting myself to the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), I argue that Aristotle is committed to things being absolutely good and also to a metaphysics of absolute goodness where there is a maximally best good that is the cause of the goodness of all other things in virtue of being their end. I begin (in Sect. 2) by suggesting that the notion of good as an end, which is present in the first lines of the NE, is not obviously accounted for by good in a kind or good for something. I then give evidence that good in a kind (in Sect. 3) and good for something (in Sect. 4) can explain neither certain distinctions drawn between virtues nor the determinacy ascribed to what is good “in itself.” I argue (in Sect. 5) contra Gotthelf (2012) that because several important arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics rely on comparative judgments of absolute value—e.g. “Man is the best of all animals”—Aristotle is committed to the existence of both absolute goodness and an absolutely best being. I focus (in Sect. 6) on one passage, Aristotle’s division of goods in NE I 12, which presupposes this metaphysical picture.     

The mere exposure effect for visual image

Mere exposure effect refers to a phenomenon in which repeated stimuli are evaluated more positively than novel stimuli. We investigated whether this effect occurs for internally generated visual representations (i.e., visual images). In an exposure phase, a 5 × 5 dot array was presented, and a pair of dots corresponding to the neighboring vertices of an invisible polygon was sequentially flashed (in red), creating an invisible polygon. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4, participants visualized and memorized the shapes of invisible polygons based on different sequences of flashed dots, whereas in Experiment 3, participants only memorized positions of these dots. In a subsequent rating phase, participants visualized the shape of the invisible polygon from allocations of numerical characters on its vertices, and then rated their preference for invisible polygons (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). In contrast, in Experiment 4, participants rated the preference for visible polygons. Results showed that the mere exposure effect appeared only when participants visualized the shape of invisible polygons in both the exposure and rating phases (Experiments 1 and 2), suggesting that the mere exposure effect occurred for internalized visual images. This implies that the sensory inputs from repeated stimuli play a minor role in the mere exposure effect. Absence of the mere exposure effect in Experiment 4 suggests that the consistency of processing between exposure and rating phases plays an important role in the mere exposure effect.     

The concreteness effect on judgments of learning: Evaluating the contributions of fluency and beliefs

Researchers have often determined how cues influence judgments of learning (JOLs; e.g., concrete words are assigned higher JOLs than are abstract words), and recently there has been an emphasis in understanding why cues influence JOLs (i.e., the mechanisms that underlie cue effects on JOLs). The analytic-processing (AP) theory posits that JOLs are constructed in accordance with participants’ beliefs of how a cue will influence memory. Even so, some evidence suggests that fluency is also important to cue effects on JOLs. In the present experiments, we investigated the contributions of participants’ beliefs and processing fluency to the concreteness effect on JOLs. To evaluate beliefs, participants estimated memory performance in a hypothetical experiment (Experiment 1), and studied concrete and abstract words and made a pre-study JOL for each (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants’ predictions demonstrated the belief that concrete words are more likely to be remembered than are abstract words, consistent with the AP theory. To evaluate fluency, response latencies were measured during lexical decision (Experiment 4), self-paced study (Experiment 5), and mental imagery (Experiment 7). Number of trials to acquisition was also evaluated (Experiment 6). Fluency did not differ between concrete and abstract words in Experiments 5 and 6, and it did not mediate the concreteness effect on JOLs in Experiments 4 and 7. Taken together, these results demonstrate that beliefs are a primary mechanism driving the concreteness effect on JOLs.     

Whose hand is this? Differential responses of right and left extrastriate body areas to visual images of self and others’ hands

The extrastriate body area (EBA) is involved in perception of human bodies and nonfacial body parts, but its role in representing body identity is not clear. Here, we used on-line high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to test the role of EBA in self–other distinction. In Experiments 1 and 2 we compared rTMS of right EBA with stimulation of left ventral premotor cortex (vPM), whereas in Experiment 3 we compared stimulation of right and left EBA. RTMS was applied during a hand laterality task in which self or others’ hand images were presented in first- versus third-person view (Experiments 1 and 3), or while participants had to explicitly recognize their own hands (Experiment 2) presented in first- versus third-person view. Experiment 1 showed that right EBA stimulation selectively speeded judgments on others’ hands, whereas no effect of left vPM stimulation was found. Experiment 2 did not reveal any effect of rTMS. Experiment 3 confirmed faster responses on others’ hands while stimulating right EBA and also showed an advantage when judging self with respect to others’ hands during stimulation of left EBA. These results would demonstrate that EBA responds to morphological features of human body contributing to identity processing.     

The effects of context in item-based directed forgetting: Evidence for “one-shot” context storage

The effects of context on item-based directed forgetting were assessed. Study words were presented against different background pictures and were followed by a cue to remember (R) or forget (F) the target item. The effects of incidental and intentional encoding of context on recognition of the study words were examined in Experiments 1 and 2. Recognition memory for the picture contexts was assessed in Experiments 3a and 3b. Recognition was greater for R-cued compared to F-cued targets, demonstrating an effect of directed forgetting. In contrast, no directed forgetting effect was seen for the background pictures. An effect of context-dependent recognition was seen in Experiments 1 and 2, such that the hit rate and the false-alarm rate were greater for items tested in an old compared to a novel context. An effect of context-dependent discrimination was also observed in Experiment 2 as the hit rate was greater for targets shown in their same old study context compared to a different old context. The effects of context and directed forgetting did not interact. The results are consistent with Malmberg and Shiffrin’s (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 322–336, 2005) “one-shot” context storage hypothesis that assumes that a fixed amount of context is stored in the first 1 to 2 s of the presentation of the study item. The effects of context are independent of item-based directed forgetting because context is encoded prior to the R or F cue, and the differential processing of target information that gives rise to the directed forgetting effect occurs after the cue.     

Visual search for changes in scenes creates long-term,incidental memory traces

Humans are very good at remembering large numbers of scenes over substantial periods of time. But how good are they at remembering changes to scenes? In this study, we tested scene memory and change detection two weeks after initial scene learning. In Experiments 1–3, scenes were learned incidentally during visual search for change. In Experiment 4, observers explicitly memorized scenes. At test, after two weeks observers were asked to discriminate old from new scenes, to recall a change that they had detected in the study phase, or to detect a newly introduced change in the memorization experiment. Next, they performed a change detection task, usually looking for the same change as in the study period. Scene recognition memory was found to be similar in all experiments, regardless of the study task. In Experiment 1, more difficult change detection produced better scene memory. Experiments 2 and 3 supported a “depth-of-processing” account for the effects of initial search and change detection on incidental memory for scenes. Of most interest, change detection was faster during the test phase than during the study phase, even when the observer had no explicit memory of having found that change previously. This result was replicated in two of our three change detection experiments. We conclude that scenes can be encoded incidentally as well as explicitly and that changes in those scenes can leave measurable traces even if they are not explicitly recalled.     

Phenomenological constraints: a problem for radical enactivism

This paper does two things. Firstly, it clarifies the way that phenomenological data is meant to constrain cognitive science according to enactivist thinkers. Secondly, it points to inconsistencies in the ‘Radical Enactivist’ handling of this issue, so as to explicate the commitments that enactivists need to make in order to tackle the explanatory gap. I begin by sketching the basic features of enactivism in sections 1–2, focusing upon enactive accounts of perception. I suggest that enactivist ideas here rely heavily upon the endorsement of a particular explanatory constraint that I call the structural resemblance constraint (SRC), according to which the structure of our phenomenology ought to be mirrored in our cognitive science. Sections 3–5 delineate the nature of, and commitment to, SRC amongst enactivists, showing SRC’s warrant and implications. The paper then turns to Hutto and Myin’s (2013) handling of SRC in sections 6–7, highlighting irregularities within their programme for Radical Enactivism on this issue. Despite seeming to favour SRC, I argue that Radical Enactivism’s purported compatibility with the narrow (brain-bound) supervenience of perceptual experience is in fact inconsistent with SRC, given Hutto and Myin’s phenomenological commitments. I argue that enactivists more broadly ought to resist such a concessionary position if they wish to tackle the explanatory gap, for it is primarily the abidance to SRC that ensures progress is made here. Section 8 then concludes the paper with a series of open questions to enactivists, inviting further justification of the manner in which they apply SRC.     

Careful What You Wish

Dilip Ninan has raised a puzzle for centered world accounts of de re attitude reports extended to accommodate what he calls “counterfactual attitudes.” As a solution, Ninan introduces multiple centers to the standard centered world framework, resulting in a more robust semantics for de re attitude reports. However, while the so-called multi-centered world proposal solves Ninan’s counterfactual puzzle, this additional machinery is not without problems. In Section 1, I present the centered world account of attitude reports, followed by the extension to counterfactual attitudes which Ninan targets with his puzzle. In Section 2, I pose the counterfactual puzzle and present Ninan’s multi-centered world solution, emphasizing similarities and differences between multi-centered and centered world accounts of attitude reports. In Section 3, I argue the counterfactual attitude wishing falls under the purview of the multi-centered proposal, but that the proposal generates false predictions for wish reports concerning unsatisfiable content. I canvass responses, ultimately concluding Ninan’s proposal requires substantial revisions.     

Lost in the supermarket: Quantifying the cost of partitioning memory sets in hybrid search

The items on a memorized grocery list are not relevant in every aisle; for example, it is useless to search for the cabbage in the cereal aisle. It might be beneficial if one could mentally partition the list so only the relevant subset was active, so that vegetables would be activated in the produce section. In four experiments, we explored observers’ abilities to partition memory searches. For example, if observers held 16 items in memory, but only eight of the items were relevant, would response times resemble a search through eight or 16 items? In Experiments 1a and 1b, observers were not faster for the partition set; however, they suffered relatively small deficits when “lures” (items from the irrelevant subset) were presented, indicating that they were aware of the partition. In Experiment 2 the partitions were based on semantic distinctions, and again, observers were unable to restrict search to the relevant items. In Experiments 3a and 3b, observers attempted to remove items from the list one trial at a time but did not speed up over the course of a block, indicating that they also could not limit their memory searches. Finally, Experiments 4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d showed that observers were able to limit their memory searches when a subset was relevant for a run of trials. Overall, observers appear to be unable or unwilling to partition memory sets from trial to trial, yet they are capable of restricting search to a memory subset that remains relevant for several trials. This pattern is consistent with a cost to switching between currently relevant memory items.     

The Perceptual Basis of Vast Space

“Vast” is a word often applied to environmental terrain that is perceived to have large spatial extent. This judgment is made even at viewing distances where traditional metric depth cues are not useful. This paper explores the perceptual basis of vast experience, including reliability and visual precursors. Experiment 1 demonstrated strong agreement in ratings of the spatial extent of two-dimensional (2D) scene images by participants in two countries under very different viewing conditions. Image categories labeled “vast” often exemplified scene attributes of ruggedness and openness (Oliva & Torralba, 2001). Experiment 2 quantitatively assessed whether these properties predict vastness. High vastness ratings were associated with highly open, or moderately open but rugged, scenes. Experiment 3 provided evidence, consistent with theory, that metric distance perception does not directly mediate the observed vastness ratings. The question remains as to how people perceive vast space when information about environmental scale is unavailable from metric depth cues or associated scene properties. We consider possible answers, including contribution from strong cues to relative depth.     

Training specificity and transfer in time and distance estimation

Learning is often specific to the conditions of training, making it important to identify which aspects of the testing environment are crucial to be matched in the training environment. In the present study, we examined training specificity in time and distance estimation tasks that differed only in the focus of processing (FOP). External spatial cues were provided for the distance estimation task and for the time estimation task in one condition, but not in another. The presence of a concurrent alphabet secondary task was manipulated during training and testing in all estimation conditions in Experiment 1. For distance as well as for time estimation in both conditions, training of the primary estimation task was found to be specific to the presence of the secondary task. In Experiments 2 and 3, we examined transfer between one estimation task and another, with no secondary task in either case. When all conditions were equal aside from the FOP instructions, including the presence of external spatial cues, Experiment 2 showed “transfer” between tasks, suggesting that training might not be specific to the FOP. When the external spatial cues were removed from the time estimation task, Experiment 3 showed no transfer between time and distance estimations, suggesting that external task cues influenced the procedures used in the estimation tasks.     

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.     

Children and the Limits of Paternalism

Philosophers disagree about what precisely makes an act paternalistic, and about whether, when, and why paternalistic acts are morally objectionable. Despite these disagreements, it might seem uncontroversial to think that it is permissible to paternalize children. When paternalism seems morally objectionable, that is usually because an adult has been treated in a way that seems appropriate only for children. But, we might think, there can be nothing morally objectionable about treating children as children. In this paper, however, I argue that there are limits to how we may permissibly paternalize children. I begin in Section 1 by describing and endorsing Jonathan Quong’s account of paternalism, which defines paternalistic acts as those that involve particular kinds of judgments that the paternalizer makes about the capacities of the paternalizee. In Section 2, I identify a distinction between two kinds of paternalism: ‘compensatory’ paternalism, and ‘non-compensatory’ paternalism. In Section 3, I argue that compensatory paternalism is usually permissible in the case of children. In section 4, I argue that non-compensatory paternalism is much harder to justify than compensatory paternalism, and because of this, it is sometimes impermissible even when directed at children.     

Predictive visual search: Role of environmental regularities in the learning of context cues

Repeatedly searching through invariant spatial arrangements in visual search displays leads to the buildup of memory about these displays (contextual-cueing effect). In the present study, we investigate (1) whether contextual cueing is influenced by global statistical properties of the task and, if so, (2) whether these properties increase the overall strength (asymptotic level) or the temporal development (speed) of learning. Experiment 1a served as baseline against which we tested the effects of increased or decreased proportions of repeated relative to nonrepeated displays (Experiments 1b and 1c, respectively), thus manipulating the global statistical properties of search environments. Importantly, probability variations were achieved by manipulating the number of nonrepeated (baseline) displays so as to equate the total number of repeated displays across experiments. In Experiment 1d, repeated and nonrepeated displays were presented in longer streaks of trials, thus establishing a stable environment of sequences of repeated displays. Our results showed that the buildup of contextual cueing was expedited in the statistically rich Experiments 1b and 1d, relative to the baseline Experiment 1a. Further, contextual cueing was entirely absent when repeated displays occurred in the minority of trials (Experiment 1c). Together, these findings suggest that contextual cueing is modulated by observers’ assumptions about the reliability of search environments.