A dialogue system specification for explanation

This paper builds a dialectical system of explanation with speech act rules that define the kinds of moves allowed, like requesting and offering an explanation. Pre and post-condition rules for the speech acts determine when a particular speech act can be put forward as a move in the dialogue, and what type of move or moves must follow it. A successful explanation has been achieved when there has been a transfer of understanding from the party giving the explanation to the party asking for it. The dialogue has an opening stage, an explanation stage and a closing stage. Whether a transfer of understanding has taken place is tested by a dialectical shift to an examination dialogue.     

Knowing in the context of acting: the task dynamics of the A-not-B error.

The A-not-B error is one of the most robust and highly studied phenomena in developmental psychology. The traditional Piagetian interpretation is that the error reflects the immaturity of infants' understanding of objects as permanent entities. More recently, the error has been interpreted in terms of changes in representation, in memory, in spatial knowledge, and in inhibitory processes. Each account may be partially right but none offers a unified account of the many accumulated facts about this error. This article presents and tests a new unified explanation. The authors propose that the perseverative reach back to A is the product of the processes that take a hand to a location in visual space: the body-centered nature of the spatial code, memories for previous reaching activity, and the close coupling of looking and reaching. The results from 6 experiments support this explanation. The results are used to challenge the idea of knowledge independent of and distinct from behavior.     

说明心理学的形态、特征与评析

说明心理学以心理、行为现象背后的本质、规律、发生机制的说明为己任,其发展先后呈现出心理-心物关系的说明、刺激-反应关系的说明、认知心理-神经机制的说明、进化心理机制的说明等形态,在方法论上则带有鲜明的科学主义特征。它致力于人的自然本性的研究,构筑了作为自然科学的心理学样态,与理解心理学一道推动了心理学的独立、成熟。未来心理学还需摒弃蕴含于说明心理学与理解心理学之中的非此即彼的思维方式,确立心理学的整合视野。     

BRITISH ORTHODOX JEWRY 1945–1990: SWING TO THE RIGHT OR SHIFT TO THE CENTRE?

For almost two decades Jewish historians and sociologists have been tracing and debating the “swing to the right” among American Orthodox Jews. This phenomenon has no precise definition, but can be summarized as the contention that since the 1970s there has been a move within centrist Orthodoxy toward stricter halakhic positions, based more on text than tradition, and that there has also been a tightening of philosophical and theological positions, for example regarding the age of the universe, evolution and the veracity of talmudic science and medicine. More recently, British Jewry began to be the subject of a similar analysis. Geoffrey Alderman, Miri Freud-Kandel and, to some extent, Todd Endelman, have made the case that there was a swing to the right among Orthodox Jews in Britain. They argue that it can be traced to the 1960s or even 1950s and that it has continued and gathered momentum. I have taken a different position from these scholars. In this article I want to develop my ideas on the basis of further evidence and thought and taking into account objections to my work.

In this article I will first clarify my existing analysis of the period 1945–1970 in the light of criticisms. Second, I will expand my explanation of developments in British Jewry in that period, offering an alternative explanation to that of a straightforward swing to the right. Finally, I will examine the period from 1970–1990 and provide an initial account of the changes that took place. Some of these could be labelled a swing to the right but I will argue they are better understood as a specifically British phenomenon; more of a ‘shift to the centre’, and with rather different causes and consequences. This article makes no claims to being final or definitive, but only one step forward (I hope) in our understanding.     

Right hemisphere advantage in lexical decision with two-character Chinese words

It has been suggested that the right hemisphere advantage reported in the literature for single Chinese or kanji characters is the result of perceptual factors rather than unique linguistic features of the orthography. However, no similar right hemisphere advantage for two-character words has ever been found. This study reports on a right hemisphere advantage for high stroke number low frequency two-character Chinese words with short exposure time and low luminance. While there is support for the perceptual-factors explanation for some findings of right hemisphere advantage for Chinese, it is suggested that linguistic factors can still play a part.     

A contrastive account of explanation generation

In this article, we propose a contrastive account of explanation generation. Though researchers have long wrestled with the concepts of explanation and understanding, as well as with the procedures by which we might evaluate explanations, less attention has been paid to the initial generation stages of explanation. Before an explainer can answer a question, he or she must come to some understanding of the explanandum—what the question is asking—and of the explanatory form and content called for by the context. Here candidate explanations are constructed to respond to the particular interpretation of the question, which, according to the pragmatic approach to explanation, is constrained by a contrast class—a set of related but nonoccurring alternatives to the topic that emerge from the surrounding context and the explainer’s prior knowledge. In this article, we suggest that generating an explanation involves two operations: one that homes in on an interpretation of the question, and a second one that locates an answer. We review empirical work that supports this account, consider the implications of these contrastive processes, and identify areas for future study.     

More on understanding in the social sciences

A central mistake in Rolf Gruner's recent article on understanding in the socia sciences in ferreted out, and consideration of it is used both to analyse Gruner's interpretation of understanding and to sketch a more adequate interpretation. The mistake is in distinguishing meanings and facts. The analysis suggests that Gruner was forced to see understanding both as a special kind of explanation and at the same time as no explanation. The sketch offers a distinction of three senses of ‘understanding’ — as identification of a certain kind of subject matter, as explanation of it, and as a subjective feeling consequent upon such explanation.     

A new dialectical theory of explanation

This paper offers a dialogue theory of explanation. A successful explanation is defined as a transfer of understanding in a dialogue system in which a questioner and a respondent take part. The questioner asks a special sort of why-question that asks for understanding of something and the respondent provides a reply that transfers understanding to the questioner. The theory is drawn from recent work on explanation in artificial intelligence (AI), especially in expert systems, but applies to scientific, legal and everyday conversational explanations.     

A saccadic suppression explanation of the Pulfrich phenomenon

A latency explanation of the Pulfrich phenomenon of binocular vision provides for the seen path with an oscillating pendulum to be symmetrical and at right angles to the line of sight. Since the experience of asymmetries in the seen path of a pendulum, when viewed with one eye filtered, is more than the exception, an explanation which has the potential to provide for both symmetry and asymmetry is to be preferred. A saccadic suppression explanation offers this possibility. A saccadic suppression explanation would provide that vision would be suppressed in the filtered eye first followed by suppression in the unfiltered eye. Both eyes would recover vision simultaneously. The predicted resultant disparate stimulation is consistent in direction with that necessary to the Pulfrich phenomenon. The details of the required stimulation have been checked using simple and compound episcotisters. The results with the episcotisters are consistent with the Pulfrich phenomenon.     

Understanding and the Norm of Explanation

I propose and defend the hypothesis that understanding is the norm of (the speech act of) explanation. On this proposal, an explanation should express understanding. I call this the understanding account of explanation. The understanding account is supported by social and introspective observations. It is also supported by the relationship between knowledge and understanding, on the one hand, and assertion and explanation, on the other.     

学习不良儿童的策略信念与理解水平

使用结构访谈法对120名儿童(其中学习不良儿童60名)的策略信念与策略理解水平进行了研究。结果显示:学习不良儿童组与一般儿童组的差异更多体现在对具体策略的元认知因果解释水平上,他们更多持有较低水平的“信息获得”解释,而对照组儿童则更多持有较高水平的“信息加工”解释,提示对策略理解水平的差异可能是导致学习不良儿童难以将新学到的策略主动应用到其它情景中去的一个重要原因。     

Agency and Human Rights

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a human right? James Griffin has persuasively argued that the notion of agency should determine the content of human rights. However, Griffin's agency account faces the question of why agency should be the sole ground for human rights. For example, can Griffin's notion of agency by itself adequately explain such human rights as that against torture? Or, has Griffin offered a plausible explanation as to why one should not broaden the ground for human rights to include other elements of a good life such as freedom from great pain, understanding, deep personal relations, and so on? These concerns have been raised regarding Griffin's agency account, but in his new book, On Human Rights, Griffin has offered new arguments in support of his view that agency is the sole ground for human rights. In this paper, I examine these new arguments, and I argue that Griffin's arguments are ultimately unsuccessful.     

Understanding Brute Facts

Brute facts are facts that have no explanation. If we come to know that a fact is brute, we obviously don’t get an explanation of that fact. Nevertheless, we do make some sort of epistemic gain. In this essay, I give an account of that epistemic gain, and suggest that the idea of brute facts allows us to distinguish between the notion of explanation and the notion of understanding.I also discuss Eric Barnes’ (1994) attack on Friedman’s (1974) version of the unification theory of explanation. The unification theory asserts that scientific understanding results from minimizing the number of brute facts that we have to accept in our view of the world. Barnes claims that the unification theory cannot do justice to the notion of being a brute fact, because it implies that brute facts are gaps in our understanding of the world. I defend Friedman’s theory against Barnes’ critique.     

Knowing how things might have been

I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer to essences; and that we can gain knowledge of them. We can know about which properties are, and which properties are not, essential to a given entity. This knowledge of essence offers a route to knowledge of the ways those entities must be or could be.

     

议价博弈决策的权利认知效应

在议价博弈中,决策者可能存在因对自己及其他参与者拥有权利的认识程度不同,从而影响其策略选择及决策行为的现象。为验证该“权利认知效应”的存在,用实验法考察了240名不同年龄被试在两种议价博弈任务——最后通牒和纳什议价中的决策表现,结果发现：（1）6到12岁儿童和大学生中均存在权利认知效应;（2）随着年龄增长,受权利认知影响的人数呈现逐渐减少的趋势;（3）在议价博弈中,儿童对分配权的认识程度高于对否决权的认知。     

The economics of paradox: a response to armour-garb

‘Those ice cubes melted because by melting total entropy increased and entropy increase has a very high objective chance.’ What role does the chance in this explanation play? I argue that it contributes to the explanation by entailing that the melting was almost necessary, and defend the claim that the fact that some event was almost necessary can, in the right circumstances, constitute a causal explanation of that event.     

Repetition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ responses with a different number of response alternatives in study and test trial

The reinforcement values of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ upon subsequent repetition of the response have been explained by the subject's independent memory for his previous response and its outcome ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Detailed analyses on the data of recent experiments suggest that an increasing number of response alternatives for each stimulus makes the recall of the response and the outcome ‘right’ no longer independent. Therefore it was predicted that for a given number of response alternatives at the Test Trial, the likelihood that a subject will repeat a response called ‘right’ at the study Trial will be a function of the number of response alternatives at the Study Trial. The results were confirmatory. The explanation of these results was based on there being a larger informational value in the outcome ‘right’ with an increasing number of response alternatives.     

Evaluating everyday explanations

People frequently rely on explanations provided by others to understand complex phenomena. A fair amount of attention has been devoted to the study of scientific explanation, and less on understanding how people evaluate naturalistic, everyday explanations. Using a corpus of diverse explanations from Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five” and other online sources, we assessed how well a variety of explanatory criteria predict judgments of explanation quality. We find that while some criteria previously identified as explanatory virtues do predict explanation quality in naturalistic settings, other criteria, such as simplicity, do not. Notably, we find that people have a preference for complex explanations that invoke more causal mechanisms to explain an effect. We propose that this preference for complexity is driven by a desire to identify enough causes to make the effect seem inevitable.