Transformation emergence,enactive co-emergence,and the causal exclusion problem

In The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance (Oxford University Press 2012), Jonardon Ganeri draws on the ancient Indian Cārvāka philosophy to delineate a “transformation” account of strong emergence, and argues that the account adequately addresses the well-known “causal exclusion problem” formulated by Kim (Supervenience and mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993; Mind in a physical world: an essay on the mind-body problem and mental causation. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998; Philos Stud 95:3–36, 1999; Synthese 151:547–559, 2006). Ganeri moreover suggests that the transformation account is superior to the enactive account of emergence, developed by Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson (Varela et al. in Embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991; Thompson and Varela in Trends Cogn Sci 5:418–425, 2001; Thompson in Mind in life: biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Belknap Press, Cambridge, 2007) for the latter merely “sidesteps” the exclusion problem (Ganeri in The self: naturalism, consciousness, and the first-person stance. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012: ch. 4, footnote 9). In this commentary, presented in an “author meets critics” panel at the Pacific APA 2016, I suggest that, contrary to Ganeri’s claim, the enactive account does not merely sidestep the causal exclusion problem—the response the enactive account can offer is actually highly similar to the response offered by the transformation account.     

A Geometric Analysis of When Fixed Weighting Schemes Will Outperform Ordinary Least Squares

Many researchers have demonstrated that fixed, exogenously chosen weights can be useful alternatives to Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation within the linear model (e.g., Dawes, Am. Psychol. 34:571–582, 1979; Einhorn &; Hogarth, Org. Behav. Human Perform. 13:171–192, 1975; Wainer, Psychol. Bull. 83:213-217, 1976). Generalizing the approach of Davis-Stober, Dana, and Budescu (Psychometrika 75:521–541, 2010b), I present an analytic method to determine when a choice of fixed weights will incur less mean squared error than OLS as a function of sample size, error variance, and model predictability. Geometrically, I solve for the region of population β that favors a choice of fixed weights over OLS. I derive closed-form upper and lower bounds on the volume of this region, giving tight bounds on the proportion of population β favoring a choice of fixed weights. I illustrate this methodology with several examples and provide a MATLAB^© (The MathWorks, Matlab software, version 2009b, 2010) programming implementation of the major results.     

Asymptotically Correct Standardization of Person-Fit Statistics Beyond Dichotomous Items

The \(l_z\) statistic (Drasgow et al. in Br J Math Stat Psychol 38:67–86, 1985) is one of the most popular person-fit statistics (Armstrong et al. in Pract Assess Res Eval 12(16):1–10, 2007). Snijders (Psychometrika 66:331–342, 2001) derived the asymptotic null distribution of \(l_z\) when the examinee ability parameter is estimated. He also suggested the \(l^*_z\) statistic, which is the asymptotically correct standardized version of \(l_z\). However, Snijders (Psychometrika 66:331–342, 2001) only considered tests with dichotomous items. In this paper, the asymptotic null distribution of \(l_z\) is derived for mixed-format tests (those that include both dichotomous and polytomous items). The asymptotically correct standardized version of \(l_z\), which can be considered as the extension of \(l^*_z\) to such tests, is suggested. The Type I error rate and power of the suggested statistic are examined from several simulated datasets. The suggested statistic is computed using a real dataset. The suggested statistic appears to be a satisfactory tool for assessing person fit for mixed-format tests.     

Lost in Translation: Religion in The Public Sphere

This paper proposes a Wittgenstein-inspired critique of the prism of translation that frames the recent literature about the debate between Rawls and Habermas on the role of religious reasons in the public sphere (Habermas 2008; Weithman 2006; Wolterstorff 1997). This debate originates with the introduction of Rawls’s proviso in his conception of the public use of reason (Rawls The University of Chicago Law Review, 64(3), 765-807, 1997), which consists in the “translation” of religious reasons into secular ones, which he thinks is necessary in order for religious reasons to be legitimate in the public sphere (Courtois Dialogue, 49, 91-112, 2010; Loobuyck and Rummens Ars disputandi: The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 5, 237–249, 2011; Sikka The Review of Politics, 78, 91-116, 2016). Even though Wittgenstein is not himself concerned with religious pluralism as a political issue, there are numerous scholars who have discussed the political implications of his remarks (Gunnell Contemporary Political Theory, 12 80-101, 2013; Livingston Philosophy and Social Criticism, 33(6), 691–715, 2007; Moore Philosophy and Social Criticism, 36(9), 1113-1136 2010; Pohlhaus and Wright Political Theory, 30(6), 800–27, 2002). The thesis of this paper is that the interpretation proposed by Cora Diamond (2000) in regards to ethical and religious questions turns out to be a suitable way out of the “translation requirement”. According to this solution, if there is to be an understanding between secular and religious citizens on the basis of religious reasons, it should not rely on a “translation” but rather on mutual self-representation.     

Bayesian inference with Stan: A tutorial on adding custom distributions

When evaluating cognitive models based on fits to observed data (or, really, any model that has free parameters), parameter estimation is critically important. Traditional techniques like hill climbing by minimizing or maximizing a fit statistic often result in point estimates. Bayesian approaches instead estimate parameters as posterior probability distributions, and thus naturally account for the uncertainty associated with parameter estimation; Bayesian approaches also offer powerful and principled methods for model comparison. Although software applications such as WinBUGS (Lunn, Thomas, Best, & Spiegelhalter, Statistics and Computing, 10, 325–337, 2000) and JAGS (Plummer, 2003) provide “turnkey”-style packages for Bayesian inference, they can be inefficient when dealing with models whose parameters are correlated, which is often the case for cognitive models, and they can impose significant technical barriers to adding custom distributions, which is often necessary when implementing cognitive models within a Bayesian framework. A recently developed software package called Stan (Stan Development Team, 2015) can solve both problems, as well as provide a turnkey solution to Bayesian inference. We present a tutorial on how to use Stan and how to add custom distributions to it, with an example using the linear ballistic accumulator model (Brown & Heathcote, Cognitive Psychology, 57, 153–178. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.12.002, 2008).     

Transgender Dispossession in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Transparent</Emphasis>: Coming Out as a Euphemism for Honesty

Since the 1990s, television narratives have increased visibility for LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual) individuals and underscored the need for a deep exploration of the heterosexism (homophobia) that pervades much mainstream American programming (Lee and Meyer in Sex Cult 141:234–250, 2010; Manuel in Soc Semiot 19(3):275–291, 2009). One such serial, Transparent, has been credited by many major media outlets with transforming the way Americans think about transgender, gender expansive (Ehrensaft in Gender born gender made, The Experiment, New York, 2011), or trans*, individuals. Exploring Transparent through Butler and Athanasiou’s (Dispossession: the performative in the political, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013) framework of dispossession, this essay argues that the depiction of dispossession in Transparent may serve to hypostasize the gender binary rather than to disrupt it. By severing the rhetorical act of “coming out” from the historical pathologization of non-normative sexualities and gender expansiveness in America, Transparent risks undoing the very social progress that it has the potential to further. While the show could powerfully disrupt cisgender privilege (Brydum in The true meaning of the word cisgender, 2015), as of its second season, instead, it merely illustrates how the media produced trans* “coming out” narrative all too often reifies the gender binary and cisgender privilege. Although it is tempting to praise Transparent for its representation of gender expansiveness, its problematic use of the “coming out” rhetoric should not be ignored.     

Do gray wolves (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis lupus</Emphasis>) support pack mates during aggressive inter-pack interactions?

For group-living mammals, social coordination increases success in everything from hunting and foraging (Crofoot and Wrangham in Mind the Gap, Springer, Berlin, 2010; Bailey et al. in Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67:1–17, 2013) to agonism (Mosser and Packer in Anim Behav 78:359–370, 2009; Wilson et al. in Anim Behav 83:277–291, 2012; Cassidy et al. in Behav Ecol 26:1352–1360, 2015). Cooperation is found in many species and, due to its low costs, likely is a determining factor in the evolution of living in social groups (Smith in Anim Behav 92:291–304, 2014). Beyond cooperation, many mammals perform costly behaviors for the benefit of group mates (e.g., parental care, food sharing, grooming). Altruism is considered the most extreme case of cooperation where the altruist increases the fitness of the recipient while decreasing its own fitness (Bell in Selection: the mechanism of evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008). Gray wolf life history requires intra-pack familiarity, communication, and cooperation in order to succeed in hunting (MacNulty et al. in Behav Ecol doi: 10.1093/beheco/arr159 2011) and protecting group resources (Stahler et al. in J Anim Ecol 82: 222–234, 2013; Cassidy et al. in Behav Ecol 26:1352–1360, 2015). Here, we report 121 territorial aggressive inter-pack interactions in Yellowstone National Park between 1 April 1995 and 1 April 2011 (>5300 days of observation) and examine each interaction where one wolf interferes when its pack mate is being attacked by a rival group. This behavior was recorded six times (17.6 % of interactions involving an attack) and often occurred between dyads of closely related individuals. We discuss this behavior as it relates to the evolution of cooperation, sociality, and altruism.     

Agency,Chance, and the Scientific Status of Psychology

Psychologists generally reject the reductionist, physicalist, “nothing but” stance of the natural sciences. At the same time they consider their discipline a science and wonder why it does not enjoy the status (and funding) of the natural sciences. Ferguson American Psychologist, 70, 527-542 (2015), Lilienfeld American Psychologist, 67, 111-129 (2012), and Schwartz et al. American Psychologist, 71, 52-70 (2016) are among those who adopt a soft naturalism of nonreductive physicalism which declares, or implies, that when it comes to humans, there is more than what the natural sciences can unravel. They envision psychology as scientific in the epistemological sense of generating reproducible results, but reject the reductive ontology of science which currently points to the undeterminable chance of quantum theory as the closest physics has come to the beginnings and what might loosely be called the foundation of the universe (e.g., Bridgman Harper's, 158, 443-451 1929; Eddington 1948). The case made here is that any science, including a psychological one, must be based on a naturalist ontology. This implies restricting the term science to disciplines which not only meet epistemological criteria like reproducibility, but which also adopt—on the ontological level—the parsimonious assumption that at present it makes sense to think that “there is nothing but time and chance” (e.g., Cox and Forshaw 2011; Crease and Goldhaber 2014; Rorty 1989). From this perspective, psychology emerges as two distinct disciplines, one a natural science, the other a human science in the broad sense of science as scientia.     

The Double Standard at Sexual Debut: Gender,Sexual Behavior and Adolescent Peer Acceptance

In this paper, a vision for the future of U.S. NCAA Division I university sport is presented. It is argued that this context could serve as the place where performance “excellence” is rooted in caring. However, U.S. sport at this level must become purposefully structured to include educational components related to moral thinking, feeling, and behaving. Otherwise, it will continue to foster a type of disconnected or “game reasoning” mentality, building “characters” vs. character (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). Using U.S.-focused feminism as the necessary first intervention, the paper is situated within a care moral orientation (e.g., Gilligan 1979, 1982) as well as sport psychology moral development scholarship (e.g., Bredemeier 1992; Fisher 1993; Kavussanu 2008; Oglesby 1990; Solomon 1993; Stephens 1993). A brief review of the current state of affairs in U.S. NCAA Division I university sport is presented first. Next, selected literature related to a care moral orientation and moral disconnection in U.S. psychology and sport psychology is highlighted. Finally, one vision of what a model of conscious, caring and connected U.S. NCAA Division I sport research and practice could look like is offered. Specifically, those who have the power to influence sport would develop character and the related skills of moral consciousness, caring, and connection, undergirded by feminist moral principles and reflective practice. Feminist (and all) sport psychology professionals are in a prime position to engage with sport constituents to enhance athletes’ overall experience, where character does matter, and, so, too, does performance.     

A visual familiarity account of evidence for orthographic processing in pigeons <Emphasis Type="Italic">(Columbia livia)</Emphasis>: a reply to Scarf,Corballis, Güntürkün,and Colombo (2017)

Scarf et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci 113(40):11272–11276, 2016) demonstrated that pigeons, as with baboons (Grainger et al. in Science 336(6078):245–248, 2012; Ziegler in Psychol Sci.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474322, 2013), can be trained to display several behavioural hallmarks of human orthographic processing. But, Vokey and Jamieson (Psychol Sci 25(4):991–996, 2014) demonstrated that a standard, autoassociative neural network model of memory applied to pixel maps of the words and nonwords reproduces all of those results. In a subsequent report, Scarf et al. (Anim Cognit 20(5):999–1002, 2017) demonstrated that pigeons can reproduce one more marker of human orthographic processing: the ability to discriminate visually presented four-letter words from their mirror-reversed counterparts (e.g. “LEFT” vs. “ Open image in new window ”). The current report shows that the model of Vokey and Jamieson (2014) reproduces the results of Scarf et al. (2017) and reinforces the original argument: the recent results thought to support a conclusion of orthographic processing in pigeons and baboons are consistent with but do not force that conclusion.     

MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE: SCORSESE’S “THE WOLF OF WALL STREET” THROUGH A PSYCHOANALYTIC LENS

In this essay I wish to present some reflections on Jordan Belfort, the protagonist of the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” from a psychoanalytic prism. The movie, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, is a 2013 black comedy film directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Terence Winter from Belfort’s memoir (2007) of the same name. This movie has already been analyzed from cultural and historical perspectives, with the protagonist representing American culture of the 1980s. I will first summarize some of these views, and then present my psychoanalytic perspective of Jordan’s wish to become “Master of the Universe” (Wolfe, 1987; Grunberger, 1993), as expressed through his abuse of drugs, hyper-sexuality, and his aggressive and self-destructive behavior. As the craving for omnipotence and immortality is a universal wish that has existed from time immemorial, I will draw an analogy between certain aspects and symbolic elements in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Wagner’s (1848–1872) four epic operas “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” I will conclude with a brief reference to the charismatic appeal of a man like Jordan to the general public.     

Names Introduced with the Help of Unsatisfied Sortal Predicates: Reply to Aranyosi

In this paper I answer Aranyosi’s (Axiomathes 19(2):223–224, 2009) criticism of my “Is Phosphorus Hesperus?” (Axiomathes 19(1):101–102, 2009).     

Spatial Cognition in a Multimedia and Intercultural World Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Spatial Cognition (ICSC 2018)

The logic operators (e.g., “and,” “or,” “if, then”) play a fundamental role in concept formation, syntactic construction, semantic expression, and deductive reasoning. In spite of this very general and basic role, there are relatively few studies in the literature that focus on their conceptual nature. In the current investigation, we examine, for the first time, the learning difficulty experienced by observers in classifying members belonging to these primitive “modal concepts” instantiated with sets of acoustic and visual stimuli. We report results from two categorization experiments that suggest the acquisition of acoustic and visual modal concepts is achieved by the same general cognitive mechanism. Additionally, we attempt to account for these results with two models of concept learning difficulty: the generalized invariance structure theory model (Vigo in Cognition 129(1):138–162, 2013, Mathematical principles of human conceptual behavior, Routledge, New York, 2014) and the generalized context model (Nosofsky in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 10(1):104–114, 1984, J Exp Psychol 115(1):39–57, 1986).     

Why realists must reject normative quietism

The last two decades have seen a surge of support for normative quietism: most notably, from Dworkin (1996, 2011), Nagel (1996, 1997), Parfit (2011a, b) and Scanlon (1998, 2014). Detractors like Enoch (2011) and McPherson (2011) object that quietism is incompatible with realism about normativity. The resulting debate has stagnated somewhat. In this paper I explore and defend a more promising way of developing that objection: I’ll argue that if normative quietism is true, we can create reasons out of thin air, so normative realists must reject normative quietism.     

Common Factors Come Alive: Practical Strategies for Implementing Common Factors in MFT Training

Presently, MFT training programs teach MFT models in a way that emphasizes differences over similarities (Karam et al. in J Marital Fam Ther, 2015. doi: 10.1111/jmft.12096; Sprenkle and Blow in J Marital Fam Ther 30:113–129, 2004a. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2004.tb01228.x, in J Marital Fam Ther 30:151–157, b. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2004.tb01230.x; Sprenkle et al. in Common factors in couple and family therapy: the overlooked foundation for effective practice. Guilford Press, New York, 2009). Although teaching a variety of models and their distinctiveness is vital, doing so may create a competitive rather than integrative relationship between models (Karam et al. 2015). While Karam et al. 2015 encourage the inclusion of common factors in MFT training, we expand their justification for the importance of doing so We also explain conceptual and practical ways to include common factors in MFT training. Common factors instruction can fulfill multiple purposes: (a) create a sense of cohesiveness for programs which need to teach breadth of topics that can seem unrelated, (b) help prepare practitioners who need to learn many models well but will likely adopt an integrative approach, (c) align with basic skills training, (d) align with process research, and (e) enhance the richness of individual models. For each of these purposes, we provide an example of a classroom activity. We conclude with a unifying example of how one student may learn the common-factors perspective and weave it into her reflective practices as an MFT student.     

The personal and the subpersonal in the theory of mind debate

It is a widely accepted assumption within the philosophy of mind and psychology that our ability for complex social interaction is based on the mastery of a common folk psychology, that is to say that social cognition consists in reasoning about the mental states of others in order to predict and explain their behavior. This, in turn, requires the possession of mental-state concepts, such as the concepts belief and desire. In recent years, this standard conception of social cognition has been called into question by proponents of so-called ‘direct-perception’ approaches to social cognition (e.g., Gallagher 2001, 2005, 2007, 2012; Gallagher and Hutto 2008; Zahavi 2005, 2011) and by those who argue that the ‘received view’ implies a degree of computational complexity that is implausible (e.g., Bermúdez 2003; Apperly and Butterfill 2009). In response, it has been argued that these attacks on the classical view of social cognition have no bite at the subpersonal level of explanation, and that it is the latter which is at issue in the debate in question (e.g., Herschbach 2008; Spaulding 2010, 2015). In this paper, I critically examine this response by considering in more detail the distinction between personal and subpersonal level explanations. There are two main ways in which the distinction has been developed (Drayson 2014). I will argue that on either of these, the response proposed by defenders of the received view is unconvincing. This shows that the dispute between the standard conception and alternative approaches to mindreading is a dispute concerning personal-level explanations - what is at stake in the debate between proponents of the classical view of social cognition and their critics is how we, as persons, navigate our social world. I will conclude by proposing a pluralistic approach to social cognition, which is better able to do justice to the multi-faceted nature of our social interactions as well as being able to account for recent empirical findings regarding the social cognitive abilities of young infants.     

God’s Melancholia

Donald Capps’s (Capps 1997, 2001, 2002a, b) male melancholia theory has been of interest to me during the past few years (Carlin 2003, 2006, 2007), and Capps (2004, 2007a, b) himself has been publishing more on the topic. In his psychobiographical book on Jesus, Capps (2000) notes that psychologists of religion have been reluctant to psychoanalyze Jesus, and here I note that even fewer have been willing to diagnose God, one recent exception being J. Harold Ellens (2007). In this article, I explore the melancholia issue further, this time applying the theory to God by means of theological concepts that deal with the Trinity and the passion of God. And while this article is playful (Pruyser 1974; cf. Dykstra 2001), the upshot is more serious: If men are incurably religious and melancholic, as Capps argues, and if men, by and large, are the creators of religion, wouldn’t one expect to find traces of this melancholy in religion, particularly in its sacred texts and doctrines? By identifying these tendencies in religion, especially in God, the pastoral psychologist, I believe, is helping contemporary Christian men—especially fathers and sons—recognize their own melancholy selves and, perhaps, helping them get along a little better.     

Deference,respect and intensionality

This paper is about the standard Reflection Principle (van Fraassen in J Philos 81(5):235–256, 1984) and the Group Reflection Principle (Elga in Nous 41(3):478–502, 2007; Bovens and Rabinowicz in Episteme 8(3):281–300, 2011; Titelbaum in Quitting certainties: a Bayesian framework modeling degrees of belief, OUP, Oxford, 2012; Hedden in Mind 124(494):449–491, 2015). I argue that these principles are incomplete as they stand. The key point is that deference is an intensional relation, and so whether you are rationally required to defer to a person at a time can depend on how that person and that time are designated. In this paper I suggest a way of completing the Reflection Principle and Group Reflection Principle, and I argue that so completed these principles are plausible. In particular, they do not fall foul of the Sleeping Beauty case (Elga in Analysis 60(2):143–147, 2000), the Cable Guy Paradox (Hajek in Analysis 65(286):112–119, 2005), Arntzenius’ prisoner cases (Arntzenius in J Philos, 100(7):356–370, 2003), or the Puzzle of the Hats (Bovens and Rabinowicz in Episteme 8(3):281–300, 2011).     

Pure Modal Logic of Names and Tableau Systems

By a pure modal logic of names (PMLN) we mean a quantifier-free formulation of such a logic which includes not only traditional categorical, but also modal categorical sentences with modalities de re and which is an extension of Propositional Logic. For categorical sentences we use two interpretations: a “natural” one; and Johnson and Thomason’s interpretation, which is suitable for some reconstructions of Aristotelian modal syllogistic (Johnson in Notre Dame J Form Logic 30(2):271–284, 1989; Thomason in J Philos Logic 22(2):111–128, 1993 and J Philos Logic 26:129–141, 1997. In both cases we use Johnson-like models (1989). We also analyze different kinds of versions of PMLN, for both general and singular names. We present complete tableau systems for the different versions of PMLN. These systems enable us to present some decidability methods. It yields “strong decidability” in the following sense: for every inference starting with a finite set of premises (resp. every syllogism, every formula) we can specify a finite number of steps to check whether it is logically valid. This method gives the upper bound of the cardinality of models needed for the examination of the validity of a given inference (resp. syllogism, formula).