Not All Worlds Are Stages

The stage theory is a four-dimensional account of persistence motivatedby the worm theory's inability to account for our intuitions in thecases involving coinciding objects. Like the worm theory, it claimsthat there are objects spread out in time, but unlike the worm theory,it argues that these spacetime worms are not familiar particulars liketables and chairs. Rather, familiar particulars are the instantaneoustemporal slices of worms. In order to explain our intuitions that particulars persist for more than an instant, the stage theory drawson the counterpart theory of modal possibilism, which it is supposedto parallel. In this paper I show how the stage theory presupposes thattime can be divided into instants, which I call the atomistic view oftime. I do this by laying out an alternative theory of the nature oftime, the gunky view, and show that if time is gunky the stage theorycollapses into the worm theory. The deeper problem is that the merepossibility of gunky time would cause the stage theory's parallels topossibilism to break down. I therefore conclude that the stage theoryis committed to the view that time is necessarily atomistic. Finally,in the last section I argue that the fact that the stage theory rulesout a priori the possibility of time being gunky gives us reason toreject it as an account of persistence.     

Why Brains Are Not Computers,Why Behaviorism Is Not Satanism,and Why Dolphins Are Not Aquatic Apes

Modern psychology has, to all intents and purposes, become synonymous with cognitive psychology, with an emphasis on the idea that the brain is a form of computer, whose job is to take in sensory input, process information, and produce motor output. This places the brain at a remove from both the body and environment and denies the intimate connection that exists between them. As a result, a great injustice is done to both human and nonhuman animals: On the one hand, we fail to recognize the distinctive nature of nonhuman cognition, and on the other hand, we continue to promote a somewhat misleading view of human psychological capacities. Here, I suggest a more mutualistic, embodied, enactive view might allow us to ask more interesting questions about how animals of all kinds come to know their worlds, in ways that avoid the (inevitable) anthropocentric baggage of the cognitivist viewpoint.     

Why Pains Are Not Mental Objects

Philosophical Studies -     

Masked Reviews Are Not Fairer Reviews

ABSTRACT— Many people believe that reviewers are less likely to produce unfair and biased reviews when they do not know the identity of the authors. However, there is surprisingly little evidence of such bias, there is little evidence that masked review is effective in addressing bias, and masked review has potential costs and drawbacks to the research community. More empirical work on the existence and nature of bias is needed.     

Why Monte Carlo Simulations Are Inferences and Not Experiments

Monte Carlo simulations arrive at their results by introducing randomness, sometimes derived from a physical randomizing device. Nonetheless, we argue, they open no new epistemic channels beyond that already employed by traditional simulations: the inference by ordinary argumentation of conclusions from assumptions built into the simulations. We show that Monte Carlo simulations cannot produce knowledge other than by inference, and that they resemble other computer simulations in the manner in which they derive their conclusions. Simple examples of Monte Carlo simulations are analysed to identify the underlying inferences.     

Not All Laughs Are Alike: Voiced but Not Unvoiced Laughter Readily Elicits Positive Affect

We tested whether listeners are differentially responsive to the presence or absence of voicing, a salient, distinguishing acoustic feature, in laughter. Each of 128 participants rated 50 voiced and 20 unvoiced laughs twice according to one of five different rating strategies. Results were highly consistent regardless of whether participants rated their own emotional responses, likely responses of other people, or one of three perceived attributes concerning the laughers, thus indicating that participants were experiencing similarly differentiated affective responses in all these cases. Specifically, voiced, songlike laughs were significantly more likely to elicit positive responses than were variants such as unvoiced grunts, pants, and snortlike sounds. Participants were also highly consistent in their relative dislike of these other sounds, especially those produced by females. Based on these results, we argue that laughers use the acoustic features of their vocalizations to shape listener affect.     

Metamers in the haptic perception of heaviness and moveableness

It is hypothesized that heaviness perception for a freely wielded nonvisible object can be mapped to a point in a three-dimensional heaviness space. The three dimensions are mass, the volume of the inertia ellipsoid, and the symmetry of the inertia ellipsoid. Within this space, particular combinations yield heaviness metamers (objects of different mass that feel equally heavy), whereas other combinations yield analogues to the size-weight illusion (objects of the same mass that feel unequally heavy). Evidence for the two types of combinations was provided by experiments in which participants wielded occluded hand-held objects and estimated the heaviness of the objects relative to a standard. Further experiments with similar procedures showed that metamers of heaviness were metamers of moveableness but not metamers of length. A promising conjecture is that the haptic perceptual system maps the combination of an object's inertia for translation and inertia for rotation to a perception of the object's maneuverability.     

Short-Term Memory Deficits Are Not Uniform in Down and Williams Syndromes

Neuropsychological investigation of the development of the mnesic function in mental retardation has primarily focused on evaluating short-term memory (STM). Studies have often documented a reduced verbal short-term memory span in individuals with mental retardation and with Down syndrome in particular, compared to groups of mental age-matched controls. However, recent evidence suggests that verbal short-term memory is not equally impaired in all individuals with mental retardation. Findings in children with Williams syndrome are particularly relevant in this regard. Also, data concerning STM for visual information suggest that visual-object and visual-spatial working memory may be differently compromised in people with mental retardation. In particular, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit specific difficulties in visual-spatial but not in visual-object working memory tasks compared to typically-developing children matched for mental age. Instead, people with Down syndrome show reduced performance in both visual-spatial and visual-object tests. Taken together, these results reinforce the view that intellectual disability is not a unitary condition characterized by homogeneous slowness of cognitive development but a variety of conditions in which some cognitive functions may be more disrupted than others. The finding that the working memory deficit in individuals with Williams and Down syndrome may be qualitatively differentiated also supports the hypothesis that it is not simply a manifestation of general cognitive impairment but, rather, the expression of a specific deficit of a discrete cognitive ability.     

Equidiscrimination Contours around an Achromatic Colour Are Convex but Not Balanced

A model based on the postreceptor channels followed by a Minkowski norm (Minkowski model) is widely used to fit experimental data on colour discrimination. This model predicts that contours of equal discrimination in colour space are convex and balanced (symmetrical). We have tested these predictions in an experiment. Two new statistical tests have been developed to analyse convexity and balancedness of experimental curves. Using these tests we have found that while they are in line with the convexity prediction, our experimental contours strongly testify against balancedness. It follows that the Minkowski model is, generally, inappropriate to model colour discrimination data.     

Epinephrine Effects on Memory Are Not Dependent on Hepatic Glucose Release

Epinephrine released or administered soon after a given training task modulates memory processes. Since epinephrine does not readily cross the blood–brain barrier, studies have suggested that some of the central effects of epinephrine might be mediated by peripheral release of glucose. These experiments examined the involvement of blood glucose levels in the posttraining effects of peripherally administered epinephrine. The effects of the administration of epinephrine (25 and 625 mg/kg) on memory of an inhibitory avoidance task were evaluated in fed and fasted rats (depleted glycogen stores in liver). Blood glucose levels after the task in each group were also measured. Female Wistar rats were divided in two groups. Fed and 48-h-fasted animals were submitted to the inhibitory avoidance task and received ip epinephrine or saline immediately after training. The test session was carried out 48 h after training. Epinephrine (25 or 625 mg/kg) caused an increased glycemia in fed rats, but no effect was observed in fasted animals. Administration of epinephrine 25 mg/kg induced a facilitation of memory, while epinephrine 625 mg/kg impaired retention (either in fasted or in fed animals). There was no relation between increased glycemia induced by epinephrine and its effects on memory, since this drug presented its classical effects independently of the previous state of the animal (fed or fasted). The results of the present study suggest that the effects of systemic released or administered epinephrine on memory processes are not dependent on hepatic glucose release.     

Why Assessment Centers Do Not Work the Way They Are Supposed To

Assessment centers (ACs) are often designed with the intent of measuring a number of dimensions as they are assessed in various exercises, but after 25 years of research, it is now clear that AC ratings that are completed at the end of each exercise (commonly known as postexercise dimension ratings) substantially reflect the effects of the exercises in which they were completed and not the dimensions they were designed to reflect. This is the crux of the long-standing "construct validity problem" for AC ratings. I review the existing research on AC construct validity and conclude that (a) contrary to previous notions, AC candidate behavior is inherently cross-situationally (i.e., cross-exercise) specific, not cross-situationally consistent as was once thought, (b) assessors rather accurately assess candidate behavior, and (c) these facts should be recognized in the redesign of ACs toward task- or role-based ACs and away from traditional dimension-based ACs.