Why is a verb like an inanimate object? Grammatical category and semantic category deficits

Semantic category effects, such as difficulties in naming animate things relative to inanimate objects, have been explained in terms of the relative weightings of perceptual and functional features within the semantic representations of these concepts. We argue that grammatical category deficits, such as difficulties in naming nouns relative to verbs, can be explained within the same framework. We hypothesize that verb concepts are richer in functional than sensory features and present a model of the semantic representations of animate nouns, inanimate nouns, and verbs. The model demonstrates that sensory feature damage results in a deficit for naming living things but spares verb naming, and functional feature damage results in a deficit for naming inanimate objects and verbs. We then report the assessment results of two patient groups. In accordance with the model's predictions, the "verb spared" patients were consistently worse at naming living things than inanimate objects, and their definitions of both living and nonliving items were lacking in sensory information. We conclude that damage to sensory features in semantic representations causes difficulties in naming concrete nouns relative to action verbs, and within the grammatical category of nouns, animate items will be more severely affected. Imageability was shown to be a strong predictor of naming performance in the "verb deficit" patients, and when this variable was controlled no class effect remained. Production of definitions revealed no differential damage to sensory or functional features, and no consistent effect of animacy in naming was shown. While the model suggests that verb deficits might occur in patients for whom functional features are damaged relative to sensory features, we conclude that the "verb deficit" shown in our patients (and potentially in many previously reported cases) was an artifact of the lower imageability of verbs in confrontation naming tasks.     

Why is Cheating Wrong?

Since cheating is obviously wrong, arguments against it (it provides an unfair advantage, it hinders learning) need only be mentioned in passing. But the argument of unfair advantage absurdly takes education to be essentially a race of all against all; moreover, it ignores that many cases of unfair (dis)advantages are widely accepted. On the other hand, the fact that cheating can hamper learning does not mean that punishing cheating will necessarily favour learning, so that this argument does not obviously justify sanctioning cheaters.     

Does everybody like a liker?

The primary hypothesis examined was that people giving positive evaluations are themselves regarded as more attractive than when they give negative evaluations. This research tests whether this holds when reciprocity is not at issue. Subjects in six experiments were presented with stimulus persons who varied in the proportion of positive to negative evaluations they gave of various attitude objects (political figures, cafeteria workers, cities, movies, and college courses). Giving predominantly positive evaluations did in fact lead to greater liking of the stimulus person in each experiment. This finding held over (1) audio or written interviews with the stimulus persons, (2) a variety of classes of attitude objects, and (3) both within-subject and between-subject designs. Greater liking for likers occurred even controlling for attitude similarity.     

Why is conversation so easy?

Traditional accounts of language processing suggest that monologue--presenting and listening to speeches--should be more straightforward than dialogue--holding a conversation. This is clearly not the case. We argue that conversation is easy because of an interactive processing mechanism that leads to the alignment of linguistic representations between partners. Interactive alignment occurs via automatic alignment channels that are functionally similar to the automatic links between perception and behaviour (the so-called perception-behaviour expressway) proposed in recent accounts of social interaction. We conclude that humans are "designed" for dialogue rather than monologue.     

What is it like to be Oscar?

Oscar is going to be the first artificial person — at any rate, he is going to be the first artificial person to be built in Tucson's Philosophy Department. Oscar's creator, John Pollock, maintains that once Oscar is complete he will experience qualia, will be self-conscious, will have desires, fears, intentions, and a full range of mental states (Pollock 1989, pp. ix–x). In this paper I focus on what seems to me to be the most problematical of these claims, viz., that Oscar will experience qualia. I argue that we have not been given sufficient reasons to believe this bold claim. I doubt that Oscar will enjoy qualitative conscious phenomena and I maintain that it will be like nothing to be Oscar.     

Why is learning to read a hard task for some children?

In this brief review of some of my research on reading disability, I argue that a child’s development into literacy has two major ontogenetic roots, one involving early informal literacy socialization and one related to phonological awareness. Although failure in reading acquisition might be a question of cultural deprivation, the dynamic interaction between genetic dispositions and environment must be acknowledged, especially in a society providing rich sources of print exposure. The crucial transition in literacy development involves a step from implicit to explicit control of the phonemic units of language. When the cipher of the alphabetic system is understood the child is equipped with a powerful instrument for self teaching. A primary source of reading disability is then related to problems of segmenting the speech stream into phonemic units. The poor functioning of the phonological module seems to be a circumscribed deficit not related to general cognitive ability. The causal and reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and learning to read has been demonstrated in my research over 20 years. Some of these studies are briefly reviewed in this article. The preventive and remedial implications of the findings are rather obvious.     

What is a Person? And Why it Matters in Religious Ethics

Here I respond to four critics of my book, What Is a Person?, seeking to find areas of common ground and crucial disagreement. Most importantly, I explore the question of whether all human knowledge is conceptually mediated, acknowledging that, no, indeed, there are likely forms of experiential knowledge that are purely and directly acquired without conceptual mediation.     

Why do people like bicycling? Modeling affect toward bicycling

Studies show that the way an individual feels about bicycling – the degree to which they like bicycling – is an important predictor of whether or not they bicycle. But why do some people like bicycling and others don’t? This study explores factors that may influence an individual’s liking of bicycling, or more formally, their bicycling affect. We analyze a rich dataset from a cross-sectional survey of residents of six small U.S. cities using an ordered logit model. Results show that bicycling behavior has the strongest association with liking bicycling, with bicycling constraints following as the second most important factor. Individual cognitions, including perceptions and normative beliefs, also play important roles in predicting bicycling affect. Individual measures of the physical environment do not correlate with liking of bicycling, but the perception that biking to various destinations is safe does. Social environment factors influence liking of bicycling as well. Longitudinal research is needed to better understand the reciprocal relationship between bicycling affect and bicycling behavior as well as the effect over time of factors such as the physical environment. Nevertheless, this study offers an initial understanding of the potential determinants of bicycling affect that provides a starting point for further research as well as direction for the development of policies for getting more people on bicycles.     

What is philosophy as a way of life? Why philosophy as a way of life?

Despite a recent surge of interest in philosophy as a way of life, it is not clear what it might mean for philosophy to guide one's life, or how a “philosophical” way of life might differ from a life guided by religion, tradition, or some other source. We argue against John Cooper that spiritual exercises figure crucially in the idea of philosophy as a way of life—not just in the ancient world but also today, at least if the idea is to be viable. In order to make the case we attempt to clarify the nature of spiritual exercises, and to explore a number of fundamental questions, such as “What role does reason have in helping us to live well?” Here we distinguish between the discerning and motivational powers of reason, and argue that both elements have limitations as guides to living well.     

Why is there anything except physics?

In the course of defending his view of the relation between the special sciences and physics from Jaegwon Kim’s objections Jerry Fodor asks “So then, why is there anything except physics?” By which he seems to mean to ask if physics is fundamental and complete in its domain how can there be autonomous special science laws. Fodor wavers between epistemological and metaphysical understandings of the autonomy of the special sciences. In my paper I draw out the metaphysical construal of his view and argue that while in a sense it answers Fodor’s question it is immensely implausible.     

Why Should a Knower Care?

This paper argues that the concept of care is significant not only for ethics, but for epistemology as well. After elucidating caring as a five‐step dyadic relation, I go on to show its epistemic significance within the general framework of virtue epistemology as developed by Ernest Sosa, Alvin Goldman, and Linda Zagzebski. The notions of “care‐knowing” and “care‐based epistemology” emerge from construing caring (respectively) as a reliabilist and responsibilist virtue.     

Why not be a desertist?

Philosophical Studies - Many philosophers believe that luck egalitarianism captures “desert-like” intuitions about justice. Some even think that luck egalitariansm distributes goods in...     

Why ‘believes’ is not a vague predicate

According to what I call the ‘Vagueness Thesis’ (‘VT’) about belief, ‘believes’ is a vague predicate. On this view, our concept of belief admits of borderline cases: one can ‘half-believe’ something (Price in Belief, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969) or be ‘in-between believing’ it (Schwitzgebel in Philos Q 51:76–82, 2001, Noûs 36:249–275, 2002, Pac Philos Q 91:531–553, 2010). In this article, I argue that VT is false and present an alternative picture of belief. I begin by considering a case—held up as a central example of vague belief—in which someone sincerely claims something to be true and yet behaves in a variety of other ways as if she believes that it is not. I argue that, even from the third-person perspective prioritised by proponents of VT, the case does not motivate VT. I present an alternative understanding of the case according to which the person in question believes as they say they do yet also has a belief-discordant implicit attitude otherwise. Moreover, I argue that, independently of the interpretation of any particular case, VT fails to accommodate the first-person perspective on belief. Belief is not only an item of one’s psychology that helps explain one’s behaviour; it is what one takes to be true. This fact about belief manifests itself in the nature of deliberation concerning whether to believe something and that of introspection regarding whether one believes something. Attending to these phenomena reveals that VT is not merely unmotivated, but untenable.