On the Reality and Causal Efficacy of Familiar Objects

What caused the event we report by saying “the window shattered”? Was it the baseball, which crashed into the window? Causal exclusionists say: many, many microparticles collectively caused that event—microparticles located where common sense supposes the baseball was. Unitary large objects such as baseballs cause nothing; indeed, by Alexander’s dictum, there are no such objects. This paper argues that the false claim about causal efficacy is instead the one that attributes it to the many microparticles. Causation obtains just where there is an “invariance”, a true generalization to the effect that had things been different with the putative cause, things would have been correspondingly different with the putative effect. But “correspondingly” here requires a rough metric. There must be a fact as to which alternative group events, involving many microparticles, would have departed less from the putative cause of the shattering, and which would have departed more. Surprisingly, there is no such fact.     

Real Representation of Fictional Objects

Assuming there are fictional objects, what sorts of properties do they have? Intuitively, most of their properties involve being represented—appearing in works of fiction, being depicted as clever, being portrayed by actors, being admired or feared, and so on. But several philosophers, including Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, Kendall Walton, and Amie Thomasson, argue that even if there are fictional objects, they are not really represented in some or all of these cases. I reconstruct four kinds of arguments for this unexpected conclusion; they concern the semantics of names, pragmatic force, creation, and representations’ qualitative content. But I find all the arguments flawed. I then argue for the contrary, employing a new perspective: representation of fictional objects begins with the works of fiction that originate them. A work of fiction represents its “native” objects because our culture bestows that property on it (and on other works of fiction). I sketch conditions for such property bestowal and argue that they are satisfied in this case.     

Real Objects Can Impede Conditional Reasoning but Augmented Objects Do Not

In this study, Knauff and Johnson‐Laird's (2002) visual impedance hypothesis (i.e., mental representations with irrelevant visual detail can impede reasoning) is applied to the domain of external representations and diagrammatic reasoning. We show that the use of real objects and augmented real (AR) objects can control human interpretation and reasoning about conditionals. As participants made inferences (e.g., an invalid one from "if P then Q" to "P"), they also moved objects corresponding to premises. Participants who moved real objects made more invalid inferences than those who moved AR objects and those who did not manipulate objects (there was no significant difference between the last two groups). Our results showed that real objects impeded conditional reasoning, but AR objects did not. These findings are explained by the fact that real objects may over‐specify a single state that exists, while AR objects suggest multiple possibilities.     

Real Objects of Speech Perception: A Commentary on Diehl and Kluender

I agree with Diehl and Kluender (1989) that perceptual constraints guide the development of sound inventories and of phonological processes in languages. I disagree that these constraints are primary in comparison with other influences on sound inventories, such as articulatory ones. More important, I disagree that any of the evidence that Diehl and Kluender cite, indicates that objects of perception are auditory or acoustic rather than phonetic gestural. None of the evidence is persuasive; all of it is consistent with a view that perceptual objects are gestural. Viewed in a larger context-of a universal theory of perception-a theory that perceptual objects are gestural, whereas acoustic structure serves as information for gestures, is strongly promoted.     

Familiar idiom comprehension

Sentences containing idioms used either literally or figuratively were presented repeatedly for 100 msec per presentation. Half of the sentences were preceded by a paragraph. The number of presentations required to read the sentences and cued recall of the sentences were recorded. The serial brief presentations method provided predictable and meaningful results. Sentences containing idioms used literally required more presentations than those containing idioms used figuratively. Cued recall was better for idioms used literally than for those used figuratively. These results are interpreted as support for the Idiomatic Processing Model of idiom comprehension, which suggests that the figurative meaning is processed first; only if that one is inappropriate is the literal meaning processed.     

General and Familiar Trust in Websites

When people rely on the web to gather and distribute information, they can build a sense of trust in the websites with which they interact. Understanding the correlates of trust in most websites (general website trust) and trust in websites that one frequently visits (familiar website trust) is crucial for constructing better models of risk perception and online behavior. We conducted an online survey of active Internet users and examined the associations between the two types of web trust and several independent factors: information technology competence, adverse online events, and general dispositions to be trusting or cautious of others. Using a series of nested ordered logistic regression models, we find positive associations between general trust, general caution, and the two types of web trust. The positive effect of information technology competence erases the effect of general caution for general website trust but not for familiar website trust, providing evidence that general trust and self-reported competence are stronger associates of general website trust than broad attitudes about prudence. Finally, the experience of an adverse online event has a strong, negative association with general website trust, but not with familiar website trust. We discuss several implications for online behavior and suggest website policies that can help users make informed decisions about interacting with potentially risky websites.     

The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures

Abstract: In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes makes a remarkable claim about the ontological status of geometrical figures. He asserts that an object such as a triangle has a 'true and immutable nature' that does not depend on the mind, yet has being even if there are no triangles existing in the world. This statement has led many commentators to assume that Descartes is a Platonist regarding essences and in the philosophy of mathematics. One problem with this seemingly natural reading is that it contradicts the conceptualist account of universals that one finds in the Principles of Philosophy and elsewhere. In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of the notion of a true and immutable nature which reconciles the Fifth Meditation with the conceptualism of Descartes' other work. Specifically, I argue that Descartes takes natures to be innate ideas considered in terms of their so-called 'objective being'.     

Objects and their locations in exogenous cuing.

Anatomical, physiological, and behavioral studies provide support for separate object- and location-based components of visual attention. Although studies of object-based components have usually involved voluntary attention, more recent evidence has suggested that objects may play an independent role in reflexive exogenous orienting, at least at long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In the present experiments, the role of objects in reflexive attentional orienting was investigated by developing a task in which location and object cuing could be separately examined for both short and long SOAs. Typical location cuing effects were obtained, indicating facilitation at short cue-target intervals and inhibition of return (IOR) at longer intervals. In contrast, object cuing resulted in facilitation for cued objects at long cue-target intervals and no object-based IOR. Interestingly, object cuing primarily affected targets at cued locations, and not those at uncued locations. Together, the experiments examine the interactive nature of objects and locations in exogenous orienting and seem most consistent with a location-mediated view of object-based orienting.     

Postdiscrimination Gradients With Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces

Discrimination training is often used to improve accuracy in stimulus recognition. However, intradimensional discrimination training with a single positive exemplar and a single negative exemplar may reduce accuracy during a generalization test. More specifically, discrimination training can cause a shift in responding from the positive exemplar to stimuli unlike the negative exemplar. Previous studies have shown that the length of discrimination training affects the degree to which a shift occurs. We sought to determine whether pre-experimental exposure (“familiarity”) to the stimuli would have a similar effect. Twenty participants were trained and tested with two different sets of facial images. Each set of images consisted of stimuli that ranged from the naturally asymmetrical version of the face to a symmetrical version of the face. In one condition, the images were based on the participant’s own face; in the second condition, the images were based on the face of a stranger. In both cases, the median face served as the positive exemplar. In half of the conditions the naturally asymmetrical face served as the negative exemplar, and in the other half, the symmetrical face served as the negative exemplar. Images based on a stranger’s face produced greater generalization than images based on the participant’s own face. A significant gradient shift occurred only with familiar faces.

     

Objects and attitudes

The concept of an attitudinal object has long been present in psychoanalysis but almost entirely neglected. This omission is integral in the confusion and controversy about the object concept in general. It has left a theoretical gap which the so-called object relations theories have attempted to fill. This paper offers some preliminary suggestions for a psychoanalytic understanding of attitudes as a first level of inference in the study of relationships and their psychological basis.     

Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition: A review

Since the 1970s there has been a continuing interest in how people recognise familiar faces (Bruce, 1979 Bruce, V. 1979. Searching for politicians: An information processing approach to face recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 31: 373–395. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Ellis, 1975 Ellis, H.D. 1975. Recognising faces. British Journal of Psychology, 66: 409–426. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This work has complemented investigations of how unfamiliar faces are processed and the findings from these two strands of research have given rise to accounts that propose qualitatively different forms of representation for familiar and unfamiliar faces. Evidence to suggest that we process familiar and unfamiliar faces in different ways is available from cognitive neuropsychology, brain scanning, and psychophysics. However, in this review we focus on the evidence, available from experimental investigations of how people recognise faces, for different types of representation existing for each type of face. Factors affecting recognition are evaluated in terms of how they apply to familiar and unfamiliar faces and categorised according to the nature of their impact. In the final section this evidence, along with recent advances in the field, is used to explore the way in which unfamiliar faces may become familiar and the factors that may be important for the development of familiar face representations.