Collective memory, group minds, and the extended mind thesis

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory “goes beyond the individual” but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency.     

Basing Science Ethics on Respect for Human Dignity

A “no ethics” principle has long been prevalent in science and has demotivated deliberation on scientific ethics. This paper argues the following: (1) An understanding of a scientific “ethos” based on actual “value preferences” and “value repugnances” prevalent in the scientific community permits and demands critical accounts of the “no ethics” principle in science. (2) The roots of this principle may be traced to a repugnance of human dignity, which was instilled at a historical breaking point in the interrelation between science and ethics. This breaking point involved granting science the exclusive mandate to pass judgment on the life worth living. (3) By contrast, respect for human dignity, in its Kantian definition as “the absolute inner worth of being human,” should be adopted as the basis to ground science ethics. (4) The pathway from this foundation to the articulation of an ethical duty specific to scientific practice, i.e., respect for objective truth, is charted by Karl Popper’s discussion of the ethical principles that form the basis of science. This also permits an integrated account of the “external” and “internal” ethical problems in science. (5) Principles of the respect for human dignity and the respect for objective truth are also safeguards of epistemic integrity. Plain defiance of human dignity by genetic determinism has compromised integrity of claims to knowledge in behavioral genetics and other behavioral sciences. Disregard of the ethical principles that form the basis of science threatens epistemic integrity.     

Principles,laws, theories and the metaphysics of science

In this paper an outline of a metaphysical conception of modern science is presented in which a fundamental distinction is drawn between scientific principles, laws and theories. On this view, ontologicalprinciples, rather than e.g. empirical data, constitute the core of science. The most fundamental of these principles are three in number, being, more particularly (A) the principle of the uniformity of nature, (B) the principle of the perpetuity of substance, and (C) the principle of causality.These three principles set basic constraints on the methodology of both empirical and theoretical science. The uniformity principle is central to the empirical aspect of science, suggesting a methodology consisting in the attempt to discover empiricallaws, while the causality principle is central to the theoretical aspect of science, suggesting the postulation of scientifictheories capable of indicating the causal basis of the laws. And the perpetuity principle functions so as to form a bridge between the theories and the laws.By distinguishing between principles, laws and theories in this way, a dimension is added to the analysis of modern science which allows for a more realistic account of its nature.     

情景记忆成功年老化的神经机制

随着年龄的增长, 大部分老年人的情景记忆会出现衰退, 但也会有一部分老年人的情景记忆表现出成功的年老化, 即记忆成绩较好或随增龄的衰退程度较小。脑保持理论、神经去分化理论、认知储备理论以及神经补偿理论分别从不同角度解释了情景记忆成功年老化的神经机制。基于选择性优化与补偿模型对现有理论进行整合, 发现情景记忆成功年老化可能与个体的认知储备水平直接相关：高认知储备的老年人能够对情景记忆相关的脑区和脑网络进行优化且具备更强的神经补偿能力, 因而其脑功能(比如, 神经表征和神经加工通路的特异性)可能会保持地更好。未来研究需要更多地采用纵向设计来考察各理论之间的关系及其影响因素, 从而更好地解释记忆成功年老化的神经机制并为提升老年人的脑与认知健康提供支持。     

Innate Ideas Revisited

ABSTRACT— The notion of innate ideas has long been the subject of intense debate in the fields of philosophy and cognitive science. Over the past few decades, methodological advances have made it possible for developmental researchers to begin to examine what innate ideas—what innate concepts and principles—might contribute to infants' knowledge acquisition in various core domains. This article focuses on the domain of physical reasoning and on Spelke's (1988, 1994) proposal that principles of continuity and cohesion guide infants' interpretation of physical events. The article reviews recent evidence that these two principles are in fact corollaries of a single and more powerful principle of persistence, which states that objects persist, as they are, in time and space.     

Teleological principles in science

In the search for elementary particles, such principles are used as Gell‐mann's that ‘anything which is possible is compulsory’. This is an example of a teleological principle according to which the scientist tries to realize in science the kind of world that he desires on prior emotional grounds. Mendeleev's classical discovery of the Periodic Law and Table of Elements was thus guided by his mystical values. A mechanistic anti‐teleologist such as Jacques Loeb was indeed a crypto‐teleologist who wished science to fulfil his radical, socialistic aims. Hoyle's ‘perfect cosmological principle’ projected conservative values, while such conceptions as Oppenheimer's ‘catastrophic collapse’, and Mach's Principle likewise had their teleological bases. Anti‐mystical and individualistic values inspired Bridgman's operationism. A ‘perfect operational principle’ would stipulate that every imaginable state of affairs would be operationally differentiable from others. Teleological principles are essential to the functioning of sciences; in the Theory of Theories, the principle of plenitude may hold: that for every mode of theory, there is some segment of reality for which it provides the best explanation. Naturalistic accounts of basic teleological principles seem inadequate.     

LAWS IN ECOLOGY: DIVERSE MODES OF EXPLANATION FOR A HOLISTIC SCIENCE

Ecology's reputation as a holistic science is partly due to widespread misconceptions of its nature as well as shortcomings in its methodology. This article argues that the pursuit of empirical laws of ecology can foster the emergence of a more unified and predictive science based on complementary modes of explanation. Numerical analyses of population dynamics have a distinguished pedigree, spatial analyses generate predictive laws of macroecology, and physical analyses are typically pursued by the ecosystem paradigm. The most characteristically ecological laws, however, are found in biotic analyses in the functional trait paradigm. Holistic credentials for ecology may thus be restored on two bases: its accommodating complementary modes of analysis and explanation, and its having some laws within the least reductionistic mode consistent with its subject matter. These claims, grounded in the aspectual theory of Herman Dooyeweerd, lead to some suggestions for enhancing the versatility and usefulness of ecology—and other sciences—by balancing different research paradigms under a holistic vision.     

Revising the concept of lawhood: special sciences and natural kinds

The Kripkean conception of natural kinds (kinds are defined by essences that are intrinsic to their members and that lie at the microphysical level) indirectly finds support in a certain conception of a law of nature, according to which generalizations must have unlimited scope and be exceptionless to count as laws of nature. On my view, the kinds that constitute the subject matter of special sciences such as biology may very well turn out to be natural despite the fact that their essences fail to be microphysical or micro-based. On the causal conception of natural kinds I privilege, the naturalness of a kind is a function of the fact that it figures prominently in at least one causal law. However, there is a strong tendency prevailing among contemporary philosophers to assume that, in order to count as proper laws generalizations must be expectionless. Since most generalizations tracked down by the special sciences turn out not to fulfill these criteria, what this conception of a law implies is that most of the generalizations the special sciences trade in are not proper laws. It follows that, on this view, most if not all of the kinds the special sciences dealing with turn out not to constitute natural kinds, understood as kinds to which bona fide laws apply. In order to establish that the non-microstructurally defined kinds that fall within the domain of enquiry of the special sciences are eligible for the status of natural kind, I must therefore establish that generalizations needn’t have unlimited scope and be exceptionless to count as laws of nature. This is precisely what I seek to do in this paper. I begin by arguing that the question “what is a law of nature?” is most naturally interpreted as the question “what features must generalizations exhibit in order to ground scientific explanations?” and by offering reasons to believe that generalizations needn’t be exceptionless and have unlimited scope to play the crucial role laws have been thought to play in scientific explanation. Drawing on Sandra Mitchell [Mitchell, S. (2000). Philosophy of Science, 67, 242–265] and James Woodward’s [Woodward, J. (1997). Philosophy of science, 64 (proceedings), 524–541; Woodward, J. (2000). British Journal for the philosophy of science, 51(2), 197–254; Woodward, J. (2001). Philosophy of science, 68, 1–20] work, I subsequently develop an alternative account of the criteria generalizations must satisfy in order to count as laws of nature, which at least some of the generalizations of the special sciences turn out to fulfill. I thus give credence to the idea that at least some of the kinds that fall within the domain of the special sciences figure in laws of nature, and I thereby restore the possibility that some special science kinds deserve to be deemed natural.     

On the Causal Completeness of Physics

According to an increasing number of authors, the best, if not the only, argument in favour of physicalism is the so‐called ‘overdetermination argument’. This argument, if sound, establishes that all the entities that enter into causal interactions with the physical world are physical. One key premise in the overdetermination argument is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, said to be supported by contemporary physics. In this paper, I examine various ways in which physics may support the principle, either as a methodological guide or as depending on some other laws and principles of physics.     

THE WEAK ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT

Abstract. The design argument for God's existence was critically assessed when in the growth of modern science the cognitive value of ideological categories was called into question. In recent discussions dealing with anthropic principles there has appeared a new version of the design argument, in which cosmic design is described without the use of ideological terms. The weak anthropic principle (WAP), a most critical version of all these principles, describes the fine-tuning of physical parameters necessary lo the genesis of carbon-based life. It defines no physical mechanisms of the observed coordination between physical parameters. If in a future unified physical theory such mechanisms are discovered, the weak anthropic principle should be replaced by the strong anthropic principle, which asserts the physical necessity of fine-tuning. Neither of the versions can be regarded as physically trivial unless one accepts strong assumptions of the existence of parallel universes. Consequently, a new version of the philosophical design argument can be developed on the basis of the weak anthropic principle.     

Memory and content

The paper argues that any theory of content has to adopt a “functionalistic core” to concord with the cognitive sciences. This functionalistic core requires that representations are defined as substitutes in functions that describe the flexible behavior to be explained by the representation. The content of a representation can thus only be determined if the representation is “in use”, i.e. if it is an argument in such a function. The stored entities in memory are not in use while they are stored, and hence cannot be assigned a specific content. The term “template” is introduced to describe stored entities in memory. The discussion of some implications of this result show that some deep philosophical problems follow from this argument as well as consequences for empirical research on memory.     

A dilemma for Heideggerian cognitive science

‘Naturalizing phenomenology’ by limiting it to the ontology of the sciences is problematic on both metaphysical and phenomenological grounds. While most assessments of the prospects for a ‘naturalized phenomenology’ have focused on approaches based in Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, problems also arise for non-reductive approaches based in Heideggerian existential phenomenology. ‘Heideggerian cognitive science’ faces a dilemma. On the one hand, (i) if it is directly concerned with the nature of subjectivity, and this subjectivity is assumed to be ontologically irreducible to its physical enablers yet still metaphysically dependent on them, then Heideggerian cognitive science will either leave that metaphysical dependence an unexplained instance of supervenience, or ground it in speculation about brute metaphysical laws that have an unclear relationship to the ontology of the sciences. On the other hand, (ii) if Heideggerian cognitive science is not directly concerned with the nature of subjectivity, but is instead merely aimed at the development of a Heideggerian phenomenological psychology, then it doesn’t fully address the ontological implications of phenomenology’s transcendental approach, and so, while it might succeed in explaining the realization of psychological phenomena scientifically, the existence of subjectivity will remain inexplicable based on the ontology of the sciences. Neither strategy succeeds in ‘naturalizing phenomenology’: (i) either rejects scientific naturalism, or makes its requirements trivial, while (ii) either rejects the transcendental dimension of phenomenology, or fails to address its ontological implications.     

Are There Cross-Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross-cultural principles of law? In a between-subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross-culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice.     

Keeping the Result in Sight and Mind: General Cognitive Principles and Language‐Specific Influences in the Perception and Memory of Resultative Events

We study how people attend to and memorize endings of events that differ in the degree to which objects in them are affected by an action: Resultative events show objects that undergo a visually salient change in state during the course of the event (peeling a potato), and non‐resultative events involve objects that undergo no, or only partial state change (stirring in a pan). We investigate general cognitive principles, and potential language‐specific influences, in verbal and nonverbal event encoding and memory, across two experiments with Dutch and Estonian participants. Estonian marks a viewer's perspective on an event's result obligatorily via grammatical case on direct object nouns: Objects undergoing a partial/full change in state in an event are marked with partitive/accusative case, respectively. Therefore, we hypothesized increased saliency of object states and event results in Estonian speakers, as compared to speakers of Dutch. Findings show (a) a general cognitive principle of attending carefully to endings of resultative events, implying cognitive saliency of object states in event processing; (b) a language‐specific boost on attention and memory of event results under verbal task demands in Estonian speakers. Results are discussed in relation to theories of event cognition, linguistic relativity, and thinking for speaking.     

Effects of manipulating valence and arousal components of mood on specificity of autobiographical memory

An important cognitive deficit in clinical depression is the inability to be specific in recalling personal memories, a phenomenon coined "overgeneral memory" by Williams and Broadbent. Although there is general consensus that overgeneral memory is not state-dependent, most of the evidence originates from studies of this effect in clinical populations. The two components of mood, valence and arousal, were manipulated to examine their influence on memory specificity in a nonclinical sample of university undergraduate students. In Exp. 1, a Velten procedure was used to induce elated, depressed, or neutral mood states. No difference was found in autobiographical memory specificity among the three groups. In Exp. 2, high and low arousal states were induced through physical exercise. A low arousal state resulted in an increased proportion of overgeneral memories, suggesting that this memory phenomenon may be influenced by the arousal component of mood.     

Psychological Laws

John McDowell claims that the propositional attitudes, and our conceptual abilities in general, are not appropriate topics for inquiry of the sort that is done in natural science. He characterizes the natural sciences as making phenomena intelligible in terms of their place in the realm of laws of nature. He claims that this way of making phenomena intelligible contrasts crucially with essential features of our understanding of propositional attitudes and conceptual abilities. In this article I show that scientific work of the sort McDowell claims cannot be done is in fact being done, and that this work presents strong evidence that there are psychological laws. The research I discuss is that by the psychologist Norman H. Anderson and his colleagues. I also argue that the considerations McDowell presents in defense of his claims do not constitute a significant challenge to the research that Anderson and his colleagues have done. It will be noted in the article that Anderson's work is relevant not just to McDowell's writings, but also to several much discussed issues in philosophy of cognitive science: the above two issues of whether there can be a science of ordinary psychological phenomena, higher cognition, comparable to that of the natural sciences and whether such a science would present laws, and also the issue of whether in such a science, and its laws, notions of folk psychology would play crucial constitutive roles. Anderson's work presents strong grounds for affirmative answers to all of these questions.