Learning a theory of causality

The very early appearance of abstract knowledge is often taken as evidence for innateness. We explore the relative learning speeds of abstract and specific knowledge within a Bayesian framework and the role for innate structure. We focus on knowledge about causality, seen as a domain-general intuitive theory, and ask whether this knowledge can be learned from co-occurrence of events. We begin by phrasing the causal Bayes nets theory of causality and a range of alternatives in a logical language for relational theories. This allows us to explore simultaneous inductive learning of an abstract theory of causality and a causal model for each of several causal systems. We find that the correct theory of causality can be learned relatively quickly, often becoming available before specific causal theories have been learned--an effect we term the blessing of abstraction. We then explore the effect of providing a variety of auxiliary evidence and find that a collection of simple perceptual input analyzers can help to bootstrap abstract knowledge. Together, these results suggest that the most efficient route to causal knowledge may be to build in not an abstract notion of causality but a powerful inductive learning mechanism and a variety of perceptual supports. While these results are purely computational, they have implications for cognitive development, which we explore in the conclusion.     

词汇具体性对情绪名词效价加工影响的ERP研究

具体性和抽象性是词汇同一特性的两极, 是直接影响词汇加工过程的重要因素。本研究采用快速序列视觉呈现范式, 结合脑电技术探讨在有限注意资源内, 词汇具体性对情绪名词加工过程的影响。结果发现：名词加工早期和晚期阶段的ERP成分受到情绪效价的调节, 情绪词比中性词诱发了更大的N170和LPC波幅; 名词加工早期和晚期阶段的ERP成分也受到词汇具体性的调节, 具体词比抽象词诱发了更大的N170和LPC波幅; 词汇具体性影响情绪名词加工的晚期阶段, LPC波幅能够分辨出不同情绪效价的抽象词, 对于具体词仅能区分出情绪与非情绪, 这说明抽象词可能比具体词负载了更多的情绪信息, 反映出对情绪信息的精细加工过程。     

Cognitive Metaphor Theory and the Metaphysics of Immediacy

One of the core tenets of cognitive metaphor theory is the claim that metaphors ground abstract knowledge in concrete, first‐hand experience. In this paper, I argue that this grounding hypothesis contains some problematic conceptual ambiguities and, under many reasonable interpretations, empirical difficulties. I present evidence that there are foundational obstacles to defining a coherent and cognitively valid concept of “metaphor” and “concrete meaning,” and some general problems with singling out certain domains of experience as more immediate than others. I conclude from these considerations that whatever the facts are about the comprehension of individual metaphors, the available evidence is incompatible with the notion of an underlying conceptual structure organized according to the immediacy of experience.     

ABSTRACTION,IDEALIZATION, AND OPPRESSION

Abstract: Feminists, critical race scholars, and other social‐justice theorists sometimes object to “abstraction” in liberal normative theory. Arguing that oppression affects individual agents in powerful yet subtle ways, they contend that allegedly abstract theories often reinforce oppressive power structures. Here I critically examine and ultimately reject Onora O'Neill's “abstraction without idealization” as a solution to this problem. Because O'Neill defines abstraction as simply the “bracketing of certain predicates,” her methodology fails to guide decisions about what to bracket and what to include in the theory. Moreover, it may not be possible to abstract without also relying on some particular ideals. While abstraction is unavoidable, I conclude that it must be employed with greater attention to sociopolitical hierarchies and by using ideals that do not collude with structures of oppression. I discuss the work of Susan Babbitt and Elizabeth Anderson as examples of how nonoppressive ideals might be incorporated into normative theory.     

UNESCO'S PROJECT ON THE EXCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE FOR ENDOGENOUS DEVELOPMENT

“Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power.” More than ever, this saying is acquiring compelling force, although it has in fact been true since man sought to communicate and to free himself from the constraints and dangers threatening his survival or hampering the development of his highest potentialities. But with the extension of relationships with societies, this maxim of Auguste Comte becomes even more pertinent. Those who lack knowledge see their fate shaped by others in the light of their own interests. This is true of individuals as well as of social groups and of people. Millions of human beings are subjected to oppressive forms of domination, both covert and overt, because they lack access to knowledge. What will the situation be tomorrow? Does irreversible “planetarization” mean that some individuals or groups of people will become the brain, storing and originating knowledge, while others will be reduced to functioning as connective or muscular tissue? The metaphor (if such it is) may be open to criticism, but the question, which is at the heart of this whole research on the exchange of knowledge, remains valid. We must face the possibility, remote though it may be, of an unequal division of mankind into a more or less standardized, mechanized, and “functional” mass and an initiated elite in possession of all the power. Processes are moving ahead that will culminate in such a situation - unless we prove capable of instituting a new international economic order. No further evidence is needed than the increase in the disparities and inequalities of income and ability to acquire knowledge not only between industrialized and Third World countries, but also within each of these groups of countries, between sections of the population, between regions, and between town and country.     

Ask me why,don't tell me why: Asking children for explanations facilitates relational thinking

Identifying abstract relations is essential for commonsense reasoning. Research suggests that even young children can infer relations such as “same” and “different,” but often fail to apply these concepts. Might the process of explaining facilitate the recognition and application of relational concepts? Based on prior work suggesting that explanation can be a powerful tool to promote abstract reasoning, we predicted that children would be more likely to discover and use an abstract relational rule when they were prompted to explain observations instantiating that rule, compared to when they received demonstration alone. Five- and 6-year-olds were given a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task, with repeated demonstrations of relational (same) matches by an adult. Half of the children were prompted to explain these matches; the other half reported the match they observed. Children who were prompted to explain showed immediate, stable success, while those only asked to report the outcome of the pedagogical demonstration did not. Findings provide evidence that explanation facilitates early abstraction over and above demonstration alone.     

Evaluation of the effects of a childhood depression prevention program

The study aimed to design and evaluate a program for the prevention of childhood depression (“Pozik-Bizi” [in English, “Live-Happily”]), comparing its effects with a socio-emotional intervention program based on cooperative play. The sample comprised 420 students aged 7 to 10?years from the Basque Country, 51.9% were randomly assigned to the experimental condition (“Pozik-Bizi”) program and 48.1% to the control group (“Play program”). Using a pretest-posttest repeated measures experimental design, 7 evaluation instruments were administered. When comparing the two interventions, it was confirmed that those who participated in the “Pozik-Bizi” program significantly decreased their level of clinical maladjustment, school maladjustment, emotional, and behavioral problems, and they increased positive behaviors that inhibit depression. However, the cooperative play program improved self-concept and social skills significantly more than the “Pozik-Bizi” program. The effect size in all the variables was small. The discussion analyzes the effectiveness of specific programs of prevention of childhood depression versus global programs of social-emotional development. This work provides a program to prevent childhood depression that has been shown to be effective in the reduction of clinical variables. In addition, this study confirms the positive potential of programs of cooperative play, to increase self-concept and social skills.     

The genesis and use of exemplar vs. prototype knowledge in abstract category learning

Accurate classification of new exemplars in an abstraction paradigm may be due to their similarity to old exemplars rather than to abstract category (or prototype) knowledge. In the present study, subjects received initial training on a two-category problem before being transferred to a task in which half of the exemplar-response pairs had their responses reversed while the remaining half of the pairs were unchanged. When transfer occurred with no delay and involved old exemplars, more errors occurred for changed than for unchanged pairs. This result implies the use of exemplar-specific rather than abstract category knowledge. However, when transfer was delayed by 24 or 72 h, errors occurred equally often for changed and unchanged pairs. This result suggests that exemplar-specific knowledge is no longer used. Since subjects were still able to accurately classify exemplars prior to the transfer task at these delays, some form of abstract category knowledge is implicated.     

When Consumers Prefer Bundles with Noncomplementary Items to Bundles with Complementary Items: The Role of Mindset Abstraction

Past research shows that consumers evaluate bundles with complementary items more favorably than they evaluate bundles with noncomplementary items. In a series of four experiments that involve evaluation, willingness to pay, and real choice, we show that this well‐established effect is moderated by the level of mindset abstraction. Complementarity (vs. noncomplementarity) among bundle items prompts relatively concrete (vs. abstract) thinking (study 1). Consequently, consumers evaluate complementary (vs. noncomplementary) bundles more favorably when they think in more concrete (vs. abstract) terms (study 2) or when the consumption context involves lower (vs. higher) spatial (study 3) or temporal (study 4) distance. These effects are mediated by consumers’ heightened sense of “feeling right” during decision making under construal fit (study 4). Finally, the level of complementarity among bundle items differentially influences mental abstraction because of consumers’ tendency to perceive bundles as a single inseparable unit. Therefore, the effect attenuates when consumers adopt a separating—rather than a connecting—mindset (study 3). Overall, this work significantly extends past research on product bundles and offers several managerial implications.     

Luck,Knowledge, and “Mere” Coincidence

There are good reasons for pursuing a theory of knowledge by way of understanding the connection between knowledge and luck. Not surprisingly, then, there has been a burgeoning of interest in “luck theories” of knowledge as well as in theories of luck in general. Unfortunately, “luck” proves to be as recalcitrant an analysandum as “knows.” While it is well worth pursuing a general theory of luck despite these difficulties, our theory of knowledge might be made more manageable if we could find a more restricted notion that captured the core phenomena of luck that are relevant to whether or not someone knows. This essay makes the attempt to delineate such a notion, called “mere coincidence.”     

Why This Makes Me Think of That

This study was aimed at explaining how and under what conditions surface similarity leads to the retrieval of an analogous base problem in LTM. Some elements of a theory of the organisation of knowledge in memory are proposed. Two levels of representation are distinguished. The first level represents directly accessible, local surface properties. The second level represents more abstract information pertaining to the category with which each analogous problem can be associated. Some results will be described showing that access to an analogue in LTM based on surface properties is determined by the existence of a similarity at a higher level of abstraction. This is a “search-area” effect, in that categorical information seems to delimit a memory search space, within which the connection between local surface properties is more likely to be made.     

语义表征具身理论:情绪在概念表征中的作用

概念如何被表征是认知科学的热点问题,其中抽象概念如何表征是当前具身认知最具争议性的话题之一。与前期概念隐喻理论(强调意象图式)和知觉符号理论(强调情境内省信息)的观点不同,语义表征具身理论强调情绪经验信息在抽象概念表征和加工中的作用。具体而言,具体概念的表征主要来自感觉运动信息,而抽象概念的表征主要来自情绪经验信息和语言信息。研究证明,抽象概念的高情绪经验信息能够促进词汇的加工,且这一促进作用受词汇情绪效价的调节。未来研究应进一步考虑影响情绪经验信息发挥作用的因素,比如语言信息的丰富性、情绪唤醒或个体的情绪状态等。     

The Tyranny of Technique

The role of technique and technology in psychological counseling is briefly discussed. A preoccupation with both has characterized approaches to knowledge and power for several centuries. It is argued that the distinction between “knowing that” and “knowing how” is an important one in professional training. Techniques are necessary codifications of more basic, abstract development. The counseling apprentice and supervisor should therefore relegate technique and technical skills to an important, but hardly central, role in psychological services.     

The Disappearing “Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math”

When teaching a novel mathematical concept, should we present learners with abstract or concrete examples? In this experiment, we conduct a critical replication and extension of a well-known study that argued for the general advantage of abstract examples (Kaminski, Sloutsky, & Heckler, 2008a). We demonstrate that theoretically motivated yet minor modifications of the learning design put this argument in question. A key finding from this study is that participants who trained with improved concrete examples performed as well as, or better than, participants who trained with abstract examples. We argue that the previously reported “advantage of abstract examples” manifested not because abstract examples are advantageous in general, but because the concrete condition employed suboptimal examples.     

Traits and Roles in Gender Stereotypes: A Comparison between Moroccan and Spanish Native Samples

This study examines gender role attitudes and attitudes toward “man” and “woman” in two native samples from Spain and Morocco. The samples were made up of 400 participants, 200 in each country, containing the same number of men and women and selected with a similar procedure. We expected differences based on the independent variables of nationality, gender and educational level. The Spanish sample, female and student participants were predicted to present more egalitarian gender role attitudes and more positive attitudes toward “woman” than participants in the Moroccan sample, male and non-student participants. Overall MANOVAs were used to show the differences in gender role attitudes and attitudes toward “man” and “woman”. Results confirmed the role of the nationality variable in the expected way. The Spanish sample showed a more egalitarian view and more favorable attitudes toward “woman” than the Moroccan one. Educational level and gender showed significant effects on the Moroccan sample but only partially. Moroccan student females and non-student males presented a more egalitarian view than non-student females and student males respectively.     

How Does One Know What Shame Is? Epistemology,Emotions, and Forms of Life in Juxtaposition

Do women conceptualize—understand, know about, and react to—shame differently from the way men do? Does the experience and knowledge of shame have a gender-specificity, and along what lines could it be analyzed? By introducing a distinction between life or enduring experiences, “Erfahrung,” and episodic or occurrent experiences, “Erlebnis,” andby juxtaposing this distinction with the Rylean notion that knowledge is dispositional this paper argues for the plausibility of a gender-specificivy.     

Bio‐Theoacoustics: Prayer Outdoors and the Reality of the Natural World

What does it mean to pray when the Earth—the fabric of our bodies’ lives, and indeed of the incarnation itself—is profoundly endangered from human action? What would Christian prayer look like that was not “losing track of nature” but following its tracks, physically and spiritually immersed in the actual, present, threatened and wild life of the more‐than‐human world? Using categories outlined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics, this essay asserts that prayer and worship that take place entirely within the wall‐, speech‐, and screen‐mediated bubble of anthropocentrism risk becoming an abstraction. The essay explores this assertion in three moves: first, it delineates Bonhoeffer's assertion of the “abstraction” created by forms of Christian life in which God is conceived in separation from the world. Next, it shows how these categories—“God” and “world”—come together in prayer outdoors, understood both literally and metaphorically. And finally, it proposes how prayer outdoors might take shape for individuals or communities: a bio‐theoacoustics of prayer for the life of the world.     

Binding,narcissistic pathology and the psychoanalytic process

This article discusses the question of truth claims in psychoanalysis, revolving around the concepts “construction”, “reconstruction”, “historical truth” and “narrative truth”. In Part I of the article, these concepts are discussed in an historical context, in particular, Freud's view, the narrative tradition and some of Bion's ideas. In Part II, an attempt is made to synthesize these concepts. It is argued that the constructed character of the unconscious has to be integrated into the patient's reconstruction of his/her life story. The psychoanalytic project enables the patient to create a new narrative that claims to possess historical validity. It is important in this context not to understand the notion of “history” objectivisticallv as if it were a question of revealing certain objective historical facts. Instead, it is suggested that the connection between the present understanding of the past and the past as it was experienced in the past should be understood as a fusion of horizons. Finally, the necessary function of consciousnesslself-consciousness for the psychoanalytic project of acquiring knowledge about one's unconscious is pointed out.     

Hegel after Nancy: Sensibility,Singularity, and the Problem of the … x

This article takes up two models of punishment in Hegel, one that is underdeveloped in the Phenomenology of Spirit and one more fully developed in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Both models focus on the notions of law and the legality of personhood. I argue that beyond this, they share a common concept of singularity as an excess over and above the ethical-political order. This concept opens up to what Jean-Luc Nancy calls the “event” of freedom in Hegel. This point about excess lets me deploy Lacan and then Nancy to underscore how, for Hegel, problems concerning the question “what is law?” might be a clue as to how the bad infinite is opposed to the good or “actual” infinite. I take this up in the context of Hegel’s theory of “value,” including the value of the “good.” Altogether this analysis reveals that Hegel’s method allows for a more complex humanism than is typically understood, since his points about law and punishment lead to a more radicalized notion of intentionality and forgiveness than usually derived from the logic of recognition.