The puzzle of the hats

The Puzzle of the Hats is a betting arrangement which seems to show that a Dutch book can be made against a group of rational players with common priors who act in the common interest and have full trust in the other players’ rationality. But we show that appearances are misleading—no such Dutch book can be made. There are four morals. First, what can be learned from the puzzle is that there is a class of situations in which credences and betting rates diverge. Second, there is an analogy between ways of dealing with situations of this kind and different policies for sequential choice. Third, there is an analogy with strategic voting, showing that the common interest is not always served by expressing how things seem to you in social decision-making. And fourth, our analysis of the Puzzle of the Hats casts light on a recent controversy about the Dutch book argument for the Sleeping Beauty.     

The Newxin puzzle

A variety of thought experiments suggest that, if the standard picture of practical rationality is correct, then practical rationality is sometimes an obstacle to practical success. For some, this in turn suggests that there is something wrong with the standard picture. In particular, it has been argued that we should revise the standard picture so that practical rationality and practical success emerge as more closely connected than the current picture allows. In this paper, I construct a choice situation—which I refer to as the Newxin puzzle—and discuss its implications in relation to the revisionist approach just described. Using the Newxin puzzle, I argue that the approach leads to a more radically revisionist picture of practical rationality than current debate suggests.

The puzzle of language evolution

Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.     

The puzzle of language evolution

Zusammenfassung. Die Sprachwissenschaft muß sich wieder auf den evolutionären Aspekt der Sprache konzentrieren, damit Sprachmodelle in bezug auf menschliche natürliche Sprachen realistischer und überzeugungskräftiger werden. Multiagent-Systeme werden als ein möglicher Weg zur Entwicklung solcher evolutionärer Modelle vorgeschlagen, und es wird ein Beispiel eines konkreten Experiments über Ursprung und Entwicklung der Semantik auf der Grundlage einer Multi-agent-Methode gegeben. Abstract. Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.     

The unsolved puzzle of trauma

This paper covers the inherent difference between psychoanalysis, which deals with unconscious fantasies, and trauma, which emphasizes the psychic repercussions caused by events in external reality. This distinction has led to variations in the treatment for victims of trauma, which also reflects the duality commonly observed in this group of patients. I suggest that trauma leads to unconscious guilt and the need for exoneration because individuals identify with their fate, and that this guilt can and indeed should be analyzed. Further studies might show that dividedness predates the experience of trauma and that this mode of defense mitigates the impact of trauma.     

The birth order puzzle.

Studies relating intellectual performance to birth order report conflicting results, some finding intellectual scores to increase, others to decrease with birth order. In contrast, the relationship between intellectual performance and family size is stable and consistently replicable. Why do these two highly related variables generate such divergent results? This birth order puzzle is resolved by means of the confluence model that quantifies the influences upon intellectual growth arising within the family context. At the time of a new birth, two opposing influences act upon intellectual growth of the elder sibling: (a) his or her intellectual environment is "diluted" and (b) he or she loses the "last-born's handicap" and begins serving as an intellectual resource to the younger sibling. Since these opposite effects are not equal in magnitude, the differences in intellectual performance among birth ranks are shown to be age dependent. While elder children may surpass their younger siblings in intellectual performance at some ages, they may be overtaken by them at others. Thus when age is taken into consideration, the birth order literature loses its chaotic character and an orderly pattern of results emerges.     

The placebo puzzle: putting together the pieces.

This article outlines and assesses the main theories of the placebo effect and suggests how they might sit together in a larger model of placebo etiology. Among the approaches considered are expectancy theory, emotional change theory, classical conditioning, and the biological approach. Although these are sometimes assumed to be competing models, in many cases they shed light on different pans of the placebo puzzle. Expectancies are the core of most placebo effects in human beings. The effects of expectancies are sometimes unmediated but in other cases are mediated by changes in emotional state, immune system function, perception, or behavior. Although expectancies are implicated in most placebo effects, a small number of placebo effects may be solely attributable to nonconscious contingency learning.     

The puzzle of working memory for sign language

Why is immediate-serial-recall (short-term memory) span consistently shorter for sign language than it is for speech? A new study by Boutla et al. shows that neither the length of signs, nor the formational similarity of signed digits, can account for the difference. Their results suggest instead that the answer lies in differences between the auditory and visual systems. At the same time, however, their results show that sign language and spoken language yield equivalent processing spans, suggesting that reliance on immediate-serial-recall measures in clinical and educational testing is misplaced.     

The puzzle of the unmarked clock and the new rational reflection principle

The “puzzle of the unmarked clock” derives from a conflict between the following: (1) a plausible principle of epistemic modesty, and (2) “Rational Reflection”, a principle saying how one’s beliefs about what it is rational to believe constrain the rest of one’s beliefs. An independently motivated improvement to Rational Reflection preserves its spirit while resolving the conflict.     

The hydra-headed Mueller-Lyer effect: A theoretical puzzle

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of multiple fins on the magnitude of the Mueller-Lyer illusion. All studies showed that the multiple form of the elongation illusion was greater than the average of the components and that the multiple form of the shrinkage illusion was smaller than either of the components. The pattern of results failed to support either simple addition models or more complex averaging theories of illusions. A cross-attribute summation hypothesis and a filled space hypothesis were proposed as possible explanations for the results.     

名家的睿智与迷茫

余秋雨先生的《千年一叹》的确是一本好书,这几年一版再版,笔者也一读再读。《千年一叹》记录了先生在新世纪来临之际,不惧荒草迷离、战     

The puzzle of responding maintained by response-contingent shock.

Four squirrel monkeys were first exposed to a sequence of procedures that reliably generate responding maintained by brief response-contingent electric shocks arranged according to a fixed-interval schedule. After responding had become stable on the fixed-interval schedule, additional contingencies were added in tandem, whereby after completion of the interval, the spacing of responses affected shock delivery. In one procedure, responses had to be spaced more widely than their previous median value if shock were to be delivered. In the other procedure, responses had to be spaced more closely to produce shock. On the first of these procedures, decreased but stable responses rates would indicate that shock functioned as a positive reinforcer; on the second, increased response rates would indicate the positively reinforcing function. Instead, response rates accelerated on the procedure that targeted more widely spaced responses for shock delivery, and decelerated or ceased on the procedure that arranged for shocks to be produced by more closely spaced responses. Consistent with other recent findings, these results question the interpretation of performances maintained by response-contingent shock as engendered by positive reinforcement and are consistent with aversive-control interpretations. The details of that aversive control are not entirely clear, however, and these same procedures would be informative if applied to shock-maintained behavior that is generated in other ways.     

通向斯德哥尔摩的“七彩拼图”——诺贝尔医学奖得主的成功法则

回眸百年诺贝尔奖,我们不难发现,荣耀的背后往往有着许多鲜为人知的故事。虽然诺贝尔医学奖得主们的人生经历丰富多彩,但在走向斯德哥尔摩的路途中,却凸显出一些共同特点,这些特点是:执着的梦想、合理的知识结构、不寻常的勤奋、丰富的想象力、浓厚的兴趣、坚韧的毅力以及对科学和生命的挚爱。     

A puzzle about pejoratives

Pejoratives are the class of expressions that are meant to insult or disparage. They include swear words and slurs. These words allow speakers to convey emotional states beyond the truth-conditional contents that they are normally taken to encode. The puzzle arises because, although pejoratives seem to be a semantically unified class, some of their occurrences are best accounted for truth-conditionally, while others are best accounted for non-truth-conditionally. Where current, non-truth-conditional, views in the literature fail to provide a unified solution for the puzzle, this paper motivates a novel, semantic, analysis of pejorative language. The significance of the proposed solution is not only linguistic in nature, but also philosophical, as it both provides a new argument for, and sheds further light on, the nature of semantic externalism.