The trouble with Madeleine

I respond to Selinger and Mix (Selinger, E. and Mix, J. 2004. On interactional expertise: Pragmatic and ontological considerations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3: 145–163), concentrating on their charges that Collins (Collins, H. M. 2004a. Interactional expertise as a third form of knowledge. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3: 125–143) underrates the importance of interactional expertise as an expertise sui generis and that the paper fails to analyse the idea of embodiment sufficiently holistically, misleading treating the ‘body’ as no more than the linear sum of its parts. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

What's the Point?*

We present a theory of conversation comprehension in which a line of the conversation is “understood” by relating it to one of seven possible “points”. We define these points, and present examples where it seems plausible that the failure to “get the point” would indeed constitute a failure to understand the conversation. We argue that the recognition of such points must proceed in both a top down and bottom up fashion, and thus is likely to be quite complicated. Finally, we see the processing of information in the conversation to be dependent upon which point classification the user decides upon.     

An evaluation of the associative strength of a partially reinforced serial CS

Three experiments examined the factors that are responsible for producing a high rate of autoshaped keypecking in pigeons when the conditioned stimulus is followed by varying consequences. In the first experiment, a single group received three serial conditioning schedules presented on different keys. The AB⁺ schedule consisted of trials in which A was followed by B, which, in turn, was followed by food. The CD⁺C° schedule consisted of reinforced CD pairings plus presentations of C alone. The EF^+/0 schedule consisted of a mixture of reinforced and nonreinforced EF pairings. It was found that responding was most rapid during C, slowest during E, and at an intermediate rate during A. In spite of this ordering A was chosen in preference to C, when these stimuli were presented simultaneously. In Experiments 2 and 3 the schedules AB⁺A° and AB^+/0 were presented to separate groups. The rate of responding during A was substantially greater in the former schedule, yet it was found that this stimulus was equally ineffective as a conditioned reinforcer in both groups. We propose that autoshaped keypecking is composed of two types of response, a conditioned response and an orienting response, which are governed by different processes.     

A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONTENT AREA READING‐1930 REVISITED

For the last twenty years, the concept of content area reading has been a major topic in the research and professional literature. This notion, however, was not an invention of the 60s; research contributing to this area is documented fifty years earlier. Another recent trend has been the emergence of ethnography as a research tool in educational settings. This, too, has been employed since the 1920s. In fact, one of the more extensive early studies incorporating an enthnographic design for content reading was undertaken by McCallister. This review and reanalysis of his study aid in judging its value and accuracy.     

II—Methodology, not Metaphysics: Against Semantic Externalism

Borg (2009) surveys and rejects a number of arguments in favour of semantic internalism. This paper, in turn, surveys and rejects all of Borg's anti-internalist arguments. My chief moral is that, properly conceived, semantic internalism is a methodological doctrine that takes its lead from current practice in linguistics. The unifying theme of internalist arguments, therefore, is that linguistics neither targets nor presupposes externalia. To the extent that this claim is correct, we should be internalists about linguistic phenomena, including semantics.