Category and feature identification

This paper considers a family of inductive problems where reasoners must identify familiar categories or features on the basis of limited information. Problems of this kind are encountered, for example, when word learners acquire novel labels for pre-existing concepts. We develop a probabilistic model of identification and evaluate it in three experiments. Our first two experiments explore problems where a single category or feature must be identified, and our third experiment explores cases where participants must combine several pieces of information in order to simultaneously identify a category and a feature. Humans readily solve all of these problems, and we show that our model accounts for human inferences better than several alternative approaches.     

Kierkegaard on the (un)happiness of faith

Hegel famously accuses Christianity of ‘unhappy consciousness’: it has a normative goal – union with the divine – that it cannot, in principle, satisfy. Kierkegaard was intimately aware of this criticism and, unlike some of Hegel’s other accusations, takes it seriously. In this paper my co-author and I investigate the way in which Kierkegaard addresses this issue in two texts published in 1843: Fear and Trembling and ‘The Expectancy of Faith’. We are especially interested in how the two texts describe faith’s relationship to finitude: for instance, whether the person of faith is permitted to expect that God will bless her in particular and concrete ways. My co-author and I offer competing interpretations. I argue that there is a deep tension in the way faith is described in the two texts; my co-author argues that there is consonance.     

Alcohol intoxication and memory for events: A snapshot of alcohol myopia in a real-world drinking scenario

Alcohol typically has a detrimental impact on memory across a variety of encoding and retrieval conditions (e.g., Mintzer, 2007; Ray & Bates, 2006). No research has addressed alcohol's effect on memory for lengthy and interactive events and little has tested alcohol's effect on free recall. In this study 94 participants were randomly assigned to alcohol, placebo, or control groups and consumed drinks in a bar-lab setting while interacting with a “bartender”. Immediately afterwards all participants freely recalled the bar interaction. Consistent with alcohol myopia theory, intoxicated participants only differed from placebo and control groups when recalling peripheral information. Expanding on the original hypervigilance hypothesis, placebo participants showed more conservative reporting behaviour than the alcohol or control groups by providing more uncertain and “don't know” responses. Thus, alcohol intoxication had confined effects on memory for events, supporting and extending current theories.     

A probabilistic account of exemplar and category generation

People are capable of imagining and generating new category exemplars and categories. This ability has not been addressed by previous models of categorization, most of which focus on classifying category exemplars rather than generating them. We develop a formal account of exemplar and category generation which proposes that category knowledge is represented by probability distributions over exemplars and categories, and that new exemplars and categories are generated by sampling from these distributions. This sampling account of generation is evaluated in two pairs of behavioral experiments. In the first pair of experiments, participants were asked to generate novel exemplars of a category. In the second pair of experiments, participants were asked to generate a novel category after observing exemplars from several related categories. The results suggest that generation is influenced by both structural and distributional properties of the observed categories, and we argue that our data are better explained by the sampling account than by several alternative approaches.     

Test-Retest Reliability of the Emotional Stroop Task: Examining the Paradox of Measurement Change

The Emotional Stroop (ES) task (I. H. Gotlib & C. D. McCann, 1984) has been proposed as an experimental measure to assess the processing of emotion or the bias in attention of emotion-laden information. However, study results have not been consistent. To further examine its reliability for empirical research, the authors of this study administered the ES task to 33 participants on 2 separate occasions separated by 1 week. Results indicated that retest reliabilities for reaction times (RTs) derived from the 3 separate emotion conditions (manic, neutral, and depressive) across the 1 week interval were very high. However, consistent with previous research, the reliabilities were very low for the interference indices (manic and depressive). These low reliabilities reflect the very high intercorrelation between the RTs derived from the 3 conditions. The authors concluded that a better indicator of the reliability for this task is the individual RTs from each emotion condition.     

Whence the Sovereignty?

This essay challenges an approach to political theology, exemplified by Clayton Crockett, that insists that divine sovereignty must be rejected to avoid the conception of political sovereignty developed by Carl Schmitt. Crockett conflates different understandings of God and God’s power, particularly ignoring the rise of nominalism and its influence over modern political theory. By attending to this history, we see that Crockett is incorrect to reject all classical onto‐theological or monotheistic definitions of God as the basis for sovereignty. The final section explores other theological options (Oliver O’Donovan, John Milbank, Jürgen Moltmann) that also challenge modern political sovereignty from within the classical Christian tradition.     

Cortisol response and psychological distress predict susceptibility to false memories for a trauma film

For eyewitness testimony to be considered reliable, it is important to ensure memory remains accurate following the event. As many testimonies involve traumatic, as opposed to neutral, events, it is important to consider the role of distress in susceptibility to false memories. The aim of this study was to investigate whether cortisol response following a stressor would be associated with susceptibility to false memories. Psychological distress responses were also investigated, specifically, dissociation, intrusions, and avoidance. Participants were allocated to one of three conditions: those who viewed a neutral film (N?=?35), those who viewed a real trauma film (N?=?35), and a trauma “reappraisal” group where participants were told the film was not real (N?=?35). All received misinformation about the film in the form of a narrative. Participants provided saliva samples (to assess cortisol) and completed distress and memory questionnaires. Cortisol response was a significant predictor of the misinformation effect. Dissociation and avoidance were related to confabulations. In conclusion, following a stressor an individual may differ with regard to their psychological response to the event, and also whether they experience a cortisol increase. This may affect whether they are more distressed later on, and also whether they remember the event accurately.     

Kant on the bounds of promise making: A Mendelssohnian account

In this essay, I argue that Kant holds one of the following two theses: A promise to do something that violates the moral law (a) is impossible or (b) can be conscientiously broken. On this issue, I put Kant in dialogue with Moses Mendelssohn in order to show, against recent suggestions, that Kant's account is distinctly Mendelssohnian.