A Neuronal Basis for the Fan Effect

The fan effect says that “activation” spreading from a concept is divided among the concepts it spreads to. Because this activation is not a physical entity, but an abstraction of unknown lower‐level processes, the spreading activation model has predictive but not explanatory power. We provide one explanation of the fan effect by showing that distributed neuronal memory networks (specifically, Hopfield networks) reproduce four qualitative aspects of the fan effect: faster recognition of sentences containing lower‐fan words, faster recognition of sentences when more cues are provided, faster acceptance of studied sentences than rejection of probes, and faster recognition of sentences studied more frequently. These are all a natural result of the dynamics of distributed associative memory.     

Alternative Frankfurt-Style Counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities

In this paper, I assume that if we have libertarian freedom, it is located in the power to choose and its exercise. Given this assumption, I then further assume a version of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) which states that an agent is morally responsible for his choice only if he could have chosen otherwise. With these assumptions in place, I examine three recent attempts to construct Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) to PAP. I argue that all fail to undermine the intuitive plausibility of PAP.