Limits of Neural Computation in Humans and Machines

Science and Engineering Ethics - Aicardi et al. (Ethical and social aspects of neurorobotics, Science and Engineering Ethics, 2020) look to neuroscience to mitigate the limitations of current...     

Object categorization by wild-ranging birds in nest defence

Animal Cognition - Despite object categorization being an important ability for the survival of wild animals, the principles behind this ability have been only scarcely studied using wild-ranging,...     

Getting Even or Getting Equal? Retributive Desires and Transitional Justice

This article examines the effect that different policy interventions of transitional justice have on the desires of the victims of human rights violations for retribution. The retributive desires assessed in this article are conceptualized as individual, collective, and abstract demands for the imposition of a commensurate degree of suffering upon the offender. We suggest a plausible way of reducing victims' retributive desires. Instead of "getting even" in relation to the suffering, victims and perpetrators may "get equal" in relation to their respective statuses, which were affected by political crimes. The article hypothesizes that the three classes of transitional justice: (1) reparation that empowers victims by financial compensation, truth telling, and social acknowledgment; (2) retribution that inflicts punishment upon perpetrators; and (3) reconciliation that renews civic relationship between victims and perpetrators through personal contact, apology, and forgiveness; each contributes to restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, and in so doing decreases the desires that victims have for retribution. In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Results from the regression analysis reveal that financial compensation, social acknowledgement, punishment, and forgiveness are likely to reduce victims' retributive desires.     

What is matched in direct matching? Intention attribution modulates motor priming

Converging evidence has shown that action observation and execution are tightly linked. The observation of an action directly activates an equivalent internal motor representation in the observer (direct matching). However, whether direct matching is primarily driven by basic perceptual features of the observed movement or is influenced by more abstract interpretative processes is an open question. A series of behavioral experiments tested whether direct matching, as measured by motor priming, can be modulated by inferred action goals and attributed intentions. Experiment 1 tested whether observing an unsuccessful attempt to execute an action is sufficient to produce a motor-priming effect. Experiment 2 tested alternative perceptual explanations for the observed findings. Experiment 3 investigated whether the attribution of intention modulates motor priming by comparing motor-priming effects during observation of intended and unintended movements. Experiment 4 tested whether participants' interpretation of the movement as triggered by an external source or the actor's intention modulates the motor-priming effect by a pure instructional manipulation. Our findings support a model in which direct matching can be top-down modulated by the observer's interpretation of the observed movement as intended or not.     

When do we simulate non-human agents? Dissociating communicative and non-communicative actions

There is strong evidence that we automatically simulate observed behavior in our motor system. Previous research suggests that this simulation process depends on whether we observe a human or a non-human agent. Measuring a motor priming effect, this study investigated the question of whether agent-sensitivity of motor simulation depends on the specific action observed. Participants saw pictures depicting end positions of different actions on a screen. All postures featured either a human or non-human agent. Participants had to produce the matching action with their left or right hand depending on the hand presented on the screen. Three different actions were displayed: a communicative action (emblem), a transitive (goal-directed) action and an intransitive action. We found motor priming effects of similar size for human and non-human agents for transitive and intransitive actions. However, the motor priming effect for communicative actions was present for the human agent, but absent for the non-human agent. These findings suggest that biological tuning of motor simulation is highly action-selective and depends on whether the observed behavior appears to be driven by a reasonable goal.     

内容和形式之本质的一般问题

我曾说过,"形式"和"内容"(质料)这两个词被人们在多种涵义上使用.这些涵义须加以区分并尽量界定得更准确.     

The super-ego, the voice of the self and the depressive position

The Freudian concept of the super–ego and Jung's idea of a primary moral reaction in the unconscious – the voice of the self – are compared. From its origin the superego is connected with human destructiveness, but for Jung individual conscience is based on a collision between the ego and the inner world of archetypes. With reference to Neumann's 'New Ethic', some implications of Jung's idea of the unconscious ambiguity of good and evil are discussed. Finally an attempt is made to relate the concept of the primary moral reaction to a developmental and clinical framework, notably Klein's depressive position, but only a partial integration is possible.     

Hurry up! The role of supervisors’ time urgency and self‐perceived status for autocratic leadership and subordinates’ well‐being

This study examines the connections among supervisors’ time urgency, their leadership behavior, and subordinate outcomes. Integrating cognitive perspectives on time urgency with contemporary thinking on the psychological experience of status, we reason that supervisors’ time‐urgent personality relates positively with their autocratic leadership behavior, and we cast supervisors’ self‐perceived status as a moderator of this linkage. Moreover, we enrich this leader‐centric perspective with a complementary, more follower‐centric view, recognizing that the consequences of supervisors’ time urgency likely extend beyond their own behavior to indirectly affect their subordinates’ well‐being at work. We tested our hypotheses using a field sample of 60 supervisors and 277 of their subordinates. Results indicate that (a) supervisors with higher time urgency are more likely to exhibit autocratic leadership behavior when they also perceive themselves as having relatively high status among subordinates, but not when perceiving lower status, and (b) supervisors’ time urgency exhibits a conditional indirect effect (via autocratic leadership) on subordinates’ work stress and time pressure experiences. Hence, this study illustrates an important boundary condition for the consequences of supervisors’ time urgency, and it demonstrates that this personality characteristic not only shapes supervisors’ leadership behavior but also affects the subordinates they are charged with leading.