Reinforcing Functions of Altruism and Leaving the Scene

The reward value of helping and the reward value of leaving the scene were assessed separately by means of a social analog of instrumental escape conditioning. Both helping and leaving the scene proved to have reward value, with that of helping being much greater. The altruistic reward afforded by helping produced strong, regular, sustained learning of the instrumental response throughout the course of acquisition. The reward afforded by leaving the scene was much weaker in its effects but, nonetheless, superior to nonreinforced controls.     

Sleeping in safe places: An experimental investigation of human sleeping place preferences from an evolutionary perspective

Although humans spend a third of their life asleep, their choice of sleeping places has so far been little investigated both theoretically and empirically. We address this issue from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Our basic assumption is that humans have an evolved preference for safe sleeping places, that is, those that promise protection against potential aggressors and nighttime predation. Several testable predictions were derived from this assumption concerning the preferred location of the bed in a sleeping room. Specifically, we predicted that people prefer sleeping places that allow them to view the entrances to the sleeping room (doors and windows) from a distance while remaining concealed from the entrances themselves. To test these hypotheses, 138 participants were asked to arrange a bed and other pieces of furniture on floor plans that were experimentally manipulated with respect to the direction in which the door opened and the presence of a window. In agreement with predictions, participants predominantly positioned the bed in a way that (a) allowed them to see the door, (b) was as distant as possible from the door, and (c) was on the side of the room toward which the door opened. In addition, the positioning of the bed was influenced as predicted by the presence of a window.     

If Folk Intuitions Vary,Then What?

We have recently presented evidence for cross‐cultural variation in semantic intuitions and explored the implications of such variation for philosophical arguments that appeal to some theory of reference as a premise. Devitt (2011) and Ichikawa and colleagues (forthcoming) offer critical discussions of the experiment and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. In this response, we reiterate and clarify what we are really arguing for, and we show that most of Devitt’s and Ichikawa and colleagues’ criticisms fail to address our concerns.     

Connectionism and three levels of nativism

Along with the increasing popularity of connectionist language models has come a number of provocative suggestions about the challenge these models present to Chomsky's arguments for nativism. The aim of this paper is to assess these claims. We begin by reconstructing Chomsky's argument from the poverty of the stimulus and arguing that it is best understood as three related arguments, with increasingly strong conclusions. Next, we provide a brief introduction to connectionism and give a quick survey of recent efforts to develop networks that model various aspects of human linguistic behavior. Finally, we explore the implications of this research for Chomsky's arguments. Our claim is that the relation between connectionism and Chomsky's views on innate knowledge is more complicated than many have assumed, and that even if these models enjoy considerable success the threat they pose for linguistic nativism is small.     

What is folk psychology?

Eliminativism has been a major focus of discussion in the philosophy of mind for the last two decades. According to eliminativists, beliefs and other intentional states are the posits of a folk theory of mind standardly called “folk psychology”. That theory, they claim, is radically false and hence beliefs and other intentional states do not exist. We argue that the expression “folk psychology” is ambiguous in an important way. On the one hand, “folk psychology” is used by many philosophers and cognitive scientists to refer to an internally represented theory of human psychology exploited in the prediction of behavior. On the other hand, “folk psychology” is used to refer to the theory of mind implicit in our everyday talk about mental states. We then argue that sorting out the conceptual and terminological confusion surrounding “folk psychology” has major consequences for the eliminativism debate. In particular, if certain models of cognition turn out to be true, then on some readings of “folk psychology” the arguments for eliminativism collapse.