Can a Robot Lie? Exploring the Folk Concept of Lying as Applied to Artificial Agents

The potential capacity for robots to deceive has received considerable attention recently. Many papers explore the technical possibility for a robot to engage in deception for beneficial purposes (e.g., in education or health). In this short experimental paper, I focus on a more paradigmatic case: robot lying (lying being the textbook example of deception) for nonbeneficial purposes as judged from the human point of view. More precisely, I present an empirical experiment that investigates the following three questions: (a) Are ordinary people willing to ascribe deceptive intentions to artificial agents? (b) Are they as willing to judge a robot lie as a lie as they would be when human agents engage in verbal deception? (c) Do people blame a lying artificial agent to the same extent as a lying human agent? The response to all three questions is a resounding yes. This, I argue, implies that robot deception and its normative consequences deserve considerably more attention than they presently receive.     

两人和三人最后通牒博弈任务中嗓音吸引力对决策的影响

本研究用两人和三人最后通牒博弈任务探究男性嗓音吸引力对决策的影响。实验1发现, 高吸引力的嗓音会提高被试对不公平分配方案的接受率。实验2发现, 即使分配方案对第三方接受者公平, 对被试不公平, 第三方接受者的高吸引力嗓音仍然会提高被试对方案的接受率。综上, 嗓音吸引力可以诱发类似面孔吸引力的“美貌津贴”效应。     

基于佛家五蕴学说的心智主体五层次模型

人工智能领域突飞猛进的发展态势,对系统的心理学理论提出了潜在而强烈的需求。佛教被认为是系统的东方心理学体系,其中五蕴体系是其核心框架,对于人工智能研究有着重要的参考价值。为了揭示人工智能系统的功能细节,本研究提出一个辅助性的五层次心智主体模型,据此对五蕴进行逐一分析,最终得出一份心智主体的功能清单,最终说明：五蕴体系不仅能描述人类心智结构,同时也能为人工智能的构建提供框架。     

面孔二态性对学前儿童信任行为的影响——来自人格标签的解释

面孔二态性是指成熟男性和女性经过青春期第二性征的发展后逐步形成了面孔上的性别特征,男性化与女性化是这一维度的两个水平。本研究探索面孔二态性是否会对学龄前儿童信任行为产生影响,并从幼儿对二态性面孔的人格标签角度来解释。实验1修订信任博弈任务（Trust game）,考察学前儿童信任行为是否会因搭档面孔的二态性（男性化和女性化）而不同,经历负性反馈后被试在下轮游戏中信任选择率是否会下降;实验2让学前儿童选择人格形容词来描述不同性别化的面孔,探讨幼儿对不同二态性面孔是否已形成不同的人格标签。结果表明学前儿童对女性化面孔信任选择率最高;在遭遇负性反馈后的下一轮游戏中,幼儿对他人的信任率显著下降;学前儿童认为女性化面孔更具有积极人格,而更多将男性化面孔与消极人格词汇匹配。由此,二态性面孔影响学前儿童的信任行为,在于他们对二态性面孔已形成不同的人格标签。     

Parasites of the mind. Why cultural theorists need the meme’s eye view

Are there any such things as mind parasites? By analogy with biological parasites, such cultural items are supposed to subvert or harm the interests of their host. The hypothesis of cultural parasitism has appeared in different guises in the burgeoning field of cultural evolution. To unpack the notion of mind parasites, we first clear some conceptual ground around the concept of cultural adaptation and its relation to human agency. We then formulate Millikan’s challenge: how can cultural items develop novel purposes of their own, cross-cutting or subverting our own personal purposes? If this central challenge is not met, talk of cultural ‘parasites’ or ‘selfish memes’ remains vacuous. First, we discuss why other attempts to answer Millikan’s challenge have failed. In particular, we put to rest the claims of panmemetics, a somewhat sinister worldview according to which human culture is nothing more than a swarm of selfish agents, plotting and scheming behind the scenes. Next, we reject a more reasonable, but still overly permissive approach to mind parasites, which equates them with biologically maladaptive culture. Finally, we present our own answer to Millikan’s challenge: certain systems of misbelief can be fruitfully treated as cultural parasites, designed by cultural evolution to subvert the interests of their human hosts. As a proof of concept, we discuss witchcraft beliefs in early modern Europe, and show how the meme’s eye view promises to shed new light on a mystery that historians and social scientists have been wrestling with for decades.     

The problem of mind in Confucianism

This essay explores the Confucian theory of mind. Doing so, it first examines the early Confucian concept of the human mind as a substance that has both moral and cognitive functions and a universal nature. It then explores the neo-Confucian concept of the human mind, the original mind, and the relationships between the human mind and human nature, as well as between the human mind and the human body. Finally, it explores the Confucian concept of cultivation of the mind.     

Assessing the associations among trait and state levels of deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering

Recent research has demonstrated that mind wandering can be subdivided into spontaneous and deliberate types, and this distinction has been found to hold at both the trait and state levels. However, to date, no attempts have been made to link trait-level spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering with state-level assessments of these two subtypes of mind wandering. Here we evaluated whether trait-level deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering map onto state levels of these subtypes of mind wandering. Results showed correspondence between trait-level reports of spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering and their state-level counterparts, indicating that people’s reports on the intentionality of their mind wandering in the laboratory correspond to their reports of the intentionality of mind wandering in everyday life. Thus, the trait- and state-level scales of mind wandering were found to validate each other: Whereas the state-level measures provided some construct validity for the trait-level measures, the trait-level measures indicated that the state-level measures may be generalizable to everyday situations.     

On the influence of re-reading on mind wandering

Re-reading has been shown to have a minimal benefit on text comprehension, in comparison to reading only once or other types of study techniques (e.g., testing; self-explanation). In two experiments we examined the effect of re-reading on mind wandering. Participants read two texts, during which they responded to intermittent mind wandering probes. One text was read once and the other twice. Consistent with previous findings, there was no effect of re-reading on comprehension even though participants reported feeling more competent when they re-read the text. Critically, participants mind wandered more while re-reading. Furthermore, the effect of re-reading on mind wandering was specific to intentional forms of mind wandering rather than unintentional. The implications of these results for understanding mind wandering and the limited effectiveness of re-reading as a mnemonic are discussed.     

A one-person doxastic characterization of Nash strategies

Within a formal epistemic model for simultaneous-move games, we present the following conditions: (1) belief in the opponents’ rationality (BOR), stating that a player believes that every opponent chooses an optimal strategy, (2) self-referential beliefs (SRB), stating that a player believes that his opponents hold correct beliefs about his own beliefs, (3) projective beliefs (PB), stating that i believes that j’s belief about k’s choice is the same as i’s belief about k’s choice, and (4) conditionally independent beliefs (CIB), stating that a player believes that opponents’ types choose their strategies independently. We show that, if a player satisfies BOR, SRB and CIB, and believes that every opponent satisfies BOR, SRB, PB and CIB, then he will choose a Nash strategy (that is, a strategy that is optimal in some Nash equilibrium). We thus provide a sufficient collection of one-person conditions for Nash strategy choice. We also show that none of these seven conditions can be dropped.