外源性注意与多感觉整合的交互关系

外源性注意与多感觉整合的交互关系是一个复杂且具有争议的研究领域, 一直以来备受研究者们关注。为了解释两者间的交互作用机制, 本文基于已有研究成果从两方面综述了外源性注意与多感觉整合的交互关系：(1)外源性注意可以通过自下而上的方式调节多感觉整合, 包括空间不确定性、感知觉敏感度和感觉通道间信号强度差异三种理论假说; (2)多感觉整合可以调节外源性注意。一方面, 来自多感觉通道的刺激能够以自下而上的方式自动整合, 整合后的多感觉通道刺激比单通道刺激具有更大的凸显性从而有效地吸引注意。另一方面, 整合后的多感觉通道刺激能够作为多感觉信号模板存储于大脑之中, 从而在任务中实现自上而下地调节注意捕获。     

动作的主动控制感与因果关系的主动控制感：主动动作时间压缩效应的产生机制

主动动作的时间压缩效应指主动动作到动作结果之间存在时间上的主观压缩。基于动作的主动控制感和因果关系的主动控制感是该效应的两种理论解释。本文首先分别介绍动作的主动控制感和因果关系的主动控制感, 并从行为和脑机制角度提供相应的证据解释时间压缩效应的机制。同时, 本文提出了在主动动作时间压缩效应中动作的主动控制感与因果关系的主动控制感之间可能存在的序列加工和平行加工的关系。     

How Causal is Downward Causation?

Summary  The purpose of this paper is to lay bare the major problems underlying the concept of downward causation as discussed within the perspective of the present interest for phenomena that are characterized by self-organization.In our discussion of the literature, we have focussed on two questions: (1) What sorts of things are said to be, respectively, causing and caused within the context of downward causation? And (2) What is the meaning of ‘causing’ in downward causation? We have concluded that the concept of ‘downward causation’ is muddled with regard to the meaning of causation and fuzzy with regard to the nature of the causes and the effects. Moreover, we have concluded that ‘causation’ in respect of ‘downward causation’ is usually understood in terms of explanation and determination rather than in terms of causation in the sense of ‘bringing about’. Thus, the term ‘downward causation’ is badly chosen.     

Resisting ruthless reductionism: A comment on Bickle

Philosophy and Neuroscienceis an unabashed apologetic for reductionism in the philosophy of mind. Although we have learnt much from Bickle's work, we find his central claims unconvincing. Our comments have two central foci:Bickle's account of mental causation, and his single-cell account of consciousness. We argue that Bickle's attempt to solve the problem of mental causation is marred by his refusal to take multiple realizability seriously, and we suggest that his faith in single cell accounts of consciousness is misplaced. We remain unconvinced that the solutions to the problems of mental causation and consciousness are to be found in neuroscience.     

Pigeons' discrimination of Michotte's launching effect

We trained four pigeons to discriminate a Michotte launching animation from three other animations using a go/no-go task. The pigeons received food for pecking at one of the animations, but not for pecking at the others. The four animations featured two types of interactions among objects: causal (direct launching) and noncausal (delayed, distal, and distal & delayed). Two pigeons were reinforced for pecking at the causal interaction, but not at the noncausal interactions; two other pigeons were reinforced for pecking at the distal & delayed interaction, but not at the other interactions. Both discriminations proved difficult for the pigeons to master; later tests suggested that the pigeons often learned the discriminations by attending to subtle stimulus properties other than the intended ones.     

Mental health and welfare transitions: depression and alcohol abuse in AFDC women

From a selection perspective, does prior dysfunction select women into welfare or serve as a barrier to leaving welfare? From a social causation perspective, does entering or exiting welfare lead to changes in well being? These questions were analyzed in panel data for over 3,600 women drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for the period 1992–94. Welfare is associated with both depression and alcohol consumption cross‐sectionally. This link appears to derive in small part from selection into welfare by depression (in interaction with marital status), but depression and alcohol abuse did not operate as barriers to leaving welfare. Entering welfare was clearly associated with increased depression and alcohol consumption, but confidence in an apparent beneficial effect on alcohol symptoms of leaving welfare for employment was limited by small sample sizes. These findings are located in the context of the 1996‐welfare reform and the recent economic expansion. One implication is that community psychology should consider welfare entry as a risk factor similar to adverse employment changes such as job loss.     

Causal theories of the moving spotlight

This paper brings together the Sarvāstivāda (a major school of Abhidharma Buddhism) and Miller's (2019) moving spotlight theory to see how presentness is explained in terms of causation. The paper argues that a causal theory of presentness like Miller's encounters a dilemma: causation is either synchronic or diachronic, but neither is safe in the presence of the challenges. On the one hand, if causation is synchronic, how does a causal chain extend over time so that the wave of causation (and hence the spotlight) can move at all? On the other, if causation is diachronic, then a present moment has a temporal extension enough to accommodate a cause and its proximate effect. The paper proposes a synchronic notion of causation that counters the first challenge. This can be done by bringing together the Sarvāstivādin grasp-production model of causation, some Stoic ideas about causation, and some Armstrong's metaphysics.     

Necessary versus Probable Cause

One finds in the systems of natural languages some explicit means of elaborating not only upon the directness of the causal relationship believed to exist between two events X and Y (i.e. some means of specifying just how inevitably event X gives or gave rise to event Y), but also some manner of indicating just who or what is understood to be the primary instigator of the caused event. The goal of the present paper is to explore these notions in detail and arrive at a formal, logic-based means of capturing them.     

Philosophical behaviorism: a review of things that happen because they should: a teleological approach to action, by Rowland Stout.

Mentalistic terms such as belief and desire have been rejected by behavior analysts because they are traditionally held to refer to unobservable events inside the organism. Behavior analysis has consequently been viewed by philosophers to be at best irrelevant to psychology, understood as a science of the mind. In this book, the philosopher Rowland Stout argues cogently that beliefs and desires (like operants such as rats' lever presses) are best understood in terms of an interaction over time between overt behavior and its overt consequences (a viewpoint called teleological behaviorism). This book is important because it identifies the science of the mind with the science of overt behavior and implies that the psychologists best equipped to study mental life are not those who purport to do so but those who focus on the experimental analysis of behavior.     

Explanatory exclusion and mental explanation

Jaegwon Kim once refrained from excluding distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient physical cause of the effect (Kim, 1984 Kim, J. (1984). "Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 9, p. 257–270.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). At that time, Kim also refrained from excluding distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect (Kim, 1988 Kim, J. (1988). Explanatory realism, causal realism, and explanatory exclusion. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 12, 225–239.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1989 Kim, J. (1989). Mechanism, purpose, and explanatory exclusion. Philosophical Perspectives, 3, 77–108.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). More recently, he has excluded distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient cause of the effect, since the physical cause is individually sufficient for the effect (Kim, 2005 Kim, J. (2005). Physicalism, or something near enough. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). But there has been, to this point, no parallel shift in the explanatory realm, such that distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect are excluded since the physical explanation is objectively complete. In this paper I consider, defend, and apply this update to the principle of explanatory exclusion—an update, which, in the final analysis, demonstrates a significant advantage that non-reductive physicalism has over reductive physicalism.