The Impossibility of Emergent Conscious Causal Powers

This paper argues that emergent conscious properties can't bestow emergent causal powers. It supports this conclusion by way of a dilemma. Necessarily, an (allegedly efficacious) emergent conscious property brings about its effects actively or other than actively (in senses explained in the paper). If actively, then, the paper argues, the emergent conscious property can't have causal powers at all. And if other than actively, then, the paper argues, the emergentist finds himself committed to incompatible accounts of causation.     

因果模型在类比推理中的作用

通过操纵因果模型的特征维度及推理方向, 探讨因果模型在类比推理中的作用。实验一探讨了当结果特征未知时进行类比推理的情况, 发现在一果多因时, 被试采用因果模型进行类比推理, 而在一因多果时, 被试同时采用因果模型和计算模型进行类比推理。实验二探讨当原因特征未知时进行类比推理的情况, 发现在一果多因和一因多果时, 被试均采用因果模型进行类比推理。结果表明：(1)当结果特征未知时, 人们会建构因果模型进行类比推理。且当因果模型和计算模型处于冲突情境时, 人们会采用因果模型进行类比推理; 但当因果模型和计算模型处于非冲突情境时, 人们会同时采用因果模型和计算模型。(2)当原因特征未知时, 即按照因果模型推理的难度增加时, 人们仍会建构因果模型进行类比推理。     

Connection and Influence: A Process Theory of Causation

Summary  A combination of process and counterfactual theories of causation is proposed with the aim of preserving the strengths of each of the approaches while avoiding their shortcomings. The basis for the combination, or hybrid, view is the need, common to both accounts, of imposing a stability requirement on the causal relation.     

School Subjects as Social Categorisations

The present study set out to examine school subjects in terms of social categorisations of a child’s educability. A group of academically educated (N = 180) and vocationally educated parents (N = 249) with a child in the third grade of comprehensive school were asked to indicate their child’s strongest and weakest school subject and to give reasons for their choices. The parents’ most frequent choices for both the strongest and the weakest subject turned out to be mathematics and Finnish, which substantiates the pivotal role of the cognitive-verbal competencies in defining the child’s educability. The choices were guided by the child’s gender, so that mathematics was typically regarded as the strongest subject of boys and the weakest subject of girls and conversely, Finnish was regarded as the strongest subject of girls and the weakest subject of boys. The parent’s educational position organised the reasons given for the subject choices so that self-serving attribution was stronger among the academically educated than the vocationally educated parents, suggesting that the parents’ education relates to the trust they place on their child’s educational potential.     

Doing cognitive neuroscience: a third way

The “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches have been thought to exhaust the possibilities for doing cognitive neuroscience. We argue that neither approach is likely to succeed in providing a theory that enables us to understand how cognition is achieved in biological creatures like ourselves. We consider a promising third way of doing cognitive neuroscience, what might be called the “neural dynamic systems” approach, that construes cognitive neuroscience as an autonomous explanatory endeavor, aiming to characterize in its own terms the states and processes responsible for brain-based cognition. We sketch the basic motivation for the approach, describe a particular version of the approach, so-called ‘Dynamic Causal Modeling’ (DCM), and consider a concrete example of DCM. This third way, we argue, has the potential to avoid the problems that afflict the other two approaches.     

基于语境的因果性预期推理的构建的实验研究

实验一探讨对因果性预期推理的支持程度不同的语境对因果性预期推理的即时构建的影响。结果表明,如果文本信息有支持预期结果的语境,读者会即时进行因果性预期推理。实验二探讨当文本描述了两个不能整合的情境模型时因果性预期推理的即时构建情况。结果表明,在这种条件下,因果性预期推理不会即时产生。本研究结果表明,文本的语境对因果性结果的支持程度对因果性预期推理的即时构建有决定性的影响作用。     

观察因果学习和自主探索对学前儿童因果推理的影响

本研究采取单因素完全随机实验设计,以94名学前末期儿童(66-74月龄)为被试,在控制证据顺序的条件下探究观察因果学习结果和自主探索结果对儿童因果推理的影响,结果发现:(1)在只获得观察学习结果或自主探索结果一种证据条件下,绝大多数儿童依据所获证据推断因果关系;(2)在获得观察学习结果和自主探索结果两种证据条件下,儿童能综合两类证据推断因果关系,其中自主探索结果对儿童因果推理的影响力大于观察学习结果。     

Causal Exclusion and Causal Autonomism

The causal exclusion problem is often considered as one of the major difficulties for which non-reductive physicalists have no easy solution to offer. Some non-reductive physicalists address this problem by arguing that mental properties are to some extent causally autonomous. If this is the case, then mental properties will not be causally excluded by their physical realizers because causation, in general, is a relation between properties of the same level. In this paper, I argue that the response from causal autonomy cannot be successful for two reasons. First, it does not offer a satisfactory explanation for how mental particulars can have causal efficacy in a non-reductive physicalist framework. Second, the causal considerations underpinning this response do not really support the conclusion that mental properties are causally autonomous.     

Idealizations and Concretizations in Laws and Explanations in Physics

The paper tries to provide an alternative to Hempel’s approach to scientific laws and scientific explanation as given in his D-N model. It starts with a brief exposition of the main characteristics of Hempel’s approach to deductive explanations based on universal scientific laws and analyzes the problems and paradoxes inherent in this approach. By way of solution, it analyzes the scientific laws and explanations in classical mechanics and then reconstructs the corresponding models of explanation, as well as the types of scientific laws appearing in it. Finally, it compares this reconstruction with the approaches of J. Woodward and C. Hitchcock, C. Liu and with the views of M. Thalos on analytic mechanics.

Children's,adolescents', and adults' reference to goals to explain interpersonal actions

This study investigated children's, adolescents', and adults' references to an actor's goals when explaining interpersonal actions. Participants were presented with eight brief stories containing a variety of social events and were asked to explain why the actor in each story performed the central action. Children, adolescents, and adults mentioned goals for most of the stories. Adults and adolescents mentioned psychological goals much more often than did children. Older children, adolescents, and adults mentioned complex psychological goals more often than did younger children. Younger children often mentioned instrumental or social goals. When making goal attributions, children, adolescents, and adults considered both the nature of the action and the social context in which it occurred. Participants mentioned psychological goals more often when explaining an antisocial action and social goals when explaining a prosocial action. Participants were also more likely to mention psychological goals when interpersonal events immediately preceding the central action were described. Thus, goals were offered as explanations for interpersonal actions by all age groups, but the type of goals mentioned varied by the age of the participant, the social context, and the valence of the action. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.