FREE WILL ACCORDING TO JOHN DUNS SCOTUS AND NEUROSCIENCE

Abstract. This paper examines two views of free will. It looks first at the fourteenth‐century religious insights of John Duns Scotus, one of history's seminal thinkers about free will. It then examines what current neuroscience tells us about free will. Finally, it summarizes the past and present views and concludes by answering two questions: Does free will refer to an absence of external constraint, or does it refer to a human ability to decide in an acausal manner?     

A multiple-valued logic approach to the design and verification of hardware circuits

We present a novel approach, which is based on multiple-valued logic (MVL), to the verification and analysis of digital hardware designs, which extends the common ternary or quaternary approaches for simulations. The simulations which are performed in the more informative MVL setting reveal details which are either invisible or harder to detect through binary or ternary simulations. In equivalence verification, detecting different behavior under MVL simulations may lead to the discovery of a genuine binary non-equivalence or to a qualitative gap between two designs. The value of a variable in a simulation may hold information about its degree of truth and its “place of birth” and “date of birth”. Applications include equivalence verification, initialization, assertions generation and verification, partial control on the flow of data by prioritizing and block-oriented simulations. Much of the paper is devoted to theoretical aspects behind the MVL approach, including the reason for choosing a specific algebra for computations and the introduction of the notions of De Morgan Canonical Form and of verification complexity of Boolean expressions. Two basic simulation-based algorithms are presented, one for satisfying and verifying combinational designs and the other for equivalence verification of sequential designs.     

Symbolically speaking: a connectionist model of sentence production

The ability to combine words into novel sentences has been used to argue that humans have symbolic language production abilities. Critiques of connectionist models of language often center on the inability of these models to generalize symbolically (Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1988; Marcus, 1998). To address these issues, a connectionist model of sentence production was developed. The model had variables (role‐concept bindings) that were inspired by spatial representations (Landau & Jackendoff, 1993). In order to take advantage of these variables, a novel dual‐pathway architecture with event semantics is proposed and shown to be better at symbolic generalization than several variants. This architecture has one pathway for mapping message content to words and a separate pathway that enforces sequencing constraints. Analysis of the model's hidden units demonstrated that the model learned different types of information in each pathway, and that the model's compositional behavior arose from the combination of these two pathways. The model's ability to balance symbolic and statistical behavior in syntax acquisition and to model aphasic double dissociations provided independent support for the dual‐pathway architecture.     

Face recognition algorithms and the other‐race effect: computational mechanisms for a developmental contact hypothesis

People recognize faces of their own race more accurately than faces of other races. The “contact” hypothesis suggests that this “other‐race effect” occurs as a result of the greater experience we have with own‐ versus other‐race faces. The computational mechanisms that may underlie different versions of the contact hypothesis were explored in this study. We replicated the other‐race effect with human participants and evaluated four classes of computational face recognition algorithms for the presence of an other‐race effect. Consistent with the predictions of a developmental contact hypothesis, “experience‐based models” demonstrated an other‐race effect only when the representational system was developed through experience that warped the perceptual space in a way that was sensitive to the overall structure of the model's experience with faces of different races. When the model's representation relied on a feature set optimized to encode the information in the learned faces, experience‐based algorithms recognized minority‐race faces more accurately than majority‐race faces. The results suggest a developmental learning process that warps the perceptual space to enhance the encoding of distinctions relevant for own‐race faces. This feature space limits the quality of face representations for other‐race faces.     

The linkage between infant negative temperament and parenting self‐efficacy: The role of resilience against negative performance feedback

Caring for infants with negative reactive temperament may tax parents' confidence in their caregiving ability, or parenting self‐efficacy (PSE). This may happen in particular in parents who interpret these signals as negative feedback on their performance. To test this hypothesis, 179 first‐time pregnant women were presented a caregiving simulation that provided positive and negative feedback on their attempts to comfort a crying baby. According to their PSE resilience to negative feedback during the task, they were grouped in a high resilient and low resilient group. PSE was followed up at 32 weeks of pregnancy and 3 and 12 months after birth, while perceived temperament of the child was assessed at 3 and 12 months after birth. Results showed that among women with low resilience against negative feedback, perceived negative temperament was negatively associated with PSE at 3 months, whereas no such association was observed among women with high resilience against negative feedback. Implications of the concept of resilience for the study of PSE are discussed.     

Eye-movements support chronometric imagery performance even when the task is occluded

ABSTRACT

Mental chronometry has often been used to provide a temporal comparison between executed and imagined movements, with smaller discrepancies indicating more accurate image production and better imagery performance. In this study, we examined the importance of retinal and extra-retinal information in the performance of simple, sequential movements. After physical practice of four activities of daily living (Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure), nineteen participants imagined completing the same tasks with: 1) free eye-movements and visible objects, 2) free eye-movements and no visibility of the objects, and 3) constrained eye-movements and visible objects. Results suggested imagery performance was slower/less accurate compared to physical execution when the eyes were constrained. Conversely, chronometric imagery performance was unaffected with free eye movements, even when task-specific visual information was occluded. This study highlights the crucial role that eye-movements play in the regulation of the temporal aspects of imagery even when retinal information is absent, suggesting that temporal sequencing of imagined actions is largely dependent on extra-retinal information sources.     

医患关系中医生沟通能力培训模式的研究进展

从医生沟通能力的视角出发，改善医患关系的相关促进技术主要包括线下课程培训和计算机网络技术的实时交互式模拟训练等形式。其中，线下课程培训是当前医生沟通能力提升的主要促进技术，分别以沟通技能培训Comskil模型和真实工作场所中的医生沟通能力培训周期模型作为理论支撑，形成了针对特殊领域的“告知坏消息”沟通培训课程和处方对话培训课程。线下的课程培训因其在培训时间和培训师能力要求方面的局限性，促使了计算机模拟在医生沟通能力训练上的运用，从而形成了基于计算机的实时交互式模拟训练系统。随着科学技术的发展，未来将会有更多的新技术加入到实时交互式模拟训练中来。     

动作理解因境而异:动作加工中情境信息的自动整合

针对动作理解的机制,模拟论主张大脑自发模拟他人的动作,就相同的动作其理解也相同,而理论论则认为人们基于合理性原则对他人动作进行推理,相同的动作发生在不同的情境时会有不同的理解。但以往研究所采用动作材料的运动学特性和发生情境存在共变,其难以区分动作理解是支持模拟论还是理论论。通过两项实验,采用动画制作技术来产生有无约束情境下的追逐动作,以指示动作加工过程的脑电μ抑制为指标,对前述两种观点进行了检验。其中,在约束情境中存在障碍物,追逐者需改变运动方向以绕过障碍物,从后方逐渐趋近目标;而无约束情境中不存在障碍物,但追逐者依然保持与存在约束情景下相同的运动模式。结果发现,当追逐动作发生在存在约束的情境时,其基于合理性原则推测可获得清晰的动作目标,该条件下的μ抑制程度高于不存在约束情境的条件(实验1);而当仅追逐者运动,即趋近的目标不确定时,虽然有约束和无约束情境间的物理差异与实验1相同,但条件间μ抑制的差异消失(实验2);且上述μ抑制并非与注意相关的枕叶α活动的泛化。该结果提示,动作发生的情境信息影响人们对动作的理解,即基于推理过程理解动作,支持理论论观点。     

Mental Rotation in False Belief Understanding

This study examines the spontaneous use of embodied egocentric transformation (EET) in understanding false beliefs in the minds of others. EET involves the participants mentally transforming or rotating themselves into the orientation of an agent when trying to adopt his or her visuospatial perspective. We argue that psychological perspective taking such as false belief reasoning may also involve EET because of what has been widely reported in the embodied cognition literature, showing that our processing of abstract, propositional information is often grounded in concrete bodily sensations which are not apparently linked to higher cognition. In Experiment 1, an agent placed a ball into one of two boxes and left. The ball then rolled out and moved either into the other box (new box) or back into the original one (old box). The participants were to decide from which box they themselves or the agent would try to recover the ball. Results showed that false belief performance was affected by increased orientation disparity between the participants and the agent, suggesting involvement of embodied transformation. In Experiment 2, false belief was similarly induced and the participants were to decide if the agent would try to recover the ball in one specific box. Orientation disparity was again found to affect false belief performance. The present results extend previous findings on EET in visuospatial perspective taking and suggest that false belief reasoning, which is a kind of psychological perspective taking, can also involve embodied rotation, consistent with the embodied cognition view.