Imprecise Epistemic Values and Imprecise Credences

A number of recent arguments purport to show that imprecise credences are incompatible with accuracy-first epistemology. If correct, this conclusion suggests a conflict between evidential and alethic epistemic norms. In the first part of the paper, I claim that these arguments fail if we understand imprecise credences as indeterminate credences. In the second part, I explore why agents with entirely alethic epistemic values can end up in an indeterminate credal state. Following William James, I argue that there are many distinct alethic values that a rational agent can have. Furthermore, such an agent is rationally permitted not to have settled on one fully precise value function. This indeterminacy in value will sometimes result in indeterminacy in epistemic behaviour—that is, because the agent’s values aren’t settled, what she believes might not be.     

Permissive Rationality and Sensitivity

Permissivism about rationality is the view that there is sometimes more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. In this paper I discuss the relationship between permissivism, deference to rationality, and peer disagreement. I begin by arguing that—contrary to popular opinion—permissivism supports at least a moderate version of conciliationism. I then formulate a worry for permissivism. I show that, given a plausible principle of rational deference, permissive rationality seems to become unstable and to collapse into unique rationality. I conclude with a formulation of a way out of this problem on behalf of the permissivist.     

iSTART: interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking.

Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) is a Web-based application that provides young adolescent to college-age students with high-level reading strategy training to improve comprehension of science texts. iSTART is modeled after an effective, human-delivered intervention called self-explanation reading training (SERT), which trains readers to use active reading strategies to self-explain difficult texts more effectively. To make the training more widely available, the Web-based trainer has been developed. Transforming the training from a human-delivered application to a computer-based one has resulted in a highly interactive trainer that adapts its methods to the performance of the students. The iSTART trainer introduces the strategies in a simulated classroom setting with interaction between three animated characters-an instructor character and two student characters-and the human trainee. Thereafter, the trainee identifies the strategies in the explanations of a student character who is guided by an instructor character. Finally, the trainee practices self-explanation under the guidance of an instructor character. We describe this system and discuss how appropriate feedback is generated.     

Assessing the format of the presentation of text in developing a Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT)

We are constructing a new computerized test of reading comprehension called the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT). R-SAT elicits and analyzes verbal protocols that readers generate in response to questions as they read texts. We examined whether the amount of information available to the reader when reading and answering questions influenced the extent to which R-SAT accounts for comprehension. We found that R-SAT was most predictive of comprehension when the readers did not have access to the text as they answered questions.     

iSTART 2: Improvements for efficiency and effectiveness

iSTART (interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking) is a Web-based reading strategy trainer that develops students’ ability to self-explain difficult text as a means to improving reading comprehension. Its curriculum consists of modules presented interactively by pedagogical agents: an introduction to the basics of using reading strategies in the context of self-explanation, a demonstration of self-explanation, and a practice module in which the trainee generates self-explanations with feedback on the quality of reading strategies contained in the self-explanations. We discuss the objectives that guided the development of the second version of iSTART toward the goals of increased efficiency for the experimenters and effectiveness in the training. The more pedagogically challenging high school audience is accommodated by (1) a new introduction that increases interactivity, (2) a new demonstration with more and better focused scaffolding, and (3) a new practice module that provides improved feedback and includes a less intense but more extended regimen. Version 2 also benefits experimenters, who can set up and evaluate experiments with less time and effort, because pre- and posttesting has been fully computerized and the process of preparing a text for the practice module has been reduced from more than 1 person-week to about an hour’s time.     

iSTART: Interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking

Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) is a Web-based application that provides young adolescent to college-age students with high-level reading strategy training to improve comprehension of science texts. iSTART is modeled after an effective, human-delivered intervention called self-explanation reading training (SERT), which trains readers to use active reading strategies to self-explain difficult texts more effectively. To make the training more widely available, the Web-based trainer has been developed. Transforming the training from a human-delivered application to a computer-based one has resulted in a highly interactive trainer that adapts its methods to the performance of the students. The iSTART trainer introduces the strategies in a simulated classroom setting with interaction between three animated characters—an instructor character and two student characters— and the human trainee. Thereafter, the trainee identifies the strategies in the explanations of a student character who is guided by an instructor character. Finally, the trainee practices self-explanation under the guidance of an instructor character. We describe this system and discuss how appropriate feedback is generated.     

Perception and tonus

Abstract.— A review is given of the achievements of more than one hundred years of research concerning the influence of muscular tonus on the perceptual phenomena related to human spatial orientation. The tonal conditions of both the extrinsic eye muscles and the complex system of skeletal muscles have been shown to have decisive influence on "egocentric localization". The factual median is perceived as being displaced in the direction of the side of the body with greater tonus. This is the case whether the tonic asymmetry is experimentally induced or natural. Corresponding to this fact, a spot of light in the dark situated at the factual eye level will be perceived as being situated above the experienced eye level. The influence on egocentric localization exercised by prolonged fixation of greater or smaller parts of the muscular system (especially of the eye muscles) is pointed out. This "fixation effect" seems to be in accordance with conceiving the postural system of the body by analogy with a servo-mechanical system, the feed-back part of which is restrained.