Observing behavior in monkeys (Macaca arctoides): Support for the information hypothesis

A single lever, discrete-trials observing procedure was used with stumptailed monkeys (Macaca arctoides). Lever-presses during a trial produced colored key lights (IS⁺ and IS^?) which signaled whether the trial would end with response-independent food or without food. During the baseline period, both IS⁺ and IS^? were produced on a variable-interval (VI) 15-sec schedule which began operating at the onset of the trial. The two experimental conditions involved a combination of this VI schedule and a DRL schedule. In one of these conditions, only a response that both met the VI requirement and was preceded by at least 6 sec of nonresponding could produce IS^? on nonfood trials, while the schedule for IS⁺ on food trials remained VI 15 sec. In the other experimental condition, the schedules for producing the two stimuli were the reverse. All subjects eventually learned to produce either IS⁺ or IS^? on the combined VI-DRL schedule. These data support an information hypothesis of observing in monkeys and contrast with data from pigeons which support a conditioned reinforcement hypothesis.     

Embodied AI, Creation, and Cog

This is a reply to comments on my paper Cog, a Humanoid Robot, and the Questions of the Image of God ; one was written by Mary Gerhart and Allan Melvin Russell, and another one by Helmut Reich. I will start with the suggested analogy of the relationship between God and us and the one between us and the humanoid robot Cog and will show why this analogy is not helpful for the dialogue between theology and artificial intelligence (AI). Such a dialogue can succeed only if both our fascination for humanoids and our fear of them are equally accepted. Any avoidance of these emotions, as well as any rejection of the possibility that Cog might one day be humanlike, destroy the dialogue. The interpretation of both scientific theories and religious metaphors as stories replaces seemingly "rational" arguments with the confession of the respective commitments to a body of stories and opens up a space for exchange and friendship between AI-researchers and theologians—an option that usually remains closed.     

Bloom and His Critics: Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Aims of Education

The central questions raised by Allan Bloom's The Closing of theAmerican Mind are often overlooked. Among the most important ofBloom's themes is the impact of nihilism upon education. Bloom condemnsnihilism. Interestingly, we find among his critics two alternativejudgments. Richard Schacht, citing Nietzsche, asserts that nihilism,while fruitless in and of itself, is a necessary prerequisite tosomething higher. Harry Neumann, affirming the accuracy of nihilism,declares that both Bloom and Nietzsche reject nihilism out of ignoranceborn of weakness. All three philosophers understand that the purpose ofeducation emerges from one's position on nihilism. If nihilism is true,then it is senseless and cowardly to teach one's students that there aregrounds for moral judgments. On the other hand, if one believes thatthere is an objective higher and lower in moral matters, then one cannotat the same time consistently endorse nihilism or the atheism upon whichit rests. There is reason to believe that a consistent nihilism isimpossible and hence that the concept is bankrupt. But then something istrue, and there are grounds for moral judgment. Education must respondaccordingly. But even Bloom with his emphasis on the Great Books fallsshort of what is required. An education which aims to defeat nihilismmust, at the very least, hold out the promise that through thecultivation of reason one may indeed arrive at the truth.     

Apparent impropriety and procedural fairness judgments

Variation in decision making and allocation procedures has been shown to affect judgments of the fairness of the procedure and its outcome, but such effects have always been studied in the context of properly enacted procedures. It was hypothesized that the appearance of impropriety in the enctment of a fair procedure would increase the extent to which the procedure is judged in terms of its outcome. One hundred twenty undergraduate males and females were placed in the role of either defendant or observer with respect to an adversary procedure trial. Appearance of impropriety was manipulated during the trial by either including or not including evidence of a friendly personal relationship between the judge and the plaintiff's lawyer. The defendant was said to have either won or lost the case. A significant impropriety × outcome interaction on ratings of procedural fairness, unqualified by higher order effect, supported the hypothesis: a favorable outcome increased and an unfavorable outcome decreased the fairness of the procedure more when the impropriety was present. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for future investigation and theory on procedural justice and for practical issues.     

Testimony,simulation, and the limits of inductivism

Although theorists disagree about precisely how to characterize the link between anger and moral judgment, that they are linked is routinely taken for granted in contemporary metaethics and philosophy of emotion. One problem with this assumption is that it ignores virtues like patience, which thinkers as different as Cassian, ?āntideva, and Maimonides have argued are characteristic of mature moral agents. The patient neither experience nor plan to experience anger in response to (at least some) wrongs. Nevertheless, we argue, they remain capable of judging such actions to be wrong. This indicates that a different account of the relationship between anger and moral judgment is required. We conclude by proposing one such account, showing how a metaethicist who was more attentive to the normative ethics of anger might set about reconstructing her position.     

Conversation and conditionals

I outline and motivate a way of implementing a closest world theory of indicatives, appealing to Stalnaker’s framework of open conversational possibilities. Stalnakerian conversational dynamics helps us resolve two outstanding puzzles for a such a theory of indicative conditionals. The first puzzle—concerning so-called ‘reverse Sobel sequences’—can be resolved by conversation dynamics in a theory-neutral way: the explanation works as much for Lewisian counterfactuals as for the account of indicatives developed here. Resolving the second puzzle, by contrast, relies on the interplay between the particular theory of indicative conditionals developed here and Stalnakerian dynamics. The upshot is an attractive resolution of the so-called “Gibbard phenomenon” for indicative conditionals.