Two analogy strategies: The cases of mind metaphors and introspection

Analogical reasoning is often employed in problem-solving and metaphor interpretation. This paper submits that, as a default, analogical reasoning addressing these different tasks employs different mapping strategies: In problem-solving, it employs analogy-maximising strategies (like structure mapping, Gentner & Markman 1997); in metaphor interpretation, analogy-minimising strategies (like ATT-Meta, Barnden 2015). The two strategies interact in analogical reasoning with conceptual metaphors. This interaction leads to predictable fallacies. The paper supports these hypotheses through case-studies on ‘mind’-metaphors from ordinary discourse, and abstract problem-solving in the philosophy of mind, respectively: It shows that (1) default metaphorical interpretations for vision- and space-cognition metaphors can be derived with a variant of the analogy-minimising ATT-Meta approach, (2) philosophically influential introspective conceptions of the mind can be derived with conceptual metaphors only through an analogy-maximising strategy, and (3) the interaction of these strategies leads to hitherto unrecognised fallacies in analogical reasoning with metaphors. This yields a debunking explanation of introspective conceptions

The Dynamics of Intentions in Collaborative Intentionality

An adequate formulation of collective intentionality is crucial for understanding group activity and for modeling the mental state of participants in such activities. Although work on collective intentionality in philosophy, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science has many points of agreement, several key issues remain under debate. This paper argues that the dynamics of intention – in particular, the inter-related processes of plan-related group decision making and intention updating – play crucial roles in an explanation of collective intentionality. Furthermore, it is in these dynamic aspects that coordinated group activity differs most from individual activity. The paper specifies a model of the dynamics of agent intentions in the context of collaborative activity. Its integrated treatment of group decision making and coordinated updating of group-related intentions fills an important gap in prior accounts of collective intentionality, thus helping to resolve a long-standing debate about the nature of intentions in group activity. The paper also defines an architecture for collaboration-capable computer agents that satisfies the constraints of the model and is a natural extension of the standard architecture for resource-bounded agents operating as individuals. The new architecture is both more principled and more complete than prior architectures for collaborative multi-agent systems.Engineering and Applied Science

Paradigmatic Self-Deception

I present a theory of what I call paradigmatic self-deception, the most serious and vivid cases of self-deception. While there has been much philosophical discussion of self-deception in recent decades, existing work does not explain how and why some cases of self-deception are more severe than others, when self-deception is intentional, and when an individual may justifiably be held morally responsible for being self-deceived. This dissertation answers all three of these important questions. The first chapter reviews the existing literature and motivates the need for a theory of paradigmatic cases. In the second chapter, I introduce three characteristic features of paradigmatic cases as revealed in the particular case of the Mitt Romney campaign\u27s self-deception during the 2012 presidential election. Next, the third chapter explores how paradigmatic cases of self-deception are plausibly intentional, drawing on the empirical literature on attention and mindfulness meditation to argue that in paradigmatic cases self-deceivers make sophisticated use of attentional capacities to sustain their false beliefs and that the intentions under which these capacities are deployed are relevant to self-deception in a way that makes the overall activity of self-deception intentional. Finally, in the last chapter I claim that paradigmatic cases involve culpable ignorance, which I reduce to a kind of negligence: because the paradigmatically self-deceived are negligent, we can hold them morally responsible

A flexible view of spontaneous trait inferences

For a long time, social psychologists focused on understanding how perceivers interpret other people’s behavior. One central question has been the identification of the conditions under which perceivers infer personality traits of others. Recent studies (e.g., Winter & Uleman, 1984) suggested that the inference of a trait about an actor from his behavior is a spontaneous process, with characteristics of automaticity. In the present thesis, evidence is presented in favor of a more flexible view of the spontaneous trait inference (STI) process. First, we tested whether STIs are weaker when traits are not so easily inferable from behaviors (Experiment 1). Second, in two sets of experiments we examined whether STIs are guided by coherence requirements. In the first set, we explored whether both STI and spontaneous situational inferences are influenced by the social category of the actor (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). In the second set, we analyzed whether STIs are influenced by the previous presentation of behavioral information about the same actor (Experiments 5 and 6). Finally, the nature of the STI process was further explored by examining whether previous STIs are deliberatively used is subsequent tasks (Experiment 7) and by analyzing how previous STIs influence the processing of congruent and incongruent information (Experiment 8). Results, in general, support a flexible view of the STI process. The implications of our work for the debate about the automaticity of the STI process, and for the analysis of the cognitive mechanisms underlying STIs are discussed.Desde há muito que os psicólogos sociais se preocupam em compreender os processos envolvidos na interpretação comportamental. Uma questão central é tentar identificar as condições em que os percipientes inferem traços de personalidade acerca dos outros actores socias. Estudos recentes (e.g., Winter & Uleman, 1984) sugerem que inferir um traço acerca de um actor, a partir do seu comportamento, é um processo espontâneo, com características de automaticidade. Na presente proposta, são apresentados resultados que favorecem uma visão mais flexível do processo de inferências espontâneas de traço (IET). Primeiro, testou-se em que medida as IET são menos prováveis quando os comportamentos não são tão implicativos de traço (Experiência 1). Segundo, em dois conjuntos de experiências, examinou-se em que medida as IET são modeladas por requisitos de coerência. No primeiro conjunto, explorou-se a influência da categoria social do alvo na ocorrência de IET e de inferências espontâneas situacionais (Experiências 2, 3, e 4). No segundo conjunto, analizou-se o efeito da apresentação de informação comportamental prévia acerca do actor na magnitude das IET (Experiências 5 e 6). Por último, explorou-se a natureza das IET. Na Experiência 7, verificou-se em que medida IET prévias são usadas deliberadamente em tarefas subsequentes. Na Experiência 8 analisou-se a influência das IET no processamento subsequente de informação consistente ou inconsistente. Os resultados, em geral, favorecem uma visão flexível das IET. Serão debtidas as implicações dos resultados para o debate acerca da automaticidade das IET, assim como para a análise dos processos subjacentes às IET

Constructing an understanding of mind : the development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction

Interactive Execution Monitoring of Agent Teams

There is an increasing need for automated support for humans monitoring the activity of distributed teams of cooperating agents, both human and machine. We characterize the domain-independent challenges posed by this problem, and describe how properties of domains influence the challenges and their solutions. We will concentrate on dynamic, data-rich domains where humans are ultimately responsible for team behavior. Thus, the automated aid should interactively support effective and timely decision making by the human. We present a domain-independent categorization of the types of alerts a plan-based monitoring system might issue to a user, where each type generally requires different monitoring techniques. We describe a monitoring framework for integrating many domain-specific and task-specific monitoring techniques and then using the concept of value of an alert to avoid operator overload. We use this framework to describe an execution monitoring approach we have used to implement Execution Assistants (EAs) in two different dynamic, data-rich, real-world domains to assist a human in monitoring team behavior. One domain (Army small unit operations) has hundreds of mobile, geographically distributed agents, a combination of humans, robots, and vehicles. The other domain (teams of unmanned ground and air vehicles) has a handful of cooperating robots. Both domains involve unpredictable adversaries in the vicinity. Our approach customizes monitoring behavior for each specific task, plan, and situation, as well as for user preferences. Our EAs alert the human controller when reported events threaten plan execution or physically threaten team members. Alerts were generated in a timely manner without inundating the user with too many alerts (less than 10 percent of alerts are unwanted, as judged by domain experts)

The rhetoric of realism: American psychology and American literature, 1860-1910

The period following the end of the Civil War in America and extending to just after the turn of the century witnessed the emergence of an independent discipline of psychology as well as the emergence of a uniquely American literary tradition. Though these developments occurred independently and operated out of different traditions, they shared a common interest in the concept of consciousness. The present study is a comparison of models of consciousness expressed in psychological and literary texts of two periods: The first period covers the emergence of literary realism and American philosophical psychology (1865-1885); the second period covers literary naturalism and the emergence of psychology as a science (1886-1910). Content analyses of selected passages revealed that psychologists portrayed consciousness as a unidimensional entity, divisible, in principle, into various powers or aspects of perceiving, thinking, reasoning, and the like. Novelists, in contrast, portrayed consciousness as a multi-dimensional, feeling-toned arena, indivisible and unclassifiable. However, both psychologists and novelists of the early period depicted a passive consciousness wholly contained within the experiencing subject; while in the later period consciousness was readily depicted as actively engaged in on-going interaction with the world. These developments are discussed within the context of the particular methodological commitments and traditions attending the nineteenth-century development of two American disciplines: the science of psychology and the American novel

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF FITNESS FROM CONSUMPTION TO VIRTUOUS PRODUCTION

Although our imagination as policy-makers, legislators, academics, and members of the general public has been captured by the promise of fitness, what is meant by it and whether or not its individualising emphasis is a good thing is much less clear. In response to this question of cultural significance, this thesis provides a phenomenology of fitness. It does so in two important senses and in the context of two distinct parts.The first half of this thesis (Chapters One and Two) is given to the task of bracketing the natural attitude with respect to fitness; that is, contextualising the question of its cultural embeddedness within processes of reflexive embodiment that are at play in modern society. “Being fit,” it is argued in this context, implies “being fit for something” (something other than health) or “being fit for someone” (someone other than oneself). And, having lost some (if not all) of its modernist illusions and its progressivist convictions to social regeneration, the task of “being fit” is framed as an ambivalent one, akin to the modern-day Sisyphus, and gestural of the self-reflexivity inherent in late-modern consumer society.By shifting the organisation of attention from ambivalence, the second half ofthis thesis (Chapters Three and Four) examines the possibilities for a positive appropriation of fitness beyond mere consumption activity. By focusing on fitness at the level of action and interaction (where meaning relates to use and practice) the second half of this thesis opens up the possibilities for a re-description of fitness (of Sisyphus) on the basis of the following proposition: fitness is something we negotiate, despite it being something we never really achieve. Findings from twelve elaborative phenomenological interviews emanating from an ethnographic orientation over a two and a half year period are given towards this end. They indicate that this thesis (Chapters Three and Four) examines the possibilities for a positive appropriation of fitness beyond mere consumption activity. By focusing on fitness at the level of action and interaction (where meaning relates to use and practice) the second half of this thesis opens up the possibilities for a re-description of fitness (of Sisyphus) on the basis of the following proposition: fitness is something we negotiate, despite it being something we never really achieve. Findings from twelve elaborative phenomenological interviews emanating from an ethnographic orientation over a two and a half year period are given towards this end. They indicate that consigning fitness to mere consumption activity overlooks the importance of participants’ meaning-making activities, their motivations, and the pleasures that accrue on the basis of ongoing activity and increased experience. They indicate that, if “doing fitness” enables individuals to become acquainted with these internal goods, then “being someone through fitness” can operate as an indexical marker of virtue.The possibilities for a Complemental Model of Health and fitness and for a novel approach to talking about the fit body are discussed in conclusion (Chapter Five) and in the context of aligning the findings of this thesis to future research and practice