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Cognitive Adaptation: A Pragmatist Perspective

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Cognitive Adaptation: A Pragmatist Perspective argues that there is a fundamental link between cognitive/neural systems and evolution that underlies human activity. One important result is that the line between nature and culture and scientific and humanistic inquiry is quite permeable - the two are fairly continuous with each other. Two concepts figure importantly in our human ascent: Agency and animacy. The first is the recognition of another person as having beliefs, desires, and a sense of experience. The second term is the recognition of an object as alive, a piece of biology. Both reflect a predilection in our cognitive architecture that is fundamental to an evolving, but fragile, sense of humanity. The book further argues for a regulative norm of self-corrective inquiry, an appreciation of the hypothetical nature of all knowledge. Schulkin's perspective is rooted in contemporary behavioral and cognitive neuroscience

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... Hence the concept of mental-model adjustment, which reflects the extent to which negotiators adapt their cognitive representations from the beginning to the end of a negotiation (Liu & Dale, 2009), is central to our discussion. When people collect new information and comprehend it, they can adapt their perceptions of the situation and behaviors (e.g., Halevy et al., 2014;Schulkin, 2009). ...
... When people update their analysis of the situation and absorb new information from exchanges with the other party, they are likely to adopt a more comprehensive view of the situation and adjust their mental models accordingly (Schulkin, 2009). Mental-model adjustment reflects cognitive adaptation at the micro level of social exchange (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992). ...
... Mental-model adjustment reflects cognitive adaptation at the micro level of social exchange (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992). Schulkin (2009) argued that cognitive adaptation, or the adjustment of mental models, reflects a process of self-corrective inquiry, in which people question existing knowledge and recognize others' views, beliefs, and desires. ...
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Fixed-pie bias, defined as the erroneous belief that the other negotiation party's interest is directly opposite to one's own, has been a consistent hurdle that negotiators must overcome in their efforts to achieve optimal negotiation outcomes. In this study, we explore the underlying cognitive mechanism and the social antecedents of fixed-pie bias reduction in negotiation. Using data from a negotiation simulation with 256 participants, we found that mental-model adjustments made by negotiators could effectively decrease fixed-pie bias. More interestingly, we also found that negotiators were less likely to reduce fixed-pie bias when negotiating with an in-group member than with an out-group member but only under a high accountability condition. Finally, we found that mental-model adjustment mediated the effects of the aforementioned social antecedents (in-groupness and accountability) on reduced fixed-pie bias. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Teed Rockwell, for example, takes work from computational neuroscience to push the neurophilosopher Paul Churchland toward embracing a pragmatist theory of truth (see Rockwell 2011). More extensively, the neuroscientist Jay Schulkin takes to heart pragmatism's emphasis on action in a series of books that provide neurobiological backing to many of the central insights of classical pragmatism (see Schulkin 2000Schulkin , 2004Schulkin , 2006Schulkin , 2009. For instance, Schulkin persuasively argues that central to the evolution of mentation is the activity of problem solving. ...
... For instance, Schulkin persuasively argues that central to the evolution of mentation is the activity of problem solving. Problem solving, as Dewey's pattern of inquiry suggests, involves significant cognitive, affective, and motor activities that are not clearly differentiated experimentally or conceptually (Schulkin 2004(Schulkin , 2009). The role of central dopamine in motivation and perseverance toward achieving one's goals (Schulkin 2006) is integral to a pragmatist conception of truth, where truths are what afford us successful action in achieving our aims in life. ...
... The role of central dopamine in motivation and perseverance toward achieving one's goals (Schulkin 2006) is integral to a pragmatist conception of truth, where truths are what afford us successful action in achieving our aims in life. Beyond the role of dopamine, Schulkin discusses the heavy innervation of cognitive and motor systems, arguing that the evidence is better understood when we do not distinguish the cognitive from the motor (Schulkin 2000(Schulkin , 2009. This is just another reiteration of the pragmatist claim that theory and practice are inextricably linked. ...
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Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 That character of everyday experience which has been most systematically ignored by philosophy is the extent to which it is saturated with the results of social inter-course and communication. Because this factor has been denied, meanings have either been denied all objective validity, or have been treated as miraculous extra-natural intrusions. If, however, language, for example, is recognized as the instru-ment of social cooperation and mutual participation, continuity is established between natural events (animal sounds, cries, etc.) and the origin and development of meanings. Mind is seen to be a function of social interactions, and to be a genu-ine character of natural events when these attain the stage of widest and most com-plex interaction with one another. Ability to respond to meanings and to employ them, instead of reacting merely to physical contacts, makes the difference between man and other animals; it is the agency for elevating man into the realm of what is usually called the ideal and spiritual. In other words, the social participation affected by communication, through language and other tools, is the naturalistic link which does away with the often alleged necessity of dividing the objects of experience into two worlds, one physical and one ideal. – John Dewey, Experience and Nature, 1929 (LW1: 6–7) Over-specialization and division of interests, occupations and goods create the need for a generalized medium of intercommunication, of mutual criticism through all-around translation from one separated region of experience into another. Thus phi-losophy as a critical organ becomes in effect a messenger, a liaison officer, making reciprocally intelligible voices speaking provincial tongues, and thereby enlarging as well as rectifying the meanings with which they are charged.
... The key to ill-structured problem solving lies in reducing uncertainty. In general, two phases in the process of solving an ill-structured problem can help reduce uncertainty: a problem identification phase, including problem definition and problem representation (Abelson & Levi, 1985;Schulkin, 2009), and a hypothesis-development phase (Schulkin, 2009). During these two phases, an ill-structured problem can be transformed into a structured problem through the reduction of uncertainty (Abelson & Levi, 1985;Adsit & London, 1997). ...
... The key to ill-structured problem solving lies in reducing uncertainty. In general, two phases in the process of solving an ill-structured problem can help reduce uncertainty: a problem identification phase, including problem definition and problem representation (Abelson & Levi, 1985;Schulkin, 2009), and a hypothesis-development phase (Schulkin, 2009). During these two phases, an ill-structured problem can be transformed into a structured problem through the reduction of uncertainty (Abelson & Levi, 1985;Adsit & London, 1997). ...
... At their most basic, all hypotheses are tentative solutions to problems; they can give direction to human inquiries and are a product of a universal and constant human activity (Wenham, 1993). In ill-structured problem-solving activities, hypotheses give problem solvers plausible paths for their explorations of a base of information (Wenham, 1993) and can guide subsequent steps in solution development (Kruglanski, 1989;McKenzie, 2004;Schulkin, 2009). People form hypotheses about how a particular set of circumstances works and then use evidence gathered from experience to test and revise their hypotheses (Cronley, Posavac, Meyer, Kardes, & Kellaris, 2005;Klayman, 1995). ...
Article
Hypothesis development is a complex cognitive activity, but one that is critical as a means of reducing uncertainty during ill-structured problem solving. In this study, we examined the effect of metacognitive scaffolds in strengthening hypothesis development. We also examined the influence of hypothesis development on young adolescents’ problem-solving performance. Data was collected from sixth-grade students (N = 172) using a computer-supported problem-based learning environment, Animal Investigator. The findings of the study indicated that participants using metacognitive scaffolds developed significantly better hypotheses and that hypothesis-development performance was predictive of solution-development performance. This article discusses further educational implications of the findings and future research.
... Music, while frequently considered an art, captures the sciences in its generative process, and draws on human expectations. The cognitive architecture, the generative processes, the diverse variation and embodiment of human meaning within almost all spheres of human expression, are rich fields of discovery for both the arts and the sciences (Dewey, 1896;Meyer, 1967;Premack, 1990;Schulkin, 2009). This development of art and music was an important evolutionary step in forming the communicative scaffolding for social interactions that have become so crucial or our species. ...
... A depiction of a toolbox as a metaphor for diverse cephalic capacities(Schulkin, 2009). ...
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Music is a core human experience and generative processes reflect cognitive capabilities. Music is often functional because it is something that can promote human well-being by facilitating human contact, human meaning, and human imagination of possibilities, tying it to our social instincts. Cognitive systems also underlie musical performance and sensibilities. Music is one of those things that we do spontaneously, reflecting brain machinery linked to communicative functions, enlarged and diversified across a broad array of human activities. Music cuts across diverse cognitive capabilities and resources, including numeracy, language, and space perception. In the same way, music intersects with cultural boundaries, facilitating our “social self” by linking our shared experiences and intentions. This paper focuses on the intersection between the neuroscience of music, and human social functioning to illustrate the importance of music to human behaviors.
... Several recent studies [14]- [16] have shown that the human visual system (HVS) is a highly adaptive system that employs independent processes for various distortion levels. For highquality samples, distortions are not readily visible and can be tolerated due to the masking effect [17]. ...
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Full-reference point cloud quality assessment (FR-PCQA) aims to infer the quality of distorted point clouds with available references. Most of the existing FR-PCQA metrics ignore the fact that the human visual system (HVS) dynamically tackles visual information according to different distortion levels (i.e., distortion detection for high-quality samples and appearance perception for low-quality samples) and measure point cloud quality using unified features. To bridge the gap, in this paper, we propose a perception-guided hybrid metric (PHM) that adaptively leverages two visual strategies with respect to distortion degree to predict point cloud quality: to measure visible difference in high-quality samples, PHM takes into account the masking effect and employs texture complexity as an effective compensatory factor for absolute difference; on the other hand, PHM leverages spectral graph theory to evaluate appearance degradation in low-quality samples. Variations in geometric signals on graphs and changes in the spectral graph wavelet coefficients are utilized to characterize geometry and texture appearance degradation, respectively. Finally, the results obtained from the two components are combined in a non-linear method to produce an overall quality score of the tested point cloud. The results of the experiment on five independent databases show that PHM achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance and offers significant performance improvement in multiple distortion environments. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/zhangyujie-1998/PHM.
... Meanwhile other theorists have argued that mind is not limited to animals with complex nervous systems, but should be extended to all forms of life (Thompson 2007 ). These are important arguments, and they show how well cutting-edge neuroscience fi ts with the century-old pragmatist approach to mind and knowing (Schulkin 2008 ). Yet no one would deny that the brain is a central piece of the puzzle that is the human mind. ...
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Within cognitive science, most accounts of value define it as the product of a special subsystem or structure which is extrinsic to basic mental functions of acting, perceiving, and knowing. Not only do such attempts fail to account for our experience of value, but they also fail to recognize the fundamental role of value in all mentality and the corresponding need for value to be grounded in the world. In search of a better account, this chapter explores a naturalistic but non-reductive approach to value based on the American traditions of pragmatism and process philosophy, especially as represented by the works of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead. Rather than attempt to objectify value by denuding it of subjective character, this approach seeks to formulate a general notion of valuation that extends certain value-related characteristics of subjectivity—such as selectivity and differential importance—to all natural processes. The essay also explores the possibility that the ubiquitous phenomenon of collective dynamics, now the focus of several non-reductive research programs in cognitive science, exhibits these very same value-related characteristics.
... Most advanced alien species will likely have developed forms of communication completely unrecognizable to us. It can be hypothesized, however, that life anywhere must gather information about its environment for purposes of development, adaptation, survival, and evolution (Geary, 2005;Roth, 2013;Krubitzer, 2014;Schulkin, 2014). For terrestrial species, information is collected through senses, including many shared across species, while others are species-specific (e.g., echolocation, electroreception, magnetoreception). ...
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Unlabelled: Advances in planetary and space sciences, astrobiology, and life and cognitive sciences, combined with developments in communication theory, bioneural computing, machine learning, and big data analysis, create new opportunities to explore the probabilistic nature of alien life. Brought together in a multidisciplinary approach, they have the potential to support an integrated and expanded Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI (1) ), a search that includes looking for life as we do not know it. This approach will augment the odds of detecting a signal by broadening our understanding of the evolutionary and systemic components in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), provide more targets for radio and optical SETI, and identify new ways of decoding and coding messages using universal markers. Key words: SETI-Astrobiology-Coevolution of Earth and life-Planetary habitability and biosignatures. Astrobiology 16, 661-676.
... The information age did not begin in the 1950s; the concept of information processing took shape in a process that we understand our brain to be mostly tied to: processing information while sampling and foraging for coherence. We forage for meaning in a world prepackaged with adaptive meaning, our brains shaped by an evolutionary and cultural history to discern relevance and track events (Schulkin 2009; Donald 1990). Endless " bootstrapping " (Carey 2012) of diverse conceptual capabilities is a core adaptation of our species in the expansion of human understanding and meaning that underlies human activity. ...
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We come prepared to track events and objects, building our knowledge base while foraging for coherence. Classical pragmatism recognizes that the acquisition of knowledge is in part a contact sport (e.g. Peirce, Dewey). One of the aims of neuroscience is to capture human experience. One route to perhaps achieve this may be through the study of the visual system and its expansion in our evolutionary history. Embodied cephalic systems, as Dewey knew well, are tied to self-corrective inquiry. A philosophy of neuroscience needs to capture how such events are tracked, tested through experience, and subsequently modified in the brain to comprise a knowledge base.
... William James and John Dewey anticipated many of the current ideas about the mind put forth in connectionism, embodied, enactive, and extended mind theories, and ecological psychology (cf. Dalton, 2002;Freeman, 2005;Rockwell, 2005;Chemero, 2009;Johnson, 2007;Schulkin, 2009). We have taken the liberty of naming such thinkers neuropragmatists and have written on several core issues (Solymosi, 2011a, b;Shook & Solymosi, 2013). ...
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Le neuropragmatisme et la culture de l’enquête : dépasser le cartésianisme rampant. Le travail récent en psychologie de Daniel Kahneman sur le système 1 et le système 2, l’intérêt récent pour une reconsidération du représentationnalisme en sciences cognitives, et l’usage récent du concept d’information dans les sciences de la conscience souffrent tous d’un cartésianisme rampant qui entrave la voie de la recherche. Le neuropragmatisme propose une manière de surmonter cet obstacle en insistant sur le contexte de développement de l’enquête. L’esquisse neuropragmatiste de l’expérience, de l’habitude, de l’esprit, de la conscience et de l’enquête que nous proposons ici sert de base théorique pour reconsidérer des données importantes obtenues en psychologie, en sciences cognitives, et dans les sciences de la conscience. Les défauts de ces études empiriques sont dépassés par le système3, c’est-à-dire par le double processus d’acculturation qui contextualise les systèmes 1 et 2 et qui fournit les ressources de leur transformation par le travail d’intellectuels créatifs, dont la tâche est d’imaginer et de découvrir de nouvelles possibilités pour l’expérience vécue. L’introduction du système 3 est une hypothèse philosophique ; elle vise à susciter d’autres discussions philosophiques et une prise en compte scientifique.
... As advances ranging from epigenetics and ecological niche construction to developmental psychology and social neuroscience indicate, there are socio-cultural effects in utero.6 On early pragmatists and psychobiology, seeSchulkin (2009 and. For more on how our evolutionary ancestors were social before H. sapiens ever were, seeSterelny (2012). ...
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Cognitive science and its philosophy have been far too long consumed with representation. This concern is indicative of a creeping Cartesianism that many scientists and philosophers wish to evade. However, their naturalism is often insufficiently evolutionary to fully appreciate the lessons of pragmatism. If cognitive neuroscience and pragmatism are to be mutually beneficial, the representational-friendly scientists and the anti-representational pragmatists need an alternative to representation that still accounts for what many find so attractive about representation, namely intentionality. I propose that instead of representations we philosophers and scientists begin thinking in terms of cultural affordances. Like Gibsonian affordances, cultural affordances are opportunities for action. However, unlike Gibsonian affordances, which are merely biological and available for immediate action in the immediately present environment, cultural affordances also present opportunities for thinking about the past and acting into the future—tasks typically attributed to representations.
... Recognition that pragmatism was receiving much re-confirmation in the brain sciences was noticed in the 1990s by scholars such as Mark Johnson (1987,1993,2007) and the late Francisco Varela (1991). Neuroscientists like Jay Schulkin have also recognized pragmatist themes ( Schulkin 2000Schulkin , 2004Schulkin , 2006Schulkin , 2009Schulkin , 2011Schulkin , and 2012. A younger generation fluent in both classical pragmatism and the latest neuroscience was in the best position to take stock of matters, such as Anthony Chemero, W. Teed Rockwell, and Tibor Solymosi. ...
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Over the past three decades, cognitive science has been making a turn towards pragmatism. Here we outline steps towards completing this turn. As a handful of cognitive scientists and philosophers have been arguing more recently, the insights of William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead are not only being re-discovered, they are also proving rather prescient in light of growing research. The new field of neuropragmatism aims to take these insights seriously and further into new directions for both pragmatism and cognitive science. In this manifesto, a brief history of the relationship between classical pragmatism and the sciences of life and mind is offered as a background for twelve proposed theses of neuropragmatism. These theses serve as general guidelines for further philosophical and scientific research. To illustrate the possibilities and consequences of this neuropragmatic framework, neuropragmatist views on traditional questions of philosophy of mind, such as the mind-body relationship, are situated among other leading philosophical perspectives, like enactive, embodied, and embedded theories of cognition and mentation. Such views, however, when taken from a neuropragmatist perspecitve, have significant consequences for the philosophical project of reconciliation be- tween what Wilfrid Sellars called the scientific and manifest images of humanity. The difference in conceptions of experience and subesequently science are crucial for understanding the difference between Sellarsian neurophilosophy and neuropragmatism, as well as how to reach rapprochement between the sciences and the humanities.
... On the dynamics of regulatory processes from a neuroscienti fi c and pragmatist perspective, seeSchulkin 2003Schulkin , 2009Schulkin , 2011a . Of particular importance is Schulkin's distinction between the regulatory processes of homeostasis (which is passive and resistant to change) and allostasis (which is dynamic and anticipates change). ...
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The philosophy of pragmatism has much to offer mind and life scientists in their thinking about the origins and nature of experience. In this chapter, I provide an introduction to neurophilosophical pragmatism by reviewing how classical pragmatists, such as John Dewey, reconceived concepts like experience, mind, and consciousness in light of the advances ushered forth by Darwinism. I then elaborate on a recent debate in cognitive science and neurophilosophy over how to think about conscious mental activity. In doing so, I draw on and modify the pragmatist framework sketched in the fi rst part of the chapter. After several decades of animosity between philosophy and science, philosophers and scientists are beginning to value the contributions each discipline brings to understanding and explaining the world. 1 Historically, philosophy and science were not separate enterprises. Only very recently has a strong distinction been made between them. In broad strokes, typically under the banner of naturalism , the dis-tinction is being rejected by many. While this con fl uence of philosophy and science is showing promise, its nature is multifaceted and problematic, for there is no con-sensus on what the nature of philosophy is, even among self-proclaimed naturalists.
... Research findings on problem-solving in real-world contexts have shown that problem solvers in uncertain conditions tend to develop viable hypotheses (McKenzie, 2004;Schulkin, 2009) because the development of a hypothesis helps to make sense of the problem (Thomas, 2004) and decrease uncertainty (Abelson & Levi, 1985;Adsit & London, 1997;Ge & Land, 2004;McKenzie, 1998;Newell & Simon, 1972). The development of hypotheses is essential when people do not have knowledge and experience about the problem and phenomena (Alexander, 1992), and has been shown to be instrumental in helping people find the best quality solution in a problem context (Bruning, Schraw, Norby, & Ronning, 2003;D'Zurilla & Nezu, 1980;Kruglanski, 1990;Nezu & D'Zurilla, 1981). ...
Article
Recently, the importance of ill‐structured problem‐solving in real‐world contexts has become a focus of educational research. Particularly, the hypothesis‐development process has been examined as one of the keys to developing a high‐quality solution in a problem context. The authors of this study examined predictive relations between young adolescents' metacognition, prior domain knowledge, and hypothesis‐development performance in a computer‐supported environment. Data were collected from 11‐ and 12‐year‐old Korean students (N = 101). A hypothesised model in predicting hypothesis‐development performance was evaluated using structural equation modelling. Both metacognition and prior domain knowledge significantly predicted young adolescents' hypothesis‐development performance. Implications and limitations of the present study and issues, including the experimental design, are discussed.
... The evolution of cooking and agriculture illustrate how something that happens (metabolic processes) becomes selected for in more effective ways to the point at which the selection is not simply natural but artificial as well, i.e. done for desired reasons, or, ends-in-view as Dewey would put it. When we consider consciousness as not something that happens but as an achievement (Schulkin 2009), we set consciousness into a larger dynamic situation than the brain or nervous system alone. Just as we have historically improved our cooking and thereby our digestion, we have improved our awareness of ourselves, our bodies, and our world. ...
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Recent work in neurophilosophy has either made reference to the work of John Dewey or independently developed positions similar to it. I review these developments in order first to show that Dewey was indeed doing neurophilosophy well before the Churchlands and others, thereby preceding many other mid-twentieth century European philosophers’ views on cognition to whom many present day philosophers refer (e.g., Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty). I also show that Dewey’s work provides useful tools for evading or overcoming many issues in contemporary neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind. In this introductory review, I distinguish between three waves among neurophilosophers that revolve around the import of evolution and the degree of brain-centrism. Throughout, I emphasize and elaborate upon Dewey’s dynamic view of mind and consciousness. I conclude by introducing the consciousness-as-cooking metaphor as an alternative to both the consciousness-as-digestion and consciousness-as-dancing metaphors. Neurophilosophical pragmatism—or neuropragmatism—recognizes the import of evolutionary and cognitive neurobiology for developing a science of mind and consciousness. However, as the cooking metaphor illustrates, a science of mind and consciousness cannot rely on the brain alone—just as explaining cooking entails more than understanding the gut—and therefore must establish continuity with cultural activities and their respective fields of inquiry. Neuropragmatism advances a new and promising perspective on how to reconcile the scientific and manifest images of humanity as well as how to reconstruct the relationship between science and the humanities. KeywordsPragmatism–Neurophilosophy–John Dewey–Dynamic systems–Consciousness–Mind
... The engagement of the same brain networks by morally salient stimuli independently of task contingencies across different studies suggested that such network may underlie a moral sensitivity mechanism, by which certain social situations automatically trigger moral sentiments (Moll et al., 2002b). Moral sensitivity allows humans to quickly apprehend the moral implications in a social situation depending on context, agency and consequences of one's choices, through the experience of specific moral sentiments (Moll et al., 2007b;Schulkin, 2004Schulkin, , 2008. ...
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Modern neuroscience is beginning to substantiate Darwin's notion that the roots of human morality lie in social instincts, present in several species. The role of primitive motivational-emotional systems in human morality still remains under-recognized, however. Based on recent experimental evidence and classic neuroanatomical data, we here portray a view of how "ancient" limbic-neurohumoral systems of social attachment and aversion are crucially involved in human moral behaviors, including altruism, empathic concern and aggression. Rather than being a mere evolutionary remnant of our ancestors, such limbic-neurohumoral systems are tightly integrated with cortical mechanisms to enable complex moral sentiments and values, which powerfully influence our choices in socio-cultural settings. Exploring the underlying mechanisms of human social attachment and aversion will provide new insights and foster novel experimental paradigms for the study of moral cognition and behavior.
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Full-reference point cloud quality assessment (FR-PCQA) aims to infer the quality of distorted point clouds with available references. Most of the existing FR-PCQA metrics ignore the fact that the human visual system (HVS) dynamically tackles visual information according to different distortion levels (i.e., distortion detection for high-quality samples and appearance perception for low-quality samples) and measure point cloud quality using unified features. To bridge the gap, in this paper, we propose a perception-guided hybrid metric (PHM) that adaptively leverages two visual strategies with respect to distortion degree to predict point cloud quality: to measure visible difference in high-quality samples, PHM takes into account the masking effect and employs texture complexity as an effective compensatory factor for absolute difference; on the other hand, PHM leverages spectral graph theory to evaluate appearance degradation in low-quality samples. Variations in geometric signals on graphs and changes in the spectral graph wavelet coefficients are utilized to characterize geometry and texture appearance degradation, respectively. Finally, the results obtained from the two components are combined in a non-linear method to produce an overall quality score of the tested point cloud. The results of the experiment on five independent databases show that PHM achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance and offers significant performance improvement in multiple distortion environments. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/zhangyujie-1998/PHM .
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The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of first aid training in live online classes using the problem-based learning approach on students' learning achievement, problem-solving skills, communication skill, and interaction. The pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design with a control group was used in the quantitative dimension of the study. The study group was conducted with forty-five university students. While live online classes in the experimental group were carried out via the PBL approach, live online classes in the control group were traditionally carried out via teacher-based methods without any intervention. Zoom application was used in both groups during live online classes. Group work in the experimental group was conducted using breakout rooms. The process of data collection and the experimental procedure of the study was completed in six weeks. Within the scope of the study, courses took three forty minute periods every week. The Learning Achievement Test, the Perceived Problem-solving Skills Scale, the Communication Skills Scale, and the Online Course Interaction Level Determination Scale were used for data collection tools. The results of study show that students who attended live online classes using PBL had higher levels of learning achievement, problem-solving skills and live online class interaction than students who attended live online classes using teacher-based methods. No significant difference between the communication skills of the groups was observed.
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The pragmatist theory of history, action, and sociality can be understood as the result of a specific interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has nothing in common with teleological, reductionist, or social Darwinist evolutionary models. This historical claim will be developed in three steps. First, I will show why Darwin’s theory was so attractive to the classical pragmatists and how their conception of history was affected by their reading of Darwin. Second, I will illustrate how the pragmatist understanding of individual action was influenced by contemporary discussions in evolutionary theory, physiology, and psychology. Third, I will discuss pragmatism’s “cultural naturalism” (John Dewey), according to which a new, autonomous level of sociocultural change emerges as a result of the process of biological evolution. The reconstruction of pragmatist evolutionary thought not only aims to achieve a better historical understanding of pragmatism but also implies a systematic and theoretical claim . As will be argued in the last section of this paper, the timeliness and continuing relevance of pragmatism is largely due to the fact that it took shape in a transdisciplinary context and remained an “empirically responsible” theory (Erkki Kilpinen). Currently, various innovative developments within psychology, the cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, and ethology are connected with the core insights of pragmatism, thereby supporting the argument that pragmatism is still evolving.
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Neuropragmatism takes seriously Dewey’s admonition that to solve the problems of philosophy we have to put the cortex in the brain, the brain in the nervous system, the nervous system in the organism, and the organism in nature.1 Further, we have to treat these items not as marbles in a box but as events in a historical process. This chapter is not going to solve all the problems of education. It does, however, present an approach to education which incorporates neuroscience and anthropology and presents a challenge to less holistic approaches by following Dewey’s advice to contextualize. We proceed by arguing that neuroscience does have a role to play in educational theory when we set aside scientism and follow pragmatism’s reconstruction of the role of science in society. We then offer an illustration of how neuroscience can be useful in thinking about education by challenging the approach to education implicit in Daniel Kahneman’s recent book Thinking, Fast and Slow.2 From there we move to a more holistic approach which employs anthropology and neuroscience to ground an apprenticeship model of education. We conclude with a discussion of some general implications of our apprenticeship model.
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Our age is one in which we hope to preserve “reason” without overexaggerated “rationalism. ” Our epistemic stances are related to a particular social and historical context and community; the community shares this context through the functioning of a common spoken and written language and other public systems of representation and communication, such as the use of numbers, diagrams, pictures, gestures, and so on. In these are encoded the horizons of real and possible facts, networks of facts, circumstances, outcomes, and practices relevant to the “world”/ “lifeworld” and the goals of the community in question. Earlier chapters in the book have set out the biological, social, psychological, neural, and philosophical perplexities. The running theme is a sense of philosophy being continuous with science without pernicious scientism.
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Enactive approaches in cognitive science propose that perception, and more generally cognitive experience, are strongly mediated by embodied (sensory–motor) processes, and that our primary experience of the world is action-oriented or pragmatic (Noë, 2004; Thompson, 2007; Varela et al., 1991). Extended mind theorists propose that cognition supervenes on embodied and environmental processes such as gestures and the use of various technologies (Clark, 2008; Clark and Chalmers, 1998; Menary, 2010). Both enactive and extended conceptions of cognition suggest that the mind is not “in the head”–that cognitive processes are distributed over brain, body, and environment – but they also differ on a number of issues. Extended mind theorists defend a functionalist account of cognition and downplay the role of the body (e.g., Clark, 2008), and they argue that cognition and action can involve mental representations (e.g., Clark, 1997; Clark and Grush, 1999; Rowlands, 2006; Wheeler, 2005). In contrast, enactive theorists argue for radical embodiment (e.g., Thompson and Varela, 2001) and defend an antirepresentationalist view (e.g., Gallagher, 2008b; Hutto, in press; Thompson, 2007). There are also debates about how to define the boundaries, or lack of boundaries, involved in cognitive processes (e.g., Di Paolo, 2009; Wheeler, 2008).
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Pragmatism's historical relationship to the sciences (especially those of life and mind) has been neglected, if not undercut in its Rortian revival of the past three and a half decades. This neglect has many roots, from the linguistic turn in professional philosophy to the Kuhnian and postmodern subversion of scientific authority. A thorough exegetical analysis of this history is not the aim of this chapter. 1 Rather, my goal is to tell a story of pragmatism and its attitude toward the sciences. I do not intend this story to be fictional or duplicitous; nor, however, do I claim it to be the story of pragmatism. My hope is that this story suggests shortcomings to how classical pragmatism is contempo-rarily considered, how contemporary (neo)pragmatism is related to classical pragmatism, and how contemporary scientific philosophy, especially neurophi-losophy, relates to pragmatism, old and new. I continue a line of thought argued earlier 2
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IntroductionInfant Theories: Standard Model and New ProposalsInnate RepresentationJoint Visual AttentionIntentionObject PermanenceElements of a Developmental Cognitive Science
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GENOMICS AND SOCIETYThe completion of the human genome sequence, like other great human achievements such as the first lunar landing or splitting the atom, carries such significance because it changes the way that we think about ourselves, explains [PA¤A¤bo][1] in this Future Directions' article. Comparisons between our genome and those of other mammals (particularly the great apes) will reveal how similar we are to the rest of life on Earth. Yet the small differences between our genome and those of other animals should reveal what makes us uniquely human. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fulltext/291/5507/1219
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We examined variation in plasma glucocorticoid concentrations of free-living Belding's ground squirrels (Spermophilus beldingi) and captive golden-mantled ground squirrels (Spermophilus lateralis) housed in constant environmental conditions. Plasma corticosterone concentrations were not significantly correlated with time held captive in traps prior to collection of blood samples in males or non-breeding females, but these variables were significantly correlated in breeding females during the pre-mating, lactation, and post-lactation periods. Among male S. beldingi, plasma corticosterone concentrations increased over the course of the active season, and were significantly higher in non-breeding than breeding individuals. Corticosterone concentrations also increased in non-breeding females throughout the active period. In breeding females, baseline (non-stress) corticosterone concentrations, determined from blood samples collected within 3 min of capture, increased during gestation and declined during lactation, whereas stress values of corticosterone, determined from blood samples collected within 4-11 min of capture, increased during gestation and then again during the period after young emerged from the natal burrow. Changes in plasma corticosterone concentrations of S. beldingi paralleled changes in body mass. Among S. lateralis, plasma concentrations of cortisol were elevated when males and females were in reproductive condition and lower in reproductively quiescent squirrels. The annual peak in plasma cortisol concentrations occurred just prior to increases in body mass associated with pre-hibernation fattening. Collectively, these results suggest that concentrations of circulating glucocorticoids fluctuate with circannual rhythmicity in conjunction with annual cycles of change in body mass and activity; within these circannual cycles glucocorticoid concentrations are influenced by stress and breeding status.
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Information serves not only as an input into decision-making, but is a source of pleasure and pain in its own right. This has diverse consequences for human decision-making.