Archive Electronique - Institut Jean Nicod
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1997 research outputs found
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The conceptual nature of imaginative content
No full textInternational audienceImagination is widely thought to come in two varieties: perception-like and belief-like imagination. What precisely sets them apart, however, is not settled. More needs to be said about the features that make one variety perception-like and the other belief-like. One common, although typically implicit, view is that they mimic their counterparts (perception and belief, respectively) along the conceptuality dimension: while the content of belief-like imagination is fully conceptual, the content of perception-like imagination is fully (or at least partially) non-conceptual. Such a view, however, is not sufficiently motivated in the literature. I will show that there are good reasons to reject it and I will argue that both varieties of imagination involve fully conceptual contents (independently of whether either perception or belief has non-conceptual content). I will suggest an alternative way to draw the distinction between perception-like and belief-like imagination along the conceptuality dimension, according to which only perception-like imagination requires observational concepts
The neural resource allocation problem when enhancing human bodies with extra robotic limbs
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The dynamics of negative concord
No full textInternational audienceConcord describes a natural language phenomenon in which a single logical meaning is expressed syntactically on multiple lexical items. The canonical example is negative concord, in which multiple negative expressions are used, but a single negation is interpreted. Formally similar phenomena have been observed for the redundant marking of distributivity and definiteness. Inspired by recent dynamic analyses of these latter two phenomena, we extend a similar dynamic analysis to negative concord. We propose that negative concord items introduce a discourse referent (like an existential), but then test that no discourse referent has been introduced in any assignment. These apparently contradictory requirements are licensed with split scope around negation: introduction occurs below negation; the test appears above it. The analysis successfully predicts that negative concord items must be licensed by a sufficiently local negative operator. We further show that modulation of what is at-issue can account for cases in which NC items themselves carry negative force
Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments.
No full textInternational audienceIndividuals exposed to deprivation tend to show a characteristic behavioural syndrome suggestive of a short time horizon. This pattern has traditionally been attributed to the intrinsically higher unpredictability of deprived environments, which renders waiting for long term rewards more risky (i.e. collection risks are high). In the current paper, based on a simple dynamic life history model, we show that a significant portion of individuals' propensity to discount future rewards might have a completely distinct origin. Upon collecting a resource, individuals have the opportunity to accumulate "capital" (e.g. grow muscular tissue, build a protective shelter, buy a car, etc.), which eventually increases their productivity and/or their chances of survival. As a result, delaying the collection of a resource creates an opportunity cost in the sense that during the waiting time, the benefits otherwise generated by the increment in capital are lost. These forgone benefits are independent of collection risks and constitute waiting costs per se. Using optimal control theory we show that these costs can lead to the evolution of short time horizons even in the complete absence of collection risks. Moreover, assuming diminishing returns to capital, we show that the evolutionarily stable time horizon increases with the amount of capital already owned by individuals. When individuals possess little capital, they have a lot of room to improve their productivity and/or survival, hence they should be impatient to collect resources; that is, their time horizon should be short. On the contrary, when individuals already possess a lot of capital, the benefits of further accumulation are plateauing, hence patience becomes a more profitable strategy and individuals should lengthen their time horizon. This means that individuals get more patient as they age and that people in deprivation, who still have important productive and survival needs that can be satisfied, should have a shorter time horizon. Moreover, beyond time horizon, our model shows that people with little capital should also be more risk averse than the more privileged. Taken together, these results lead us to interpret the behavioral constellation of deprivation in a new way
Colour terms: native language semantic structure and artificial language structure formation in a large-scale online smartphone application
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The evolution of music: One trait, many ultimate-level explanations
No full textInternational audienceWe propose an approach reconciling the ultimate-level explanations proposed by Savage et al. and Mehr et al. as to why music evolved. We also question the current adaptationist view of culture, which too often fails to disentangle distinct fitness benefits
Does discussion make crowds any wiser?
No full textInternational audienceDoes discussion in large groups help or hinder the wisdom of crowds? To give rise to the wisdom of crowds, by which large groups can yield surprisingly accurate answers, aggregation mechanisms such as averaging of opinions or majority voting rely on diversity of opinions, and independence between the voters. Discussion tends to reduce diversity and independence. On the other hand, discussion in small groups has been shown to improve the accuracy of individual answers. To test the effects of discussion in large groups, we gave groups of participants (N = 1958 participants in groups of size ranging from 22 to 212; mean 59) one of three types of problems (demonstrative, factual, ethical) to solve, first individually, and then through discussion. For demonstrative (logical or mathematical) problems, discussion improved individual answers, as well as the answer reached through aggregation. For factual problems, discussion improved individual answers, and either improved or had no effect on the answer reached through aggregation. Our results suggest that, for problems which have a correct answer, discussion in large groups does not detract from the effects of the wisdom of crowds, and tends on the contrary to improve on it
Transparent Coreference
No full textInternational audienceBecause reference is not transparent, coreference is not transparent either: it is possible for the subject to refer to the same individual twice (as in Frege cases) without knowing that the two acts of reference target the same individual. That happens whenever the subject associates two distinct yet coreferential files with two token singular terms. The subject may not know that the two files corefer, so her ascribing contradictory properties to the same object (the referent of the two files) does not threaten her rationality. But if the subject deploys the same file twice, in association with both of the singular terms, she is bound to know that she is referring to the same entity twice (assuming she succeeds in referring)
Joint actions, commitments and the need to belong
No full textInternational audienceThis paper concerns the credibility problem for commitments. Commitments play an important role in cooperative human interactions and can dramatically improve the performance of joint actions by stabilizing expectations, reducing the uncertainty of the interaction, providing reasons to cooperate or improving action coordination. However, commitments can only serve these functions if they are credible in the first place. What is it then that insures the credibility of commitments? To answer this question, we need to provide an account of what motivates us to abide by our commitments. We first discuss two conceptions of the nature of the commitments present in joint action and of the norms that govern them. We contend that while normative considerations may have some motivational force, there are reasons to doubt that they, by themselves, could provide a sufficient motivational basis to fully explain why agents abide by their commitments and thus why their commitments are credible. In the next two sections, we discuss two proposals regarding further sources of motivation, reputation management and social emotions. We argue that while reputation management and social emotions certainly play a role in motivating us to act as committed, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons to think that neither captures the most basic motivational force at work in sustaining commitments. We propose instead that the need to belong, i.e., the need to affiliate with others and form long-lasting bonds with them, is what primarily motivates us to interact and engage with those around us and act so as to preserve and reinforce the bonds we have forged with them. We argue that the need to belong is a more basic proximate motivation for conforming to commitments, in the sense both that affiliative behaviors are evidenced much earlier in human development than either reputation management or social emotions and that the need to belong is at least part of an explanation of why we care for our reputation and why we care about others’ assessments of our behavior
