A Philosopher's Reaction to Intelligence Tests

Philosophy ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 29 (110) ◽  
pp. 231-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Mays
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Intelligence Tests ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
At Will

I DO not have to apologize for entering upon a discussion of intelligence and intelligence tests; it is a field which comes within the purview of philosophy as well as psychology. Any method of testing intelligence is therefore of common interest, especially as the methodology employed is usually based upon some definite theory as to its nature. The very word intelligence covers a wide range of meanings and psychologists seem to select sections of this range at will in accordance with their particular interest. It may include most of the behavioural activities of man, or be narrowed down so that it refers to certain quantitative or relational aspects of experience. To take the case of the factor analyst, after his concept of intelligence has been analysed and classified into g's and s's, it becomes not a description of the mind, but rather a closed cognitive model of it.

General AI

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-206
Author(s):  
Stephen K. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Standard Model ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Intelligence Tests ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind

People use their cognitive skills to solve a wide range of problems whereas computers solve only a limited number of specific problems. A goal of artificial intelligence (AI) is to build on its previous success in specific environments to advance toward the generality of human level intelligence. People are efficient general-purpose learners who can adapt to many situations such as navigating in spatial environments and communicating by using language. To compare human and machine reasoning the AI community has proposed a standard model of the mind. Measuring progress in achieving general AI will require a wide variety of intelligence tests. Grand challenges, such as helping scientists win a Nobel prize, should stimulate development efforts.

scholarly journals Activity in the brain’s valuation and mentalizing networks is associated with propagation of online recommendations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa C. Baek ◽  
Matthew Brook O’Donnell ◽  
Christin Scholz ◽  
Rui Pei ◽  
Javier O. Garcia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Opinion Change ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mentalizing System

AbstractWord of mouth recommendations influence a wide range of choices and behaviors. What takes place in the mind of recommendation receivers that determines whether they will be successfully influenced? Prior work suggests that brain systems implicated in assessing the value of stimuli (i.e., subjective valuation) and understanding others’ mental states (i.e., mentalizing) play key roles. The current study used neuroimaging and natural language classifiers to extend these findings in a naturalistic context and tested the extent to which the two systems work together or independently in responding to social influence. First, we show that in response to text-based social media recommendations, activity in both the brain’s valuation system and mentalizing system was associated with greater likelihood of opinion change. Second, participants were more likely to update their opinions in response to negative, compared to positive, recommendations, with activity in the mentalizing system scaling with the negativity of the recommendations. Third, decreased functional connectivity between valuation and mentalizing systems was associated with opinion change. Results highlight the role of brain regions involved in mentalizing and positive valuation in recommendation propagation, and further show that mentalizing may be particularly key in processing negative recommendations, whereas the valuation system is relevant in evaluating both positive and negative recommendations.

The Fragmented Mind

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Belief State ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.

scholarly journals WAR Metaphor in the Chinese Economic Media Discourse

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunyu Hu ◽  
Yuting Xu
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Social Resources ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Cooperative Principle ◽  
Critical Metaphor Analysis ◽  
War Metaphor ◽  
The Mind ◽  
China Daily

The economic media discourse depends upon a complex web of metaphors, among which WAR metaphor is worthy of special attention. The data used in this study is comprised of 2566 articles (about 1.2 million words) under the Economy column of China Daily published in 2014. Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) is used as the analytical framework to investigate WAR metaphor in the economic media discourse. This study is governed by the three steps of CMA including metaphor identification, metaphor interpretation and metaphor explanation. The results show that among the selected 62 lemmas, 40 of them have metaphorical instantiations and more than half of all the metaphorical expressions are nouns. Both social resources and individual resources influence metaphor choice. WAR metaphor has the rhetorical function as persuasion, which constructs the cognitive model of competition in the mind of the readers and arouses their emotions; on the other hand, it hides the cooperative principle of economic activities.

scholarly journals The Metamorphosis of the Victim of Crime: From Crime to Culture and the Implications for Justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Walklate
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
As If

Beck (2015: 81) observes, metamorphosis ‘is proceeding latently, behind the mind walls of unintended side effects, which are being constructed as ‘natural’ and ‘self-evident’. Thus Beck’s concept of metamorphosis conceives of social change as unnoticed and unacknowledged. Such change is evident in the contemporary ever present invocation of the ‘victim’ in a wide range of different, crime-soaked circumstances. This paper is concerned to explore this metamorphosis of the ‘victim’ in reflecting on two narratives: the victim narrative and the trauma narrative. The contemporary conflation of these two narratives has led Agamben (1999: 13) to suggest that policy has proceeded as if ‘“testis” (the testimony of a person as a third party in a trial or a law suit) can be conflated with “superstes” (a person who has lived through something and can thereby bear witness to it)’. The paper makes the case that this conflation has consequences for understandings of justice.

How the Group Affects the Mind: A Cognitive Model of Idea Generation in Groups

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard A. Nijstad ◽  
Wolfgang Stroebe
Keyword(s):  
Associative Memory ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
Negative Feedback Loops ◽  
Cognitive Failures ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Knowledge Activation ◽  
The Mind

A model called search for ideas in associative memory (SIAM) is proposed to account for various research findings in the area of group idea generation. The model assumes that idea generation is a repeated search for ideas in associative memory, which proceeds in 2 stages (knowledge activation and idea production), and is controlled through negative feedback loops and cognitive failures (trials in which no idea is generated). We show that (a) turn taking (production blocking) interferes with both stages of the process; (b) ideas suggested by others aid the activation of problem-relevant knowledge; and (c) cognitive failures are important determinants of brainstorming persistence, satisfaction, and enjoyment. Implications for group decision making and group recall are discussed.

Psychotherapy: The Search for Chaos and the Discovery of Determinism

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Langs ◽  
Anthony Badalamenti
Keyword(s):  
Science Studies ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy ◽  
Chaotic Attractors ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Science Domain ◽  
Formal Science ◽  
The Mind

The search for a science of psychoanalysis is introduced by defining three modes of psychoanalytic science: domain, statistical-stochastic, and formal. The paper outlines the domain science propositions of the communicative approach to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and indicates how this version of psychoanalytic theory led to the development of an extensive series of statistical-stochastic and formal science studies of the communications between patients and therapists. The formal science efforts which began as a mathematical search for chaotic attractors revealed instead a deep determinism within the psychotherapeutic dialogue. Three specific laws of the mind and human communication have been identified. The research is centred on how we communicate (the communicative vehicle) rather than what we express (the contents). After describing a wide range of unexpected and unprecedented results, the paper concludes with a discussion of some of the clinical implications of these findings and of the new formal science of psychoanalysis created by these investigations.

Diagrammatic information

1993 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Graphic Design ◽  
General Level ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Present Complex ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
Subject Domains

Diagrams are increasingly used to present complex and abstract information. Their ultimate success as tools for communication depends largely upon how effectively they can be processed in the mind of the viewer. The application of established principles of graphic design is a vital part of developing effective diagrams, but tends to focus upon external aspects of representation that apply at a general level across a wide range of subject domains. However, the internal (mental) representation of a specific set of subject matter is also important in influencing what sense viewers make of a diagram. The task of characterising relationships between the way a diagram is represented mentally and the effectiveness with which that diagram is processed poses novel challenges to researchers. This paper decribes some of these challenges and discusses methodologies that have been developed to explore the mental representation and processing of explanatory diagrams.

Ideological Confrontation and the Manipulation of Oral History: a Zambesian Case

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 257-273
Author(s):  
Matthew Schoffeleers
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Scarce Resource ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Origin Myths ◽  
The Moment ◽  
At Will ◽  
Original Event

Ever since Malinowski formulated his concept of myths as charters, there has been a tendency among anthropologists to regard origin myths more or less as post factum constructs designed to legitimize existing privileges and positions. A classic example of this pragmatist view is Leach's study of political systems in highland Burma, in which he attempts to demonstrate that origin myths change with clocklike regularity in response to shifts in the political constellation. More recently, however, voices have been raised, particularly among historians, which insist that a society's past cannot always be manipulated at will, but that under certain conditions it has to be treated circumspectly in the way one deals with any scarce resource.My own interpretation of this view is that accounts of the past, when they concern important aspects of a society, are often (or perhaps always) constructed in such a way that the original event is somehow preserved and recoverable. The qualification “somehow” is added on purpose to make clear that the phrase ‘oral history’ refers to such a wide range of genres and mnemonic techniques, and that the methods at our disposal to extract the original event are still so rudimentary--despite the progress made over the past dozen years or so--that for the moment one cannot do more than express belief in our ultimate capability to discover what happened in actual fact.

To Run or Not to Run: Estimates of a Black Contender's Delegate Strength at the 1984 Democratic Convention

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (04) ◽  
pp. 673-677
Author(s):  
James I. Lengle
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Black Candidate ◽  
Black Vote ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
Presidential Nomination ◽  
Vice Presidency ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind

The possibility of a black contender for the Democratic presidential nomination has raised many interesting questions. Has the Democratic Party and its past nominees taken the black vote for granted? Can the black community reach a consensus on a black issue agenda? Can it agree on a candidate? Could a black candidate actually hurt black interests by dividing the liberal vote and throwing the nomination to a more conservative Democratic contender? Could the strategy seriously backfire in other less obvious ways? Do the presumed benefits, both symbolic and real, outweigh the potential costs? Could the threat of a candidacy be just as beneficial to black interests as the candidacy itself? Are there other strategies during the nomination process that could enhance black political power even more?Although the debate has covered a wide range of questions, one crucial question has been ignored: how many delegates could a black presidential contender conceivably win in 1984? While few experts believe that a black contender could win a majority of delegates, many argue that, if the contest is close between two other contenders, blacks could be “kingmakers,” crowning the nominee in exchange for major policy concessions, patronage appointments, and, conceivably, the vice-presidency. If the nomination is not close, then a group of black delegates, at a minimum, would increase substantially black influence on important rules and platform decisions. Hopes based on these or any other convention scenario the mind can devise, however, depend on how well a black contender fares in the race for delegates. The larger his delegation, the more power he can potentially wield at the convention. Conversely, the smaller his delegation, the less power he will have.

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