Explaining the Temporal Value Asymmetry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Callender
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Causal Asymmetry ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Value

An important feature of life is the past/future value asymmetry. Not to be confused with proximal/distant discounting, the past/future value asymmetry is the fact that we prefer future rather than past preferences be satisfied. Misfortunes are better in the past, where they are “over and done,” than in the future. Some philosophers take this value asymmetry to warrant positing a radical metaphysical asymmetry between the past and future. By contrast, others contend that the value asymmetry is due to the causal asymmetry. Thanks to the causal asymmetry, there is a mechanism between future desires and future fulfilment, but no such mechanism between past desires and past fulfilment. Opponents of this view deride it as a piece of “socio-biological mythology.” Here, appealing to recent work in cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution, a rich and powerful version of the “causal asymmetry” explanation of the value asymmetry is built.

Smart Estimation Ver-H.1.0

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigit Haryadi
Keyword(s):  
Sample Size ◽  
Confidence Level ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Regression Equation ◽  
Weight Factor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Of Confidence ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Value ◽  
The Difference

We cannot be sure exactly what will happen, we can only estimate by using a particular method, where each method must have the formula to create a regression equation and a formula to calculate the confidence level of the estimated value. This paper conveys a method of estimating the future values, in which the formula for creating a regression equation is based on the assumption that the future value will depend on the difference of the past values divided by a weight factor which corresponding to the time span to the present, and the formula for calculating the level of confidence is to use "the Haryadi Index". The advantage of this method is to remain accurate regardless of the sample size and may ignore the past value that is considered irrelevant.

PERSONAL LANDSCAPE TRANSFORMATIONS FOLLOWING THE TRAUMATIC WAR EXPERIENCE

2020 ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
T. M. Tytarenko
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Value ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Landscape Transformations ◽  
Integral Indicator

The personal landscape transformations are defined as the territory of a person 's life, which has special dynamics, structural and functional characteristics, meaningful filling. In addition to specifying the landscape concept, the task was to determine the types of landscapes of combatants after returning from the war. The sample consisted of 91 combatants (higher education cadets and volunteers). We used the written narrative method of the proposed scheme, a conversation, and a focused one-on-one interview. As a result, post-traumatic combatants 'narratives consisted of war-related injuries (41.9%); family treason (24.7%); losses suffered in peace time (23.5%); other difficult life situations (9.9%). The following criteria for determining the type of landscape have been developed: meaningfulness of the past; assessment of the present; a vision of the future; value dominant. There is considered the value-semantic configuration of the individual 's life as an integral indicator of the landscape. The following types of landscapes have been identified: a) existential (differs in the unwillingness to rethink the traumatic past; the inability to assess the present adequately; the inability to construct the future; the dominant for survival); b) family (distinguished by a good understanding of the past; adequate assessment of the present; detailed construction of the future; dominant of meaningful relationships); c) service (differs from family one primarily by the criterion of dominant value – to be useful to the state, to the fight against the aggressor, and to the army); d) self-realization (differs in the main value of self-development); e) pragmatic (distinguished by the major value of career advancement). The most common landscapes are existential and family landscapes (25.0% each); in second place is landscapes of service and self-realization (17.3% each); on the third – pragmatic (13.6%). The hypothesis according to which the direct participation of military personnel in hostilities can act as a trigger for changing the personal landscape is confirmed.

scholarly journals The Progression of Life: Before, Now, and In the Future; Here and Elsewhere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel S Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Selective Pressure ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
Evolution Understanding ◽  
The Relationship

Evolution and abiogenesis are usually considered two different topics in biology. However, recent work on the relationship between thermodynamics and life, as well as complexity and evolution, suggest that these topics may all be intimately related. Leveraging novel research on thermodynamics and complexity theory, I attempt to show that thermodynamics seems to exert a universal selective pressure (entropic pressure). This pressure seems to exist on the atomic and molecular level, biological level, and even societal level, and results in a number of interesting consequences. There is still much work to do in order to increase our understanding of the relationship between thermodynamics, complexity theory, abiogenesis, and evolution. Understanding entropic pressure may allow for robust predictions about life in the past and the potential nature of life in the future, and help us better predict the nature and scarcity of life beyond this world.

Against representation: A brief introduction to cultural affordances

Human Affairs ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tibor Solymosi
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

AbstractCognitive 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.

What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: A defense manual for cognitive and behavioral scientists

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 603-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Ross ◽  
David Spurrett
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism.We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics.

Just Nationalism: The Future of an Illusion

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 345-363
Author(s):  
Andrew Levine
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

Until quite recently, political philosophers routinely ignored nationalism. Nowadays, the topic is very much on the philosophical agenda. In the past, when philosophers did discuss nationalism, it was usually to denigrate it. Today, nationalism elicits generally favorable treatment. I confess to a deep ambivalence about this turn of events. On the one hand, much of what has emerged in recent work on nationalism appears to be on the mark. On the other hand, the anti- or extra-nationalist outlook that used to pervade political philosophy seems as sound today as it ever was, and perhaps even more urgent in the face of truly horrendous eruptions of nationalist hostilities in many parts of the world. What follows is an effort to grapple with this ambivalence. My aim will be to identify what is defensible in the nationalist idea and then to reflect on the flaws inherent in even the most defensible aspects of nationalist theory and practice.

With the future coming up behind them: Evidence that Time approaches from behind in Vietnamese

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Sullivan ◽  
Linh Thuy Bui
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Research Opportunities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Andes ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Research ◽  
Vietnamese Speakers

AbstractVietnamese speakers can describe the future as behind them and gesture forwards to indicate the past, which suggests they use a conceptual model of Time in which the future is behind and the past is in front. This type of model has previously been shown to be pervasive only among older speakers of Aymara in the Andes (Núñez and Sweetser 2006. With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science 30. 401–450). Whereas Time in the Aymara model does not “move”, the present data show that Time in Vietnamese can “approach” from behind the Ego and “continue forward” into the past. To our knowledge, no other language has been identified with a model where Time moves from behind Ego to in front. Recognition of this model in Vietnamese will open up new research opportunities, particularly since the model does not seem to be endangered in Vietnamese.

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