There is a continuum between prototypical cases of rule use and prototypical cases of similarity use. A prototypical rule: (1) is explicitly represented, (2) can be verbalized, and (3) requires that the user selectively attend to a few features of the object, while ignoring the others. Prototypical similarity-use requires that: (1) the user should match the object to a mental representation holistically, and (2) there should be no selective attention or inhibition. Neural evidence supports prototypical rule-use. Most models of categorization (...) fall between the two prototypes. (shrink)

A number of theoretical positions in psychology—including variants of case‐based reasoning, instance‐based analogy, and connectionist models—maintain that abstract rules are not involved in human reasoning, or at best play a minor role. Other views hold that the use of abstract rules is a core aspect of human reasoning. We propose eight criteria for determining whether or not people use abstract rules in reasoning, and examine evidence relevant to each criterion for several rule systems. We argue that there is substantial evidence (...) that several different inferential rules, including modus ponens, contractual rules, causal rules, and the law of large numbers, are used in solving everyday problems. We discuss the implications for various theoretical positions and consider hybrid mechanisms that combine aspects of instance and rule models. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider whether there is a place for trust in the American constitutional order and what it means if there is. In particular, I argue that a constitutional way of life requires a certain kind of trust, what I shall call civic trust, which I describe as an attitudinal disposition to engagement and cooperation with others in the shared project of constitutional self-governance. Civic trust is a specific conception of trust; it has a public as well as (...) a private character and it is an essential component of a healthy and successful constitutional regime. In short: civic trust is a constitutional good. Its absence in our public life is not only a marker but also a cause of constitutional dysfunction. (shrink)

My essay “Let's Take the Con out of Econometrics” is intended to be an amusing, titillating, and even annoying distillation of ideas that I have published in a more formal, academic style in many different locations over the course of several years. As far as I could tell, these ideas were widely ignored until I adopted the more contentious style of “Con,” which, since its publication two years ago, has been reprinted in two volumes and excerpted in two others. There (...) is something to be learned from this episode about the sociology of ideas. Notoriety, however, is a mixed blessing, since now I find myself spending too much of my time trying to explain what I meant. (shrink)

Three decades ago Gilbert posited that novel proteins arise by re‐shuffling genomic sequences encoding polypeptide domains. Today, with numerous genomes and countless genes sequenced, it is well established that recombination of sequences encoding polypeptide domains plays a major role in protein evolution. There is, however, less evidence to suggest how the novel polypeptide domains, themselves, arise. Recent comparisons of genomes from closely related species have revealed numerous species‐specific exons, supporting models of domain origin based on “exonization” of intron sequences. Also, (...) a mechanism for the origin of novel polypeptide domains has been proposed based on analyses of insertion‐based polymorphisms between orthologous genes across broad phylogenetic spectra and between allelic variants of genes within species. This review discusses these processes and how each might participate in the evolutionary emergence of novel polypeptide domains. BioEssays 29: 262–270, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Many neuroimaging studies of semantic memory have argued that knowledge of an object's perceptual properties are represented in a modality-specific manner. These studies often base their argument on finding activation in the left-hemisphere fusiform gyrus-a region assumed to be involved in perceptual processing-when the participant is verifying verbal statements about objects and properties. In this paper, we report an extension of one of these influential papers-Kan, Barsalou, Solomon, Minor, and Thompson-Schill (2003 )-and present evidence for an amodal component in the (...) representation and processing of perceptual knowledge. Participants were required to verify object-property statements (e.g., "cat-whiskers?"; "bear-wings?") while they were being scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We replicated Kan et al.'s activation in the left fusiform gyrus, but also found activation in regions of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and middle-temporal gyrus, areas known to reflect amodal processes or representations. Further, only activations in the left IFG, an amodal area, were correlated with measures of behavioural performance. (shrink)

This article examines the role played by US foundations in shaping the academic field of race relations and a black social movement in Brazil. It takes issue with Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant's assertion that US foundations use their power to impose a US model on understanding race in Brazil. Their analysis exaggerates the power of US foundations in Brazil, fails to understand how programming decisions are made within the foundations, greatly underestimates the intellectual agency of the Brazilian academy and (...) its black social movement, and reveals a rather dated understanding of the academic literature and public opinion on race in Brazil. The author relies on information gleaned from his former position as a Program Officer of the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and as a researcher of Brazilian race relations. (shrink)

We advance a model of human probability judgment and apply it to the design of an extrapolation algorithm. Such an algorithm examines a person's judgment about the likelihood of various statements and is then able to predict the same person's judgments about new statements. The algorithm is tested against judgments produced by thirty undergraduates asked to assign probabilities to statements about mammals.

“For the most valuable is not he who leads his pupils to depend upon him, but he who leads those whom he instructs to beable to criticise their teacher. “.