ABSTRACT Constitutive panpsychism is the doctrine that macro-level consciousness—that is, consciousness of the sort possessed by certain composite things such as humans—is built out of irreducibly mental features had by some or all of the basic physical constituents of reality. On constitutive panpsychism, changes in macro-level consciousness amount to changes in either the way that micro-conscious entities ‘bond’ or the way that micro-conscious qualities ‘blend’. I pose the ‘Selection Problem’ for constitutive panpsychism—the problem of explaining how high-level (...) functional states of the brain ‘select’ micro-conscious qualities for bonding or blending. I argue that there are no empirically plausible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

In 'Fiction and Fictionalism', Mark Sainsbury has recently dubbed “Selection Problem” a serious trouble for Meinongian object theories. Typically, Meinongianism has been phrased as a kind of realism on nonexistent objects : these are mind-independent things, not mental simulacra, having the properties they have independently from the activity of any cognitive agent. But how can one single out an object we have no causal acquaintance with, and which is devoid of spatiotemporal location, picking it out from a pre-determined, (...) mind-independent set ? In this paper, I set out a line of response by distinguishing different ways in which a thing may not exist. I show that the selection problem (a) does not arise for past, currently nonexistent objects ; (b) may not arise also for future existents (provided one massages naïve intuitions a bit) ; and (c) even for mere possibilia ; but (d) is a real snag for purely fictional objects, such as Holmes or Gandalf. As for (d), I propose a solution that forces Meinongianism to introduce a kind of ontological dependence of purely fictional nonexistents upon existents. The strategy complicates the intuitively simple, naïve Meinongian framework a bit, but looks quite promising. (shrink)

In this article I discuss and evaluate the selectivity problem as a problem put forward by Bermudez (1997, 2000) against anti-intentionalist accounts of self-deception. I argue that the selectivity problem can be raised even against intentionalist accounts, which reveals the too demanding constraint that the problem puts on the adequacy of a psychological explanation of action. Finally I try to accommodate the intuitions that support the cogency of the selectivity problem using the resources from the (...) framework provided by an anti-intentionalist account of self-deception. (shrink)

Early in _Movements of the Mind_, Wayne Wu puts forth a foundational picture of action. On this picture, intentional action is necessarily a solution to a selection problem, a problem of choice among multiple causally possible alternatives. Forming an intention solves one selection problem; acting on that intention requires solving yet further selection problems about how to execute that intention. There are two serious issues with this picture of action. First: some intentional actions are (...) causally necessitated. They can't be solutions to selection problems. Wu's argument for this claim, which contrasts reflex with action, does not succeed in showing that action must solve a selection problem — nor that reflex does not solve such a problem. Second: the requirement to solve further selection problems while acting on an intention leads to a vicious regress that threatens the possibility of action in general. If these two issues are addressed, Wu's groundbreaking scientific approach to mental action might offer us a powerful new theory of ongoing causal control over intentional action. (shrink)

The present paper discusses selected issues of evaluation in the teaching of philosophy. It deals with the issue under consideration on a general level since we do not differentiate between high school and college study performance assessment. Critical reflection focuses on the proper mode of evaluation in teaching the history of philosophy as and in the disciplines of systematic philosophy. In doing so, the close interrelation between the history of philosophy and its disciplines is considered. Three basic evaluative approaches are (...) distinguished. These vary depending on whether the assessment is of the history of philosophy, logic, or other philosophical disciplines. The question of whether a philosopher or a philosophy teacher not directly involved in discussing philosophical issues is better as an evaluator is also investigated. Furthermore, the paper also articulates the reasons for preferring the first option. (shrink)

Many species rely on the three-dimensional surface layout of an environment to find a desired goal following disorientation. They generally do so to the exclusion of other important spatial cues. Two influential frameworks for explaining that phenomenon are provided by geometric-module theories and view-matching theories of reorientation respectively. The former posit a module that operates only on representations of the global geo- metry of three-dimensional surfaces to guide behavior. The latter place snapshots, stored representations of the subject’s two-dimensional retinal stimulation (...) at specific locations, at the heart of their accounts. In this paper, I take a fresh look at the debate between them. I begin by making a case that the empirical evidence we currently have does not clearly favor one framework over the other, and that the debate has reached something of an impasse. Then, I present a new explanatory problem—the representation selection problem—that offers the pro- spect of breaking the impasse by introducing a new type of explanatory consideration that both frameworks must address. The representation selection problem requires explaining how subjects can reliably select the relevant representation with which they initiate the reorientation process. I argue that the view-matching framework does not have the resources to address this problem, while a certain type of theory within the geometric-module framework can provide a natural response to it. In showing this, I develop a new geometric-module theory. (shrink)

India dropped its target of 500 GW of renewable energy capacity fossil fuel sources by 2030. Its responsibilities the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change [UNFCCC],and reducing radiations by one billion tonnes by the end of the decade at the COP26 conference, held in Glasgow in November 2022. Researchers are continually searching for inexhaustible and reasonable energy sources. Solar energy is one of the greenest sources of energy and is also one of the cleanest. The most important factor in using (...) solar energy is the location of the solar power plant. The main objective of this study is to find the best location for a new solar power plant in a specific region called Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh in India. Here we offer an extension of ELECTRE III method as two-phase Pythagorean neutrosophic elimination and choice translating reality PN-ELECTRE-III) method to adapt with fuzzy, ambiguous, unsure, and indeterminate criteria. The Pythagorean neutrosophic numbers [PNNs] used by the group decision support system of PN-ELECTRE III to measure performance of the alternatives. The options are entirely outclassed in the subsequent stage in view of the past stage's evaluations of them. By defining PNN we describe the technique of indifference threshold functions, preference treshold and veto threshold functions, which provide a more stable basis to drop outranking relations. By calculating the concordance credibility, discordance credibility and net credibility degrees of each alternative, the ranking module of the PN-ELECTRE III approach is made simpler. In order to confirm the applicability of the strategy suggested in this paper, the location selection problem for solar plants is finaly solved. (shrink)

Choice experiment (CE) is a questionnaire based method that the accuracy of research questionnaire determines the validity of the research outcomes. Attribute selection has a prime importance in every CE studies. If respondents do not understand or do not have preference for a certain attribute, the attribute non-attendance problem might happen that biases overall results of the research. Qualitative approaches such as literature review, focus group discussion, and in depth discussion commonly applied in CE researches. However, especially in (...) the developing countries context where ethnical and cultural diversity is a challenge in conducting survey based questionnaires, qualitative methods are not sufficient in selecting attributes. Present study investigates the application of relative importance index (RII) in respondents¡¯ preference for attributes in a modal shift study in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The 5 point Likert scale questions were employed to enhance respondents¡¯ preferences for initial 24 selected attributes. The results of this study showed that from 24 pre-selected attributes, only 18 of them had RII>0.5 and could be included in the final CE design. The results of this study could help researchers to control for unobserved problems in selecting the attributes which could not be discovered through qualitative approaches. -/- . (shrink)

First published in German in 1984 as volume 45 of Martin Heidegger’s collected works, this book is the first English translation of a lecture course he presented at the University of Freiburg in 1937–1938. Heidegger’s task here is to reassert the question of the essence of truth, not as a "problem" or as a matter of "logic," but precisely as a genuine philosophical question, in fact the one basic question of philosophy. Thus, this course is about the essence of (...) truth and the essence of philosophy. On both sides Heidegger draws extensively upon the ancient Greeks, on their understanding of truth as aletheia and their determination of the beginning of philosophy as the disposition of wonder. In addition, these lectures were presented at the time that Heidegger was composing his second magnum opus, Beiträge zur Philosophie, and provide the single best introduction to that complex and crucial text. (shrink)

The evolutionary problem of the units of selection has elicited a good deal of conceptual work from philosophers. We review this work to determine where the issues now stand.

Sober and Lewontin's critique of genic selectionism is based upon the principle that a unit of selection should make a context‐independent contribution to fitness. Critics have effectively shown that this principle is flawed. In this paper I show that the context independence principle is an instance of a more general principle for characterizing causes,called the contextual unanimity principle. I argue that this latter principle, while widely accepted, is erroneous. What is needed is to replace the approach to causality characterized (...) by the contextual unanimity criterion with an approach based on the concept of causal mechanism. After sketching such an approach, I show how it can be used to shed light on the units of selection problem. (shrink)

The World Health Organization has issued international instructions for certification and classification (coding) of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as cause of death. Central to these instructions is the selection of the underlying cause of death for a public health preventive purpose. This article focuses on two rules for this selection: (1) that a death due to COVID-19 should be counted independently of pre-existing conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19 and (2) that COVID-19 should (...) not be considered as due to anything else. The article argues that observance of the first rule may not always lead to an optimal selection from a preventive point of view and that in the future the ascertainment of an animal source of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) would make it possible to reconceptualize ‘COVID-19‘ and create a zoonotic classification code by means of which a factor of a greater preventive value could be selected than what is currently possible. (shrink)

We study human performance in two classical NP‐hard optimization problems: Set Cover and Maximum Coverage. We suggest that Set Cover and Max Coverage are related to means selection problems that arise in human problem‐solving and in pursuing multiple goals: The relationship between goals and means is expressed as a bipartite graph where edges between means and goals indicate which means can be used to achieve which goals. While these problems are believed to be computationally intractable in general, they (...) become more tractable when the structure of the network resembles a tree. Thus, our main prediction is that people should perform better with goal systems that are more tree‐like. We report three behavioral experiments which confirm this prediction. Our results suggest that combinatorial parameters that are instrumental to algorithm design can also be useful for understanding when and why people struggle to choose between multiple means to achieve multiple goals. (shrink)

Due to the huge amount of data being generating from different sources, the analyzing and extracting of useful information from these data becomes a very complex task. The difficulty of dealing with big data optimization problems comes from many factors such as the high number of features, and the existing of lost data. The feature selection process becomes an important step in many data mining and machine learning algorithms to reduce the dimensionality of the optimization problems and increase the (...) performance of the classification or clustering algorithms. In this paper, a set of hybrid and efficient genetic algorithms are proposed to solve feature selection problem, when the handled data has a large feature size. The proposed algorithms use a new gene-weighted mechanism that can adaptively classify the features into strong relative features, weak or redundant features, and unstable features during the evolution of the algorithm. Based on this classification, the proposed algorithm gives the strong features high priority and the weak features less priority when generating new candidate solutions. In the same time, the proposed algorithm tries to more concentrate on unstable features that sometimes appear and sometimes disappear from the best solutions of the population. The performance of proposed algorithms is investigated by using different datasets and feature selection algorithms. The results show that our proposed algorithms can outperform the other feature selection algorithms and effectively enhance the classification performance over the tested datasets. (shrink)

Non-actualist theories promise straightforward accounts of meaning, truth and reference of fictional discourse but are ostensibly saddled with a Selection Problem, that multiple possible candidates satisfy the role-descriptions associated with names used in fictions and no principled way to distinguish between them; yet if names are referential, there can only be one referent. The problem is often taken to be a serious—even decisive—obstacle for non-actualism, and the aim of this article is to show that the challenge can (...) be met. I suggest that storytellers and authors fix the referents of referential terms they use by arbitrary selecting referents through simple acts of stipulation, and then determine which of the worlds containing the relevant individuals serve as truth-makers for the story by adding properties to the characters. The resulting view of reference is consistent with reasonable, foundational requirements on reference, such as a causal-historical theory, and can moreover be used to support plausible theories of truth in fiction and facilitate elegant models of fiction as a type of discourse. (shrink)

The present article reviews the psychological literature on selected problems of gifted education. It discusses issues which are particularly important from the point of view of the skills and tools used by psychologists, educational specialists, teachers and tutors in their daily work with gifted children and adolescents. The problems described include diagnosis of giftedness in education, types of educational support provided to the gifted, and the requirements placed on teachers of gifted students. A particular emphasis is put on the contemporary (...) research-related and practical challenges faced by gifted support specialists in schools. (shrink)

Sober argues that the units of selection problem in evolutionary biology is to be understood and solved by applying the general analysis of what it means for C to cause E in a population. The account he utilizes is the unanimity account, according to which C causes E in a population when C raises the probability of E in each causal context. I argue that he does not succeed here, both because the unanimity account is not well grounded (...) in the general case, and because there are important differences between cases of population causation which do involve selection and those which do not. (shrink)

Laurie Paul has recently proposed that transformative experiences are a distinct challenge to our ability to make rational decisions about our futures. In response, many have claimed that the situation is not as bad as it seems and that it is possible to rationally choose to undergo a transformative experience. Here I argue that the situation is actually worse because the current debate has so far only been framed in terms of comparing a transformative experience to the familiar status quo. (...) If we instead consider choices among transformative experiences—what I call a transformative selection—then transformative experiences continue to pose a significant challenge to our rational decision-making. (shrink)

In this note we provide new results of interest in the portfolio choice problem when the risky opportunities are correlated: for a general vector (X 1, X 2,..., X n ) of risky opportunities we give new conditions for stochastic comparison among different portfolios choices and new necessary and sufficient conditions to characterize the portfolio which gives the maximal expected utility.

The book is a second volume of the project, which is focused on a systematic examination of aesthetic experience by the unification of philosophical and cognitive-scientific approaches to beauty and aesthetic experience. This volume is focused on the analysis of selected aspects of aesthetic experience, especially on methodological problems and aspects of philosophical and scientific research, the question of the complementarity and compatibility of methods, and needs to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. Authors of the chapters are considering about diverse areas (...) of perception of beauty, e.g.: pleasure by face perception; the synchronicity by music; the problems of musical chills; the psychosomatic unity of dance; or the problem of development of aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

This article is about the role of factual uncertainty for moral decision-making as it concerns the ethics of machine decision-making. The view that is defended here is that factual uncertainties require a normative evaluation and that ethics of machine decision faces a triple-edged problem, which concerns what a machine ought to do, given its technical constraints, what decisional uncertainty is acceptable, and what trade-offs are acceptable to decrease the decisional uncertainty.

Skipper and Millstein analyze natural selection and mechanism, concluding that natural selection is not a mechanism in the sense of the new mechanistic philosophy. Barros disagrees and provides his own account of natural selection as a mechanism. This discussion identifies a missing piece of Barros's account, attempts to fill in that piece, and reconsiders the revised account. Two principal objections are developed: one, the account does not characterize natural selection; two, the account is not mechanistic. Extensive (...) and persistent variability causes both of these difficulties, so further attempts to describe natural selection as a mechanism are also unlikely to succeed. (shrink)

We’ll adopt a simple framework today. Our assumptions: A model (M) is a family of hypotheses. A hypothesis (H) is a curve plus an associated error term . For simplicity, we’ll assume a common N (0, 1) Gaussian.

Selective permeability holds that people’s distinct capacities allow them to do different things in a space, making it unequally accessible. Though mainly applied to urban geography so far, we propose selective permeability as an affordance-based approach for understanding diversity in education. This has advantages. First, it avoids dismissing lower achievements as necessarily coming from “within” students, instead locating challenges in the environment. This implies that settings (not just people) need remedial attention, also raising questions about normative judgments in disability nomenclature. (...) Second, affordances can be negotiated in numerous ways to reach a goal, analogously to how people with missing arms have learned to drive with their feet, so restrictive problem-solving methods are often counterproductive. Third, our approach illuminates how cultural factors ranging from gait styles to language and hence group coordination modulate action possibilities, so that cultural groups may encounter objectively different affordances in the same classroom. But fourth, while fit with environment allows for skill refinement, non-fit can contribute to growth situations, which suggests a degree of selective closure can be desirable. Throughout, we argue social constructs—including educational ones—are literally built or enacted barriers or openings that have reality in environments in the same way that affordances do. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with only one of the problems encountered in selecting donors for artificial insemination, that of choosing suitable donors. In Belgium medical students have generally been the donors of semen but Dr Schoysman examines the other choices of potential donors and outlines certain criteria for selecting them: these criteria are more explicit than those outlined by Professor Kerr and Miss Rogers on page 32. He also touches on the question of payment to donors.

The paper tries to introduce the substantial terms used by the traditionalist authors. In its first part a short characteristic of the French counter-revolutionary thought is given. The second, substantial part of the paper offers an interpretation of the basic concepts used by the traditionalists, such as "revolution", "society", "humans", "reason", "power" and "constitution".

Probabilistic inference from frequencies, such as "Most Quakers are pacifists; Nixon is a Quaker, so probably Nixon is a pacifist" suffer from the problem that an individual is typically a member of many "reference classes" (such as Quakers, Republicans, Californians, etc) in which the frequency of the target attribute varies. How to choose the best class or combine the information? The article argues that the problem can be solved by the feature selection methods used in contemporary Big (...) Data science: the correct reference class is that determined by the features relevant to the target, and relevance is measured by correlation (that is, a feature is relevant if it makes a difference to the frequency of the target). (shrink)

Mainstream teleosemantics is the view that mental representation should be understood in terms of biological functions, which, in turn, should be understood in terms of selection processes. One of the traditional criticisms of teleosemantics is the problem of novel contents: how can teleosemantics explain our ability to represent properties that are evolutionarily novel? In response, some have argued that by generalizing the notion of a selection process to include phenomena such as operant conditioning, and the neural (...) class='Hi'>selection that underlies it, we can resolve this problem. Here, we do four things: we develop this suggestion in a rigorous way through a simple example, we draw on recent neurobiological research to support its empirical plausibility, we defend the move from a host of objections in the literature, and we sketch how the picture can be extended to help us think about more complex “conceptual” representations and not just perceptual ones. (shrink)

Specifically, Allan Franklin is concerned with two problems in the use of experimental results in science: selectivity of data or analysis procedures and the resolution of discordant results.

Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes — and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide (...) a principled solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples, including to a debate concerning the ‘causal democracy’ of organismal development, with an anti-democratic (though not a gene-centric) moral. (shrink)

A profound problem in viewing operant learning as selection appears to be the identification of replicators. Given the lack of consensus on what constitutes the appropriate unit of analysis for behavior, there may be multiple levels at which the metaphor of selection may be usefully applied. A final difficulty: The elements of selection in the evolution of species are objects. In behavior, they are events.

Marko Jurjako’s article “Self-deception and the selectivity problem” (Jurjako 2013) offers a very interesting discussion of intentionalist approaches to self-deception and in particular the selectivity objection to anti-intentionalism raised in Bermúdez 1997 and 2000. This note responds to Jurjako’s claim that intentionalist models of self-deception face their own version of the selectivity problem, offering an account of how intentions are formed that can explain the selectivity of self-deception, even in the “common or garden” cases that Jurjako emphasizes.

This paper expands on, and provides a qualified defence of, Arthur Fine's selective interactions solution to the measurement problem. Fine's approach must be understood against the background of the insolubility proof of the quantum measurement. I first defend the proof as an appropriate formal representation of the quantum measurement problem. The nature of selective interactions, and more generally selections, is then clarified, and three arguments in their favour are offered. First, selections provide the only known solution to the (...) measurement problem that does not relinquish any of the explicit premises of the insolubility proofs. Second, unlike some no-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics, selections suffer no difficulties with non-ideal measurements. Third, unlike most collapse interpretations, selections can be independently motivated by an appeal to quantum propensities. IntroductionThe problem of quantum measurement2.1 The ignorance interpretation of mixtures2.2 The eigenstate–eigenvalue link2.3 The quantum theory of measurementThe insolubility proof of the quantum measurement3.1 Some notation3.2 The transfer of probability condition (TPC)3.3 The occurrence of outcomes condition (OOC)A defence of the insolubility proof4.1 Stein's critique4.2 Ignorance is not required4.3 The problem of quantum measurement is an idealisationSelections5.1 Representing dispositional properties5.2 Selections solve the measurement problem5.3 Selections and ignoranceNon-ideal selections6.1 No-collapse interpretations and non-ideal measurements6.2 Exact and approximate measurements6.3 Selections for non-ideal interactions6.4 Approximate selections6.5 Implications for ignoranceSelective interactions test quantum propensities7.1 Equivalence classes as physical ‘aspects’: a critique7.2 Quantum dispositions7.3 Selections as a propensity modal interpretation7.4 A comparison with Popper's propensity interpretation. (shrink)

Machine-learning algorithms are transforming healthcare diagnostics and prognostics. However, they sometimes underperform for groups underrepresented in their training data. Vandersluis and Savulescu have suggested selectively deploying these algorithms for populations well represented in the training data, while excluding underrepresented groups until improvements are made to the algorithms. In this paper, I explore one long-term risk of such selective deployment for certain small underrepresented groups, such as those with rare diseases. The risk in question is the potential long-term decline in the (...) human expertise critical for such small groups, which, because they are excluded from effective care by the algorithm, would still rely on non-algorithmic, human expertise even in the long run. I then discuss how to best preserve human expertise and maintain long-term access to quality care for excluded groups and contend that such expertise preservation is essential for ethical deployment of algorithmic processes in healthcare. (shrink)

The reduction, reuse, collection and recovery of recyclable materials are sustainable behaviors and people’s awareness of them plays an important role in implementing strategies and policies in this field. The quantitative analysis performed on a group of 816 students of Politehnica University of Timisoara, aimed at finding answers to important environmental concerns and observing the students’ behaviors of reuse and selective collection of the waste resulted from plastic containers, paper, aluminum, batteries, iron packaging waste, electronic equipment, used cooking oil and (...) printer toner. The research has shown that ‘increased amounts of waste’ is among the first three concerns Romania has to deal with, besides ‘air pollution’ and ‘deforestation’. Moreover, the study highlights the existence of the behavior toward the selective waste collection among students. although there are some areas that students still need to be familiarized with through different campaigns, trainings, courses, etc. The results can be used in the development of institutional strategies or of strategic documents targeting environmental protection and sustainable development. (shrink)

The evolution of human language, and the kind of thought the communication of which requires it, raises considerable explanatory challenges. These systems of representation constitute a radical discontinuity in the natural world. Even species closely related to our own appear incapable of either thought or talk with the recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality that characterize human talk and the thought it expresses. W. Tecumseh Fitch’s proposal (2004, in press) that human language is descended from a sexually selected, prosodic (...) proto-language that approximated its syntactic complexity, and later acquired semantics thanks to kin selection for its use as a means of pedagogical transmission, has the promise of meeting these explanatory challenges. However, Fitch’s theory raises two problems of its own: (1) according to Boyd and Richerson (1996, Proc. Br. Acad. 88: 77–93), circumstances in which pedagogy is adaptive are inevitably rare in nature, and (2) it is unlikely that our non-discursive precursors had generally systematic, task-domain neutral thoughts to communicate to their offspring. I propose solutions to these problems. Pedagogy would be favored in a population where complex rituals dominated diverse aspects of life. Prosodic proto-language could emerge as the medium of pedagogic transmission. As this medium was used to teach a greater variety of tasks, it would become increasingly general and domain neutral. The presence and importance of such a system of communication in hominid populations could then drive, via Baldwinian mechanisms, the evolution of a kind of ‘thinking for speaking’ (Slobin 1991, Pragmatics 1: 7–25) characterized by recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality. (shrink)

The principles of sexual selection were used as an organizing framework for interpreting cross-national patterns of sex differences in mathematical abilities. Cross-national studies suggest that there are no sex differences in biologically primary mathematical abilities, that is, for those mathematical abilities that are found in all cultures as well as in nonhuman primates, and show moderate heritability estimates. Sex differences in several biologically secondary mathematical domains (i.e., those that emerge primarily in school) are found throughout the industrialized world. In (...) particular, males consistently outperform females in the solving of mathematical word problems and geometry. Sexual selection and any associated proximate mechanisms (e.g., sex hormones) influence these sex differences in mathematical performance indirectly. First, sexual selection resulted in greater elaboration in males than in females of the neurocognitive systems that support navigation in three-dimensional space. Knowledge implicit in these systems reflects an understanding of basic Euclidean geometry, and may thus be one source of the male advantage in geometry. Males also use more readily than females these spatial systems in problem-solving situations, which provides them with an advantage in solving word problems and geometry. In addition, sex differences in social styles and interests, which also appear to be related in part to sexual selection, result in sex differences in engagement iii mathematics-related activities, thus further increasing the male advantage in certain mathematical domains. A model that integrates these biological influences with sociocultural influences on the sex differences in mathematical performance is presented in this article. (shrink)

Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes-and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide a principled (...) solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples. (shrink)