Emotion understanding is a crucial skill for early social development, yet little is known regarding longitudinal development of this skill from infancy to early childhood. To address this issue, t...

How do we recognize identities between seen shapes and felt ones? Is this due to associative learning, or to intrinsic connections these sensory modalities? We can address this question by testing the capacities of newly sighted subjects to match seen and felt shapes, but only if it is shown that the subjects can see the objects well enough to form adequate visual representations of their shapes. In light of this, a recent study by R. Held and colleagues fails to demonstrate (...) that their newly sighted subjects’ inability to match seen and felt shape was due to a lack of intermodal connections rather than a purely visual deficit, as they may not have been able visually to represent 3D shape in the perspective-invariant way required for intermodal matching. However, the study could be modified in any of several ways to help avoid this problem. (shrink)

Introduction: The present study was conducted to verify a promising experimental setup which demonstrated an inversed Stroop-effect following a mismatching tone. In the matching condition, which was an almost exact replication of the original study, participants were required to indicate whether word color and word meaning were matching, whereas in the response conflict condition, instruction was the same as in a classical Stroop task and required the participants to respond to the word color. As in the original study, (...) each trial was preceded by a sine tone which was deviant in pitch in 20% of the trials.Results: The main result was that the Stroop effect was not inversed after deviant tones, neither under the matching task instruction nor under the response conflict task instruction. The Stroop effect was unaffected by the previous “conceptual mismatch.”Conclusion: The current study failed to replicate the astonishing concept of “conflict priming” reported in previous work and does not open the doors for a new window on sequences of conflicts. Nevertheless, the failed replication is valuable for future research, since it demonstrated that “Conflict Priming” as a facilitation of processing of conflict trials following deviant tones, is not an confirmed finding. (shrink)

The ‘Molyneux problem’ is typically framed in terms of the crossmodal matching of shape information from touch to vision. Indeed, shape along with intensity have commonly been considered amodal stimulus properties/dimensions (at least by developmental researchers). However, it is important to note that what is common, if anything, to the senses differs in the two cases: It is the physical stimulus (and possibly also the associated phenomenology) that is thought to be the same in the case of crossmodal (or (...) intermodal) shape matching between touch and vision, whereas it is the nature of the underlying neural encoding that is said to be similar in the case of crossmodal matching of auditory and visual stimulus intensity. While the first empirical data to have been published on these two forms of putatively amodal crossmodal matching appeared to suggest that they both emerge surprisingly early in the course of human development (i.e., within the first month of life), certain of these seminal findings have proved difficult to replicate. Ultimately, therefore, there is currently little convincing evidence to support the notion that such putatively innate crossmodal matching of amodal stimulus dimensions is actually different in kind from the various other crossmodal correspondences that are seemingly acquired at various points during the course of human development (typically as a result of the internalization of the crossmodal statistics of the environment). As such, there may be nothing particularly special about the type of crossmodal matching thought to underlie the ‘Molyneux problem’, and continued interest in the issue may inadvertently have helped to sustain a misguided account of the differences between different types of crossmodal correspondence. (shrink)

When infants and toddlers are confronted with sequences of sounds, they are required to segment the sounds into meaningful units to achieve sufficient understanding. Rhythm has been regarded as a crucial cue for segmentation of speech sounds. Although previous intermodal methods indicated that infants and toddlers could detect differences in speech sounds based on stress-timed and syllable-timed units, these methods could not clearly indicate how infants and toddlers perform sound segmentation. Thus, the present study examined whether Japanese infants and (...) toddlers could segment word speech sounds comprising basic morae, on the basis of concurrent basic mora units within syllable units, using the new intermodal matching procedure. The results indicated that, regardless of their ages and linguistic abilities, Japanese infants and toddlers aged 6–25 months tended to segment Japanese words comprising basic morae sounds on the basis of concurrent basic mora units within syllable units. This implies that infants' and toddlers' use of syllable units for segmentation of speech sounds at an early age could be evident among many infants and toddlers learning various languages. Although this finding should be interpreted carefully, the present study demonstrated the utility of the new intermodal matching procedure for examining segmentation of speech sounds and word sounds by infants and toddlers, on the basis of specific rhythm units. (shrink)

Skepticism toward the existence of neonatal differential imitation is fostered by views that assign it an excessive significance, making it foundational for social cognition. Moreover, a misleading theoretical framework may generate unwarranted expectations about the kinds of findings experimentalists are supposed to look for. Hence we propose a theoretical analysis that may help experimentalists address the empirical question of whether early differential imitation really exists. We distinguish three models of early imitation. The first posits automatic visuo-motor links evolved for sociocognitive (...) functions and we call it Genetically Programmed Direct Matching. The second is Meltzoff and Moore’s Active Intermodal Matching, which postulates a comparison between the acts of self and other. The third is the alternative we propose and we call it “Association by Similarity Theory”, as it relies on the tacit functioning of this domain-general process. AST describes early imitation merely as the differential induction or elicitation of behaviors that already tend to occur spontaneously. We focus on the contrast between AIM and AST, and argue that AST is preferable to AIM for two reasons. First, AST is more parsimonious and more plausible, especially because it does not require infants to be able to recognize self-other similarities. Second, whereas the extant findings tend to disqualify AIM, AST can account for them adequately. Furthermore, we suggest that AST has the potential to give new impulse to empirical research because it discriminates promising lines of inquiry from unproductive ones. (shrink)

It is tempting to hold that perceptual experience amounts to a co-conscious collection of visual, auditory, tactual, gustatory, and olfactory episodes. If so, each aspect of perceptual experience on each occasion is associated with a specific modality. This paper, however, concerns a core variety of multimodal perceptual experience. It argues that there is perceptually apparent intermodal feature binding. I present the case for this claim, explain its consequences for theorizing about perceptual experience, and defend it against objections. I maintain (...) that just as one thing may perceptually appear at once to jointly bear several features associated with the same sense modality, one thing also may perceptually appear at once to jointly bear features associated with different sense modalities. For instance, just as something may visually appear at once to be both red and round, or to have a red part and a green part, something may multimodally perceptually appear at once to be both bright and loud, or to have a red part and a rough part. The main lesson, I argue, is that perceiving is not just co-consciously seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling at the same time. And perceptual phenomenal character is not on each occasion exhausted by that which is distinctive to or associated with a given modality, along with that which accrues thanks to simple co-consciousness. Not all ways of perceiving are modality specific. I defend this account against three main objections: that singular content theorists avoid my conclusions; that apparent infusion of perceptible features is required for perceptually apparent binding but does not occur intermodally; and that the diversity of objects across modalities makes perceptually apparent intermodal binding rare. (shrink)

Intermodal representationalists hold that the phenomenal characters of experiences are fully determined by their contents. In contrast, intramodal representationalists hold that the phenomenal characters of experiences are determined by their contents together with their intentional modes or manners of representation, which are nonrepresentational features corresponding roughly to the sensory modalities. This paper discusses a kind of experience that provides evidence for an intermodal representationalist view: intermodal experiences, experiences that unify experiences in different modalities. I argue that such (...) experiences are much easier to explain on the intermodal view. (shrink)

The phenomenon known as matching bias consists of a tendency to see cases as relevant in logical reasoning tasks when the lexical content of a case matches that of a propositional rule, normally a conditional, which applies to that case. Matching is demonstrated by use of the negations paradigm that is by using conditionals in which the presence and absence of negative components is systematically varied. The phenomenon was first published in 1972 and the present paper reviews the (...) history of research and theorising on the problem in the subsequent 25 years. Theories of matching bias considered include those based on several broad frameworks including the heuristic-analytic theory, the mental models theory, the theory of optimal data selection, and relevance theory as well as the specific processing-negations account. The ability of these theories to account for a range of phenomena is considered, including the effects of linguistic form, realistic content, and explicit negation on the matching bias effect. Of particular importance are recent findings showing that the bias is observable on a wider range of linguistic forms than has generally been thought, and that it is almost entirely dependent on the use of implicit negation in the logical cases to which rules are applied. The reasons for the general suppression of matching when realistic content is used are, however, unclear and a need for further research is identified here. It is concluded that matching bias is a highly robust effect which is closely connected with the problem of understanding implicit negation. Most of the theories in the literature are unable to account for at least some of the major phenomena discovered in research on the bias. The accounts that fare best are those that posit local effects of negation, including the heuristic-analytic and processing negations theories. (shrink)

(2013). Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 54-77. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.735622.

ABSTRACT Match-fixing is a major ethical issue in sports. Although research interest in match-fixing has increased in recent years, we remain largely in the dark regarding how both betting- and non-betting-related match-fixing relate to the moral decision-making of those involved. Drawing on Rest’s theory of morality and on the perceptions of a large sample of participants in Flemish sports, this study indicates that most match-fixing incidents are non-betting-related, while moral motivation and associated challenges clearly differ according to the type of (...) match-fixing. Therefore, each type of match-fixing requires different preventive measures. (shrink)

Recently, the pandemic caused by COVID-19 is severe in the entire world. The prevention and control of crimes associated with COVID-19 are critical for controlling the pandemic. Therefore, to provide efficient and convenient intelligent legal knowledge services during the pandemic, we develop an intelligent system for legal information retrieval on the WeChat platform in this paper. The data source we used for training our system is “The typical cases of national procuratorial authorities handling crimes against the prevention and control of (...) the new coronary pneumonia pandemic following the law”, which is published online by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the People’s Republic of China. We base our system on convolutional neural network and use the semantic matching mechanism to capture inter-sentence relationship information and make a prediction. Moreover, we introduce an auxiliary learning process to help the network better distinguish the relation between two sentences. Finally, the system uses the trained model to identify the information entered by a user and responds to the user with a reference case similar to the query case and gives the reference legal gist applicable to the query case. (shrink)

A variety of theoretical frameworks predict the resemblance of behaviors between two people engaged in communication, in the form of coordination, mimicry, or alignment. However, little is known about the time course of the behavior matching, even though there is evidence that dyads synchronize oscillatory motions (e.g., postural sway). This study examined the temporal structure of nonoscillatory actions—language, facial, and gestural behaviors—produced during a route communication task. The focus was the temporal relationship between matching behaviors in the interlocutors (...) (e.g., facial behavior in one interlocutor vs. the same facial behavior in the other interlocutor). Cross-recurrence analysis revealed that within each category tested (language, facial, gestural), interlocutors synchronized matching behaviors, at temporal lags short enough to provide imitation of one interlocutor by the other, from one conversational turn to the next. Both social and cognitive variables predicted the degree of temporal organization. These findings suggest that the temporal structure of matching behaviors provides low-level and low-cost resources for human interaction. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of intermodal perception, that of how warranted perception arises of objects having characteristics in multiple sense modalities. It first shows the inadequacy of the currently popular explanations of such perception in terms of special, innate mechanisms. It proposes instead a phenomenological account in terms of an infant's general capacities for observation and thought. To this end it prepares the terrain with brief investigations into four topics: spontaneity, non-symbolic thinking, the role of spontaneity in perception, (...) and the lived body. It then traces how an infant may, through spontaneous observations of invariable co-presence and sequence, integrate tactile objects, then tastes, smells, and sounds, and finally, with the help from topological and dynamic congruence, visual objects into a single world with the lived body as centre of orientation. (shrink)

Many conserved eukaryotic traits, including apoptosis, two sexes, speciation and ageing, can be causally linked to a bioenergetic requirement for mitochondrial genes. Mitochondrial genes encode proteins involved in cell respiration, which interact closely with proteins encoded by nuclear genes. Functional respiration requires the coadaptation of mitochondrial and nuclear genes, despite divergent tempi and modes of evolution. Free‐radical signals emerge directly from the biophysics of mosaic respiratory chains encoded by two genomes prone to mismatch, with apoptosis being the default penalty for (...) compromised respiration. Selection for genomic matching is facilitated by two sexes, and optimizes fitness, adaptability and fertility in youth. Mismatches cause infertility, low fitness, hybrid breakdown, and potentially speciation. The dynamics of selection for mitonuclear function optimize fitness over generations, but the same selective processes also operate within generations, driving ageing and age‐related diseases. This coherent view of eukaryotic energetics offers striking insights into infertility and age‐related diseases. (shrink)

Partial matching theory, which maintains that some memory representations of target items in immediate memory are overwritten by others, can predict both a “theoretical” and an “actual” maximum memory span provided no chunking takes place during presentation. The latter is around 4 ± 2 items, the exact number being determined by the degree of similarity between the memory representations of two immediately successive target items.

For a many-to-many matching model with contracts, where all the agents have substitutable preferences, we provide an algorithm to compute the full set of stable allocations. This is based on the lattice structure of such set.

Evolutionary psychiatry suggests that mental disorders can be explained in evolutionary terms (a) as failures of psychological mechanisms to produce the adaptive effects for which they were naturally selected, (b) as mismatches between naturally selected psychological mechanisms and contemporary environmental pressures, or (c) as naturally selected psychological mechanisms whose effects continue to be adaptive. In this paper, I present a philosophical critique of evolutionary psychiatry that draws on Subrena Smith’s matching problem for evolutionary psychology. For evolutionary psychiatry hypotheses to (...) be empirically supported, proponents of evolutionary psychiatry must demonstrate (1) that the contemporary psychological mechanisms involved in mental disorders resemble the psychological mechanisms of our evolutionary ancestors, (2) that the contemporary psychological mechanisms are phylogenetically descended from the ancestral psychological mechanisms, and (3) that the ancestral psychological mechanisms were naturally selected because their effects had adaptive benefits. However, for many mental disorders, evolutionary psychiatry lacks the methodological resources to demonstrate these conditions. Therefore, many evolutionary psychiatry hypotheses are empirically untestable and remain indefinitely underdetermined by data. (shrink)

The paper defines a measure on the set of stable matchings in the marriage problem. This measure is based on the minimization of the envy difference between the sets of men and women, while preserving stability and selects stable matchings with the least conflict of interest between both groups of agents. The solution concept proposed is called Sex-equal Matching (SEM) and the paper also provides an algorithm to compute the set of SEM.

In the integrative memory model proposed by Bastin et al., familiarity is thought to arise from attribution of fluency signals. We suggest that, from a computational and anatomical perspective, this conceptualization converges with a global-matching account of familiarity assessment. We also argue that consideration of global matching and evidence accumulation in decision making could help further our understanding of the proposed attribution system.

J. L. Moreno (1889–1974), the founder of psychodrama, argued against legitimate theater, asserting it is a “rigid drama conserve,”1 a finished product of the preceding creative process. In particular, Moreno protested against the centripetal manner in which actors of legitimate theater assimilate a role from a written play: an external material, the written play, assimilates into the center, the actor. Moreno viewed such process as an imposition, for it is “not genuinely creative, but re-creative.”2 In line with this notion, Moreno (...) decisively distinguished between the rehearsed art of “dramaturgy” and the extemporaneous art of “creaturgy.”3 Moreno also dissented with the scarcity of spontaneity in Stanislavsky’s .. (shrink)

The simplest combination of unimodal logics \ into a bimodal logic is their fusion, \, axiomatized by the theorems of \. Shehtman introduced combinations that are not only bimodal, but two-dimensional: he defined 2-d Cartesian products of 1-d Kripke frames, using these Cartesian products to define the frame product \. Van Benthem, Bezhanishvili, ten Cate and Sarenac generalized Shehtman’s idea and introduced the topological product \, using Cartesian products of topological spaces rather than of Kripke frames. Frame products have been (...) extensively studied, but much less is known about topological products. The goal of the current paper is to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the topological product to match the frame product, for Kripke complete extensions of \. (shrink)

When charitable matching occurs, both the person initially offering the matching donation and the person taking up the offer may well feel they have done something better than if they had donated on their own without matching. They may well feel they deserve some credit for the matched donation as well as their own. Can they both be right? Natural assumptions about charitable matching lead to puzzles that are challenging to resolve in a satisfactory way.

Space and time have been explained not in terms of physical entities but in terms of practice, that is, based on communication, which includes spacetime code in the _A-series_, _B-series_, and _E-series_. Each code has a unique grammar, and it progresses through _boundary operation_, i.e., setting the limit and transgressing it, but in each distinct way. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of _event matching_ to elucidate the mechanism of meaning-making through _boundary operations_. Biological spacetime production (...) is an incessant _effort after meaning_ in the adaptive process, where the _dia-metric_ scale in the _E-series_ necessitates anticipatory (retrocausal) actions in the steps of interaction. This paper suggests that the three terms — _event matching_, meaning making, and spacetime production — are synonymous with each other in biological worlds. Evidence-based examples are provided to support the arguments. (shrink)

This article identifies the dominant public narrative of AIDS in Malawi through an analysis of qualitative interview data and policy and intervention materials. The public narrative creates distinctions between “risky” and “healthy” sex that organize HIV prevention efforts around moral categories, rather than relative risk. These distinctions oppose images of backward, ignorant villagers to the protective power of “love matches”. The analysis demonstrates that the public narrative and corresponding prevention efforts only make sense in connection with the patently false assumption (...) that love, heterosexuality, and modernity effectively protect individuals from HIV. This research brings to light the unspoken assumptions of modernity in the “charmed circle” of heteronormativity, as well as the need to consider the workings of heteronormativity in studies of modernization and globalization. Furthermore, it highlights individualistic and oversimplified analytic models currently directing HIV prevention efforts and points to potentially more effective strategies. (shrink)

Warming up prior to competition is a widely accepted strategy to increase players’ readiness and achieve high performances. However, pre-match routines are commonly based on empirical knowledge and strongly influenced by models emerging from elite team practices. The aim of the present study was to identify and analyze current pre-match warm-up practices in elite futsal. Forty-three elite players were analyzed during their pre-match warm-up routines during the Portuguese Futsal Cup Final 8. Warm-up tasks were classified according to duration, type of (...) activity, sequence, and structure. External load variables included the total distance covered, total distance covered per minute, running distance per minute, sprinting distance per minute, number of accelerations per minute, and number of decelerations per minute. Results highlighted that warm-up routines lasted for 27.5 ± 9.2 min and included nine major different tasks. Open-skill activities were prioritized by coaches; competitive and non-competitive futsal-specific tasks were included in 90% of the total warm-up routines, with higher focus on non-competitive tasks. The intensity progressively increased during warm-ups, mainly because of the higher number of accelerations and decelerations per minute. Pre-match warm-up routines strongly endorse futsal-specific and representative tasks in order to establish pre-match settings able to prepare players for the upcoming game. When designing pre-match warm-up routines, coaches should be aware that duration, sequence, and type of tasks may affect players’ acute performance and readiness. (shrink)

De Dreu and Gross (D&G) seem to have disregarded some relevant experimental literature on games of conflict, most notably variations on “matching pennies” games. While in such games, “attacker” and “defender” are typically not explicitly labelled, players’ differentiated roles yield naturally to such notions. These studies partly validate some of D&G's findings and interpretations.

Previous studies have shown that people often use heuristics in making inferences and that subjective memory experiences, such as recognition or familiarity of objects, can be valid cues for inferences. So far, many researchers have used the binary choice task in which two objects are presented as alternatives (e.g., “Which city has the larger population, city A or city B?”). However, objects can be presented not only as alternatives but also in a question (e.g., “Which country is city X in, (...) country A or country B?”). In such a situation, people can make inferences based on the relationship between the object in the question and each object given as an alternative. In the present study, we call this type of task a “relationships‐comparison task.” We modeled the three inference strategies that people could apply to solve it (familiarity‐matching [FM; a new heuristic we propose in this study], familiarity heuristic [FH], and knowledge‐based inference [KI]) to examine people's inference processes. Through Studies 1, 2, and 3, we found that (a) people tended to rely on heuristics, and that FM (inferences based on similarity in familiarity between objects) well explained participants' inference patterns; (b) FM could work as an ecologically rational strategy for the relationships–comparison task since it could effectively reflect environmental structures, and that the use of FM could be highly replicable and robust; and (c) people could sometimes use a decision strategy like FM, even in their daily lives (consumer behaviors). The nature of the relationships–comparison task and human cognitive processes is discussed. (shrink)

In the process of children’s psychological development, various levels of psychological distress often occur, such as attention problems, emotional problems, adaptation problems, language problems, and motor coordination problems; these problems have seriously affected children’s healthy growth. Scene matching in the treatment of psychological distress can prompt children to change from a third-person perspective to a first-person perspective and shorten the distance between scene contents and child’s perceptual experience. As a part of machine learning, deep learning can perform mapping transformations (...) in huge data, process huge data with the help of complex models, and extract multilayer features of scene information. Based on the summary and analysis of previous research works, this paper expounded the research status and significance of the scene matching method for children’s psychological distress, elaborated the development background, current status, and future challenges of deep learning algorithm, introduced the methods and principles of depth spatiotemporal feature extraction algorithm and dynamic scene understanding algorithm, constructed a scene matching model for children’s psychological distress based on deep learning algorithm, analyzed the scene feature extraction and matching function construction of children’s psychological distress, proposed a scene matching method for children’s psychological distress based on deep learning algorithm, performed scene feature matching and information processing of children’s psychological distress, and finally conduced a simulation experiment and analyzed its results. The results show that the deep learning algorithm can have a deep and abstract mining on the characteristics of children’s psychological distress scenes and obtain a large amount of more representative characteristic information through training on large-scale data, thereby improving the accuracy of classification and matching of children’s psychological distress scenes. The study results of this paper provide a reference for further researches on the scene matching method for children’s psychological distress based on deep learning algorithm. (shrink)

Since its inception as a topic of inquiry, mirror-self-recognition has usually been explained by two models: one, initiated by Guillaume, proposes that mirror-self-recognition depends upon kinesthetic-visual matching, and the other, initiated by Gallup, that self-recognition depends upon a self-concept. These two models are examined historically and conceptually. This examination suggests that the kinesthetic-visual matching model is conceptually coherent and makes reasonable and accurate predictions; and that the self-concept model is conceptually incoherent and makes inaccurate predictions from premises which (...) are themselves inaccurate. From a theoretical standpoint, the kinesthetic-visual matching model is the better explanation of self-recognition. (shrink)

How does match-fixing, or other unfair manipulation of matches, that involves under-performance by players, or refereeing and umpiring that prevents fair competition, be thought of in ethical terms? In this article, I outline the different forms that match-fixing can take and seek to comprehend these disparate scenarios within Kantian, Hegelian and contractualist ethical frameworks. I tentatively suggest that, by developing an ethical opposition to match-fixing in sport, we can give much greater substance to popular phrases such as ‘respect for the (...) game’, encompassing the value of sport itself and respect for other players, fans, sponsors and organisers. Arguing that match-fixing denies recognition to these ‘others’ demonstrates how fundamentally match-fixing ‘hollows out’ sport because a fixed match is of no worth: the whole value of the game has literally been evacuated. (shrink)

It has been pointed out that Sensorimotor Enactivism, a theory that claims that perception is enacted and brought about by movement, says very little about the neural mechanisms that enable perception. For the proponents of the predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism, this is a challenge that can be met by introducing predictive processing into the picture. However, the compatibility between these theories is not straightforward. Firstly, because they seem to differ in their stand towards representations: while Sensorimotor Enactivism is said (...) to belong to the non-representational wing of cognitive science, predictive processing has a representational profile. And secondly, because they exhibit different explanatory strategies: while Sensorimotor Enactivism prioritizes the interactions of the embodied agent, predictive processing has internalist commitments. The aim of this paper is to address these concerns and show that a predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism is viable. More specifically, I focus on the Free-Energy approach, a theory that falls within the ballpark of predictive processing. In this paper I argue for the following claims. I argue that both Sensorimotor Enactivism and the Free-Energy approach may be understood for some systems in representational terms. The non-representational reading of Sensorimotor Enactivism is not mandatory and neither is the representational reading of the Free-Energy approach. Sensorimotor Enactivism is, in this respect, compatible with both representational and non-representational interpretations of the FEA. So, the position towards representations of these frameworks should not stand in the way of a predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism. I also show that the Free-Energy approach allows for an account that prioritizes the interaction of the embodied agent with the environment. This is the explanatory strategy followed by Sensorimotor Enactivism. To justify this strategy and following other proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism, I argue that by referring to the interactions of the embodied agent a better account of the phenomena in question is provided. On this basis, I claim that Sensorimotor Enactivism and the Free-Energy approach are compatible in what concerns their explanatory strategy as well. Thus, making the case for the viability of the predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism. (shrink)

We show that the solvability of matching problems in the simply typed λ-calculus, up to β equivalence, is not decidable. This decidability question was raised by Huet [4].Note that there are two variants of the question: that concerning β equivalence, and that concerning βη equivalence.The second of these is perhaps more interesting; unfortunately the work below sheds no light on it, except perhaps to illustrate the subtlety and difficulty of the problem.

This paper proposes an epistemic logical framework for demanding knowing why in the natural sciences. Our focus is on the phenomena and their respective causal factors revealed by experiments. Two novel modalities \(\textsf{E}(\psi,\varphi )\) and \(\textsf {W}((\psi _1,\varphi _1)\bullet (\psi _2,\varphi _2)\bullet \cdots \bullet (\psi _n,\varphi _n))\) are introduced over models that deviate from the usual epistemic models by having both experimental evidence and the scientific theories, which is inspired by scientific practices. The modality \(\textsf{E}\) expresses scientists’ have (conclusive) experimental (...) evidence indicating a dependence relation between the causal factor \(\psi \) and \(\varphi \). Based on the evidence, scientists often package some (perhaps seemingly unrelated) phenomena together, and the modality \(\textsf{W}\) captures scientists’ knowing why in their entirety, or having systematic knowledge-why of them, which amounts to having a _unified_ scientific theory of all these dependences. A sound and complete axiomatization is given, followed by a decidability result. Many notions of much philosophical interest are embodied in the present framework. We also draw several comparisons and connections with some existing relevant logical work. (shrink)

The persistent failure of public schooling in low-income communities constitutes one of our nation's most pressing civil rights and social justice issues. Many school reformers recognize that poverty, racism, and a lack of power held by these communities undermine children's education and development, but few know what to do about it. A Match on Dry Grass argues that community organizing represents a fresh and promising approach to school reform as part of a broader agenda to build power for low-income communities (...) and address the profound social inequalities that affect the education of children. Based on a comprehensive national study, the book presents rich and compelling case studies of prominent organizing efforts in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, San Jose, and the Mississippi Delta. The authors show how organizing groups build the participation and leadership of parents and students so they can become powerful actors in school improvement efforts. They also identify promising ways to overcome divisions and create the collaborations between educators and community residents required for deep and sustainable school reform. Identifying the key processes that create strong connections between schools and communities, Warren, Mapp, and their collaborators show how community organizing builds powerful relationships that lead to the transformational change necessary to advance educational equity and a robust democracy. (shrink)

In his seminal 1960 paper, the physicist Eugene Wigner formulated the question of the applicability of mathematics in physics in a way nobody had before. This formulation has been entirely overlooked due to an exclusive concern with solving Wigner’s problem and explaining the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, in one way or another. Many have attempted to attribute Wigner’s unjustified conclusion—that mathematics is unreasonably effective in the natural sciences—to his formalist views on mathematics. My goal is to show (...) that this reading misses out on Wigner’s highly original formulation of the problem which is presented throughout his body of work in physics as well as in philosophy. This formulation, as I will show, leads us in a new direction in solving the applicability problem. (shrink)