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Parity, Imprecise Comparability and the Repugnant Conclusion

This article explores the main similarities and differences between Derek Parfit's notion of imprecise comparability and a related notion I have proposed of parity. I argue that the main difference between imprecise comparability and parity can be understood by reference to ‘the standard view’. The standard view claims that 1) differences between cardinally ranked items can always be measured by a scale of units of the relevant value, and 2) all rankings proceed in terms of the trichotomy of ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, and ‘equally good’. Imprecise comparability, which can be understood in terms of the more familiar notions of cardinality and incommensurability, rejects only the first claim while parity rejects both claims of the standard view. I then argue that insofar as those attracted to imprecise comparability assume that all rankings are trichotomous, as Parfit appears to, the view should be rejected. This is because imprecise equality is not a form of equality but is a sui generis ‘fourth’ basic way in which items can be ranked. We should, I argue, understand imprecise equality as parity, and imprecise comparability as entailing ‘tetrachotomy’ – that if two items are comparable, one must better than, worse than, equal to, or on a par with the other. Thus those attracted to the idea that cardinality can be imprecise should abandon trichotomy and accept parity and tetrachotomy instead. Finally, I illustrate the difference between Parfit's trichotomous notion of imprecise comparability and parity by examining how each notion might be employed in different solutions to the problem posed by the Repugnant Conclusion in population ethics. I suggest that parity provides the arguably more ecumenical solution to the problem.

Selection of new objects by onset capture and visual marking

Visual search is easier after looking at some distractors in advance because previewed distractors are excluded from the search (preview benefit). A dominant explanation for preview benefit is that it occurs because of the inhibition of old objects (visual marking). However, another view claims that preview benefit simply reflects automatic attentional orienting to new objects (onset capture). To address the question of whether visual marking plays any role in addition to onset capture, we compared the search performance for a target that always appeared as a new item (“marking” condition) with the performance for a target that appeared equally as a new or old item (“capture” condition). When items were presented at random positions in an invisible matrix, the slope in the “marking” condition was shallower than that in the “capture” condition, favoring the involvement of visual marking (Experiments 1 and 2). In contrast, no difference in slope was found among the search conditions regardless of changes in old items when items were arranged around the circumference of a circle (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that the contribution of visual marking depends on the configuration of search items; with complex displays, prioritizing selection for new objects is more effective if coupled with de-prioritizing de-selection for old objects.

Marvin Minsky

research-article Share on Marvin Minsky: 1927-2016 Author: Lawrence M. Fisher View Profile Authors Info & Claims Communications of the ACMVolume 59Issue 4April 2016 pp 22–24https://doi.org/10.1145/2892716Published:23 March 2016Publication History 1citation3,178DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations1Total Downloads3,178Last 12 Months110Last 6 weeks5 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Teachers’ Perceptions of Self-observation As An Appraisal Tool

This study explores teachers' beliefs about self-observation on practice as one alternative for the appraisal process. In this study, teachers were interviewed about how they viewed self-observation and how well it served them in developing their teaching on the one hand, and enhancing reflective practice on the other one. The findings in this paper are based on a qualitative research that employed an interpretivist/constructivist theory, in which qualitative data was gathered primarily through interviews with a view to clarifying teachers' perceptions and understanding the beliefs and practices behind them. The study attempted to answer mainly the following question. What do teachers understand by self-observation and how do they perceive its role in professional development? The findings of the study revolve around two main themes; the benefits and the drawbacks of self-observation theory. While, the first one describes self-observation as an opportunity for reflection, awareness and professional growth, the second view claims that such practices depend on personality and attitudes, and is limited by various constraints.

Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz.

The Yiddish language is over 1,000 years old and incorporates German, Slavic, and Hebrew elements. The prevalent view claims Yiddish has a German origin, whereas the opposing view posits a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata. One of the major difficulties in deciding between these hypotheses is the unknown geographical origin of Yiddish speaking Ashkenazic Jews (AJs). An analysis of 393 Ashkenazic, Iranian, and mountain Jews and over 600 non-Jewish genomes demonstrated that Greeks, Romans, Iranians, and Turks exhibit the highest genetic similarity with AJs. The Geographic Population Structure analysis localized most AJs along major primeval trade routes in northeastern Turkey adjacent to primeval villages with names that may be derived from “Ashkenaz.” Iranian and mountain Jews were localized along trade routes on the Turkey’s eastern border. Loss of maternal haplogroups was evident in non-Yiddish speaking AJs. Our results suggest that AJs originated from a Slavo-Iranian confederation, which the Jews call “Ashkenazic” (i.e., “Scythian”), though these Jews probably spoke Persian and/or Ossete. This is compatible with linguistic evidence suggesting that Yiddish is a Slavic language created by Irano-Turko-Slavic Jewish merchants along the Silk Roads as a cryptic trade language, spoken only by its originators to gain an advantage in trade. Later, in the 9th century, Yiddish underwent relexification by adopting a new vocabulary that consists of a minority of German and Hebrew and a majority of newly coined Germanoid and Hebroid elements that replaced most of the original Eastern Slavic and Sorbian vocabularies, while keeping the original grammars intact.

SecondLab, PUC-Rio

opinion Free Access Share on SecondLab, PUC-Rio Authors: Hugo Fuks View Profile , Marcio Cunha View Profile , Bruno Chagas View Profile , Fernando Ismério View Profile , Bruno Pontes View Profile Authors Info & Claims InteractionsVolume 23Issue 2March + April 2016 pp 16–19https://doi.org/10.1145/2878378Published:24 February 2016Publication History 1citation445DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations1Total Downloads445Last 12 Months88Last 6 weeks7 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteView all FormatsPDF

Editorial

short-paper Free Access Share on Editorial: Welcome to a New Era for TOCHI Author: Ken Hinckley View Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM Transactions on Computer-Human InteractionVolume 23Issue 1February 2016 Article No.: 1epp 1–6https://doi.org/10.1145/2882897Published:20 February 2016Publication History 0citation602DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads602Last 12 Months79Last 6 weeks10 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

A neo-Pyrrhonian response to the disagreeing about disagreement argument

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

Mutational randomness as conditional independence and the experimental vindication of mutational Lamarckism.

The Modern Synthesis enshrined natural selection as the driver of adaptive evolution mainly by eliminating competing explanations. One of the eliminated competitors was Lamarckism, particularly 'mutational Lamarckism', a hypothesis according to which mutations may be directed towards producing phenotypes that improve the performance of the organism in a particular environment. Contrary to this hypothesis, the Modern Synthesis' view claims that mutations are 'random', even though the precise meaning of the term was never formally explicated. Current evidence seemingly in favour of the existence of legitimate cases of mutational Lamarckism has revitalized interest to seek a clarification of the meaning of the term 'random' in this context. Herein we analyse previous definitions of random mutations and show that they are deficient in three ways: either they are too wide, or too narrow, or dyadic. We argue that the linguistic expression 'random mutation' refers to a triadic rather than a dyadic relationship, propose a new, formal and precise definition based on the probabilistic concept of conditional independence, and finally provide examples of its application. One important consequence of our analysis is that the genomic specificity of the mutational process is not a necessary condition for the existence of mutational Lamarckism.

Early lexical composition of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals: Nouns before verbs or verbs before nouns

AbstractNouns and verbs are considered as fundamental categories of lexical development, and there are contradicting views on the order of the acquisition. One view claims that nouns are acquired earlier than verbs and this primacy of nouns can be attributed to perceptual-conceptual constraints from a linguistic point of view, on the other hand, nouns and verbs are the lexical units which categorically highlight language-general and language-specific characteristics. These language-specific characteristics have motivated this research because of the different typological characteristics between Turkish and Dutch in terms of nouns and verbs. The aim of this study is two-fold: to investigate the Dutch and Turkish lexicon of Turkish-Dutch bilingual children with respect to noun-verb categories and to consider the role of gender. Our sample comprised 55 Turkish-Dutch bilingual children aged between 9 and 36 months. We found that age, language and gender are at play during early lexical development. Vocabulary develops after 12 months and nouns are prioritized over verbs both in comprehension and production.

Session Summary

review-article Share on Session Summary: Fine-grained parallelism Reviewer: Brad Moore View Profile , Staffs: Luis Miguel Pinho View Profile , Stephen Michell View Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGAda Ada LettersVolume 35Issue 1April 2015 pp 97–101https://doi.org/10.1145/2870544.2870557Published:28 December 2015Publication History 1citation25DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations1Total Downloads25Last 12 Months0Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Professional practice by unlicensed professionals

column Share on Professional practice by unlicensed professionals Author: Don Gotterbarn View Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM InroadsVolume 6Issue 4December 2015 pp 16–19https://doi.org/10.1145/2822900Published:17 November 2015Publication History 0citation78DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads78Last 12 Months0Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Category mistakes and figurative language

Category mistakes are sentences such as ‘The number two is blue’ or ‘Green ideas sleep furiously’. Such sentences are highly infelicitous and thus a prominent view claims that they are meaningless. Category mistakes are also highly prevalent in figurative language. That is to say, it is very common for sentences which are used figuratively to be such that, if taken literally, they would constitute category mistakes. (Consider for example the metaphor ‘The poem is pregnant’, the metonymy ‘The White House decided to change its policy’, or a fictional use of ‘The tree was happy’.) In this paper I argue that the view that category mistakes are meaningless is inconsistent with many central and otherwise plausible theories of figurative language. Thus if the meaninglessness view is correct, the theories in question must each be rejected, and conversely, if any of the theories in question is correct, the meaninglessness view must be wrong. The debates concerning the semantics of figurative language and concerning the semantic status of category mistakes are closely connected.

Relationalism about perceptible properties and the principle of charity

Color relationalism holds that the colors are constituted by relations to subjects. The introspective rejoinder against this view claims that it is opposed to our phenomenally-informed, pre-theoretic intuitions. The rejoinder seems to be correct about how colors appear when looking at how participants respond to an item about the metaphysical nature of color but not when looking at an item about the ascription of colors. The present article expands the properties investigated to sound and taste and inspects the mentioned asymmetry, with a particular focus on the principle of charity. Using a metaphysical item, we find that color and sound are no different from shape, our control for a clearly anti-relational property. Taste, on the other hand, is no different from likability, our control for a clearly relational property. Importantly, we find that the disparity between metaphysical and ascription items is due to participants using a principle of charity to interpret disagreement cases such that both parties can be correct.

Emic approach to research on conversational gap in the foreign language classroom

An emic perspective, or insiders’ perspective, has been widely employed in social interactionism-inspired qualitative studies. This view claims that any interactional behavior can be examined from within the system. Applied to research in which talk is central, this view requires data to come from the participants who are involved in the talk because they document their social actions to each other within the details of their interaction. Researchers can access the perspective by adopting the same perspective as the participants. As a result, the findings yield high internal and ecological validity. Following this perspective, this study, which explores silence, or, to be more specific, gap, in institutionalized talk, demonstrates how interactional data is produced and analyzed by the participants as the talk emerges. This study shows that an emic view allows researchers to indirectly involve participants in the analysis and can be an alternative potential tool in descriptive communication research.

Review of

review-article Share on Review of: Games and Mathematics: Subtle Connections by David Wells Reviewer: S. C. Coutinho View Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGACT NewsVolume 46Issue 3September 2015 pp 7–10https://doi.org/10.1145/2818936.2818939Published:01 September 2015Publication History 0citation37DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads37Last 12 Months0Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Interaction design for Indian needs lab, IIT Bombay

opinion Free Access Share on Interaction design for Indian needs lab, IIT Bombay Authors: Shashank Ahire View Profile , Girish Dalvi View Profile , Manjiri Joshi View Profile , Anirudha Joshi View Profile Authors Info & Claims InteractionsVolume 22Issue 5September-October 2015 pp 14–17https://doi.org/10.1145/2808491Published:28 August 2015Publication History 1citation2,023DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations1Total Downloads2,023Last 12 Months151Last 6 weeks32 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteView all FormatsPDF

Hidden Genes: Understanding cancer data with matrix factorization

column Share on Hidden Genes: Understanding cancer data with matrix factorization Author: Marinka Zitnik View Profile Authors Info & Claims XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for StudentsVolume 21Issue 4Summer 2015 pp 72–74https://doi.org/10.1145/2788526Published:27 July 2015Publication History 0citation348DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads348Last 12 Months20Last 6 weeks1 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Is There a Role for ‘Human Nature’ in Debates About Human Enhancement?

ABSTRACTIn discussions about the ethics of enhancement, it is often claimed that the concept of ‘human nature’ has no helpful role to play. There are two ideas behind this thought. The first is that nature, human nature included, is a mixed bag. Some parts of our nature are good for us and some are bad for us. The ‘mixed bag’ idea leads naturally to the second idea: the fact that something is part of our nature is, by itself, normatively inert. The Inert View claims that nothing normative follows from the mere fact that some trait is a part of our nature. If the Inert View is correct, then appeals to the value or importance of human nature in debates about enhancement are indeed misplaced. We argue that the Inert View is wrong, and that a certain concept of human nature – which we refer to as ‘human form’ – does have an important role to play in debates about enhancement.

The studio for critical making, Emily Carr University of art and design

opinion Free Access Share on The studio for critical making, Emily Carr University of art and design Author: Garnet Hertz View Profile Authors Info & Claims InteractionsVolume 22Issue 4July - August 2015 pp 16–19https://doi.org/10.1145/2786515Published:25 June 2015Publication History 0citation746DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads746Last 12 Months143Last 6 weeks13 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteView all FormatsPDF