That wraps up my #SPP2023 experience. Thanks to Chantel and Jennifer for excellent logistics, Edouard Machery for local organizing, and Nadia Chernyak and Sara Aronowitz for co-charing the program!

As usual, I left the SPP thinking, "These are my people". I really hope I can attend again soon!

Teresa McCormack closed the #SPP2023 #preconference on #memory with “The value of remembering and anticipating experiences: a developmental perspective”

It was—as Teresa put it—dangerously close to an #xPhi talk. It adapted a famous thought experiment (from Derek Parfit?) to test kids’ and adults’ intuitions about how much we care about past, present, or future versions of us.

Follow Dr. McCormack on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=g9T7yn8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#personalIdentity #PhilMind #psychology #devPsych #P4C

Markus Werning presented “Episodic memory as a predictive process: minimal hippocampal traces as error signals and the role of precision weights” at the #SPP2023 #preconference on #memory

Find Markus’s work on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=V87KRwsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#neuroscience #computationalModeling

John Anderson presented “The Environmental Basis of Memory”, at #SPP2023’s #preconference on #memory.



Dr. Anderson applied “rational analysis” of human cognition (based on only goals, the environment, and constraints of the cognitive system) to explain memory (with Milson in 1989) and find evidence for this (with Schooler in 1991).

More recent #bigData from #Reddit and #Twitter fit the model.



Dr. Anderson’s career on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PGcc-RIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#cogSci #computationalModeling

Catching up on the #SPP2023 #preconference on #memory:

Felipe De Brigaard introduced us to the topic and some recent trends before a series of talks ensued.

#philosophy #PhilMind #PhilosophyOfMemory #google #nGram

Tamar Kushnir’s #SPP2023 presidential address tried to answer, “When do children become responsible for moral decisions?”

Evidence suggests people’s opinions vary by culture, as do laws, but there’s evidence that kids develop the ability to understand moral aspects of decisions (including that some decisions seem to be moral).

Find/follow Dr. Kushnir on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TMuSMXoAAAAJ&hl=en

#DevPsych #Ethics #PhilMind #cogSci #xPhi

Emily Liquin presented “The Origins of Information-Seeking Questions”

People
1. re-used previously seen “question templates”
2. even “novel" questions were similar to templates.

This anchoring decreased with age.

Curiously, older kids and adults didn’t ask questions that could reveal more information.

Collaborators: Barron Tsai, Marjorie Rhodes, & Todd Gureckis

Dr. Liquin’s on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IdymDGQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#xPhi #Epistemology #Rationality #Intelligence #Psychology #CogSci #SPP2023

“Norm Emergence from Cognitive Biases and Cultural Transmission” presented by Scott Partington


Three experiments suggest that people
- Infer impermissibility from imprudence
- that impermissibility can be retained

Why care? Cuz we see biased pedagogy that caused this deontic inference in many developmental contexts (like teaching and parenting).


Collaborators: Rachana Kamtekar, Shaun Nichols

Scott’s on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jAq0UGIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#DevPsych #xPhi #ethics #teaching #cogSci #SPP2023

Drew Johnson presents a “Needs-Based Account” (NBA) of attention, develops some desiderata for “need”, considers two objections, and considers future directions in evolutionary psychology, clinical psychology, and epistemology.

You can find/follow Drew on PhilPeople: https://philpeople.org/profiles/drew-johnon



#SPP2023 #philosophyOfMind #CogSci #epistemology

Eric Mandelbaum won the #SPP2023 Stanton Prize. 🎉

Eric thought Noam Chomsky might attend, which helps explains Eric talking about #propaganda, whether it’s getting worse, and the (bounded) rationality of how we consume it.



It was very Eric—i.e., very Fodorian and very funny.

Chaz Firestone’s introduction of Eric was immaculate.

You can find Eric’s work (including recent ventures into empirical research) on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8jXQhvMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#philMind #PhilosophyOfLanguage #Epistemology

Melissa Kibbe shared “Function Arithmetic Computations Over Pre-Symbolic Representations of Quantity in Infants and Children” at #SPP2023:

Research with Cheng empirically distinguished nonsymbolic arithmetic (noticing one physical object is placed next to another) from symbolic arithmetic (1+1=2) are algorithmically distinct, which may limit transfer from nonsymbolic arithmetic formal math.

Find/follow Dr. Kibbe on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NN4GKo8AAAAJ&hl=en

#DevPsych #math #xPhi #CogSci #PhilMind

My #SPP2023 poster
1. reflection tests didn't prime intuitions on 10 thought experiments
2. some reflection-philosophy correlations found
3. thought experiments primed reflection?
4. Up to 18x more junk from mTurk than Prolific, CloudResearch, or uGrads

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y8sdm

Another #SPP2023 Keynote Elisabeth Camp suggests “Identity Labels [can function[ as Interpretive Frames for Building Agency”

Some pushback and requests for clarification in the Q&A.

Find your own clarification from Dr. Camp's gScholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RfuoIFYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#Philosophy #Ethics #PhilosophyOfAction #PhilosophyOfLanguage

I found some great posters at #SPP2023. So many, that I had to shorten interesting conversations with interesting people in try to see them all. I'll start posting them below (before returning to the talks, if I have time).

Kevin O’Neill presented great #xPhi/#cogSci studies of how people think of causation in cases of double prevention (i.e., A prevents B from preventing C from doing something).

Kevin, Paul Henne, Tadeg Quillien, Thomas Icard, & Felipe De Brigard devised three kinds of cases to understand people's thinking.

Gorgeous plots! But the team seems to admit they deviate from their model.

You can follow Kevin on PhilPapers: https://philpeople.org/profiles/kevin-o-neill

#xPhi #cogSci #Causation #Psychology #PhilSci #SPP2023

Paul J. Kelly opened the "Reasoning & Explanation" session at #SPP2023 with "Dynamical Models, Scientific Understanding, and Explanatory Unification".

After some objections to accounts of the explanatoriness of explanatory models, Kelly refers to the notion of "model transfer" in which one model can explain multiple phenomena using the same "state space"—an idea that traces to Kitcher (1989).

Paul can be followed on PhilPeople: https://philpeople.org/profiles/paul-j-kelly

#PhilSci #Metaphysics #Epistemology #CogSci

Isaac Davis presented "Inferring the Internal Structure of Social Collectives".

Isaac, Yarrow Dunham, and Julian Jara-Ettinger designed social vignettes to test their computational model of how people infer social structure (e.g., hierarchies) from a domain-general statistical learning mechanism and domain-specific social knowledge.

They think 2 experiments "support our account".

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/t5hpb

#SPP2023 #socialPsych #PhilMind #cogSci #politics #ComputationalModeling #xPhi

In the "Thinking about Social Groups" session of #SPP2023, David Kinney presented "Tell Me Your (Cognitive) Budget, and I’ll Tell You What You Value: ..." (in collaboration with Tania Lombrozo).

They tried to design stimuli that could test the degree to which people incorporate a representation of a problem, relevant, data, and values.

I didn't see a preprint of this project online, but Dr. Kinney's on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9gK2xIoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

#Probability #Rationality #DecisionScience #PhilSci #xPhi

Outstanding #cogSci/#xPhi #research about #wisdom! (N = 2707) to kick off the "Thinking about Minds" session of #SPP2023:

In 19 #wise characteristics, two factors emerged across #culture:
1. Socio-emotional awareness
2. Reflective thinking

People also rated how much of the characteristics they had compared to certain people (young, middle-aged, old; doctor, politician; etc.).

A 2-factor plot of those relative ratings was *not* universal across 8 regions.

#preprint: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/p9cv4

Cameron Buckner closes the #AI session at #SPP2023 with "Interventional Methods for Relating Representations in DNNs to Representations in the Brain"

As usual, it was a delightful path from #AI through #computerScience, #PhilosophyOfScience, and #philosophyOfMind!

One teaser take-away: #AI is not (and was not) a stochastic parrot!

Find/follow Cameron's work (including forthcoming book) on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OXgCldoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao