koglist October 2002

koglist@maillist.ttk.hu

12 participants
26 discussions

by Ladányi Mária

Meghívó A Magyar Nyelvtudományi Társaság Általános Nyelvészeti Szakosztályának felolvasó ülésére: Kassai Ilona: Az -e kérdőszó és az is kötőszó együttes előfordulásának szórendi megoldásai Az ülés helye: ELTE BTK 1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 4. I épület, 106. terem (alagsor) Időpontja: 2002. november 5. (kedd), du. 1/2 5

23 years, 6 months

Philosophy of Science Colloquium, November

by Laszlo E. Szabo

Department of HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Eotvos University, Budapest Pazmany P. setany 1/A Budapest Phone/Fax: (36-1) 372 2924 Department's Home Page:http://hps.elte.hu Philosophy of Science Colloquium Room 6.54 (6th floor) Monday 4:00 PM ____________________________________ November 4 November No seminar session!Instead you are invited to Logic, Algebra, Relativity - 2002 István Németi is 60 November 4 - 8, 2002 Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics <http://www.renyi.hu/~n60/n60.html> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11 November 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54 (Language: Hungarian) János Tanács <nego(a)primposta.com> Philosophy and History of Science, Technical University of Budapest Ami hiányzik Bolyai János Appendixébo"l - és ami nem A Bolyai-féle paralléla-terminus hiánya és rekonstrukciója (The missing term 'parallela' and its reconstruction in Bolyai's Appendix) Az elo"adás célja megmutatni, hogy nem támasztható alá az a standard nézet, amely Bolyai János Appendix címu" mu"vével, azon belül is a Bolyai-féle paralléla-terminus értelmezésével kapcsolatban kialakult. A bevett nézet ugyanis - egymástól kevéssé eltéro" megfogalmazási változatokban - azt állítja, hogy Bolyai János a mu" elso" paragrafusában (i) értelmezi, (ii) definiálja vagy (iii) újradefiniálja a párhuzamosság fogalmát. Az elo"adás elso" lépésben a bevett nézet rekonstrukciójára tesz kísérletet, amely az interpretatív szándékú magyar Appendix-fordításokat, valamint a nemzetközi matematikatörténeti szakirodalom által - helytelenül - elso"dleges forrásként használt angol (Halsted-féle), valamint francia (Hoüel-Schmidt-féle) fordításokat elemzi, illetve az elso" paragrafusra vonatkozó matematikatörténeti nézeteket összegzi. A standard nézet cáfolásához az álláspontok legjóindulatúbb, közös minimális megfogalmazását veszem alapul. A tézis cáfolatát az Appendix eredeti latin nyelvu" - facsimile és levéltári - példányaira, a Bolyaiak levelezésére, Bolyai János sajátkezu" német Appendix-fordítására és Lobacsevszkij mu"vével kapcsolatos feljegyzéseire, továbbá a magyar nyelvújítási mozgalom matematikai mu"szavakra adott javaslataira valamint a szóalkotás elveire szándékozom építeni. Végül azzal a meglepo" tézissel fogok elo"állni, hogy a paralléla-terminus nem az Appendix elso" paragrafusában, hanem a mu" egy másik helyén bukkan fel. Ám hogy hol, ennek megválaszolását az elo"adásra tartogatom. A fogalmi általánosítás problémája felo"l amellett fogok érvelni, hogy az euklideszi geometria mellett megjeleno" nem-euklideszi geometria fogalmi rendszere, pontosabban a ketto" közötti fogalmi átmenet aluldeterminált. Ez azt jelenti, hogy az átmenetben a fogalmi általánosításnak nincs kitüntetett iránya, hanem nyitott az alternatív kiterjesztések vonatkozásában. Ennek következménye, hogy nem beszélhetünk az euklideszi geometria egyetlen helyes fogalmi kiterjesztéséro"l és a hiperbolikus geometria egyetlen helyes fogalmi rendszeréro"l sem. Ez azzal a következménnyel jár, hogy megmutatható: az adott fogalmi rendszeren, jelesül az euklideszi geometriáén belül érvényes szinonimitási viszonyok nem tarthatók fenn egy az egyben a fogalmi rendszerek közötti átmenetben - egyes szinonimitási viszonyokhoz ragaszkodva másokat fel kell adnunk, azonban bármelyik viszony mego"rzéséhez ragaszkodhatunk a többi rovására. Bolyai János tehát teljes joggal választhatott Lobacsevszkij vagy Gauss fogalmi kiterjesztéséto"l eltéro"t. Mindez elméletileg támasztja alá, hogy Bolyainak miért nem kellett szükségképpen azt a fogalmi általánosítást végrehajtania, vagy azt a kiterjesztési alternatívát választania, amelyet a standard nézet favorizál, és amelyet az Appendix-interpretációk és -fordítások révén, hibásan, Bolyaira kényszerít. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18 November 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54 Instead of the canceled lecture of 21 October! (Language: English, except all participants speak Hungarian) Tamás Rudas <rudas(a)tarki.hu> Department of Statistics, Institute of Sociology, Eötvös University, Budapest Measurement and modelling of association in contingency tables Association between two variables is defined in the talk as the information in their joint distribution not present in the univariate distributions. Therefore, a measure of association, together with the marginal distributions, has to parameterize the joint distribution and has to be variationally independent from the marginals. These requirements point to the odds ratio as the only appropriate measure of association. For higher dimensional contingency tables, a possible generalization is the system of conditional odds ratios. The conditional odds ratios, on an ascending class of subsets, are variationally independent from the marginal distributions on the complement descending class and together parameterize the joint distribution. Depending on the class of subsets used, one obtains a flexible class of parametereizations that can be used to model the conditional association structure. The models obtained by assuming lack of conditional association on an ascending class of subsets are of the log-linear type. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 25 November 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54 (Language: Hungarian) András Benedek <benedek(a)helka.iif.hu> Research Institute for Philosophy of HAS Alkalmas-e a nem-standard analízis a mozgás metafizikai leírására? (Is nonstandard analysis applicable for the metaphysical description of motion?) TBA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The 60-minute lecture is followed by a 10-minute break. Then we held a 30-60-minute discussion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The organizer of the seminar: László E. Szabó <http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo> (email: leszabo(a)hps.elte.hu) -- L a s z l o E. S z a b o Theoretical Physics Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Department of History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University, Budapest H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary Phone/Fax: (36-1)372-2924 Mobil/SMS: (36) 20-366-1172 http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo

23 years, 6 months

magyar tudomany napja

by Pléh Csaba

magyar tudomany napjaKedves Kollegak ! Nomvember 5-en 10 es 16 ra kozott igen erdekes latas eloadasok lesznek a Magyar Kepzomuveszeti Egyetemen. Lasd a mellekt programot. Mindekit szerettel varnak. Csaba Pléh Center for Cognitive Science Budapest U. of Technology and Economics Budapest Muegyetem rkp 9 R. 203 H-1111 Hungary T: (361) 4631241 Fax:: (361) 4631072 Email: pleh(a)itm.bme.hu ----- Original Message ----- From: Kovács Gyula To: dr. Pléh Csaba Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 12:53 PM Subject: magyar tudomany napja -----Original Message----- From: Miklos Peternak [mailto:peternak@c3.hu] Sent: Fri 25/10/2002 12:26 PM To: sziranyi(a)sztaki.hu; Vidnyanszky Zoltan; Kovács Gyula; Laszlo Beke; tillmann(a)c3.hu Cc: Subject: magyar tudomany Kedves Kollegak, mellekelem az aktualizalt programot, elore is koszonom a reszvetelt (remelem, honoralni is tudom) a rendezveny nyilvanos, rogziteni is fogjuk videora a teremben projektor lesz, remelem, hogy computer es (nem tul eros) halozat is, video (vhs, svhs, dv), diavetito ugyancsak elkepzelheto, ha szukseges kosz miklos

23 years, 6 months

Holland Konyvbemnutato

by Csaba PLEH

Kedves Barataim ! Oktober 27-en, vasarnap 14h3Otol knyvbemutato beszelgetes lesz a Bolygo Hollandok irodalmi fesztival keretben a BARKA SZINHAZBAN B[p. Ulloi ut 82 Douwe Draisma: Metaformasina (Typotex) es Johan Goudsblom: Tuy es civilizacio (Osiris) frissen megjelent konyvek szerzoivel. Mindekit szerettel latunk udv Pleh Csaba Csaba Pleh, professor of psychology, Center for Cognitive Science Budapest U.of Technology and Economics Budapest Muegyetem rkp 9. R-203 H-1111 T and Fax: 36-1-4631072 email: pleh(a)itm.bme.hu Home: Budakeszi Zichy P. u. 4 H-2092 Hungary (36)(23)453933 Fax:932 Editor: Hungarian Review of Psychology

23 years, 6 months

Philosophy of Science Colloquium, Douwe Draaisma

by Laszlo E. Szabo

Department of HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Eotvos University, Budapest ---------------------------------------------------------------- Pazmany P. setany 1/A Budapest, Hungary Phone/Fax: (36-1) 372 2924 The web site of the seminar: http://hps.elte.hu/seminar Philosophy of Science Colloquium Room 6.54 (6th floor) Monday 4:00 PM _________________________________________ 28 October 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54 (Language of presentation: English) Douwe Draaisma <http://www.ppsw.rug.nl/~teng/draaisma.html> Heymans Institute, Univerity of Groningen The tracks of thought: metaphors of memory There has always been an intimate link between human memory and the means invented to record knowledge independently of that memory. From Plato's wax tablet to holography and computers, artificial memories have supported, relieved and occasionally replaced natural memory. Over the centuries these artificial memories have also shaped our views of remembering and forgetting, providing the terms and concepts with which we have reflected on our own memory. After a general introduction on the theme of metaphor and memory, I will demonstrate my analysis by the case of 'panoramic memory', the experience sometimes reported by persons in sudden mortal danger of seeing a rapid sequence of visual scenes from their childhood 'flash before their eyes like a movie'. A brief history of metaphorical descriptions of this sensation from the period before the invention of film will make clear just how metaphors may lay down the tracks of our thoughts. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Douwe Draaisma's book, METAFORAMASINA <http://www.typotex.hu/p_0027.html>, has been recently published in Hungarian translation. _________________________________________________________ The 60-minute lecture is followed by a 10-minute break. Then we held a 30-60-minute discussion. The organizer of the seminar: László E. Szabó <http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo> (email: leszabo(a)hps.elte.hu ) -- L a s z l o E. S z a b o Theoretical Physics Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Department of History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University, Budapest H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary Phone/Fax: (36-1)372-2924 Mobil/SMS: (36) 20-366-1172 http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo

23 years, 6 months

Oxford Connectionist Summer School

by Kim Plunkett

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD OXFORD SUMMER SCHOOL ON CONNECTIONIST MODELLING Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford Sunday 20th July - Friday 1st August, 2003 Applications are invited for participation in a 2-week residential Summer School on techniques in connectionist modelling. The course is aimed primarily at researchers who wish to exploit neural network models in their teaching and/or research and it will provide a general introduction to connectionist modelling, biologically plausible neural networks and brain function through lectures and exercises on Macintosh's and PC's. The course is interdisciplinary in content though many of the illustrative examples are taken from cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The instructors with primary responsibility for teaching the course are Kim Plunkett and Edmund Rolls. No prior knowledge of computational modelling will be required though simple word processing skills will be assumed. Participants will be encouraged to start work on their own modelling projects during the Summer School. The cost of participation in the Summer School is £950. This figure covers the cost of accommodation (bed and breakfast at St. John's College), registration and all literature required for the Summer School. Participants will be expected to cover their own travel and meal costs. A number of partial bursaries (£200) will be available for graduate students. Applicants should indicate whether they wish to be considered for a graduate student scholarship but are advised to seek further funding as well, since in previous years the number of graduate student applications has far exceeded the number of scholarships available. If you are interested in participating in the Summer School, please complete the application form at the web address http://epwww.psych.ox.ac.uk/conferences/connectionist_modelling or alternatively send a brief description of your background with an explanation of why you would like to attend the Summer School, to: Mrs Sue King Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3UD Tel: (01865) 271353 Email: susan.king(a)psy.ox.ac.uk no later than 28th February 2003.

23 years, 6 months

Biophysical theory of mind and brain

by Zaman Frederick L Civ OO-ALC/MASAD

FYI: On the Biophysical Development and Evolution of Consciousness L. Frederick Zaman III Neural Engineering Research & Development, Hill AFB frederick.zaman(a)hill.af.mil The repulsive forces arising when charges of like sign are placed in proximity are an anomaly in electrostatic field theory, because field theory itself (vis-à-vis Coulomb's law considered separately) simply doesn't predict these forces. The resolution of this anomaly, wherein these forces are properly understood in terms of electrostatic fields, requires electric forces that are internally impressed within charges or charged bodies, rather than being externally impressed; so that the electric fields of charges, rather than being force, are instead information dynamically inscribed in space. And the forces of repulsion experienced by like charges placed in proximity are then fully explained, by electrostatic field theory thus modified. Based on this finding, a paradigm of "informatic fields emergent in self-organizing systems" can be proposed, wherein: (1) the interactions of self-organizing systems in biology and elsewhere, both internally between the system components and externally with the environment, are based on the transmission of information, (2) the dynamics of emergent forces in these systems do not require a vocabulary that is fundamentally different than what is required to explain the component dynamics, and (3) the physical understanding of the system components is in accordance with electrostatic field theory as modified above. In an application of this paradigm to developmental biology, the morphogenetic "vector field" of a cell assembly becomes a morphogenetic "force field," which self-organizes through the forces within cells whose internal dynamics are determined globally by supporting informatic fields. What is the evolution of life from this point of view? It is the emergence and self-organization of forces internal to living organisms that, through electrostatic, magnetostatic, and electromagnetic fields that are information rather than force, direct evolution toward ever increasing complexity. Biological evolution in effect then becomes a physical dynamics expressed in terms of informatic fields whose functionality in complex systems is far greater than classical Newtonian theory allows, and which operate at much at higher levels of system organization even up to and including organism consciousness.

23 years, 6 months

News from Science & Consciousness Research

by Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy

Dear member of this list, Science & Consciousness Review (http://psych.pomona.edu/scr/ ) has released new articles and reviews: _____________________ NEWS ARTICLE: Free consciousness articles - And how to find them on the web Did you know? The Web has an abundance of freely available consciousness articles. Scientific articles on anaesthesia, visual attention, and blindsight, just to mention a few. All this is available through many different websites and services. Some websites offer documents uploaded by the authors themselves, other sites are regular science journals that offer free articles older than 1-2 years. Here is a brief tour guide through some of the best places. Full article: http://psych.pomona.edu/scr/LN_Oct02_FreeScienceOnline.htm _____________________ NEWS IN BRIEF - New Issue: Visual cognition - New articles from Psyche - ASSC-7 -- Call for papers - Integrating emotion and cognition in formal models - Brain activity and the perception of Rubin's vase-face illusion - Volition to action -- an event- related fMRI study - Pain in the persistent vegetative state - Biology vs. the blank slate - Destined for distinguished oblivion - Neural correlates for feeling-of-knowing - Orbitofrontal cortex and memory formation - Reflective self-awareness and conscious states Full access at http://psych.pomona.edu/scr/more_news.html _____________________ ARCHIVES Previous issues of Science & Consciousness Review can be found at http://psych.pomona.edu/scr/archive.html We have now issues from April to September, including all articles, reviews and news in brief. _____________________ CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS Please send your contributions to us. Summaries of published scientific articles, 200 words or more, in easy to read language. Authors are encouraged to send the first 500 words of their published articles, rewritten in teaching style. You keep the copyright. Manuscripts may be lightly edited. See Instructions for authors: http://psych.pomona.edu/scr/author_instructions.html ____________________ ABOUT SCIENCE & CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW SCR is a community-building effort. Many scientific communities study how the human brain makes possible perception, memory, and even attention. But for historical reasons, we have no scientific community for exploring consciousness --- including our own experiences of the world, of each other and of ourselves. It is probably the most important neglected topic in science. Students and scientists all over the world are vitally interested. Hardly a week goes by without another major article in headline journals like Science and Nature. The flow of evidence has increased enormously. But so far we have few institutional resources for teaching, learning, and sharing this information. In the last decade we have seen new, high quality journals, professional societies, and regular meetings. They are vitally important. But many people feel that we need an international forum to build a sense of shared community. SCR is an effort in that direction. ___________________________ Best wishes, Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy Managing Editor

23 years, 6 months

Smith et al./Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition: BBS Call for Commentators

by Behavioral & Brain Sciences

Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article The Comparative Psychology of Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition by John D. Smith, Wendy E. Shields, and David A. Washburn http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Smith/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html (please note that this list is being updated) If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= IMPORTANT To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the online BBSPrints Archive, at the URL that follows the abstract below. _______________________________________________________________________ The Comparative Psychology of Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition John David Smith Dept. of Psychology State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 Wendy Ellen Shields University of Montana David Alan Washburn Georgia State University KEYWORDS: cognition, comparative cognition, consciousness, memory monitoring, metacognition, metamemory, self-awareness, uncertainty, uncertainty monitoring ABSTRACT: Researchers have begun to explore animals' capacities for uncertainty monitoring and metacognition. This exploration could extend the study of animal self-awareness and establish the relationship of self-awareness to other-awareness. It could sharpen descriptions of metacognition in the human literature and suggest the earliest roots of metacognition in human development. We summarize research on uncertainty monitoring by humans, monkeys, and a dolphin within perceptual and metamemory tasks. We extend phylogenetically the search for metacognitive capacities by considering studies that have tested less cognitively sophisticated species. By using the same uncertainty-monitoring paradigms across species, it should be possible to map the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition and illuminate the emergence of mind. We provide a unifying formal description of animals' performances and examine the optimality of their decisional strategies. Finally, we interpret animals' and humans' nearly identical performances psychologically. Low-level, stimulus-based accounts cannot explain the phenomena. The results suggest granting animals a higher-level decision-making process that involves criterion setting using controlled cognitive processes. This conclusion raises the difficult question of animal consciousness. The results show that animals have functional features of or parallels to human conscious cognition. Remaining questions are whether animals also have the phenomenal features that are the feeling/knowing states of human conscious cognition, and whether the present paradigms can be extended to demonstrate that they do. Thus the comparative study of metacognition potentially grounds the systematic study of animal consciousness. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Smith/Referees/ ====================================================================== IMPORTANT Please do not prepare a commentary yet. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. We will then let you know whether it was possible to include your name on the final formal list of invitees. ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Ralph BBS ------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph DeMarco Editorial Coordinator Behavioral and Brain Sciences Journals Department Cambridge University Press 40 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011-4211 UNITED STATES bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org Tel: +001 212 924 3900 ext.374 Fax: +001 212 645 5960 -------------------------------------------------------------------

23 years, 6 months

Smith et al./Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition: BBS Call for Commentators

by Behavioral & Brain Sciences

Dear Dr. Qwerty, Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article The Comparative Psychology of Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition by John D. Smith, Wendy E. Shields, and David A. Washburn http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Smith/Referees/ This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls(a)bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html (please note that this list is being updated) If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) ======================================================================= IMPORTANT To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the online BBSPrints Archive, at the URL that follows the abstract below. _______________________________________________________________________ The Comparative Psychology of Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition John David Smith Dept. of Psychology State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 Wendy Ellen Shields University of Montana David Alan Washburn Georgia State University KEYWORDS: cognition, comparative cognition, consciousness, memory monitoring, metacognition, metamemory, self-awareness, uncertainty, uncertainty monitoring ABSTRACT: Researchers have begun to explore animals' capacities for uncertainty monitoring and metacognition. This exploration could extend the study of animal self-awareness and establish the relationship of self-awareness to other-awareness. It could sharpen descriptions of metacognition in the human literature and suggest the earliest roots of metacognition in human development. We summarize research on uncertainty monitoring by humans, monkeys, and a dolphin within perceptual and metamemory tasks. We extend phylogenetically the search for metacognitive capacities by considering studies that have tested less cognitively sophisticated species. By using the same uncertainty-monitoring paradigms across species, it should be possible to map the phylogenetic distribution of metacognition and illuminate the emergence of mind. We provide a unifying formal description of animals' performances and examine the optimality of their decisional strategies. Finally, we interpret animals' and humans' nearly identical performances psychologically. Low-level, stimulus-based accounts cannot explain the phenomena. The results suggest granting animals a higher-level decision-making process that involves criterion setting using controlled cognitive processes. This conclusion raises the difficult question of animal consciousness. The results show that animals have functional features of or parallels to human conscious cognition. Remaining questions are whether animals also have the phenomenal features that are the feeling/knowing states of human conscious cognition, and whether the present paradigms can be extended to demonstrate that they do. Thus the comparative study of metacognition potentially grounds the systematic study of animal consciousness. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Smith/Referees/ ====================================================================== IMPORTANT Please do not prepare a commentary yet. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. We will then let you know whether it was possible to include your name on the final formal list of invitees. ======================================================================= *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT *** (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Ralph BBS ------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph DeMarco Editorial Coordinator Behavioral and Brain Sciences Journals Department Cambridge University Press 40 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011-4211 UNITED STATES bbs(a)bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org Tel: +001 212 924 3900 ext.374 Fax: +001 212 645 5960 -------------------------------------------------------------------

23 years, 6 months

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koglist October 2002