José V. Hernández-Conde

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward.

The present study embarks on a comprehensive investigation of whether the influence of the moral valence, as highlighted by Knobe, remains a predominant factor in subjects’ attributions of intentionality across diverse scenarios and populations. In addition to examining the harm dimension, our research explores the potential presence of this effect in other circumstances, assessing whether there is a comparable influence on attributions of intentionality for cases with side effects not describable as harmful. A comparative analysis between neurotypical and autistic populations is conducted –-in line with Zalla & Leboyer’s work, but extending the study to other scenarios–-, revealing some disparities in how these two groups attribute intentionality and praise and blame. Final analyses were conducted on the gender variable, which revealed significant gender differences within both populations.

There is convergence among researchers of the ‘Big Five’ personality traits taxonomy, that the dimension of conscientiousness best explains differences in work performance. This research is a literature review on the interrelationship between certain traits of the conscientiousness dimension and human virtues, or character traits. It also analyzes whether or not it is rational to argue that the continuous improvement culture enhances the exercise of these character traits. The personal effort to develop one's conscientiousness enriches one's character or way of being, and this development is a consequence of character moulding through an intellectual and willful effort enabling one not only to develop personal habits but also to improve task performance. Continuous improvement culture, on the one hand, should provide a work environment where employees can practice virtues, including those contained in conscientiousness. On the other hand, the requirement is that continuous improvement culture should be developed in an environment that respects the freedom and purpose of the individual.

Since the 1960s, the distinction between data and phenomena has fueled debates in the philosophy of science, with scholars arguing that data must be modeled in order to serve as evidence for phenomena. We claim that the modeling of data to obtain evidence for phenomena involves four levels: data, sample structure, population structure and phenomena. Our analysis suggests that the notion of pattern is essential to fully grasp the inferential capacity of data models, where representation occurs through nested surrogative reasoning –typically in the form of an isomorphism that holds at different layers. We also explain how our taxonomy of pattern-based inferential steps could shed light on various aspects of nested data modeling, such as the risk of theoretical bias. To illustrate our proposal, we examine the Eddington experiment –which tested general relativity by observing the deflection of starlight near the Sun–, and show how patterns at different levels of the data modeling provide the basis for nested surrogative reasoning in this case. Transforming the data points identified on photographic plates into a representation of light deflection requires a multi-layered search for patterns, where each pattern takes us one step further in data modeling and one step closer to the target phenomenon.

Recientemente Casasanto y Lupyan (2015) han sostenido que no hay conceptos independientes del contexto: todos los conceptos serían construidos ad hoc en el momento de su instanciación. El presente artículo muestra que el marco de la cognición ad hoc puede caracterizarse mediante una teoría de similaridad conceptual, y distingue dos nociones de concepto —asociadas a diferentes fases de su ciclo de vida (almacenamiento e instanciación)—. Esta propuesta reúne virtudes de enfoques opuestos: (a) invariantista: la estabilidad del concepto almacenado permite acumular nueva información; (b) contextualista: la dependencia contextual del concepto instanciado explica nuestra capacidad de adaptación.Recently, Casasanto and Lupyan (2015) have asserted that there are no context-independent concepts: all concepts are constructed ad hoc when they are instantiated. My aim is to show that the ad hoc cognition framework can be characterized by a similarity-based theory of concepts, and that two different notions of concept should be distinguished —which may be identified with two distinct stages of their life cycle (storage and instantiation). This approach brings together virtues from opposing views: (a) invariantist: stored concepts are stable enough to collect new information; (b) contextualist: instantiated concepts are context-dependent, what explains our adaptive ability to changing environments.

Recently, Casasanto and Lupyan (2015) have proposed an appealing and daring thesis: there are no context-independent concepts—that is, all concepts are ad hoc concepts. They argue that the seeming stability of concepts is merely due to commonalities across their different instantiations but that, in fact, there is nothing invariant in them. In their view, concepts only exist when they are instantiated for categorizing, communicating, drawing inferences, etc., and those instantiations are produced on the fly from a set of contextual cues. However, the main weakness of Casasanto and Lupyan’s framework is that it lacks a proposal for articulating it within a theory on the structure of concepts. My aim is to show that the ad hoc cognition framework can be characterized by means of a prototype theory of concepts developed in terms of a conceptual similarity space.

José María Vigil y Antonio Caso fueron dos defensores de la democracia liberal y de la posibilidad de un limitado, aunque efectivo, manejo consciente de los asuntos públicos y sociales dentro de los contextos adversos de México durante la administración de Porfirio Díaz y en el periodo post-revolucionario. Ambos autores basan sus posiciones en una crítica concerniente al positivismo y al determinismo social, que apuntaría hacia una manera de pensar muy distante del pensamiento subjetivista, aunque muy cercana a un “realismo directo” epistemológico que establece que el mundo no es de hecho una construcción subjetiva o intersubjetiva que debe interpretarse subjetiva o intersubjetivamente. Sin embargo, esto no es algo que pueda saberse a través de una copia mental o representación de sus entidades y procesos. Tal vez el defensor más evocador del realismo directo en la historia ha sido el filósofo escocés del siglo XVIII, Thomas Reid, un gran representante del “sensocomunismo” explícitamente recuperado por Vigil y reivindicado tácitamente por Antonio Caso.

The notion of conceptual space, proposed by Gärdenfors as a framework for the representation of concepts and knowledge, has been highly influential over the last decade or so. One of the main theses involved in this approach is that the conceptual regions associated with properties, concepts, verbs, etc. are convex. The aim of this paper is to show that such a constraint—that of the convexity of the geometry of conceptual regions—is problematic; both from a theoretical perspective and with regard to the inner workings of the theory itself. On the one hand, all the arguments provided in favor of the convexity of conceptual regions rest on controversial assumptions. Additionally, his argument in support of a Euclidean metric, based on the integral character of conceptual dimensions, is weak, and under non-Euclidean metrics the structure of regions may be non-convex. Furthermore, even if the metric were Euclidean, the convexity constraint could be not satisfied if concepts were differentially weighted. On the other hand, Gärdenfors’ convexity constraint is brought into question by the own inner workings of conceptual spaces because: some of the allegedly convex properties of concepts are not convex; the conceptual regions resulting from the combination of convex properties can be non-convex; convex regions may co-vary in non-convex ways; and his definition of verbs is incompatible with a definition of properties in terms of convex regions. Therefore, the mandatory character of the convexity requirement for regions in a conceptual space theory should be reconsidered

This paper reports an experiment that investigates interpretive distinctions between two different expressions of generalization in Spanish. In particular, our aim was to find out when the distinction between generic statements (GS) such as Tigers have stripes and universally quantified statements (UQS) such as All tigers have stripes was acquired in Spanish-speaking children of two different age groups (4/5-year-olds and 8/9-year-olds), and then compare these results with those of adults. The starting point of this research was the semantic distinction between GS and UQS in that the former admit exceptions, unlike the latter. On the other hand, several authors have observed a Generic overgeneralization effect (GOG) consisting in allowing for UQS to be felicitous in the face of exceptions, thus proposing that this “error” stems from GS being defaults (simpler, more easily learned and processed). In the current paper we aimed to test the “Generics as Default” (GaD) hypothesis by comparing GS and UQS in three different age ranges. Our data show that, overall, the accuracy of GS is greater than the accuracy of UQS. Moreover, we also confirm a hypothesized interaction between age and NP type (GS vs UQS). Further, we present several data points that are not predicted by the GaD, including an observed decline in the accuracy of GS in the older group of children as well as in adults, and that children fail at rejecting statements that are not considered to be true generalizations.

Recently, Casasanto and Lupyan have asserted that there are no context-independent concepts: all concepts are constructed ad hoc when they are instantiated. My aim is to show that the ad hoc cognition framework can be characterized by a similarity-based theory of concepts, and that two different notions of concept should be distinguished —which may be identified with two distinct stages of their life cycle. This approach brings together virtues from opposing views: invariantist: stored concepts are stable enough to collect new information; contextualist: instantiated concepts are context-dependent, what explains our adaptive ability to changing environments.