Degeneracy and redundancy in cognitive anatomy

A: Because she knows how to get Arizona's budget back on track. Again, participants judged either reasonableness or circularity, and did so by either ranking or rating arguments. Two-branch arguments were ranked as less circular than one-branch arguments, indicating structural sensitivity, and repetition created less perceived circularity when the opponent had already acknowledged the repeated claim, suggesting pragmatic sensitivity. However, when rated rather than ranked, circularity was unaffected by branching or opponent response. Without explicit comparison, participants were apparently less sensitive to structure and pragmatics in the circularity task. In the case of the reasonableness task, repetition in two-branch arguments was slightly less reasonable than in one-branch arguments, whether ranked or rated. This is the opposite of what was found in the circularity task. As with circularity, acknowledgements were the most acceptable condition for repetition. Thus, pragmatics played a role in reasonableness judgments, but differences remained between circularity and reasonableness judgments , suggesting that they draw on structural and pragmatic components differently. Implications and future research This study and others suggest that structural and pragmatic components are dissociable in informal argument (see also [10,12 – 14]). The results also provide further evidence for the usefulness of Rips's structural rules for informal argument. As Rips notes, the structural and pragmatic components are not equally attended to in all cases, perhaps because a particular task focuses us on one to the exclusion of the other, or because people are not always as sensitive to factors as they ought to be. This needs further investigation, and raises important questions about models of informal argument as normative or descriptive. When participants are less sensitive to a particular component, is this an error in reasoning, or do theories need to specify circumstances when these deviations are appropriate? Also needed is a consideration of socio-cultural and personal factors in argument strategies. Arguers might value preserving relationships or showing someone up more than coordinating claims and evidence [10]. A broader consideration of pragmatic factors will be needed to improve our understanding of informal argument. the bifurcation/bootstrapping method, and Convince Me: computer-based techniques for studying beliefs and their revision. Artificial life provides important theoretical and meth-odological tools for the investigation of Piaget's developmental theory. This new method uses artificial neural networks to simulate living phenomena in a computer. A recent study by Parisi and Schlesinger suggests that artificial life might reinvigorate the Piagetian framework. We contrast artificial life …