I thank Maurice Lagueux for his thoughtful reflections on my book Economic theory and cognitive science: microexplanation (henceforth: ETCS:M). Given space restrictions, in this comment I won’t say much about his criticisms of my use of the intentional stance, except to observe that they seem to rely on equivocation between thinking of beliefs and desires as internal states of people, and as de...

In order to demonstrate possible broader applications of information theory to the quantification of non-human communication systems, we apply calculations of information entropy to a simple chemical communication from the cotton plant (Gossypium hirsutum) to the wasp (Cardiochiles nigriceps) studied by DeMoraes et al. The purpose of this chemical communication from cotton plants to wasps is pr...

In recent work, Stalnaker proposes a logical framework in which belief is realized as a weakened form of knowledge [33]. Building on Stalnaker’s core insights, and using frameworks developed in [12] and [4], we employ topological tools to refine and, we argue, improve on this analysis. The structure of topological subset spaces allows for a natural distinction between what is known and (roughly...

Recent revelations about government surveillance have significantly increased the demand for end-to-end secure communications. However, key management remains a major barrier to adoption. Current systems are often either vulnerable to a malicious or coerced key directory or they make unrealistic assumptions about user behavior, for example, that users will verify key fingerprints out of band. W...

In an influential essay entitled Why abortion is wrong, Donald Marquis argues that killing actual persons is wrong because it unjustly deprives victims of their future; that the fetus has a future similar in morally relevant respects to the future lost by competent adult homicide victims, and that, as consequence, abortion is justifiable only in the same circumstances in which killing competent...

Three experiments were conducted within the framework of correspondent inference theory. I n each of the experiments the subjects were instructed to estimate the "trueJ' attitude of a target person after having either read or listened to a speech by him expressing opinions on a controversial topic. Independent variables included position of speech (pro, anti, or equivocal), choice of position v...

Two experiments investigated how much time Ss take to verify a sentence with respect to a set of subject-verb-object (SVO) propositions they had learned. Three triplets of SVOs provided differing degrees of equivocation, including ( 1) unique SVOs, (2) a V with 3 SOS, and (3) an SV with 3 OS. A general class of models was proposed regarding the representation of propositional trees in memory an...

Having, as it is generally agreed, failed to destroy the computational conception of mind with the Gödelian attack he articulated in his The Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose has returned, armed with a more elaborate and more fastidious Gödelian case, expressed in Chapters 2 and 3 of his Shadows of the Mind. The core argument in these chapters is enthymematic, and when formalized, a remarkable number...