Does Doubt Require Reasons?

Reasons to doubt the present evidence for metaphoric representation.

In his reply to my article, Raymond Gibbs provides further information about the thinking underlying claims for metaphoric representation. As he points out, I was not able to review some of the theoretical rationale underlying claims for metaphoric thought, such as the issue of embodiment. He also describes further empirical evidence for the notion of metaphoric concepts. To summarize my rebutt...

Five Reasons to Doubt the Existence of a Geometric Module

It is frequently claimed that the human mind is organized in a modular fashion, a hypothesis linked historically, though not inevitably, to the claim that many aspects of the human mind are innately specified. A specific instance of this line of thought is the proposal of an innately specified geometric module for human reorientation. From a massive modularity position, the reorientation module...

Does Modernization Require

Does intelligence require a body?

Our brain controls our body—every movement we make is guided by neuronal activity. But how about vice versa? Does the body influence our brain; does it have an impact on how we think? This question might seem odd. We usually stick to a simple ‘sense– think–act’ paradigm: we hear the phone ring (sense), we recognize that we should answer it (think) and grab the receiver (act). This is a one-way ...

Does Privacy Require True Randomness?

Most cryptographic primitives require randomness (for example, to generate their secret keys). Usually, one assumes that perfect randomness is available, but, conceivably, such primitives might be built under weaker, more realistic assumptions. This is known to be true for many authentication applications, when entropy alone is typically sufficient. In contrast, all known techniques for achievi...