Children’s reasoning about other’s intentions: False-belief and counterfactual conditional inferences

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Necesidad lógica y lógica condicional

El artículo pretende, en primer lugar, caracterizar brevemente la idea de verdad necesaria en Leibniz a los efectos de mostrar cómo en el desarrollo de las investigaciones lógicas ella se ha ido debilitando al extremo de convertirse en una de las tantas posibles interpretaciones del operador de necesidad. Se muestra, además, que ello ha sucedido tanto en los sistemas generados a partir de las semánticas de Kripke para la lógica modal clásica como para los sistemas de lógica, para los condicionales contrafácticos de David Lewis y para los condicionales derrotables de Carlos Alchourrón.

Necesidad lógica y lógica condicional

El artículo pretende, en primer lugar, caracterizar brevemente la idea de verdad necesaria en Leibniz a los efectos de mostrar cómo en el desarrollo de las investigaciones lógicas ella se ha ido debilitando al extremo de convertirse en una de las tantas posibles interpretaciones del operador de necesidad. Se muestra, además, que ello ha sucedido tanto en los sistemas generados a partir de las semánticas de Kripke para la lógica modal clásica como para los sistemas de lógica, para los condicionales contrafácticos de David Lewis y para los condicionales derrotables de Carlos Alchourrón.

Necesidad lógica y lógica condicional

El artículo pretende, en primer lugar, caracterizar brevemente la idea de verdad necesaria en Leibniz a los efectos de mostrar cómo en el desarrollo de las investigaciones lógicas ella se ha ido debilitando al extremo de convertirse en una de las tantas posibles interpretaciones del operador de necesidad. Se muestra, además, que ello ha sucedido tanto en los sistemas generados a partir de las semánticas de Kripke para la lógica modal clásica como para los sistemas de lógica, para los condicionales contrafácticos de David Lewis y para los condicionales derrotables de Carlos Alchourrón.

Raciocínio contrafactual e modelos mentais

A ideia central deste estudo é de que «... raciocinar sobre factos e raciocinar sobre possibilidades e impossibilidades, baseia-se nos mesmos tipos de representações mentais e processos cognitivos» (Byrne, 1997, p. 107). Quer dizer que as pessoas raciocinam através da construção e revisão de modelos mentais (e.g., Johnson-Laird, Byrne, 1991). As condicionais contrafactuais requerem que os raciocinadores tenham em mente não apenas o que é suposto ser verdadeiro, mas também o que é supostamente verdadeiro mas factualmente falso (Byrne, 1997, p. 117; cf. Johnson-Laird, Byrne, 1991, pp. 72- -73). E a hipótese de que a representação inicial de uma condicional contrafactual é mais explícita do que a de uma condicional factual, permite prever que as inferências Modus Tollens e Negação do Antecedente deverão ser feitas com maior frequência a partir das condicionais contrafactuais do que das factuais. Byrne e Tasso (in press) encontraram evidência para esta hipótese. No estudo que apresentamos, também procuramos replicar esses resultados encontrados por Byrne e Tasso, e acrescentamos algumas hipóteses relacionadas com as latências para compreender os dois tipos de condicionais, e para escolher a conclusão. Utilizamos condicionais neutras do tipo «Se houve um círculo, então houve um triângulo», e apresentamos aos participantes os quatro silogismos condicionais no programa SUPERLAB.

Oaxaca-Blinder type counterfactual decomposition methods for duration outcomes

Los métodos disponibles para realizar análisis de descomposición que se pueden aplicar cuando los datos son completamente observados, no son válidos cuando la variable de interés es censurada. Esto puede explicar la escasez de este tipo de ejercicios considerando variables de duración, las cuales se observan usualmente bajo censura. Este documento propone un método del tipo Oaxaca-Blinder para descomponer diferencias en la media en el contexto de datos censurados. La validez de dicho método radica en la identificación y estimación de la distribución conjunta de la variable de duración y un conjunto de covariables. Adicionalmente, se propone un método más general que permite descomponer otros funcionales de interés como la mediana o el coeficiente de Gini, el cual se basa en la especificación de la función de distribución condicional de la variable de duración dado un conjunto de covariables. Con el fin de evaluar el desempeño de dichos métodos, se realizan experimentos tipo Monte Carlo. Finalmente, los métodos propuestos son aplicados para analizar las brechas de género en diferentes características de la duración del desempleo en España, tales como la duración media, la probabilidad de ser desempleado de largo plazo y el coeficiente de Gini. Los resultados obtenidos permiten concluir que los factores diferentes a las características observables, tales como capital humano o estructura del hogar, juegan un papel primordial para explicar dichas brechas.

Conditional cash transfers, schooling and child labor : micro-simulating bolsa escola

Cash transfers targeted to poor people, but conditional on some behavior on their part, such as school attendance or regular visits to health care facilities, are being adopted in a growing number of developing countries. Even where ex-post impact evaluations have been conducted, a number of policy-relevant counterfactual questions have remained unanswered. These are questions about the potential impact of changes in program design, such as benefit levels or the choice of the means-test, on both the current welfare and the behavioral response of household members. This paper proposes a method to simulate the effects of those alternative program designs on welfare and behavior, based on microeconometrically estimated models of household behavior. In an application to Brazil’s recently introduced federal Bolsa Escola program, we find a surprisingly strong effect of the conditionality on school attendance, but a muted impact of the transfers on the reduction of current poverty and inequality levels.

The impact of grants in the agriculture sector in Albania: a counterfactual approach

The objective of this study is to measure the impact of the national subsidy scheme on the olive and fruit sector in two regions of Albania, Shkodra and Fier. From the methodological point of view, we use a non- parametric approach based on the propensity score matching. This method overcomes problem of the missing data, by creating a counterfactual scenario. In the first step, the conditional probability to participate in the program was computed. Afterwards, different matching estimators were applied to establish whether the subsidies have affected sectors performance. One of the strengths of this study stays in the data. Cross-sectional primary data was gathered through about 250 interviews.. We have not found empirical evidence of significant effects of government aid program on production. Differences in production found between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries disappear after adjustment by the conditional probability of participating into the program. This suggests that subsidized farmers would have performed better than the subsidized households even in the absence of production grants, revealing program self-selection. On the other hand, the scheme has affected positively the farm structure increasing the area under cultivation, but yields has not increased for beneficiaries compared to non beneficiaries. These combined results shed light on the reason of the missed impact. It could be reasonable to believe that the new plantation, in particular in the case of olives, has not yet reached full production. Therefore, we have reasons to believe on positive impacts in the future. Concerning some qualitative results, the extension of area under cultivation is strongly conditioned by the small farm size. This together with a thin land market makes extremely difficult the expansion beyond farm boundaries.

The Conditional Autonomy of Tafuri's Historian / De Provisorische Autonomie van de Historicus bij Tafuri

This article considers the conditions placed on the autonomous architectural history discipline often understood at stake in Manfredo Tafuri's 1968 book Teorie e storia dell'architettura.

Prediction of carbon monoxide in fires by conditional moment closure

Carbon monoxide is the chief killer in fires. Dangerous levels of CO can occur when reacting combustion gases are quenched by heat transfer, or by mixing of the fire plume in a cooled under- or overventilated upper layer. In this paper, carbon monoxide predictions for enclosure fires are modeled by the conditional moment closure (CMC) method and are compared with laboratory data. The modeled fire situation is a buoyant, turbulent, diffusion flame burning under a hood. The fire plume entrains fresh air, and the postflame gases are cooled considerably under the hood by conduction and radiation, emulating conditions which occur in enclosure fires and lead to the freezing of CO burnout. Predictions of CO in the cooled layer are presented in the context of a complete computational fluid dynamics solution of velocity, temperature, and major species concentrations. A range of underhood equivalence ratios, from rich to lean, are investigated. The CMC method predicts CO in very good agreement with data. In particular, CMC is able to correctly predict CO concentrations in lean cooled gases, showing its capability in conditions where reaction rates change considerably.

Economic performance of Brazilian manufacturing firms: a counterfactual analysis of innovation impacts

This article assesses if innovators outperform non-innovators in Brazilian manufacturing during 1996-2002. To do so, we begin with a simple theoretical model and test the impacts of technological innovation (treatment) on innovating firms (treated) by employing propensity score matching techniques. Correcting for the survivorship bias in the period, it was verified that, on an average, the accomplishment of technological innovations produces positive and significant impacts on the employment, the net revenue, the labor productivity, the capital productivity, and market share of the firms. However, this result was not observed for the mark-up. Especially, the net revenue reflects more robustly the impacts of the innovations. Quantitatively speaking, innovating firms experienced a 10.8-12.5 percentage points (p.p. henceforth) higher growth on employment, a 18.1-21.7 p.p. higher growth on the net revenue, a 10.8-11.9 p.p. higher growth on labor productivity, a 11.8-12.0 p.p. higher growth on capital productivity, and a 19.9-24.3 p.p. higher growth on their market share, relative to the average of the non-innovating firms in the control group. It was also observed that the conjunction of product and process innovations, relative to other forms of innovation, presents the stronger impacts on the performance of Brazilian firms.

Modelling of species in hood fires by conditional moment closure

Carbon monoxide, the chief killer in fires, and other species are modelled for a series of enclosure fires. The conditions emulate building fires where CO is formed in the rich, turbulent, nonpremixed flame and is transported frozen to lean mixtures by the ceiling jet which is cooled by radiation and dilution. Conditional moment closure modelling is used and computational domain minimisation criteria are developed which reduce the computational cost of this method. The predictions give good agreement for CO and other species in the lean, quenched-gas stream, holding promise that this method may provide a practical means of modelling real, three-dimensional fire situations. (c) 2005 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conditional variance reduction by measurements on correlated field modes

We consider the case of two cavity modes of the electromagnetic field, which are coupled via the action of a parametric amplifier. The fields are allowed to leak from the cavity and homodyne measurement is performed on one of the modes. Because of the correlations between the modes, this leads to a reduction of the variance in a quadrature of the other mode, although no measurement is performed on it directly. We discuss how this relates to the Einstein-Podolky-Rosen Gedankenexperiment.

Limiting conditional distributions for birth-death processes

In a recent paper [16], one of us identified all of the quasi-stationary distributions for a non-explosive, evanescent birth-death process for which absorption is certain, and established conditions for the existence of the corresponding limiting conditional distributions. Our purpose is to extend these results in a number of directions. We shall consider separately two cases depending on whether or not the process is evanescent. In the former case we shall relax the condition that absorption is certain. Furthermore, we shall allow for the possibility that the minimal process might be explosive, so that the transition rates alone will not necessarily determine the birth-death process uniquely. Although we shall be concerned mainly with the minimal process, our most general results hold for any birth-death process whose transition probabilities satisfy both the backward and the forward Kolmogorov differential equations.