Meaningful Lives, Ideal Observers, and Views from Nowhere

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 73-97
Author(s):  
Jason Kawall ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Observers ◽  
Meaningful Lives

scholarly journals Bayesian natural selection and the evolution of perceptual systems

2002 ◽  
Vol 357 (1420) ◽  
pp. 419-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson S. Geisler ◽  
Randy L. Diehl
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Decision Theory ◽  
Ideal Observer ◽  
Statistical Decision Theory ◽  
Statistical Decision ◽  
Natural Stimuli ◽  
Ideal Observers ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Bayesian Statistical Decision Theory ◽  
Perceptual Systems

In recent years, there has been much interest in characterizing statistical properties of natural stimuli in order to better understand the design of perceptual systems. A fruitful approach has been to compare the processing of natural stimuli in real perceptual systems with that of ideal observers derived within the framework of Bayesian statistical decision theory. While this form of optimization theory has provided a deeper understanding of the information contained in natural stimuli as well as of the computational principles employed in perceptual systems, it does not directly consider the process of natural selection, which is ultimately responsible for design. Here we propose a formal framework for analysing how the statistics of natural stimuli and the process of natural selection interact to determine the design of perceptual systems. The framework consists of two complementary components. The first is a maximum fitness ideal observer, a standard Bayesian ideal observer with a utility function appropriate for natural selection. The second component is a formal version of natural selection based upon Bayesian statistical decision theory. Maximum fitness ideal observers and Bayesian natural selection are demonstrated in several examples. We suggest that the Bayesian approach is appropriate not only for the study of perceptual systems but also for the study of many other systems in biology.

What makes a life meaningful? Folk intuitions about the content and shape of meaningful lives.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joffrey Fuhrer ◽  
Florian Cova
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Folk Concept ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Folk Intuitions ◽  
Susan Wolf ◽  
Meaningful Lives

It is often assumed that most people want their life to be “meaningful”. But what exactly does this mean? Though numerous researches have documented which factors lead people to experience their life as meaningful and people’s conceptions about the best ways to secure a meaningful life, investigations in people’s concept of meaningful life are scarce. In this paper, we investigate the folk concept of a meaningful life by studying people’s third-person attribution of meaningfulness. We draw on hypotheses from the philosophical literature, and notably on the work of Susan Wolf (Study 1) and Antti Kauppinen (Study 2). In Study 1, we find that individuals who are successful, competent, and engaged in valuable and important goals are considered to have more meaningful lives. In Study 2, we find that the meaningfulness of a life did not depend only on its components, but also on the order in which these elements were ordered to form a coherent whole (the “narrative shape” of this life). Additionally, our results stress the importance of morality in participants’ assessments of meaningfulness. Overall, our results highlight the fruitfulness of drawing on the philosophical literature to investigate the folk concept of meaningful life.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Questing for meaningfulness through narrative identity work: The helpers, the heroes, and the hurt

2021 ◽  
pp. 001872672110430
Author(s):  
Sarah-Louise Weller ◽  
Andrew D. Brown ◽  
Caroline A Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Search And Rescue ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Identity Narratives ◽  
Primary Contribution ◽  
Meaningful Lives

What identity narratives do those engaged in dangerous volunteering fabricate and how do they help satisfy their quest for meaningful lives? Based on a three-year ethnographic study of QuakeRescue, a UK-based voluntary, search and rescue charity, we show that volunteers worked on identity narratives as helpers, heroes and hurt. The primary contribution we make is to analyse how meaningfulness (the sense of personal purpose and fulfilment) that people attribute to their lives, is both developed through and a resource for individuals’ narrative identity work. We show how organizationally based actors attribute significance to their lives through authorship of desired identities which are sanctioned and supplied by societal (master) narratives embedded in and constitutive of local communities. In our case, the helper and hero identities dangerous volunteering offered members were seductive. However, their pursuit had ambiguous and sometimes, arguably, negative consequences for volunteers who had seen action overseas, and our study adds to understanding of how organizational members’ quest for meaningful identities may falter and sometimes fail.

scholarly journals Performance of normative and approximate evidence accumulation on the dynamic clicks task

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian E. Radillo ◽  
Alan Veliz-Cuba ◽  
Krešimir Josić ◽  
Zachary P. Kilpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Model Fitting ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Response Accuracy ◽  
Parameter Recovery ◽  
Ideal Observers ◽  
Log Likelihood ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Normative Models ◽  
Task Parameters ◽  
Sensory Noise

The aim of a number of psychophysics tasks is to uncover how mammals make decisions in a world that is in flux. Here we examine the characteristics of ideal and near–ideal observers in a task of this type. We ask when and how performance depends on task parameters and design, and, in turn, what observer performance tells us about their decision-making process. In the dynamic clicks task subjects hear two streams (left and right) of Poisson clicks with different rates. Subjects are rewarded when they correctly identify the side with the higher rate, as this side switches unpredictably. We show that a reduced set of task parameters defines regions in parameter space in which optimal, but not near-optimal observers, maintain constant response accuracy. We also show that for a range of task parameters an approximate normative model must be finely tuned to reach near-optimal performance, illustrating a potential way to distinguish between normative models and their approximations. In addition, we show that using the negative log-likelihood and the 0/1-loss functions to fit these types of models is not equivalent: the 0/1-loss leads to a bias in parameter recovery that increases with sensory noise. These findings suggest ways to tease apart models that are hard to distinguish when tuned exactly, and point to general pitfalls in experimental design, model fitting, and interpretation of the resulting data.

How do Kenyan orphan girls experience less meaningful lives and how much does it matter for ‘health’?

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1551-1559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Goodman ◽  
Thomas M. Johnson ◽  
Shannon Guillot-Wright ◽  
Katherine Ackerman Porter ◽  
Philip H. Keiser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Meaningful Lives
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