What is it about your face that tells me what you want from me? Emotional appeals are associated with specific mental images.

Emotional facial expressions have a communicative function. Besides information about the internal states (emotions) and the intentions of the expresser (action tendencies), they also communicate what the expresser wants the observer to do (appeals). Yet, there is very little research on the association of appeals with specific emotions. The present study has the aim to study the mental association of appeals and expressions through reverse correlation. Using reverse correlation, we estimated the observer-specific internal representations of expressions associated with four different appeals. A second group of participants rated the resulting expressions. As predicted, we found that the appeal to celebrate was uniquely associated with a happy expression and the appeal to empathize with a sad expression. A pleading appeal to stop was more strongly associated with sadness than with anger, whereas a command to stop was comparatively more strongly associated with anger. The results show that observers internally represent appeals as specific emotional expressions.

Emotional expressions as appeals to recipients.

Emotion expressions convey information. One important kind of information, from a communicative perspective, is information about what is demanded of the recipients of the expression. Compared to the vast body of research that focuses on whether, and to what degree, emotion expressions convey information about inner states, there is surprisingly little systematic research on the information emotion expressions convey about what the expresser wants the recipient to do. The present research documents for the first time the set of appeals associated with the expressions of anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and disgust. In two studies, we found that (a) generally, for each emotional expression, a core appeal is perceived as being made on recipients, but also a range of complementary demands, and that (b) context matters, as is the case for social perception of emotions in general. In this case, who caused the emotion expression affects the mapping between emotional expressions and appeals. Finally, (c) recipients report intentions to comply with these appeals, as can be expected from a functional point of view. Overall, these findings put the focus squarely on the imperative dimension of emotional expressions and lend support to the view that emotional communication entails an attempt to influence recipients rather than simply to inform them about how expressers feel or what they may do next. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Functional specialization does not require a one-to-one mapping between brain regions and emotions.

Lindquist et al. have assumed that functional specialization requires a one-to-one mapping between brain regions and discrete emotions. This assumption is in tension with the fact that regions can have multiple functions in the context of different, possibly distributed, networks. Once we open the door to other forms of functional specialization, neuroimaging data no longer favor constructionist models over natural kind models.

Information processing, computation, and cognition.

Computation and information processing are among the most fundamental notions in cognitive science. They are also among the most imprecisely discussed. Many cognitive scientists take it for granted that cognition involves computation, information processing, or both - although others disagree vehemently. Yet different cognitive scientists use 'computation' and 'information processing' to mean different things, sometimes without realizing that they do. In addition, computation and information processing are surrounded by several myths; first and foremost, that they are the same thing. In this paper, we address this unsatisfactory state of affairs by presenting a general and theory-neutral account of computation and information processing. We also apply our framework by analyzing the relations between computation and information processing on one hand and classicism, connectionism, and computational neuroscience on the other. We defend the relevance to cognitive science of both computation, at least in a generic sense, and information processing, in three important senses of the term. Our account advances several foundational debates in cognitive science by untangling some of their conceptual knots in a theory-neutral way. By leveling the playing field, we pave the way for the future resolution of the debates' empirical aspects.

Evidence of coordination as a cure for concept eliminativism.

I argue that Machery stacks the deck against hybrid theories of concepts by relying on an unduly restrictive understanding of coordination between concept parts. Once a less restrictive notion of coordination is introduced, the empirical case for hybrid theories of concepts becomes stronger, and the appeal of concept eliminativism weaker.

Inductive risk and justice in kidney allocation.

How should UNOS deal with the presence of scientific controversies on the risk factors for organ rejection when designing its allocation policies? The answer I defend in this paper is that the more undesirable the consequences of making a mistake in accepting a scientific hypothesis, the higher the degree of confirmation required for its acceptance. I argue that the application of this principle should lead to the rejection of the hypothesis that 'less than perfect' Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) matches are an important determinant of kidney graft survival. The scientific community has been divided all along on the significance of partial antigen matches. Yet reliance on partial matches has emerged as one of the primary factors leading blacks to spend a much longer time than whites on the waiting list for kidneys, thereby potentially impacting the justice of the kidney allocation policy. My case study illustrates one of the legitimate roles non-epistemic values can play in science and calls into question the ideal of a value-free science.