The Law of Self-Reflexion--论文代写范文精选

从约翰·洛克开始，人类的能力代表精神上自己的思想和情感，一直是西方哲学的一个中心话题。这种能力通常被称为反射。主体具有反射可以描述为一个微型人与自我的形象。这张照片可能包含思想和情感。包括自我的描述。下面的essay代写范文进行讲述。

ABSTRACT 
The centuries-old philosophical idea that man has an image of the self containing an image of the self (of the second order) obtains a new life in the mathematical model of the subject possessing reflexion. One assumption underlying the model is that the subject tends to generate patterns of behavior such that some kind of similarity is established between the subject himself and his second order image of the self. We demonstrate that this model allows a single explanation for three diverse, experimentally observed phenomena: (a) the nonlinear relation between magnitude estimation and categorization of identical stimuli (Parducci, Stevens, Galanter), (b) the avoidance of the value of 0.5 in estimating stimuli equidistant from two samples on a psychological scale (Poulton, Simmonds), and (c) the formal correspondence between, on the one hand, frequency of choice for particular alternatives and, on the other, reinforcement rate, found in some experiments with animals and people (Herrnstein, Baum). The results obtained allow us to hypothesize that the reflexive metaphor represents a general principle for regulation of both human and animal behavior.

Beginning with John Locke, the human ability to represent mentally one’s own thoughts and feelings has been a central topic of Western philosophy (1, 2). This ability is conventionally called reflexion. The subject possessing reflexion can be depicted as a miniature human figure with the image of the self inside his head (Fig.1). This image may contain thoughts and feelings including a description of the self; that is, this figure not only sees himself but also sees himself seeing himself. Although the idea of reflexion played an important role in nineteenth century psychology, it has not become part of mainstream psychology in the twentieth century. The main reason for this is that the concept of image of oneself has not been grounded either in clearly determined psychological phenomena nor in morphological or functional brain structure (3). 

Nevertheless, the term ‘image of the self’ and others equivalent to it were broadly used in psychology of personality and social psychology, due to their practical convenience. The situation began to change in 1970s, when it became clear that the metaphors similar to the one in Figure 1 can be expressed in the language of functions and so provide formal description of human behavior. This opened the prospect of linking the human introspective world with objectively observable behavior (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). This finding allows us to assume that the structure of the inner domain given in Figure 1 is a manifestation of work of a special cognitive mechanism of self-representation (possibly inborn), rather than a result of the intellectual efforts of the subject consciously thinking about the self (5, 6, 13). We will demonstrate further how a model of the subject based on the reflexive metaphor allows us to suggest a unified explanation for three different psychological phenomena none of which has so far been explained convincingly.

Magnitude estimation is the choice of a number characterizing the intensity of a physical stimulus. For example, subjects are presented with a set of steel rods one by one and asked to estimate the length of each in inches. The data obtained from a large number of subjects allow experimenters to find a function G, which connects stimuli estimations with their objective physical measures. This function leads to the construction of a psychological scale of stimuli intensity. Categorization, on the other hand, classifies the stimuli according to their intensity. For example, the subjects are shown the same steel rods as before, but here the task is to refer each of them to one of eleven categories: the shortest rod belongs to the first category, the longest one to the eleventh category, and all the others lie in between (17). 

For a long time it was considered obvious that estimations obtained in these two kinds of experiments - magnitude and categorical - would be related linearly with each other. In the 1950's it was found that this relation is non-linear (17). It turned out also that the shape of a curve depends on the distribution of weak and strong stimuli in an experimental series: the more marked shift toward weak stimuli, the more convex the graph (18) (See Fig.2a). Let us now connect these observations with the function of readiness (Eq.2). We represent a categorical scale as a segment [0,1], where the category of the strongest stimulus corresponds to point 1, playing the role of the positive pole, and the category of the weakest stimulus corresponds to point 0, playing the role of the negative pole.

For long randomized sequences of stimuli, x 2 will not change considerably after a series of presentations and can be considered constant. Under such conditions, Eq.2 turns into the equation of a hyperbola with variable x 1 and parameter x 2 (16). A family of such hyperbolas is shown in Fig.2b. Now we can explain the observations obtained during stimuli categorization: (a) The connection between magnitude estimation and categorization is non-linear, because Eq.2 with constant x 2 corresponds to a hyperbola. (b) The subjects overestimate the stimuli intensity in categorization by comparison with magnitude estimation, because hyperbolas are upward convex. (c) When the intensity of stimuli is shifted toward the weakest values, the curve’s convexity increases, because the value of parameter x 2 decreases. Unlike phenomena 1 and 2, the matching law is not connected with the subject’s estimating activity, but rather with his economical behavior. 

It seems natural to assume that this law reflects the tendency of an organism to obtain as much utility as possible. This idea underlies most attempts to explain this phenomenon, although Heyman and Luce demonstrate that the matching law is not a logical consequence of maximizing reinforcement rate (29). Nevertheless, many researcher do not rule out the possibility that the subject seeks to maximize utility understood in broader sense (30). For example, the subject may try to shorten the run between a key and the food hopper or save the energy needed to operate with the key, ans so forth. Baum and Apparacio mention this topic, “Despite claims to the contrary, all leading theories about operant choice may be seen as model of 7 optimality.” (31, p.75). 

The idea of maximizing utility values, however, has not helped researchers to deduce Eq.3 (32). The reflexive model provides us with another possible explanation for the matching law: Eq.3 holds not because the subject tends to obtain more utility of any kind, but because he generates a pattern of behavior such that the relation of similarity between the subject and his model of the self is established and sustained. If the reflexive model could explain why it is necessary to introduce a free parameter s into Eq.3, this would become an important step forward toward substantiating this hypothesis.

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