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Papers

Tu, A. (Work In Progress). The Non-uniform Effect of Statistical Frequency on Folk Judgment of Token Causation in the Presence and Absence of Counterfactual Thoughts
In Cause and Norm (forthcoming), Christopher Hitchcock and Joshua Knobe presented a statistical norm case in which a journal reviewer has a bizarre habit to reject a paper if it contains more than three 'andˇ¦ words on one given page. Hitchcock and Knobe suggested people would choose this statistically aberrant method of reviewing as the cause of the rejection of the paper. However, it was not entirely clear to me if the information presented in the story was strictly statistical. Especially when words with negative connotation like "bizarre" are invoked, it may be difficult to avoid confounding violation of statistical norms with culpability/responsibility. In addition, the two factors of the reviewer and the writer work in noticeably different time frames, which raise another worry of confounding with the event-condition distinction. In other stories the results could have been confounded because one of the actions was intentional, and the other was not. Thus, I sought to test Hitchcock and Knobeˇ¦s hypothesis regarding statistical norm with a quantitative study with a think-aloud protocol on a new set of cases. In order to minimize the possibilities of confounding (with responsibility, event-condition distinction...etc), the cases used the experiments were fictive natural phenomena in which the two causes do not elicit dramatic time frame variations or intentional actions. The causal structures are symmetrical across problems. (Drafts will become available as soon as I am done with my experiment)

Tu, A. (2008). Lao Zi's Skepticism and the Development of Neo-Confucianism (pdf) (doc). CMU Thought, 3, 38-49.

(this page contains a list of theses, publications and technical reports. For some of my more casual writings, please check out my Portfolio or the Spontaneity section)