Janina Hosiasson and the Value of Evidence
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
shows that I.J. Good's classic result concerning the pragmatic value of learning is prefigured in a 1931 paper by Janina Hosiasson
Learning How to Learn by Self-tuning Reinforcement
with Jeff Barrett, Synthese
develops a model of self-tuning reinforcement learning that captures a well-known experimental finding on learning to learn in rhesus macaques
Learning to Forget
with Jeff Barrett, forthcoming in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
considers how reinforcement learners in Lewis-Skyrms signaling games might learn to adopt methods of learning well-adapted to the communicative problems they repeatedly face
Learning in Crawford-Sobel Games
with Jeff Barrett, Cailin O'Connor, and Brian Skyrms, forthcoming in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
bridges a gap in the game theoretic literatures on communication in philosophy and economics by modeling simple forms of trial-and-error learning in Crawford-Sobel games and comparing findings to related results for Lewis-Skyrms signaling games
Task-Switching and Natural Projectibility
under review
articulates a version of Goodman's "new riddle of induction" that applies very generally to learners in nature; develops a model showing how that problem might be solved by means of a simple form of reinforcement learning in the context of an experiment on task-switching in rhesus macaques
Learning and the Evolution of Fairmindedness
draft available on request
uses the "indirect evolutionary approach," developed in economics, to model the evolution of inequity aversion in the context of the Nash demand game
Alexander Bain on Learning and Control
draft available on request
explicates the theory of learning underlying Bain's account of the development of voluntary control; argues that the account presages important later developments in the psychology of learning