The disagreement between “color realists” and “color eliminativists” is better seen as a disagreement over pedagogical policies, about how best to satisfy lay curiosity about “what color is,” than as a clash of substantive theories. To suppose otherwise is to endow the ordinary language term “color” with more authority than it can bear.

One reason why humans don't behave according to standard game theoretical rationality is because it's not realistic to assume that everyone else is behaving rationally. An individual is expected to have psychological mechanisms that function to maximize his/her long-term payoffs in a world of potentially “irrational” individuals. Psychological decision theory has to be individualistic because individuals make decisions, not groups.

The driving force in the evolution of language and the human mind was the advantage gained in courtship by efficient communicators. Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny may offer an alternative to Donald's picture of the relative origins of language and mimesis. Very recent evidence is pertinent to dating the origin of language.

Clark and Fischer propose that people interpret social robots not as social agents, but as interactive depictions. Drawing on research focusing on how children selectively learn from social others, we argue that children do not view social robots as interactive toys but instead treat them as social learning partners and critical sources of information.

The music and social bonding (MSB) hypothesis suggests that damage to brain regions in the proposed neurobiological model, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), would disrupt the social and emotional effects of music. This commentary evaluates prior research in persons with vmPFC damage in light of the predictions put forth by the MSB hypothesis.

Moving beyond distinguishing knowledge and beliefs, we propose two lines of inquiry for the next generation of theory of mind (ToM) research: (1) characterizing the contents of different mental-state representations and (2) formalizing the computations that generate such contents. Studying how children reason about what others think of the self provides an illuminating window into the richness and flexibility of human social cognition.

Unlike physics and chemistry, the behavioral sciences are historical sciences that explain the fuzzy complexity of social life through historical narratives. Unifying the behavioral sciences through evolutionary game theory would require a nested hierarchy of three kinds of historical narratives: natural history, cultural history, and biographical history.

In this commentary on Firestone & Scholl's (F&S's) article, we argue that researchers should use brain-activity modelling to investigate top-down mechanisms. Using functional brain imaging and a specific cognitive paradigm, modelling the BOLD signal provided new insight into the dynamic causalities involved in the influence of cognitions on perceptions.

Doris proposes that the exercise of morally responsible agency unfolds as a collaborative dialogue among selves expressing their values while being subject to ever-present constraints. We assess the fit of Doris's account with recent data from psychology and neuroscience related to how people make judgments about moral agency (responsibility, blame), and how they understand the self after traumatic events.

Spatial visualization as a key variable in sex-related differences in mathematical problem solving and spatial aspects of geometry is traced to the 1960s. More recent relevant data are presented. The variability debate is traced to the latter part of the nineteenth century and an explanation for it is suggested. An idea is presented for further research to clarify sex-related brain laterality differences in solving spatial problems.

An evolutionary framework on human teaching is not well equipped to explain the nature of human teaching unless it specifies the subserving cognitive and motivational mechanisms. Only a theory that speculates on the psychological processes provides testable predictions and stimulates further empirical research.

O'Brien & Opie's connectionist vehicle theory of consciousness is heavily dependent on their notion of explicitness as (1) structural and (2) necessary and sufficient for consciousness. These assumptions unnecessarily constrain their position: the authors are forced to find an intrinsic property of patterns that accounts for the distinction between conscious and unconscious states. Their candidate property, stability, does not capture this distinction. Yet, I show that we can drop assumptions (1) and (2) and still develop a vehicle theory of consciousness. This alternative is better served by models that incorporate both connectionist and symbolic representations.

Replications can make theoretical contributions, but are unlikely to do so if their findings are open to multiple interpretations (especially violations of psychometric invariance). Thus, just as studies demonstrating novel effects are often expected to empirically evaluate competing explanations, replications should be held to similar standards. Unfortunately, this is rarely done, thereby undermining the value of replication research.