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173-660: Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception , attention , thought , imagination , intelligence , the formation of knowledge , memory and working memory , judgment and evaluation , reasoning and computation , problem-solving and decision-making , comprehension and production of language . Cognitive processes use existing knowledge to discover new knowledge. Cognitive processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in

346-577: A lower house based on population; and the Senate , an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Federalism provides substantial autonomy to the 50 states, while the country's political culture promotes liberty , equality , individualism , personal autonomy , and limited government . One of the world's most developed countries , the United States has had the largest nominal GDP since about 1890 and accounted for over 15% of

519-580: A " Special Relationship " with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada , Australia , New Zealand , the Philippines , Japan , South Korea , Israel , and several European Union countries ( France , Italy , Germany , Spain , and Poland ). The U.S. works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues, and with countries in the Americas through

692-459: A basic action it is not just important what the agent can do but what the agent actually does. So raising one's right hand may only count as a basic action if it is done directly through the right hand. If the agent uses her left hand to lift the right hand then the raising of the right hand is not a basic action anymore. A contrasting view identifies basic actions not with bodily movements but with mental volitions. One motivation for this position

865-443: A branch of social psychology , the term is used to explain attitudes , attribution , and group dynamics . However, psychological research within the field of cognitive science has also suggested an embodied approach to understanding cognition. Contrary to the traditional computationalist approach, embodied cognition emphasizes the body's significant role in the acquisition and development of cognitive capabilities. Human cognition

1038-503: A chain smoker may have a negative impact on the health of the people around him. This is a side-effect of his smoking that is not part of his intention. The smoker may still be responsible for this damage, either because he was aware of this side-effect and decided to ignore it or because he should have been aware of it, so-called negligence . In the theory of enactivism , perception is understood to be sensorimotor in nature. That is, we carry out actions as an essential part of perceiving

1211-402: A clinical setting but no lasting effects has been shown. Action (philosophy) An important distinction among actions is between non-basic actions, which are done by doing something else, and basic actions, for which this is not the case. Most philosophical discussions of actions focus on physical actions in the form of bodily movements. But many philosophers consider mental actions to be

1384-460: A content from consciousness. One reason for doubting the existence of mental actions is that mental events often appear to be involuntary responses to internal or external stimuli and therefore not under our control. Another objection to the existence of mental actions is that the standard account of actions in terms of intentions seems to fail for mental actions. The problem here is that the intention to think about something already needs to include

1557-542: A coordinated, continent-wide military effort. Finally, deteriorating relations between the British military establishment and the colonists, relations that were already less than positive, set the stage for further distrust and dislike of British troops. Following their victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater control over local colonial affairs, resulting in colonial political resistance ; one of

1730-534: A decentralized government that operated until 1789. After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781 American sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida . The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which

1903-635: A distinct type of action that has characteristics quite different from physical actions. Deliberations and decisions are processes that often precede and lead to actions. Actions can be rational or irrational depending on the reason for which they are performed. The problem of responsibility is closely related to the philosophy of actions since we usually hold people responsible for what they do. Conceptions of action try to determine what all actions have in common or what their essential features are. Causalist theories, like Donald Davidson 's account or standard forms of volitionalism, hold that causal relations between

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2076-407: A few prominent industrialists , largely by their formation of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition. Tycoons led the nation's expansion in the railroad , petroleum , and steel industries. The United States emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry . These changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality , slum conditions , and social unrest , creating

2249-464: A following in America , scientists such as Wilhelm Wundt , Herman Ebbinghaus , Mary Whiton Calkins , and William James would offer their contributions to the study of human cognition. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) emphasized the notion of what he called introspection : examining the inner feelings of an individual. With introspection, the subject had to be careful with describing their feelings in

2422-638: A founding member of the World Bank , Organization of American States , NATO , and the United Nations , as well as a permanent member of the UN Security Council . The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan , a Continental Army aide to General George Washington , wrote to Joseph Reed , Washington's aide-de-camp , seeking to go "with full and ample powers from

2595-463: A non-causal way. Some suggestions have been made on this issue but this is still an open problem since none of them have gathered significant support. The teleological approach, for example, holds that this relation is to be understood not in terms of efficient causation but in terms of final "causation" . One problem with this approach is that the two forms of causation do not have to be incompatible. Few theorists deny that actions are teleological in

2768-461: A number of variables that may have affected his ability to learn and recall the non-words he created. One of the reasons, he concluded, was the amount of time between the presentation of the list of stimuli and the recitation or recall of the same. Ebbinghaus was the first to record and plot a " learning curve " and a " forgetting curve ". His work heavily influenced the study of serial position and its effect on memory Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930)

2941-420: A pedestrian witnessing a terrible car accident may be morally responsible for calling an ambulance and for providing help directly if possible. Additionally to what the agent did, it is also relevant what the agent could have done otherwise, i.e. what powers and capacities the agent had. The agent's intentions are also relevant for responsibility, but we can be responsible for things we did not intend. For example,

3114-598: A period of heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often called the nadir of American race relations . A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson , emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in communities across the country , which would be reinforced by

3287-431: A philosophical approach to the study of cognition and the mind, with his Meditations he wanted people to meditate along with him to come to the same conclusions as he did but in their own free cognition. In psychology , the term "cognition" is usually used within an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions , and such is the same in cognitive engineering . In the study of social cognition ,

3460-488: A prominent leader in the early 1960s. The Great Society plan of President Lyndon Johnson 's administration resulted in groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism . The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality . It also encouraged open defiance of

3633-526: A sense of manifest destiny . The Missouri Compromise attempted to balance the desire of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to extend it, admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It further prohibited slavery in all other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel . As Americans expanded further into land inhabited by Native Americans,

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3806-614: A sense of American identity as well. Men who otherwise never left their own colony now traveled across the continent to fight alongside men from decidedly different backgrounds but who were no less "American". British officers trained American officers for battle, most notably George Washington ; these officers would lend their skills and expertise to the colonists' cause during the American Revolutionary War to come. In addition, colonial legislatures and officials found it necessary to cooperate intensively in pursuit of

3979-632: A status solidified after its involvement in World War I . After Japan 's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II . Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War , during which both countries struggled for ideological dominance and international influence . Following the Soviet Union's collapse and

4152-413: A strict distinction between our agency and our body, which is not how things appear to us. One way to avoid this objection is to hold that volitions constitute bodily movements, i.e. are an aspect of them, instead of causing them. Another response able to soften this objection is to hold that volitions are not just the initial triggers of the bodily movements but that they are continuous activities guiding

4325-535: A wall, in which the jumping itself (corresponding to the triggering) is considered an action, but the falling (corresponding to the entertaining of a content) is not an action anymore since it is outside the agent's control. Candace L. Upton and Michael Brent object that this account of mental actions is not complete. Taking their lead from mental activities taking place during meditation , they argue that Strawson's account leaves out various forms of mental actions, like maintaining one's attention on an object or removing

4498-401: A year). Juvenile correctional facilities are operated by local or state governments and serve as longer-term placements for any minor adjudicated as delinquent and ordered by a judge to be confined. As of January 2023, the United States has the sixth-highest per capita incarceration rate in the world—531 people per 100,000 inhabitants—and the largest prison and jail population in

4671-429: Is wayward if the intention caused its goal to realize but in a very unusual way that was not intended, e.g. because the skills of the agent are not exercised in the way planned. For example, a rock climber forms the intention to kill the climber below him by letting go of the rope. A wayward causal chain would be that, instead of opening the holding hand intentionally, the intention makes the first climber so nervous that

4844-461: Is a middle path possible between these two extreme positions that allows for the existence of both physical and mental actions. Various mental events have been suggested as candidates for non-physical actions, like imagining, judging or remembering. One influential account of mental action comes from Galen Strawson , who holds that mental actions consist in "triggering the delivery of content to one's field of consciousness". According to this view,

5017-669: Is an important aspect of metacognition. Aerobic and anaerobic exercise have been studied concerning cognitive improvement. There appear to be short-term increases in attention span, verbal and visual memory in some studies. However, the effects are transient and diminish over time, after cessation of the physical activity. People with Parkinson's disease has also seen improved cognition while cycling, while pairing it with other cognitive tasks. Studies evaluating phytoestrogen , blueberry supplementation and antioxidants showed minor increases in cognitive function after supplementation but no significant effects compared to placebo . Another study on

5190-416: Is being undertaken to examine the cognitive psychology of emotion; research is also focused on one's awareness of one's own strategies and methods of cognition, which is called metacognition . The concept of cognition has gone through several revisions through the development of disciplines within psychology. Psychologists initially understood cognition governing human action as information processing. This

5363-591: Is believed to be the first widespread culture in the Americas. Over time, indigenous North American cultures grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture , developed agriculture , architecture , and complex societies . In the post-archaic period , the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern , eastern , and southern regions, and the Algonquian in

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5536-426: Is between basic and non-basic actions . This distinction is closely related to the problem of individuation since it also depends on the notion of doing one thing by or in virtue of doing another thing, like turning on a light by flipping a switch. In this example, the flipping of the switch is more basic than the turning-on of the light. But the turning-on of the light can itself constitute another action, like

5709-418: Is closely related to the aforementioned study and conclusion of the memory experiments conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus. William James (1842–1910) is another pivotal figure in the history of cognitive science. James was quite discontent with Wundt's emphasis on introspection and Ebbinghaus' use of nonsense stimuli. He instead chose to focus on the human learning experience in everyday life and its importance to

5882-440: Is conscious and unconscious , concrete or abstract , as well as intuitive (like knowledge of a language) and conceptual (like a model of a language). It encompasses processes such as memory , association , concept formation , pattern recognition , language , attention , perception , action , problem solving , and mental imagery . Traditionally, emotion was not thought of as a cognitive process, but now much research

6055-516: Is gathered through observation and conscientious experimentation. Two millennia later, the groundwork for modern concepts of cognition was laid during the Enlightenment by thinkers such as John Locke and Dugald Stewart who sought to develop a model of the mind in which ideas were acquired, remembered and manipulated. During the early nineteenth century cognitive models were developed both in philosophy —particularly by authors writing about

6228-403: Is inevitable, or they are not, in which case there would be no need to posit them as an explanatory inert " ghost in the machine ". But it has been suggested that this constitutes a false dilemma : that volitions can play an explanatory role without leading to a vicious regress . John Stuart Mill , for example, avoids this problem by holding that actions are composed of two parts: a volition and

6401-498: Is known as the presidential system , in contrast to the parliamentary system , where the executive is part of the legislative body. Many countries around the world imitated this aspect of the 1789 Constitution of the United States , especially in the Americas. The Constitution is silent on political parties. However, they developed independently in the 18th century with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties. Since then,

6574-414: Is learned first still has to go through a retrieval process. This experiment focuses on human memory processes. The word superiority effect experiment presents a subject with a word, or a letter by itself, for a brief period of time, i.e. 40 ms, and they are then asked to recall the letter that was in a particular location in the word. In theory, the subject should be better able to correctly recall

6747-438: Is now the United States experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging European tools for food and animal pelts. Relations ranged from close cooperation to warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity. Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked African slaves through

6920-424: Is problematic since it threatens to lead to a vicious regress : if something is an action because it was caused by a volition then we would have to posit one more volition in virtue of which the first trying can be regarded as an action. An influential criticism of the volitional explanations of actions is due to Gilbert Ryle , who argued that volitions are either active , in which case the aforementioned regress

7093-481: Is that he has prostate cancer, another is that they have his favorite newspaper in the waiting area. Abdul is aware of both of these reasons, but he performs this action only because of the former reason. Causalist theories can account for this fact through causal relation: the former but not the latter reason causes the action. The challenge to non-causalist theories is to provide a convincing non-causal explanation of this fact. The problem of individuation concerns

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7266-517: Is that volitions are the most direct element in the chain of agency: they cannot fail, unlike bodily actions, whose success is initially uncertain. One argument against this position is that it may lead to a vicious regress if it is paired with the assumption that an earlier volition is needed in order for the first volition to constitute an action. This is why volitionists often hold that volitions cause actions or are parts of actions but are not full actions themselves. Philosophers have investigated

7439-482: Is that we often do one thing by doing another thing: we shoot the gun by pulling the trigger or we turn on the light by flipping the switch. One argument against this view is that the different events may happen at different times. For example, Lincoln died of his injuries the following day, so a significant time after the shooting. This raises the question of how to explain that two events happening at different times are identical. An important distinction among actions

7612-552: Is the federal agency charged with addressing most environmental-related issues . The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act . The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides a way to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service implements and enforces the Act. In 2024, the U.S. ranked 34th among 180 countries in

7785-426: Is the time it takes for a participant to identify whether a green circle is present or not, should not change as the number of distractors increases. Conjunctive searches where the target is absent should have a longer reaction time than the conjunctive searches where the target is present. The theory is that in feature searches, it is easy to spot the target, or if it is absent, because of the difference in color between

7958-459: Is to hold that basic actions correspond to the most simple commands we can follow. This position excludes most forms of muscle contractions and chemical processes from the list of basic actions since we usually cannot follow the corresponding commands directly. What counts as a basic action, according to this view, depends on the agent's skills. So contracting a given muscle is a basic action for an agent who has learned to do so. For something to be

8131-603: The Allies of World War I , helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers . In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women's suffrage . During the 1920s and '30s, radio for mass communication and the invention of early television transformed communications nationwide. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression , which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to with

8304-553: The Atlantic slave trade . The original Thirteen Colonies that would later found the United States were administered as possessions of Great Britain , and had local governments with elections open to most white male property owners . The colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations; by the 1770s, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain allowed for

8477-549: The Environmental Performance Index . The country joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016 and has many other environmental commitments. The United States is a federal republic of 50 states and a separate federal capital district, Washington, D.C. It also asserts sovereignty over five unincorporated territories and several uninhabited island possessions . The U.S. is

8650-500: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have national jurisdiction and specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights , national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts ' rulings and federal laws. State courts conduct most civil and criminal trials, and federal courts handle designated crimes and appeals of state court decisions . There is no unified "criminal justice system" in

8823-720: The Great Lakes , Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico . British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607) and Plymouth Colony (1620). The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. While European settlers in what

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8996-719: The Great Lakes region and along the Eastern Seaboard , while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the southwest . Native population estimates of what is now the United States before the arrival of European immigrants range from around 500,000 to nearly 10 million. Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from Puerto Rico and Florida to New Mexico and California . France established its own settlements along

9169-596: The Midwest . At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England . During the Great Migration , millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. The Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction and white supremacists took local control of Southern politics . African Americans endured

9342-688: The National Park Service and other agencies. About 28% of the country's land is publicly owned and federally managed, primarily in the Western States . Most of this land is protected , though some is leased for commercial use, and less than one percent is used for military purposes. Environmental issues in the United States include debates on non-renewable resources and nuclear energy , air and water pollution , biodiversity , logging and deforestation , and climate change . The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

9515-596: The New Deal , a series of sweeping programs and public works projects combined with financial reforms and regulations . All were intended to protect against future economic depressions. Initially neutral during World War II , the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December after the Empire of Japan 's attack on Pearl Harbor . The U.S. developed

9688-778: The Organization of American States and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement . In South America, Colombia is traditionally considered to be the closest ally of the United States. The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia , the Marshall Islands , and Palau through the Compact of Free Association . It has increasingly conducted strategic cooperation with India , but its ties with China have steadily deteriorated. Since 2014,

9861-648: The Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore's law , rechargeable lithium-ion batteries , the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in 1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade online in 1998. In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait . The September 11 attacks on

10034-468: The Shared intentionality approach, the mother shares the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive problem with the child. By sharing this stimulus, the mother provides a template for developing the young organism's nervous system. Recent findings in research on child cognitive development and advances in inter-brain neuroscience experiments have made the above proposition plausible. Based on them,

10207-591: The Spanish–American War . (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S. territories.) American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the Second Samoan Civil War . The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917. The United States entered World War I alongside

10380-685: The United States ( U.S. ) or America , is a country primarily located in North America . It is a federal union of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the states of Alaska to the northwest and the archipelagic Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean . The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands . The country has

10553-700: The cotton gin made the institution increasingly profitable for Southern elites . This sectional conflict regarding slavery culminated in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Eleven slave states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America , while the other states remained in the Union . War broke out in April 1861 after the Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter . After

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10726-523: The end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. emerged as the world's sole superpower , wielding significant geopolitical influence globally . The U.S. national government is a presidential constitutional federal republic and liberal democracy with three separate branches : legislative , executive , and judicial . It has a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives ,

10899-537: The fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union , which marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole superpower . The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history , a dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates , and advances in technology . Throughout this decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web , the evolution of

11072-400: The global economy in 2023. It possesses by far the largest amount of wealth of any country and has the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD countries. The U.S. ranks among the world's highest in economic competitiveness , productivity , innovation , human rights , and higher education . Its hard power and cultural influence have a global reach. The U.S. is

11245-508: The philosophy of mind —and within medicine , especially by physicians seeking to understand how to cure madness. In Britain , these models were studied in the academy by scholars such as James Sully at University College London , and they were even used by politicians when considering the national Elementary Education Act 1870 ( 33 & 34 Vict. c. 75). As psychology emerged as a burgeoning field of study in Europe , whilst also gaining

11418-416: The psychological construct of Shared intentionality , highlighting its contribution to cognitive development from birth. This primary interaction provides unaware collaboration in mother-child dyads for environmental learning. Later, Igor Val Danilov developed this notion, expanding it to the intrauterine period and clarifying the neurophysiological processes underlying Shared intentionality . According to

11591-706: The shared intentionality hypothesis introduced the notion of pre-perceptual communication in the mother-fetus communication model due to nonlocal neuronal coupling. This nonlocal coupling model refers to communication between two organisms through the copying of the adequate ecological dynamics by biological systems indwelling one environmental context, where a naive actor (Fetus) replicates information from an experienced actor (Mother) due to intrinsic processes of these dynamic systems ( embodied information ) but without interacting through sensory signals. The Mother's heartbeats (a low-frequency oscillator) modulate relevant local neuronal networks in specific subsystems of both her and

11764-465: The 15th century, where it meant " thinking and awareness". The term comes from the Latin noun cognitio ('examination', 'learning', or 'knowledge'), derived from the verb cognosco , a compound of con ('with') and gnōscō ('know'). The latter half, gnōscō , itself is a cognate of a Greek verb, gi(g)nósko ( γι(γ)νώσκω , 'I know,' or 'perceive'). Despite

11937-813: The 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord , igniting the American Revolutionary War . At the Second Continental Congress , the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army , and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence . Two days after passing the Lee Resolution to create an independent nation the Declaration

12110-520: The 2010s, political polarization in the country increased between liberal and conservative factions. This polarization was capitalized upon in the January 2021 Capitol attack , when a mob of insurrectionists entered the U.S. Capitol and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in an attempted self-coup d'état . The United States is the world's third-largest country by total area behind Russia and Canada. The 48 contiguous states and

12283-596: The American West have an alpine climate . The climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California , and oceanic in coastal Oregon , Washington , and southern Alaska . Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar . Hawaii , the southern tip of Florida and U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific are tropical . States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of

12456-475: The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The term "United States" and the initialism "U.S.", used as nouns or as adjectives in English, are common short names for the country. The initialism "USA", a noun, is also common. "United States" and "U.S." are the established terms throughout the U.S. federal government , with prescribed rules. In English, the term "America" rarely refers to topics unrelated to

12629-573: The District of Columbia occupy a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km ). The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif separate the East Coast from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest . The Mississippi River System ,

12802-573: The Elder concluded that major military resources needed to be devoted to North America to win the war against France. For the first time, the continent became one of the main theaters of what could be termed a " world war ". The British colonies' position as an integral part of the British Empire became more apparent during the war, with British military and civilian officials becoming a more significant presence in American life. The war increased

12975-683: The January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation , many freed slaves joined the Union army . The war began to turn in the Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg , and the Confederacy surrendered in 1865 after the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House . The Reconstruction era followed the war. After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln , Reconstruction Amendments were passed to protect

13148-611: The Rocky Mountains, the Yellowstone Caldera , is the continent's largest volcanic feature. In 2021, the United States had 8% of global permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of cropland. With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. East of the 100th meridian , the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The western Great Plains are semi-arid . Many mountainous areas of

13321-647: The U.S. has become a key ally of Ukraine ; it has also provided the country with significant military equipment and other support in response to Russia's 2022 invasion . The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The Department of Defense , which is headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of

13494-661: The U.S. territories." Despite disparate systems of confinement, four main institutions dominate: federal prisons , state prisons , local jails, and juvenile correctional facilities . Federal prisons are run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and hold people who have been convicted of federal crimes, including pretrial detainees. State prisons, run by the official department of correction of each state, hold sentenced people serving prison time (usually longer than one year) for felony offenses. Local jails are county or municipal facilities that incarcerate defendants prior to trial; they also hold those serving short sentences (typically under

13667-464: The United States and the peaceful transfer of power , respectively. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States. Lingering issues with Britain remained , leading to the War of 1812 , which was fought to a draw. Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819. In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward , many with

13840-714: The United States entered the Cold War, where geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union led the two countries to dominate world affairs . The U.S. utilized the policy of containment to limit the USSR's sphere of influence, and prevailed in the Space Race , which culminated with the first crewed Moon landing in 1969. Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth , urbanization , and population growth following World War II . The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming

14013-666: The United States has operated as a de facto two-party system , though the parties in that system have been different at different times. The two main national parties are presently the Democratic and the Republican . The former is perceived as relatively liberal in its political platform while the latter is perceived as relatively conservative . In the American federal system , sovereign powers are shared between two levels of elected government: national and state. People in

14186-593: The United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda led to the war on terror , and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq . The cultural impact of the attacks was profound and long-lasting. The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession , the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression. Coming to a head in

14359-597: The United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known public usage is an anonymous essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper, The Virginia Gazette , on April 6, 1776. By June 1776, the "United States of America" appeared in the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence . The Second Continental Congress adopted

14532-593: The United States, despite the usage of "the Americas " as the totality of North and South America. "The States" is an established colloquial shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad; "stateside" is the corresponding adjective or adverb. The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge about 12,000 years ago; the Clovis culture , which appeared around 11,000 BC,

14705-624: The United States, except Iran , North Korea , and Bhutan . Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close unofficial relations. The United States regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment to deter potential Chinese aggression. Its geopolitical attention also turned to the Indo-Pacific when the United States joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan. The United States has

14878-509: The United States. The American prison system is largely heterogenous, with thousands of relatively independent systems operating across federal, state, local, and tribal levels. In 2023, "these systems [held] almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 181 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons , civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in

15051-414: The action of alerting the burglar. It is usually held that the chain or hierarchy of actions composed this way has a fundamental level at which it stops. The action at this fundamental level is called a basic action : it is not done by doing something else. For this reason, basic actions are simple while non-basic actions are complex. It is often assumed that bodily movements are basic actions , like

15224-402: The agent performed the action. The most straightforward answer to this question cites the agent's desire. For example, John went to the fridge because he had a desire for ice cream. The agent's beliefs are another relevant feature for action explanation. So the desire to have ice cream does not explain that John went to the fridge unless it is paired with John's belief that there is ice cream in

15397-419: The agent's mental states and the resulting behavior are essential to actions. According to Davidson, actions are bodily movements that are caused by intentions in the right way. Volitionalist theories include the notion of volitions in their account of actions. Volitions are understood as forms of summoning of means within one's power and are different from merely intending to do something later. Non-causalists, on

15570-463: The agent's role in the production of action. This role could include reflecting on what to do, choosing an alternative and then carrying it out. Another objection is that mere intentions seem to be insufficient to cause actions, that other additional elements, namely volitions or tryings, are necessary. For example, as John Searle has pointed out, there seems to be a causal gap between intending to do something and actually doing it, which needs an act of

15743-420: The beginning of cognition is memory storage about the relevant ecological dynamics by the naive nervous system (i.e., memorizing the ecological condition of relevant sensory stimulus) at the molecular level – an engram . Evidence derived using optical imaging , molecular-genetic and optogenetic techniques in conjunction with appropriate behavioural analyses continues to offer support for the idea that changing

15916-451: The beginning of the sequence, called the primacy effect , and information at the end of the sequence, called the recency effect . Consequently, information given in the middle of the sequence is typically forgotten, or not recalled as easily. This study predicts that the recency effect is stronger than the primacy effect, because the information that is most recently learned is still in working memory when asked to be recalled. Information that

16089-399: The belief that mental properties are reducible to physical properties are known as token-identity reductionists. Some have disagreed with the conclusion that this reduction means the mental explanations are causally impotent while still maintaining that the reduction is possible. For example, Dretske has put forward the viewpoint of reasons as structuring causes. This viewpoint maintains that

16262-431: The bodily movement corresponding to it. Volitions can also be used to explain how the agent knows about her own action. This knowledge about what one is doing or trying to do is available directly through introspection: the agent does not need to observe her behavior through sensory perception to arrive at this knowledge, unlike an external observer. The experience of agency involved in volitions can be distinguished from

16435-417: The bodily movements while they are occurring. Non-causalist or anti-causalist theories deny that intentions or similar states cause actions. They thereby oppose causalist theories like Davidson's account or standard forms of volitionalism. They usually agree that intentions are essential to actions. This brings with it the difficulty of accounting for the relation between intentions and actions in

16608-447: The burglar then alerting the burglar is part of the agent's actions. In an example from Anscombe 's manuscript Intention , pumping water can also be an instance of poisoning the inhabitants. One difficulty with theories of action that try to characterize actions in terms of causal relations between mental states and bodily movements, so-called causalist theories , is what has been referred to as wayward causal chains. A causal chain

16781-435: The concept of actions mostly in regard to physical actions, which are usually understood in terms of bodily movements. It is not uncommon among philosophers to understand bodily movements as the only form of action. Some volitionists, on the other hand, claim that all actions are mental because they consist in volitions. But this position involves various problems, as explained in the corresponding section above. However, there

16954-409: The construction of human thought or mental processes. Jean Piaget was one of the most important and influential people in the field of developmental psychology . He believed that humans are unique in comparison to animals because we have the capacity to do "abstract symbolic reasoning". His work can be compared to Lev Vygotsky , Sigmund Freud , and Erik Erikson who were also great contributors in

17127-405: The construction of human thought or mental processes. Research shows the intentional engagement of fetuses with the environment, demonstrating cognitive achievements. However, organisms with simple reflexes cannot cognize the environment alone because the environment is the cacophony of stimuli (electromagnetic waves, chemical interactions, and pressure fluctuations). Their sensation is too limited by

17300-406: The content of the thought. So the thought is no longer needed since the intention already "thinks" the content. This leads to a vicious regress since another intention would be necessary to characterize the first intention as an action. An objection not just to mental actions but to the distinction between physical and mental actions arises from the difficulty of finding strict criteria to distinguish

17473-457: The contiguous United States are in the State of California, about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali is the highest peak in the country and continent. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands , and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in

17646-556: The country's GDP. The U.S. has 42% of the world's nuclear weapons —the second-largest share after Russia. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces . The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries. State defense forces (SDFs) are military units that operate under

17819-469: The country's territory would expand with the admission of new states , rather than the expansion of existing states. The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together ensured a system of checks and balances . George Washington

17992-713: The development of self-governance, and the First Great Awakening , a series of Christian revivals , fueled colonial interest in religious liberty . For a century, the American colonists had been providing their own troops and materiel in conflicts with indigenous peoples allied with Britain's colonial rivals , especially France, and the Americans had begun to develop a sense of self-defense and self-reliance separate from Britain. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) took on new significance for all North American colonists after Parliament under William Pitt

18165-707: The disciplines of cognitive science . Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta , meaning "beyond", or "on top of". Metacognition can take many forms, such as reflecting on one's ways of thinking, and knowing when and how oneself and others use particular strategies for problem-solving . There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) cognitive conceptions and (2) cognitive regulation system. Research has shown that both components of metacognition play key roles in metaconceptual knowledge and learning. Metamemory , defined as knowing about memory and mnemonic strategies,

18338-414: The dispossession of native inhabitants . As more states were admitted , a North–South division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate States of America , which fought states remaining in the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War . With the victory and preservation of the United States, slavery was abolished nationally . By 1900, the country had established itself as a great power ,

18511-497: The distractor task, they are asked to recall the trigram from before the distractor task. In theory, the longer the distractor task, the harder it will be for participants to correctly recall the trigram. This experiment focuses on human short-term memory . During the memory span experiment , each subject is presented with a sequence of stimuli of the same kind; words depicting objects, numbers, letters that sound similar, and letters that sound dissimilar. After being presented with

18684-401: The effects of herbal and dietary supplements on cognition in menopause show that soy and Ginkgo biloba supplementation could improve women's cognition. Exposing individuals with cognitive impairment (i.e. dementia ) to daily activities designed to stimulate thinking and memory in a social setting, seems to improve cognition. Although study materials are small, and larger studies need to confirm

18857-580: The environment for labor unions to begin to flourish . This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era , which was characterized by significant reforms. Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy ; the islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico , the Philippines , and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter's defeat in

19030-405: The events of imagining, judging or remembering are not mental actions strictly speaking but they can be the products of mental actions. Mental actions, in the strict sense, are prefatory or catalytic : they consist in preparing the mind for these contents to arise. They foster hospitable conditions but cannot ensure that the intended contents will appear. Strawson uses the analogy of jumping off

19203-407: The experience of freedom, which involves the additional aspect of having various alternative routes of action to choose from. But volition is possible even if there are no additional alternatives. Volitionalists usually hold that there is a causal relation between volitions and bodily movements. Critics have pointed out that this position threatens to alienate us from our bodies since it introduces

19376-541: The federal government often applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation . The Trail of Tears (1830–1850) was a U.S. government policy that forcibly removed and displaced most Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to lands far to the west. These and earlier organized displacements prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi. The Republic of Texas

19549-487: The field of developmental psychology. Piaget is known for studying the cognitive development in children, having studied his own three children and their intellectual development, from which he would come to a theory of cognitive development that describes the developmental stages of childhood. Studies on cognitive development have also been conducted in children beginning from the embryonal period to understand when cognition appears and what environmental attributes stimulate

19722-438: The fields of linguistics , musicology , anesthesia , neuroscience , psychiatry , psychology , education , philosophy , anthropology , biology , systemics , logic , and computer science . These and other approaches to the analysis of cognition (such as embodied cognition ) are synthesized in the developing field of cognitive science , a progressively autonomous academic discipline . The word cognition dates back to

19895-606: The first nuclear weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ending the war. The United States was one of the " Four Policemen " who met to plan the post-war world , alongside the United Kingdom , Soviet Union , and China . The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic power and international political influence . After World War II,

20068-665: The first settlement of the Thirteen Colonies in Virginia in 1607. Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and political representation sparked the American Revolution , with the Second Continental Congress formally declaring independence on July 4, 1776. Following its victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War , the country continued to expand westward across North America , resulting in

20241-399: The form of mental causation bridging the gap between mental intention and bodily movement. Volitionalism as a theory is characterized by three core theses: (1) that every bodily action is accompanied by a trying, (2) that tryings can occur without producing bodily movements and (3) that in the case of successful tryings, the trying is the cause of the bodily movement. The central idea of

20414-500: The fridge would be considered irrational if his reason for this is bad, e.g. because his belief that there is ice cream in the fridge is merely based on wishful thinking . The problem of responsibility is closely related to the philosophy of actions since we usually hold people responsible for what they do. But in one sense the problem of responsibility is wider since we can be responsible not just for doing something but for failing to do something, so-called omissions . For example,

20587-466: The fridge. The desire together with the belief is often referred to as the reason for the action. Causalist theories of action usually hold that this reason explains the action because it causes the action. Behavior that does not have a reason is not an action since it is not intentional. Every action has a reason but not every action has a good reason. Only actions with good reasons are considered rational . For example, John's action of going to

20760-473: The function and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in which he constructed over 2,000 syllables made out of nonexistent words (for instance, 'EAS'). He then examined his own personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose non-words as opposed to real words to control for the influence of pre-existing experience on what the words might symbolize, thus enabling easier recollection of them. Ebbinghaus observed and hypothesized

20933-463: The integration of Army National Guard units and personnel into the U.S. Army and (since 1947) the U.S. Air Force. There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to national level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff departments in their municipal or county jurisdictions. The state police departments have authority in their respective state , and federal agencies such as

21106-446: The legs is different from intending to do it later or merely wishing to do it: only in the former case does the patient learn that the treatment was unsuccessful. There is a sense in which tryings either take place or not, but cannot fail, unlike actions, whose success is uncertain. This line of thought has led some philosophers to suggest that the trying itself is an action: a special type of action called basic action . But this claim

21279-505: The letter when it was presented in a word than when it was presented in isolation. This experiment focuses on human speech and language. In the Brown–Peterson cohomology experiment , participants are briefly presented with a trigram and in one particular version of the experiment, they are then given a distractor task, asking them to identify whether a sequence of words is in fact words, or non-words (due to being misspelled, etc.). After

21452-460: The mental states the agent invokes as justifying his action are physical states that cause the action. Problems have been raised for this view because the mental states seem to be reduced to mere physical causes. Their mental properties don't seem to be doing any work. If the reasons an agent cites as justifying his action, however, are not the cause of the action, they must explain the action in some other way or be causally impotent. Those who hold

21625-482: The military draft (leading to the end of conscription in 1973) and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam (with the U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975). A societal shift in the roles of women was significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation during the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older were employed. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw

21798-402: The mind. The development of Cognitive psychology arose as psychology from different theories, and so began exploring these dynamics concerning mind and environment, starting a movement from these prior dualist paradigms that prioritized cognition as systematic computation or exclusively behavior. For years, sociologists and psychologists have conducted studies on cognitive development , i.e.

21971-612: The most attractive to the population are the most vulnerable. The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species : about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, 295 amphibians , and around 91,000 insect species. There are 63 national parks , and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas , managed by

22144-408: The most objective manner possible in order for Wundt to find the information scientific. Though Wundt's contributions are by no means minimal, modern psychologists find his methods to be too subjective and choose to rely on more objective procedures of experimentation to make conclusions about the human cognitive process. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined

22317-662: The most violent, the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the early 1870s, just as additional western territories and states were created. During the colonial period, slavery had been legal in the American colonies , though the practice began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution. States in the North enacted abolition laws , though support for slavery strengthened in Southern states , as inventions such as

22490-407: The movement of the finger flipping the switch is part of the action as well as the electrons moving through the wire and the light bulb turning on. Some consequences are included in the action even though the agent did not intend them to happen. It is sufficient that what the agent does "can be described under an aspect that makes it intentional". So, for example, if flipping the light switch alerts

22663-508: The nervous system of the fetus due to the effect of the interference of the low-frequency oscillator (Mother heartbeats) and already exhibited gamma activity in these neuronal networks (interference in physics is the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave). Therefore, the subliminal perception in a fetus emerges due to Shared intentionality with the mother that stimulates cognition in this organism even before birth. Another crucial question in understanding

22836-455: The noise to solve the cue problem–the relevant stimulus cannot overcome the noise magnitude if it passes through the senses (see the binding problem ). Fetuses need external help to stimulate their nervous system in choosing the relevant sensory stimulus for grasping the perception of objects. The Shared intentionality approach proposes a plausible explanation of perception development in this earlier stage. Initially, Michael Tomasello introduced

23009-451: The notion of trying is found in the second thesis. It involves the claim that some of our tryings lead to successful actions while others arise without resulting in an action. But even in an unsuccessful case there is still something: it is different from not trying at all. For example, a paralyzed person, after having received a new treatment, may test if the treatment was successful by trying to move her legs. But trying and failing to move

23182-783: The oldest paradigms is the leveling and sharpening of stories as they are repeated from memory studied by Bartlett . The semantic differential used factor analysis to determine the main meanings of words, finding that the ethical value of words is the first factor. More controlled experiments examine the categorical relationships of words in free recall . The hierarchical structure of words has been explicitly mapped in George Miller 's WordNet . More dynamic models of semantic networks have been created and tested with computational systems such as neural networks , latent semantic analysis (LSA), Bayesian analysis , and multidimensional factor analysis. The meanings of words are studied by all

23355-407: The one hand, on the agent's belief that this bodily movement would turn on the light and, on the other hand, on the desire to have light. Because of its reliance on psychological states and causal relations, this position is considered to be a Humean theory of action . According to Davidson, it is not just the bodily behavior that counts as the action but also the consequences that follow from it. So

23528-405: The other hand, deny that intentions or similar states cause actions. The most well-known account of action, sometimes simply referred to as the standard account , is due to Davidson, who holds that actions are bodily movements that are caused by intentions. Davidson explains the intentions themselves in terms of beliefs and desires . For example, the action of flipping a light switch rests, on

23701-408: The policy of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation . An explosion of technological advancement accompanied by the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor led to rapid economic expansion during the late 19th and early 20th centuries , allowing the United States to outpace the economies of England, France, and Germany combined. This fostered the amassing of power by

23874-478: The pressing of one's finger against the trigger, while the consequences of these movements, like the firing of the gun, are non-basic actions . But it seems that bodily movements are themselves constituted by other events (muscle contractions) which are themselves constituted by other events (chemical processes). However, it appears that these more basic events are not actions since they are not under our direct volitional control. One way to solve these complications

24047-574: The primary colonial grievances was a denial of their rights as Englishmen , particularly the right to representation in the British government that taxed them . To demonstrate their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed the Continental Association , a colonial boycott of British goods that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in

24220-592: The question of whether two actions are identical or of how actions should be counted. For example, on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth both pulled the trigger of his gun, fired a shot and killed Abraham Lincoln . On a fine-grained theory of individuation , the pulling, the firing and the killing are three distinct actions. In its most extreme form, there is one distinct action for every action type. So, for example, since "singing" and "singing loudly" are two different action types, someone who sings loudly performs at least these two distinct actions. This kind of view has

24393-740: The relation, intentional properties that are created in the process of justifying one's actions are causally potent in that the process is an instance of action. When considering that actions are causally potent, Dretske claims that the process of justifying one's actions is necessarily part of the causal system. Others have objected to the belief that mental states can cause physical action without asserting that mental properties can be reduced to physical properties. Such individuals suggest that mental states are epiphenomenal, in that they have no impact on physical states, but are nonetheless distinct entities (see epiphenomenalism ). United States The United States of America ( USA ), commonly known as

24566-482: The results, the effect of social cognitive stimulation seems to be larger than the effects of some drug treatments. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been shown to improve cognition in individuals without dementia 1 month after treatment session compared to before treatment. The effect was not significantly larger compared to placebo. Computerized cognitive training, utilizing a computer based training regime for different cognitive functions has been examined in

24739-515: The rights of African Americans . National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads , spurred growth in the American frontier . From 1865 through 1917 an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4 million from Europe. Most came through the port of New York City , and New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish , Irish , and Italian populations, while many Germans and Central Europeans moved to

24912-614: The rocky Great Basin and Chihuahua , Sonoran , and Mojave deserts. In the northwest corner of Arizona , carved by the Colorado River over millions of years, is the Grand Canyon , a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination known for its overwhelming visual size and intricate, colorful landscape. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast . The lowest and highest points in

25085-424: The rope slips through his hand and thus leads to the other climber's death. Davidson addresses this issue by excluding cases of wayward causation from his account since they are not examples of intentional behavior in the strict sense. So bodily behavior only constitutes an action if it was caused by intentions in the right way . One important objection to Davidson's theory of actions is that it does not account for

25258-411: The same for letters that sound dissimilar and short words. The memory span is projected to be shorter with letters that sound similar and with longer words. In one version of the visual search experiment , a participant is presented with a window that displays circles and squares scattered across it. The participant is to identify whether there is a green circle on the window. In the featured search,

25431-403: The sense of being goal-oriented. But the representation of a goal in the agent's mind may act as an efficient cause at the same time. Because of these problems, most of the arguments for non-causalism are negative: they constitute objections pointing out why causalist theories are unfeasible. Important among them are arguments from wayward causation: that behavior only constitutes an action if it

25604-573: The six service branches, which are made up of the U.S. Army , Marine Corps , Navy , Air Force , and Space Force . The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime. The United States spent $ 916 billion on its military in 2023, which is by far the largest amount of any country , making up 37% of global military spending and accounting for 3.4% of

25777-545: The sole authority of a state government. SDFs are authorized by state and federal law but are under the command of the state's governor . They are distinct from the state's National Guard units in that they cannot become federalized entities. A state's National Guard personnel, however, may be federalized under the National Defense Act Amendments of 1933 , which created the Guard and provides for

25950-543: The states are also represented by local elected governments , which are administrative divisions of the states. States are subdivided into counties or county equivalents , and further divided into municipalities . The District of Columbia is a federal district containing the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. . The federal district is an administrative division of the federal government. Federally recognized tribes govern 326 Indian reservations . The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, and it has

26123-407: The stimuli, the subject is asked to recall the sequence of stimuli that they were given in the exact order in which it was given. In one particular version of the experiment, if the subject recalled a list correctly, the list length was increased by one for that type of material, and vice versa if it was recalled incorrectly. The theory is that people have a memory span of about seven items for numbers,

26296-442: The strength of connections between neurons is one of the major mechanisms by which engrams are stored in the brain. Two (or more) possible mechanisms of cognition can involve both quantum effects and synchronization of brain structures due to electromagnetic interference. The Serial-position effect is meant to test a theory of memory that states that when information is given in a serial manner, we tend to remember information at

26469-510: The structure and responsibilities of the national federal government and its relationship with the individual states. The U.S. Constitution is the world's oldest national constitution still in effect (from March 4, 1789). Composed of three branches, all headquartered in Washington, D.C., the federal government is the national government of the United States. It is regulated by a strong system of checks and balances . The three-branch system

26642-409: The study of cognition. James' most significant contribution to the study and theory of cognition was his textbook Principles of Psychology which preliminarily examines aspects of cognition such as perception, memory, reasoning, and attention. René Descartes (1596–1650) was a seventeenth-century philosopher who came up with the phrase "Cogito, ergo sum", which means "I think, therefore I am." He took

26815-414: The subject is presented with several trial windows that have blue squares or circles and one green circle or no green circle in it at all. In the conjunctive search, the subject is presented with trial windows that have blue circles or green squares and a present or absent green circle whose presence the participant is asked to identify. What is expected is that in the feature searches, reaction time, that

26988-535: The target and the distractors. In conjunctive searches where the target is absent, reaction time increases because the subject has to look at each shape to determine whether it is the target or not because some of the distractors if not all of them, are the same color as the target stimuli. Conjunctive searches where the target is present take less time because if the target is found, the search between each shape stops. The semantic network of knowledge representation systems have been studied in various paradigms. One of

27161-576: The two. Deliberations and decisions are relevant for actions since they frequently precede the action. It is often the case that several courses of action are open to the agent. In such cases, deliberation performs the function of evaluating the different options by weighing the reasons for and against them. Deciding then is the process of picking one of these alternatives and forming an intention to perform it, thereby leading toward an action. Explanations can be characterized as answers to why-questions. Explanations of actions are concerned with why

27334-515: The unintuitive consequence that even the most simple exercises of agency result in a vast number of actions. Theories of coarse-grained individuation of actions, on the other hand, hold that events that constitute each other or cause each other are to be counted as one action. On this view, the action of pulling the trigger is identical to the action of firing the gun and to the action of killing Lincoln. So in doing all of these things, Booth performed only one action. One intuition in favor of this view

27507-521: The will to be overcome. Volitionalists aim to overcome these shortcomings of Davidson's account by including the notion of volition or trying in their theory of actions. Volitions and tryings are forms of affirming something, like intentions . They can be distinguished from intentions because they are directed at executing a course of action in the here and now, in contrast to intentions, which involve future-directed plans to do something later. Some authors also distinguish volitions , as acts of

27680-425: The will, from tryings , as the summoning of means within one's power. But it has been argued that they can be treated as a unified notion since there is no important difference between the two for the theory of action because they play the same explanatory role. This role includes both the experiential level, involving the trying of something instead of merely intending to do so later, and the metaphysical level, in

27853-496: The word cognitive itself dating back to the 15th century, attention to cognitive processes came about more than eighteen centuries earlier, beginning with Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and his interest in the inner workings of the mind and how they affect the human experience. Aristotle focused on cognitive areas pertaining to memory, perception, and mental imagery. He placed great importance on ensuring that his studies were based on empirical evidence, that is, scientific information that

28026-582: The world's fourth-longest river system , runs predominantly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat and fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains , west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado . Farther west are

28199-583: The world's second-largest diplomatic corps as of 2024 . It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council , and home to the United Nations headquarters . The United States is a member of the G7 , G20 , and OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all countries host formal diplomatic missions with

28372-461: The world's third-largest land area , largest exclusive economic zone , and third-largest population , exceeding 334 million. Its three largest metropolitan areas are New York , Los Angeles , and Chicago , and its three most populous states are California , Texas , and Florida . Paleo-Indians migrated across the Bering land bridge more than 12,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations and societies . British colonization led to

28545-444: The world's oldest surviving federation, and its presidential system of national government has been adopted, in whole or in part, by many newly independent states worldwide following their decolonization . It is a liberal representative democracy "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law ". The Constitution of the United States serves as the country's supreme legal document , also establishing

28718-553: The world's tornadoes occur in the country , mainly in Tornado Alley . Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country. Extreme weather became more frequent in the U.S. in the 21st century, with three times the number of reported heat waves as in the 1960s. In the American Southwest , droughts became more persistent and more severe. The regions considered as

28891-410: The world. Alva Noë states: 'We move our eyes, head and body in taking in what is around us... [we]: crane our necks, peer, squint, reach for our glasses or draw near to get a better look...'...'Perception is a mode of activity on the part of the whole animal...It cannot be represented in terms of merely passive, and internal, processes...' Some philosophers (e.g. Donald Davidson ) have argued that

29064-575: Was annexed in 1845, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest . Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California, Nevada, Utah, and much of present-day Colorado and the American Southwest . The California gold rush of 1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even more confrontations with Native populations. One of

29237-545: Was a movement known as cognitivism in the 1950s, emerging after the Behaviorist movement viewed cognition as a form of behavior. Cognitivism approached cognition as a form of computation, viewing the mind as a machine and consciousness as an executive function. However; post cognitivism began to emerge in the 1990s as the development of cognitive science presented theories that highlighted the necessity of cognitive action as embodied, extended, and producing dynamic processes in

29410-759: Was adopted on July 4, 1776. The political values of the American Revolution included liberty , inalienable individual rights ; and the sovereignty of the people ; supporting republicanism and rejecting monarchy , aristocracy , and all hereditary political power; civic virtue ; and vilification of political corruption . The Founding Fathers of the United States , who included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams , Benjamin Franklin , Alexander Hamilton , John Jay , James Madison , Thomas Paine , and many others, were inspired by Greco-Roman , Renaissance , and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas. The Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781 and established

29583-418: Was an influential American pioneer in the realm of psychology. Her work also focused on human memory capacity. A common theory, called the recency effect , can be attributed to the studies that she conducted. The recency effect, also discussed in the subsequent experiment section, is the tendency for individuals to be able to accurately recollect the final items presented in a sequence of stimuli. Calkin's theory

29756-502: Was caused by an intention in the right way, not in any way. This critique focuses on difficulties causalists have faced in explicitly formulating how to distinguish between proper and wayward causation. An important challenge to non-causalism is due to Davidson. As he points out, we usually have many different reasons for performing the same action. But when we perform it, we often perform it for one reason but not for another. For example, one reason for Abdul to go for cancer treatment

29929-583: Was elected the country's first president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government. His resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the supremacy of civil authority in

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