The Agentive Modalities

A number of philosophical projects require a proper understanding of the modal aspects of agency, or of what I call ‘the agentive modalities.’ I propose a general account of the agentive modalities, one which takes as its primitive the decision‐theoretic notion of an option. I relate this account to the standard semantics for ‘can’ and to the viability of some positions in the free will debates.     

Projection across Sensory Modalities

Question is raised as to whether we are not setting our sights too high in trying to understand personality. Difficulty of understanding the “whole” personality is related to the fact that half of what is determining it at any given time is situationally defined and the other half is tied up with almost invisible inner processes. Homage is paid to Henry Murray for having put us on the right path.     

Bisimulation for Conditional Modalities

We give a definition of bisimulation for conditional modalities interpreted on selection functions and prove the correspondence between bisimilarity and modal equivalence, generalizing the Hennessy–Milner Theorem to a wide class of conditional operators. We further investigate the operators and semantics to which these results apply. First, we show how to derive a solid notion of bisimulation for conditional belief, behaving as desired both on plausibility models and on evidence models. These novel definitions of bisimulations are exploited in a series of undefinability results. Second, we treat relativized common knowledge, underlining how the same results still hold for a different modality in a different semantics. Third, we show the flexibility of the approach by generalizing it to multi-agent systems, encompassing the case of multi-agent plausibility models.     

Kant's Modalities of Judgment

Abstract: This paper proposes a way to understand Kant's modalities of judgment—problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic—in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference. Other interpretations have tended to understand these modalities of judgment in terms of one or other conventional notion of modality. For example, Mattey (1986) argues that we should take them to be connected to notions of epistemic or doxastic modality. I shall argue that this is wrong, and that these kinds of interpretation of the modality of judgments cannot be reconciled with a key claim made by Kant, namely, that the modality of a judgment does not contribute to its content, and has nothing to do with the matter that is judged. I offer an alternative interpretation based upon Kant's explicating these modalities in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference, whereby the modality of a judgment is determined by the role a judgment plays in a given course of reasoning. If I am right, then Kant in fact presents an intriguing thesis pertaining to the inferential status and potential of all our judgments.     

Non-Adjunctive Inference and Classical Modalities

The article focuses on representing different forms of non-adjunctive inference as sub-Kripkean systems of classical modal logic, where the inference from □A and □B to □A∧B fails. In particular we prove a completeness result showing that the modal system that Schotch and Jennings derive from a form of non-adjunctive inference in (Schotch and Jennings, 1980) is a classical system strictly stronger than EMN and weaker than K (following the notation for classical modalities presented in Chellas, 1980). The unified semantical characterization in terms of neighborhoods permits comparisons between different forms of non-adjunctive inference. For example, we show that the non-adjunctive logic proposed in (Schotch and Jennings, 1980) is not adequate in general for representing the logic of high probability operators. An alternative interpretation of the forcing relation of Schotch and Jennings is derived from the proposed unified semantics and utilized in order to propose a more fine-grained measure of epistemic coherence than the one presented in (Schotch and Jennings, 1980). Finally we propose a syntactic translation of the purely implicative part of Jaśkowski's system D₂ into a classical system preserving all the theorems (and non-theorems) explicilty mentioned in (Jaśkowski, 1969). The translation method can be used in order to develop epistemic semantics for a larger class of non-adjunctive (discursive) logics than the ones historically investigated by Jaśkowski.     

A Comparison of Modalities in Modeling

Organizational display rules (e.g., “service with a smile”) have had mixed relationships with employee emotional labor—either in the form of “bad faith” surface acting (suppressing or faking expressions) or “good faith” deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational perspective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than 500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find that customer orientation directly increases “good faith” acting while it moderates the relationship of display rules with “bad faith” acting.     

Grafting Modalities onto Substructural Implication Systems

We investigate the semantics of the logical systems obtained by introducing the modalities and into the family of substructural implication logics (including relevant, linear and intuitionistic implication). Then, in the spirit of the LDS (Labelled Deductive Systems) methodology, we "import" this semantics into the classical proof system KE. This leads to the formulation of a uniform labelled refutation system for the new logics which is a natural extension of a system for substructural implication developed by the first two authors in a previous paper.     

On Provability Logics with Linearly Ordered Modalities

We introduce the logics GLP _Λ, a generalization of Japaridze’s polymodal provability logic GLP _ω where Λ is any linearly ordered set representing a hierarchy of provability operators of increasing strength. We shall provide a reduction of these logics to GLP _ω yielding among other things a finitary proof of the normal form theorem for the variable-free fragment of GLP _Λ and the decidability of GLP _Λ for recursive orderings Λ. Further, we give a restricted axiomatization of the variable-free fragment of GLP _Λ.     

Symmetric Contingency Logic with Unlimitedly Many Modalities

Journal of Philosophical Logic - The completeness of the axiomatization of contingency logic over symmetric frames has been thought of as a nontrivial job, the unimodal case of which cannot be...     

具身认知观的身体样态分析

面对身体与心灵的二元论困境,具身认知观开始以一种新的眼光去打量身体,并致力于将身体改造为一种具有超越能力的新的身体。但是,当根据一条纵向线索将具身认知观划分为温和的具身认知观和激进的具身认知观之后,上述新的身体在纵向上就呈现为两种身体样态。而且,通过对这两种身体样态的批判性反思,最终可以发现,具身认知观当前所实现出来的身体,与其说超越了二元论,不如说在二元论的思考框架下最大程度地强化了传统身体。     

Modalities of Generalization Through Single Case Studies

The value of case studies for theory building is still doubted in psychology. The paper argues for the importance of case studies and the possibility of generalizing from these for a specific sociocultural understanding of human development. The paper first clarifies the notion of abduction within case studies, drawing on pragmatists James and Peirce and expanding it with the work of Lewin, and argues that it is the core mechanism that allows generalization from case studies. The second section presents the possibility of generalizing from individual single case studies, for which not only the subjective perspective, but also the dynamics by which the social and cultural environment guide and enable the person’s development, have to be accounted for. The third section elaborates the question of institutional case studies, where the challenge is to account both for institutional dynamics, and for persons’ trajectories within; this is exemplified with an ongoing study on the process of obtaining citizenship in Switzerland. The paper briefly concludes by highlighting two possible implications of the paper, one concerning the process of theoretical reasoning, the other, the fact that sociocultural psychology could itself be seen as an institution in-the-making.     

Interaction Across Modalities: I. Successive Stimulation

The aim of the study was to determine the structure and dimensionality of social-political attitudes. Also investigated was the hypothesis that the liberal vs. conservative attitude dimension was synonymous with the value dimension rule free vs. authoritarian. An attitude measure consisting of simply stated social-political issues and a personal values inventory were administered to a varied sample of 300 men and women. Analysis of the attitude items disclosed three factors—Liberal vs. Conservative, Freedom of Sex Expression, and Equalitarianism—whose intercorrelations indicated a common dimension of conservatism. The cross-correlations in both the male and female samples support the hypothesis that conservative attitudes and authoritarian values were essentially identical constructs. Groups ranked by conservativism and groups ranked as to age increased significantly in mean conservativism score as anticipated.     

Art Media and the Sense Modalities: Tactile Pictures

It is widely assumed that the art media can be individuated with reference to the sense modalities. Different art media are perceived by means of different sense modalities, and this tells us what properties of each medium are aesthetically relevant. The case of pictures appears to fit this principle well, for pictures are deemed purely and paradigmatically visual representations. However, recent psychological studies show that congenitally and early blind people have the ability to interpret and make raised-line drawings through touch. This shows that pictures are not essentially visual representations. The view that pictures are essentially visual follows from influential views of the nature of depiction and of the nature of vision that are mistaken. By rooting out the mistake, we learn something about pictures, something about vision, and something about the doctrine that art media are individuated by the sense modalities.     

Pooling Modalities and Pointwise Intersection: Axiomatization and Decidability

Studia Logica - We establish completeness and the finite model property for logics featuring the pooling modalities that were introduced in Van De Putte and Klein (Pooling modalities and...