Critical Notice: Peter Ludlow’s Living Words: Meaning Underdetermination and he Dynamic Lexicon,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014

A provocative view has it that word meanings are underdetermined and dynamic, frustrating traditional approaches to theorizing about meaning. Peter Ludlow’s Living Words provides some of the philosophical reasons and motivations for accepting one such view, develops some of its details, and explores some of its ramifications. We critically examine some of the arguments in Living Words, paying particular attention to some of Ludlow’s views about the meanings of predicates, preservation of bivalence and the T-schema, and methods of modulating meaning.     

An Adamsian Theory of Intrinsic Value

In this paper I develop a theological account of intrinsic value drawn from some passages in Robert Merrihew Adams’ book Finite and Infinite Goods. First I explain why Adams’ work on this topic is interesting, situate his theory within the broader literature on intrinsic value, and draw attention to some of its revisionist features. Next I state the theory, raise some problems for it, and refine it in light of those problems. Then I illustrate how the refined theory works by showing that it has the resources to deal with some seemingly formidable objections.     

Beyond Rasiowa's Algebraic Approach to Non-classical Logics

This paper reviews the impact of Rasiowa's well-known book on the evolution of algebraic logic during the last thirty or forty years. It starts with some comments on the importance and influence of this book, highlighting some of the reasons for this influence, and some of its key points, mathematically speaking, concerning the general theory of algebraic logic, a theory nowadays called Abstract Algebraic Logic. Then, a consideration of the diverse ways in which these key points can be generalized allows us to survey some issues in the development of the field in the last twenty to thirty years. The last part of the paper reviews some recent lines of research that in some way transcend Rasiowa's approach. I hope in this way to give the reader a general view of Rasiowa's key position in the evolution of Algebraic Logic during the twentieth century. This paper is an extended version of the invited talk given by the author at the conference Trends in Logic III, dedicated to the memory of A. MOSTOWSKI, H. RASIOWA and C. RAUSZER, and held in Warsaw and Ruciane-Nida from 23rd to 25th September 2005. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

态度与行为关系研究现状及发展趋势

关于态度与行为关系研究存在以下几种模式：态度和行为直接相关;态度和行为通过其他的中介,调节变量共同作用于行为;态度的不同构成对行为起不同的作用。该文结合以上的研究框架介绍了近些年来有影响力的模型如计划行为理论、态度强度模型等,并提出未来的态度和行为的关系应该充分考虑内隐态度测量以及采用时间序列追踪研究的新的角度     

On the reducibility of questions

The concepta question is reducible to a non-empty set of questions is defined and examined. The basic results are: (1) each question which is sound relative to some of its presuppositions is reducible to some set of binary (i.e. having exactly two direct answers) questions; (b) each question which has a finite number of direct answers is reducible to some finite set of binary questions; (c) if entailment is compact, then each normal question (i.e. sound relative to its presuppositions) is reducible to some finite set of binary questions.     

Common dilemmas in combined individual and group treatment

The treatment of patients in combined individual and group therapy presents a challenge in terms of theory and technique. The inevitable paradoxes that arise in this modality can confound even the most experienced clinician. This paper delineates some of the conflicts, examines some of the advantages and disadvantages of combined treatment, and addresses the contraindications for some patients.     

The theory of incubation: a reply to Bersh

Bersh's critique of Eysenck's theory of incubation is summarized, and some arguments are presented to indicate that while some criticisms are pertinent, they do not invalidate the theory.     

Triviality Pursuit

The thesis that probabilities of conditionals are conditional probabilities has putatively been refuted many times by so-called ‘triviality results’, although it has also enjoyed a number of resurrections. In this paper I assault it yet again with a new such result. I begin by motivating the thesis and discussing some of the philosophical ramifications of its fluctuating fortunes. I will canvas various reasons, old and new, why the thesis seems plausible, and why we should care about its fate. I will look at some objections to Lewis’s famous triviality results, and thus some reasons for the pursuit of further triviality results. I will generalize Lewis’s results in ways that meet the objections. I will conclude with some reflections on the demise of the thesis—or otherwise.     

Is jealousy justifiable?

Jealousy has been disparaged as psychologically debilitating and morally flawed since well before Shakespeare wrote Othello and is indeed represented—particularly well—as far back as in Homer's portrayal of gods and goddesses in The Iliad. According to some of these traditional views, often shared by philosophers, psychologists and the general public, jealousy is the sign, if not of an irredeemably corrupt mind, then at least of an excessively possessive and insecure character. But does jealousy always indicate some sort of flaw or failure? Is jealousy rerehensible in all contexts? In the present paper, I intend to suggest some modifications to the view that it is, by giving jealousy a more sympathetic and charitable hearing than it normally receives, and suggesting that jealousy might, in some cases, be justifiable.     

Job Characteristics and Voluntary Employee Turnover: Direct and Moderated Relationships

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine Hackman and Oldham's job characteristics model in predicting voluntary employee turnover. Using a sample of 120 production workers, the study provided some support for the model's most demanding assumption of a moderating effect of growth need strength on the job characteristics-turnover relationship. In addition, some direct associations were also found. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed and some suggestions are given.     

Basic emotions: Theory and measurement

Abstract

There have been new conceptualisations and new evidence bearing on the question of whether or not some emotions are basic. There has been innovation in work on cognitive appraisals of emotions, in cross-cultural research, and in developmental psychology. We introduce some of these ideas, and in introducing the contributors to this volume, we lay out four considerations that affect understanding of whether or not some emotions are basic. These considerations are the separability of components of emotion, the differences of definitions, and indicators used by different theorists of basic emotions, questions about whether some emotions are derived from others, and mappings between elicitors, accompaniments, and consequences of emotions.     

Current Trends in Substructural Logics

This paper briefly overviews some of the results and research directions. In the area of substructural logics from the last couple of decades. Substructural logics are understood here to include relevance logics, linear logic, variants of Lambek calculi and some other logics that are motivated by the idea of omitting some structural rules or making other structural changes in LK, the original sequent calculus for classical logic.     

Ground and Free-Variable Tableaux for Variants of Quantified Modal Logics

In this paper we study proof procedures for some variants of first-order modal logics, where domains may be either cumulative or freely varying and terms may be either rigid or non-rigid, local or non-local. We define both ground and free variable tableau methods, parametric with respect to the variants of the considered logics. The treatment of each variant is equally simple and is based on the annotation of functional symbols by natural numbers, conveying some semantical information on the worlds where they are meant to be interpreted.This paper is an extended version of a previous work where full proofs were not included. Proofs are in some points rather tricky and may help in understanding the reasons for some details in basic definitions.     

Van Inwagen on the Cosmological Argument

Abstract

In his book Metaphysics, Peter van Inwagen constructs a version of the Cosmological Argument which does not depend on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He goes on to reject the argument. In this paper, I construct an alternative version of the Cosmological Argument that uses some of van Inwagen's insights and yet is immune to his criticisms. If we suppose that for each contingent truth, there is some at least partial explanation, then it follows that there is some necessary truth that explains the conjunction of all the contingent truths.     

Men's Liberation and the Men's Movement: Implications for Counselors

This article briefly describes some of the changes in men that are a result of “men's liberation” and examines some of the evidence for the Men's Movement, a network of men and women across the United States and Western Europe that is a counterpart to the Women's Movement. The article also explores some of the implications of men's liberation and the Men's Movement for counselors who work with men wishing to change, especially in terms of developing partnerships as equals with women.     

Productivity of Noun Slots in Verb Frames

Productivity is a central concept in the study of language and language acquisition. As a test case for exploring the notion of productivity, we focus on the noun slots of verb frames, such as __want__, __see__, and __get__. We develop a novel combination of measures designed to assess both the flexibility and creativity of use in these slots. We do so using a rigorously controlled sample of child speech and child directed speech from three English‐speaking children between the ages of 2–3 years and their caregivers. We find different levels of creativity and flexibility between the adult and child samples for some measures, for some slots, and for some developmental periods. We discuss these differences in the context of verb frame semantics, conventionality versus creativity and child errors, and draw some tentative conclusions regarding developmental changes in children's early grammatical representations.     

Updating without evidence

Sometimes you are unreliable at fulfilling your doxastic plans: for example, if you plan to be fully confident in all truths, probably you will end up being fully confident in some falsehoods by mistake. In some cases, there is information that plays the classical role of evidence—your beliefs are perfectly discriminating with respect to some possible facts about the world—and there is a standard expected-accuracy-based justification for planning to conditionalize on this evidence. This planning-oriented justification extends to some cases where you do not have transparent evidence, in the sense that your beliefs are not perfectly discriminating with respect to any non-trivial facts. In other cases, accuracy considerations do not tell you to plan to conditionalize on any information at all, but rather to plan to follow a different updating rule. Even in the absence of evidence, accuracy considerations can guide your doxastic plan.     

A Story about the Counselors in the Land of Help

Licensure is an issue of interest to many counselors. In some ways, however, the issue of licensure seems to be unresolved among them; in other words, some counselors want licensure, some don't, and others really don't seem to care one way or the other. This article recounts what happened to the counselors in the Land of Help when they were confronted with licensure and what they were able to do about it.     

Inductive Incompleteness

Nelson Goodman cast the ‘problem of induction’ as the task of articulating the principles and standards by which to distinguish valid from invalid inductive inferences. This paper explores some logical bounds on the ability of a rational reasoner to accomplish this task. By a simple argument, either an inductive inference method cannot admit its own fallibility, or there exists some non-inferable hypothesis whose non-inferability the method cannot infer (violating the principle of ‘negative introspection’). The paper discusses some implications of this limited self-knowledge for the justifiability of inductive inferences, auto-epistemic logic, and the epistemic foundations of game theory.     

Fake Journals: Not Always Valid Ways to Distinguish Them

In their recent paper, Esfe et al. (Sci Eng Ethics, doi: 10.1007/s11948-014-9595-z 2014) present some criteria for fake journals and propose some ‘features’ to recognize them. While I share most of the authors’ concerns about this issue in general, some of the reported criteria are not fit to differentiate fake journals from genuine ones. Here are some examples derived from their list, which illustrate that such criteria are not necessarily specific to fake journals only, but they could also apply to well-established journals and, therefore, should not be considered as is.