Ways in which coherence is confirmation conducive

Recent works in epistemology show that the claim that coherence is truth conducive – in the sense that, given suitable ceteris paribus conditions, more coherent sets of statements are always more probable – is dubious and possibly false. From this, it does not follows that coherence is a useless notion in epistemology and philosophy of science. Dietrich and Moretti (Philosophy of science 72(3): 403–424, 2005) have proposed a formal of account of how coherence is confirmation conducive—that is, of how the coherence of a set of statements facilitates the confirmation of such statements. This account is grounded in two confirmation transmission properties that are satisfied by some of the measures of coherence recently proposed in the literature. These properties explicate everyday and scientific uses of coherence. In his paper, I review the main findings of Dietrich and Moretti (2005) and define two evidence-gathering properties that are satisfied by the same measures of coherence and constitute further ways in which coherence is confirmation conducive. At least one of these properties vindicates important applications of the notion of coherence in everyday life and in science.     

The Relation between Formal and Informal Logic

The issue of the relationship between formal and informal logic depends strongly on how one understands these two designations. While there is very little disagreement about the nature of formal logic, the same is not true regarding informal logic, which is understood in various (often incompatible) ways by various thinkers. After reviewing some of the more prominent conceptions of informal logic, I will present my own, defend it and then show how informal logic, so understood, is complementary to formal logic.     

Humanness can be said in many ways

The recent debates on human enhancement ask the question whether enhancing our capabilities is morally desirable. In a sense, the answer is straightforward: to enhance, that is to make things better, is, by definition, a good thing. However, to enhance has a special meaning in the present debates: it consists in going beyond our "natural" capabilities. Is it then still a good thing? To answer this question, it is necessary to ask what is the value of the goods we pursue through enhancement, and this is only possible in the context of a conception of human flourishing. There exist several conceptions of human flourishing; each demands that we improve ourselves in certain directions, depending on the various excellences and on the ideal of the person they promote. But are all means permissible to this effect? Of course not. A set of normative principles is suggested in order to determine which means are permissible. The result of this is that technological and biotechnological means raise no particular problem.     

The Greatest Extension of S4 into which Intuitionistic Logic is Embeddable

This paper gives a characterization of those quasi-normal extensions of the modal system S4 into which intuitionistic propositional logic Int is embeddable by the Gödel translation. It is shown that, as in the normal case, the set of quasi-normal modal companions of Int contains the greatest logic, M*, for which, however, the analog of the Blok-Esakia theorem does not hold. M* is proved to be decidable and Halldén-complete; it has the disjunction property but does not have the finite model property.     

国内语用逻辑研究回顾与展望(上)

20世纪后半叶兴起的语用逻辑 ,产生于人们分析人类言语行为的语用学以及现代形式逻辑的综合与互动 ,尤其是语用学、行为科学、人工智能、计算机科学的发展也刺激和促进了以人工语言为研究手段的语用逻辑的兴起。而国内语用逻辑的兴起则不仅与西方人文社会科学的语用学转向以及形式化的语用逻辑的兴起密切相关 ,而且也还与中国传统文化的“大传统”密切相关 ,因为中国传统文化是高语境的汉字文化 ,它具有鲜明的语用学和语用逻辑的特征。自 80年代起 ,在中国兴起的自然语言的语用逻辑研究 ,也可以说是在相当程度上 ,发自于对传统逻辑和现代纯…     

从动态命题逻辑PDL到动态道义逻辑DDL

一动态命题逻辑的来源和基本构想动态逻辑DL(DYNAM IC LOGIC)是关于行动和程序推理的形式系统。DL可以描述为三个经典逻辑的合成:一是一阶谓词逻辑;二是模态逻辑;三是正则事件(REGULAR EVENT)的代数。DL区分于经典逻辑的地方是其真值的特性:经典逻辑的真值是静态的,一公式Φ的真值由其结构中自由变元的取值所决定,公式Φ导致的真值和赋值被看做不可改变的。[1]而动态逻辑在这点上正好相反,在DL中,有清晰的被称做程序的语形结构,这些程序的作用就是改变变元的值,由此进而改变公式的值。这些改变在经典谓词逻辑中,是在元逻辑的层…     

逻辑哲学研究述评(上)

在英文中 ,与逻辑哲学相关的表达一般有三个 :哲学逻辑 (philosophicallogic)、逻辑哲学 (philosophyoflogic)和逻辑的哲学 (logicalphilosophy)。从文献来看 ,使用较多的是前两个。关于这两个表达 ,人们的看法是不一样的。而且 ,即使是关于其中的某一个表达 ,看法也不一样。这些看法不仅表现出人们对逻辑哲学的不同理解 ,而且也反映出在以逻辑哲学为名的东西上存在的问题。一般认为 ,罗素最早使用了“哲学逻辑”这个概念。但是 ,这个词以及与它相近的词“逻辑哲学”的频繁出现却是在进入 2 0世纪 6 0年代以后。在过去几十年的时间里 ,不仅…     

Experimental pragmatics and what is said: a response to Gibbs and Moise

Gibbs and Moise [Gibbs, R., Moise, J., 1997. Pragmatics in understanding what is said. Cognition 62, 51-74], present experimental results which, they claim, show that people recognize a distinction between what is said and what is implicated. They also claim that these results provide support for theories of utterance interpretation (such as Relevance Theory) which recognize that pragmatic processes are involved not only in understanding what is implicated but also in working out what is said (the 'explicature'). We attempted to replicate some of these experiments and also adapted them. Our results fail to confirm Gibbs and Moise's claims. Most significantly, they show that, under certain conditions, subjects select implicatures when asked to select the paraphrase that best reflects what a speaker has said. We suggest that our results can be explained within the framework of Relevance Theory (Sperber, D., Wilson, D., 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell, Oxford) if we assume that subjects select the paraphrase that comes closest to achieving the same set of communicated contextual effects as the original utterance. When an utterance gives rise to a single strong implicature, subjects tend to select this as the paraphrase that best reflects what is said; in other cases (for example in Gibbs and Moise's stimuli) subjects tend to select the explicature.     

Whatever it is better to be than not to be

The Anselmian claim that God is that than which a greater cannot be thought in virtue of being ‘whatever it is better to be than not to be’ may be accused of incoherence or even unintelligibility. By proposing a non-relative but apparently meaningful analysis thereof, I attempt to defend it against such criticism. In particular, I argue that ‘whatever it is better to be than not to be’ can be plausibly interpreted so as to imply very many attributes traditionally predicated of that than which a greater cannot be thought. Central to this line of reasoning is the assumption that whatever is an actual moral being is greater, simpliciter, than whatever is not an actual moral being.     

To be(long) or not to be(long): social identification in organizational contexts

In the past few years, ideas of Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory have been successfully applied to the organizational domain. In this article, the authors provide an overview of these recent developments and present a concept of social identification in organizational contexts, based on these theories. The assumptions of this framework are that (a) social identification in organizational contexts is a multifaceted concept consisting of different dimensions and foci (or targets), (b) higher levels of identification are related to higher productivity and more positive work-related attitudes, and (c) identification is a very flexible concept that is linked to the situational context. The authors present the results of a series of field and laboratory studies in which the proposed relationships are analyzed and, in the main, confirmed.     

逻辑训练对不同理性思维方式大学生三段论推理的影响

采用理性—经验思维方式量表对105名大学生进行测量,选出高、低理性思维方式各35名大学生进行实验,探讨了逻辑训练对不同理性思维方式大学生三段论推理的影响。结果表明：(1)高理性思维方式个体三段论推理的平均反应时快于低理性思维方式个体;非冲突类型题目推理的平均正确率高于冲突类型题目;逻辑训练可以提高个体三段论推理的平均反应时和正确率;(2)逻辑训练后非冲突任务类型题目的平均正确率高于冲突任务类型题目;(3)逻辑训练对低理性思维方式个体冲突任务类型题目平均正确率的提高效果更明显。这意味着逻辑训练可以显著提升个体的推理成绩,但不能完全消除信念偏差对推理的影响,而且逻辑训练对低理性思维方式个体推理成绩的提升效果更加明显。