Completeness and Decidability Results for Some Propositional Modal Logics Containing “Actually” Operators

The addition of actually operators to modal languages allows us to capture important inferential behaviours which cannot be adequately captured in logics formulated in simpler languages. Previous work on modal logics containing actually operators has concentrated entirely upon extensions of KT5 and has employed a particular model-theoretic treatment of them. This paper proves completeness and decidability results for a range of normal and nonnormal but quasi-normal propositional modal logics containing actually operators, the weakest of which are conservative extensions of K, using a novel generalisation of the standard semantics.     

Use of speech-modulated noise adds strong “bottom-up” cues for phonemic restoration

When deleted segments of speech are replaced by extraneous sounds rather than silence, the missing speech fragments may be perceptually restored and intelligibility improved. This phonemic restoration (PhR) effect has been used to measure various aspects of speech processing, with deleted portions of speech typically being replaced by stochastic noise. However, several recent studies of PhR have used speech-modulated noise, which may provide amplitude-envelope cues concerning the replaced speech. The present study compared the effects upon intelligibility of replacing regularly spaced portions of speech with stochastic (white) noise versus speech-modulated noise. In Experiment 1, filling periodic gaps in sentences with noise modulated by the amplitude envelope of the deleted speech fragments produced twice the intelligibility increase obtained with interpolated stochastic noise. Moreover, when lists of isolated monosyllables were interrupted in Experiment 2, interpolation of speech-modulated noise increased intelligibility whereas stochastic noise reduced intelligibility. The augmentation of PhR produced by modulated noise appeared without practice, suggesting that speech processing normally involves not only a narrowband analysis of spectral information but also a wideband integration of amplitude levels across critical bands. This is of considerable theoretical interest, but it also suggests that since PhRs produced by speech-modulated noise utilize potent bottom-up cues provided by the noise, they differ from the PhRs produced by extraneous sounds, such as coughs and stochastic noise.     

Achievement Goal Impacts Students' Preferences for “Personalized Problems” in Computer-Adaptive Tests1

The contemporary development of psychometric theories and information technologies enables students to work on algorithm-based personalized tests in classroom settings. This study aims to investigate the relationship between students' achievement goals and what they prefer as “personalized problems” in computer-adaptive tests. We theoretically contrast achievement goals with developing competency through mastery and demonstrating competency through performance goals. We asked elementary and secondary school students to work on a computer-adaptive test and to complete questionnaires about what they prefer as “personalized problems” in computer-adaptive tests. The results revealed that while mastery goals positively predicted preference for challenging problems, performance goals positively predicted preference for problems that guaranteed students’ success. Moreover, only the preference for challenging problems positively predicted the intention to take computer-adaptive tests in the future. These results suggest that simply introducing a computer-adaptive test into the classroom may not be effective. We discuss how educational technologies should be integrated into human teaching activities.     

The “Three Rs” of Sex

Summary We have seen that sex has three functions, the reproductive, the relational, and the recreational. We have shown it probable that a great deal of unnecessary marital conflict comes from one party holding relational sex to be all-important while the other considers recreational sex to be of more importance. Finally, we have indicated that it is most likely that if they can compromise this difficulty by each meeting the other on his own ground a part of the time, much of the haggling will stop and many unnecessary divorces will be avoided.The Rev. Maxwell H. Morris, Th.D., following studies in the Old Testament and ancient history in the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, and the University of Southern California, spent a year in Jewish studies at the Hebrew Union College for Rabbinical Studies in Cincinnati. His interest in the psychology of sex grew out of his attempts to understand phallic and fertility cults.     

Labelled Sequent Calculi for Lewis’ Non-normal Propositional Modal Logics

Studia Logica - C. I. Lewis’ systems were the first axiomatisations of modal logics. However some of those systems are non-normal modal logics, since they do not admit a full rule of...     

Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

Ringstrom addresses major changes in a number of paradigms that have been occurring over the past 50 to 70 years within the larger scientific/philosophical community and, more specifically, within psychoanalysis. His overall purpose is to further delineate and integrate these paradigmatic changes and their theoretical and clinical implications for understanding psychoanalytic change. In his title, “Three Dimensional Field Theory: Dramatization and Improvisation in a Psychoanalytic Theory of Change,” Ringstrom a third “spatial” dimension to relational field theory that makes it more than a metaphor. Dramatization and improvisation does not just refer to a technical approach but, more important, provides a framework by which he understands effective therapeutic interaction. This discussant attempts to evaluate several of the paradigm shifts, namely, the informational revolution and dramatization and improvisation.     

“The Most Difficult of all Phenomenological Problems”

I argue in this essay that Edmund Husserl distinguishes three levels within time-consciousness: an absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness, the immanent acts of consciousness the flow constitutes, and the transcendent objects the acts intend. The immediate occasion for this claim is Neal DeRoo’s discussion of Dan Zahavi’s reservations about the notion of an absolute flow and DeRoo’s own efforts to mediate between Zahavi’s view and the position Robert Sokolowski and I have advanced. I argue that the flow and the tripartite distinction it introduces into consciousness is firmly grounded in Husserl’s texts and is philosophically defensible. The absolute flow is distinct but inseparable from what it constitutes. It is intentional in a nonobjectivating way, and accounts for the awareness I have of my individual acts of consciousness and of the unity and continuity of my conscious life. In its absence, consciousness would become an incoherent stream of episodic acts. There is nothing mysterious about the flow. What would be mysterious is consciousness without the flow.     

On “Interactional Semantics” and Problems of Meaning

This article is a comment on papers being published in this special issue concerned with interactional semantics. As these papers are concerned with abstractions, formulations, generalizations, and other uses of categorizations whereby participants’ everyday understandings and interpretations come to the foreground of analysis, I explore the wider issue with which the papers wrestle. That issue is whether problems of meaning—related to subjectivity, intersubjectivity, mutual comprehension, and the like—are pervasive in interaction, or are limited and situational. I examine problems of meaning through the lenses of social theory and ethnomethodology, and take the position that analytic preoccupation with interpretation should be one that follows participants’ own orientations to problems of meaning. This is different from but related to what each author argues in his own paper.     

Modal Logic for Other-World Agnostics: Neutrality and Halldén Incompleteness

The logic of ‘elsewhere,’ i.e., of a sentence operator interpretable as attaching to a formula to yield a formula true at a point in a Kripke model just in case the first formula is true at all other points in the model, has been applied in settings in which the points in question represent spatial positions (explaining the use of the word ‘elsewhere’), as well as in the case in which they represent moments of time. This logic is applied here to the alethic modal case, in which the points are thought of as possible worlds, with the suggestion that its deployment clarifies aspects of a position explored by John Divers un-der the name ‘modal agnosticism.’ In particular, it makes available a logic whose Halldén incompleteness explicitly registers the agnostic element of the position – its neutrality as between modal realism and modal anti-realism.     

Revisiting the “strong but wrong“ effect

In the 1930s, J. M. Stephens found that strong verbal associations called wrong are more likely to be changed than weak verbal associations called wrong, relative to items with no feedback. The present study produced a much larger "strong but wrong" effect, apparently as a result of defining "strong" in terms of meanings presumably stored in long-term memory. It was also found that such items are followed by high recall of feedback on the next trial, and that, indeed, when feedback recall is statistically controlled, the effect disappears. An explanation of why feedback is better recalled for "strong but wrong" items is offered, and several predictions are generated, some of which are tested (and confirmed) from the present data.     

I. A strong programme for the sociology of belief∗

Like the positivists, Fuller is concerned to demarcate and systematically evaluate scientific claims and practices. Fuller corrects and reforms the positivist enterprise in light of his sociological naturalism. What Fuller's analysis brings to the fore is how the naturalization of epistemology makes the power‐knowledge relation into an epistemological issue. Yet, in his writings. Fuller is radically divided with respect to how to react to this fact. Specifically, Fuller vacillates between, on the one hand, a concern for democratizing norms and, on the other hand, a Machiavellian impulse for the maximization of the norms of knowledge production. I argue that his commitment to being both a democratizer and a Machiavellian is inconsistent, and, moreover, that his argument for democratizing normative pursuits rules out, in fact, his more Machiavellian proclivities regarding how most efficiently to realize the norms of knowledge production.     

Arriving at a “New View” of Women's Sexual Problems

Abstract

This essay offers an all-embracing narrative of the “new view” project to explain how and why a feminist critique of current sex problem nomenclature, an alternative vision, and an activist campaign have emerged since 1999. The story begins with 15 years of urology-promoted medicalization of men's sexuality and the building of a female market near the end of the 1990s. The Food and Drug Administration role is illuminated by the author's advisory panel experience and the FDA's proposed guidelines for testing sex drugs for women. The prevailing theory of women's sexual problems is traced to Masters and Johnson's biased research and continuing debates about orgasm. Finally, the origins of the “new view” campaign are described: a growing discomfort with the aggressive roles of urology and the drug industry in women's sexual medicine, the decision to take public as well as professional positions, the creation of a working group, and ongoing activism.     

Blake's Development of the Number Words “One,” “Two,” and “Three”

A mother tracked her preschooler's number word development daily from 18 to 49 months of age. Naturalistic observations were supplemented with observations during structured (Kumon) training and microgenetic testing. The boy's everyday use of “two” did not become highly reliable and selective for 10 months (at 28 months), emerged later than that of words representing less abstract concepts, and was used in a relatively abstract manner to describe various visible pairs of items. He quickly generalized “two” to partially visible collections and then those that were not visible. Highly reliable use of “one” and “two” appeared to develop simultaneously, before he started using a plural rule, and before he could put out two items upon request. Reliable and accurate use of number words in everyday situations, particularly child-initiated efforts, preceded such use in the contexts of the Kumon training and microgenetic testing, both of which involved adult-initiated tasks. Educational implications include underscoring differences among the first number words by contrasting, for instance, one with two, and pointing out non-examples of a number (“not two”) as well as a wide variety of examples, such as “two blocks, two hands, two socks, two airplanes.”     

On Blass Translation for Leśniewski’s Propositional Ontology and Modal Logics

Studia Logica - In this paper, we shall give another proof of the faithfulness of Blass translation (for short, B-translation) of the propositional fragment $$\mathbf{L}_1$$ of...