Graded modalities,II (canonical models)

This work intends to be a generalization and a simplification of the techniques employed in [2], by the proposal of a general strategy to prove satisfiability theorems for NLGM-s (= normal logics with graded modalities), analogously to the well known technique of the canonical models by Lemmon and Scott for classical modal logics.     

Graded modalities. III (the completeness and compactness of S40)

We go on along the trend of [2] and [1], giving an axiomatization of S4 ⁰ and proving its completeness and compactness with respect to the usual reflexive and transitive Kripke models. To reach this results, we use techniques from [1], with suitable adaptations to our specific case.The present work was carried out while the author had a grant of the Foundation U. Bordoni.     

Switching of response modalities

When participants perform a sequence of different tasks, it is assumed that the engagement in one task leads to the inhibition of the previous task. This inhibition persists and impairs performance when participants switch back to this (still inhibited) task after only one intermediate trial. Previous task-switching studies on this issue have defined different tasks at the level of stimulus categorization. In our experiments we used different response modalities to define tasks. Participants always used the same stimulus categorization (e.g., categorize a digit as odd vs. even), but had to give a vocal, finger, or foot response (A, B, or C). Our results showed a higher reaction time and error rate in ABA sequences than in CBA sequences, indicating n - 2 repetition cost as a marker for persisting task inhibition. We assume that different response modalities can define a task and are inhibited in a “task switch” in the same way as stimulus categories are inhibited.     

Freudian modalities of disbelief

This article can be characterized as a ‘rediscovery’ of a notion of psychoanalysis that had disappeared or had been confused by later operations. The authors explore a Freudian notion that has been unjustly misunderstood, especially because of the multiple ways in which ‘Unglaube’ – disbelief – has been translated. We shall establish the archaeology of this term in Freud by extracting its three significant modes. Firstly, paranoiac disbelief designates an unconscious process of the rejection of belief in the subject's first encounter with a sexual reality that is always traumatic. Secondly, the obsessional neurotic's disbelief, which we shall call ‘incredulity’, is a secondary, less radical refusal of belief, one that is different from its paranoiac counterpart. Finally, we shall envision a third – dialectical – type of disbelief, which Freud called ‘act of disbelief’ and which will enable us to approach the fundamental epistemic and ethical stakes for psychoanalysis.     

Articulatory consequences of Parkinson's disease: perspectives from two modalities.

Language production involves complex yet productively varying motor behavior. Rule-governed combinations yield a finite set of formational units combined in an infinite number of ways. The creativity of language ensures that no particular articulation will be highly automatized. Linguistic articulation is highly complex and varied. As such, it differs from the other more automatized motor behaviors typically studied such as learned movements in apraxia studies or repetitive behavior as occurs in walking or other everyday activities. Language also strives to maintain a balance between ease of articulation and ease of perception, while maintaining linguistically relevant distinctions. We report here a number of studies on the articulatory consequences of Parkinson's disease (PD) in the spoken and signed modalities. Our goal is to highlight the commonalities and distinctions between the two modalities of speech and sign that will allow us to better understand the impingements of PD on language production in general.     

Spatial ontology and physical modalities

Conclusion Most relational theories assert both that spatial discourse is reducible to talk about physical objects and their spatial relations, and that the relation of congruence derives from a non-metrical relation which intervals bear or possibly bear to measuring instruments. We have shown that there are serious logical difficulties involved in maintaining both these positions and the thesis of the continuity of space. We have also shown that Grünbaum's motivating argument for the reduction of congruence is unsound, and, moreover, that the prospects of formulating the kind of definition which this reduction requires seem to rest upon a wholly vague notion of physical possibility. Alternatively, if congruence is taken as primitive, it seems plausible that spatial discourse can be reconstructed so that there is no ontological commitment to spatial objects other than physical objects. Whether or not this relational thesis is ultimately defensible requires more elaboration of the relational theory, and investigation of its role in the formalizations of current physical theories. It is odd, considering the wide currency of relational theories, that this work has never been done.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. SOC75-08464) to the first author.     

Graded representations in behavioral dissociations

Why do people sometimes seem to know things when they are tested in one way, while seeming unaware of this information when tested in a different way? Such task-dependent behaviors, or dissociations, often occur in infants and children, and in adults following brain damage. To explain these dissociations, researchers have posited separable knowledge systems that are differentially tapped by various tasks, develop at different rates and can be selectively impaired. There is an alternative account in which knowledge is viewed as graded in nature. Certain tasks tap weaker representations, while other tasks require stronger representations, leading to dissociations in behavior. The graded representations approach addresses dissociations observed in perception, attention, memory, executive functioning and language, and has implications for the organization, development and impairment of our cognitive systems.     

Indicative Conditionals and Graded Information

Journal of Philosophical Logic - I propose an account of indicative conditionals that combines features of minimal change semantics and information semantics. As in information semantics,...