Value ascriptions: rethinking cognitivism

Philosophical Studies - This paper focuses on value as ascribed to what can be desired, enjoyed, cherished, admired, loved, and so on: value that putatively serves as ground for evaluating such...     

Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: an integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change

A central theme in recent research on attitudes is the distinction between deliberate, "explicit" attitudes and automatic, "implicit" attitudes. The present article provides an integrative review of the available evidence on implicit and explicit attitude change that is guided by a distinction between associative and propositional processes. Whereas associative processes are characterized by mere activation independent of subjective truth or falsity, propositional reasoning is concerned with the validation of evaluations and beliefs. The proposed associative-propositional evaluation (APE) model makes specific assumptions about the mutual interplay of the 2 processes, implying several mechanisms that lead to symmetric or asymmetric changes in implicit and explicit attitudes. The model integrates a broad range of empirical evidence and implies several new predictions for implicit and explicit attitude change.     

Relational Semantics and Domain Semantics for Epistemic Modals

The standard account of modal expressions in natural language analyzes them as quantifiers over a set of possible worlds determined by the evaluation world and an accessibility relation. A number of authors have recently argued for an alternative account according to which modals are analyzed as quantifying over a domain of possible worlds that is specified directly in the points of evaluation. But the new approach only handles the data motivating it if it is supplemented with a non-standard account of attitude verbs and conditionals. It can be shown the the relational account handles the same data equally well if it too is supplemented with a non-standard account of such expressions.     

Training propositional reasoning

Two experiments compared the effects of four training conditions on propositional reasoning. A syntactic training demonstrated formal derivations, in an abstract semantic training the standard truth-table definitions of logical connectives were explained, and a domain-specific semantic training provided thematic contexts for the premises of the reasoning task. In a control training, an inductive reasoning task was practised. In line with the account by mental models, both kinds of semantic training were significantly more effective than the control and the syntactic training, whereas there were no significant differences between the control and the syntactic training, nor between the two kinds of semantic training. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern of effects using a different set of syntactic and domain-specific training conditions.     

Determinants of processing for a propositional structure

The main purpose of this study was to characterize differences among propositions within a propositional structure. Propositions were described in terms of degree (the number of other propositions to which each is connected) and in terms of a kind of hierarchical level. Paragraphs having a given structure were tested in three tasks: selection of the most important proposition, free recall, and reading under two orienting instructions. Performance was analyzed according to degree and level of the individual propositions and according to the sequences of propositions within the paragraphs. All of these variables affected performance in various tasks. The results were discussed in terms of the distinction between initial encoding and subsequent recall.     

Semantics for existential graphs

This paper examines Charles Peirce's graphical notation for first-order logic with identity. The notation forms a part of his system of existential graphs, which Peirce considered to be his best work in logic. In this paper a Tarskian semantics is provided for the graphical system.