Variations in use of the term “or”

Two studies showed that adults' responses to questions involving the term or varied markedly depending upon the type of question presented. When presented with various objects (A's and B's) and asked to circle all things which are A or B subjects tended to circle A's as well as B's, whereas when asked to circle all the A's or B's subjects showed a relatively stronger tendency to circle one or the other. Moreover the nature of the sets of objects (As and Bs) influenced behavior as well. There was also evidence that the effects due to question wording or set type transferred.     

“Emotionally, Soulfully, Spiritually ‘Free to Think and Act’: The Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902–59) Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Medicine and Pastoral Care”

This essay aims to stimulate rethinking about religious and medical healing and wholeness. While psychiatrist (Helen) Flanders Dunbar (1902–1959) is well known as a psychosomatic investigator and as Medical Director of the Council for Clinical Training, the initial home of Anton Boisen's groundbreaking movement for the clinical pastoral education of institutional chaplains and parish ministers, she is less appreciated as a theologically-trained scholar. This essay explores an earlier era's understanding of the spiritual and the more soulful components of healing and how Dunbar combined these to focus on helping all peoples become free to think and act. This essay was originally delivered as The Helen Flanders Dunbar Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Medicine and Pastoral Care at Columbia Presbyterian Center of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York on November 2, 1999.     

In and behind a Lenneberg paradigm

Lenneberg suggested that a chimpanzee's linguistic ability could be tested by presenting sentences containing two prepositional phrases joined by a conjunction. This would involve joining two semantic propositions, and thus represents a more complex test of chimpanzee syntactic competence than previously attempted. Jane, a five year-old language trained chimpanzee, was tested on her ability to both produce and comprehend sentences involving a preposition (in or behind) and a conjunction (and). The results from production and comprehension were substantially the same. Jane showed the ability to appropriately deploy and, behind and in, but displayed very little flexibility in their use. It is suggested that a chimpanzee may be able to learn some rules of syntax but is not able to be creative with that syntax.     

Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order,duration, and simultaneity

This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The children in the study were 3, 5, and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions after, before, since, and until. Temporal duration was examined through children's understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions since and until. These two conjunctions signal duration in the main clause when they conjoin two clauses. Simultaneity was studied through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing while. The results revealed that the order sentence structures (before and after) were generally comprehended by the children before the duration or simultaneous sentence structures, although at 7 years of age children were still not performing above chance on the order relation in since and until sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before the simultaneous sentence structures. The results support the literature in cognitive psychology and in philosophy which argues that order is simpler than duration is simpler than simultaneity.This report is based on a dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Ph.D.     

The liar: What paradox?

Most philosophers believe that the Liar Paradox is semantical in character, and arises from difficulties in the predicate true. The author argues that the paradox is pragmatic, not semantic, and arises from violations of essential conditions that define statement-making speech acts. The author shows that his solution to the paradox will not only handle the classical Liar sentences that are necessarily or intrinsically paradoxical, but also sets of Kripke-sentences that are contingently paradoxical.     

Is the holocaust relevant to sociobiology?

Sociobiologists have emphasized that altruism and benevolent behavior are part of the genetic repertoire of most animals and certainly of man. They have constructed a theory of ethics as a biological phenomenon without reference to the concept of evil. It is concluded here however, that holocaust behavior is not equivalent to the natural manifestation of an incompletely tamed animal flashing its teeth. Biologists have been too rigid in trying to equate ethical behavior with social behavior. The added dimension of ethical behavior is a special kind of sensitivity to the needs of others, just as evil is the total lack of it. The evolution of this moral sense may itself have important selective value for the human species, whose survival depends on creating maximal diversity in its gene pool.     

Illustrating two complementary enterprises at the interface of psychology and religion through reading Winnicott

Our work at the interface of psychology and religion can proceed in two complementary directions. When reading a psychological theory, (1) we may pay special attention to how certain concepts in particular, and the system of ideas as a whole, are being or might be used to interpret religious phenomena. We may focus on how those ideas may be involved in doing psychology of religion: the psychological interpretation of religious phenomena. Alternatively, (2) we may pay special attention to how certain concepts in particular, and the system of ideas as a whole, are being or might be used, either implicitly or explicitly, to make claims about human nature, about the meaning and purpose of life, about God. We may identify the psychology as religion-theology: psychological ideas potentially functioning in a religious-theological manner. I will illustrate this by: (a) examining D. W. Winnicott's article, Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena (1953/1986) in terms of three successive concepts or categories: transitional object, transitional phenomena, and a third intermediate area of experiencing; (b) considering how these categories can be used in psychology of religion; (c) reconsidering how the psychological categories may function as religious-theological. The discussion is intended to illustrate how we might more fully appreciate how and why a psychological theory may work well in doing psychology of religion when we more fully appreciate how that psychology implicitly functions as theology.     

On the logic of conscious belief

In this paper we are discussing a version of propositional belief logic, denoted by LB, in which so-called axioms of introspection (B BB and B B B) are added to the usual ones. LB is proved to be sound and complete with respect to Boolean algebras equipped with proper filters (Theorem 5). Interpretations in classical theories (Theorem 4) are also considered. A few modifications of LB are further dealt with, one of which turns out to be S5.     

Lotteries And Contexts

There are many ordinary propositions we think we know. Almost every ordinary proposition entails some lottery proposition which we think we do not know but to which we assign a high probability of being true (for instance:I will never be a multi-millionaire entails I will not win this lottery). How is this possible – given that some closure principle is true? This problem, also known as the Lottery puzzle, has recently provoked a lot of discussion. In this paper I discuss one of the most promising answers to the problem: Stewart Cohens contextualist solution, which is based on ideas about the salience of chances of error. After presenting some objections to it I sketch an alternative solution which is still contextualist in spirit.     

Model theoretic results for infinitely deep languages

We define a subhierarchy of the infinitely deep languagesN described by Jaakko Hintikka and Veikko Rantala. We shall show that some model theoretic results well-known in the model theory of the ordinary infinitary languages can be generalized for these new languages. Among these are the downward Löwenheim-Skolem and o's theorems as well as some compactness properties.     

The Longest Faculty Strike in the History of U.S. Institutions of Higher Education: Perceptions of the Union President

The president of the AAUP faculty union at University of Bridgeport, from 1987 to 1991, offers a first-hand account of the circumstances leading to the fatal strike there. He refutes accusations that the union and its leadership destroyed the university and provides a dramatic, personal account of a faculty union under attack by union busters. The faculty, he argues, was resisting a concerted onslaught on traditional faculty rights. It fought desperately to stifle a retrograde revolution in higher education seeking the substitution of absolute Management Rights to traditional collegiality. He refers to faculty as the soul and mind of a university, and to administration as a necessary evil whose duty is primarily to assist the faculty in the accomplishment of the university's mission.     

The family as portrayed on prime-time television, 1947–1990: Structure and characteristics

Successful family series across four decades of American prime-time television were examined. Family portrayals were defined as either conventional or nonconventional. Conventional families were categorized as couples without children and couples with children. Nonconventional families were categorized as single parent or contrived. Additional family characteristics were also recorded including sex of single parent, reason for singleness, social class status, females employed outside the home, live-ins, race, and whether the presentation was dramatic or comedic. The data show a trend toward more equal presentation of conventional and nonconventional families, few divorced or female single parents, and few minority families. Implications of findings are discussed and future research questions suggested.     

Hobby horses in Lascaux — On pictures and semiosis

This contribution is about semiology and art history. More specifically, it argues against the frequent claims that art history ought to take much more notice of semiology than it has tended to do so far. The argument against these claims is simple and basic: art history deals largely with images, and semiology does not — it has, in fact, little to say about them.Semiology has recently been presented as a supra-disciplinary theory that, although in practice most often applied to written texts, could equally well be applied to the art of painting. It has been considered merely a historical accident that semiotics was developed primarily in conjunction with literary texts. I do not think this is so. Semiology (or semiotics) not only has a strong anti-iconical bias, this bias was in fact one of its principles from the very beginning.Furthermore, the so-called supra-disciplinary theory of semiotics (in the form advocated for the humanities) is based upon specific views of language, signification and meaning, and these are not as evident as they are often made out to be — not even with regard to language itself. In particular the overriding importance attached to the role of arbitrariness within sign systems is questionable.In any case images are indeed in a class of their own, and without the acknowledgement of what is typical about them, it is hard to make much sense of either their use or construction — let alone of the history of art.     

The Deep Structure of Group Life: Unconscious Dimensions

There is a reconsideration and renaissance of interest in expanded conceptions of unconscious processes as they affect individuals and groups (Grotstein, 1999). Recent focus on social unconscious (Hopper, 1996) and cultural unconscious processes (Henderson, 1988) and the nature of intersubjectivity (Harwood and Pines, 1998) raise questions about the location of group analysis. This paper considers the deep structure of group life by examining four functions of the unconscious: repressive, conservative, creative, and mythopoetic (Ellenberger, 1970). On an individual level of analysis, these functions are equated respectively with formative ideas about the: personal–subjective, social–political, intersubjective–cultural and collective–objective unconscious. Group level analogs, as they develop and affect groups and their members, are explored as synthetic, shared, symbolicy and synchronous unconscious processes.     

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.     

Is “some-other-time” sometimes better than “sometime” for proving partial correctness of programs?

The main result of this paper belongs to the field of the comparative study of program verification methods as well as to the field called nonstandard logics of programs. We compare the program verifying powers of various well-known temporal logics of programs, one of which is the Intermittent Assertions Method, denoted as Bur. Bur is based on one of the simplest modal logics called S5 or sometime-logic. We will see that the minor change in this background modal logic increases the program verifying power of Bur. The change can be described either technically as replacing the reflexive version of S5 with an irreflexive version, or intuitively as using the modality some-other-time instead of sometime. Some insights into the nature of computational induction and its variants are also obtained.This project was supported by the Hungarian National Foundation for Scientific Research, Grant No. 1810.     

Formalization of the basic concepts of animal ecology

Summary Formal definitions of the following concepts of animal ecology are given: environment, niche, locality, local population, natural population, community, ecosystem. Five primitive (undefined) notions are used including animal, offspring and habitat, the latter in the sense of Charles Elton. The defining equations for the environment of one animal are first given, then niche (in the Elton sense) is formally defined in terms of the environment. The fifth primitve notion habitat is then introduced in order to define the remaining concepts.     

On the identification of clinically significant client changes: Reinterpretation of Jacobson's cut scores

Cut points or cut scores play a central role in Jacobson's popular method of identifying clinically significant changes in psychotherapy. When pre- and posttherapy scores of a client are on different sides of one of these cut scores, the change is considered clinically significant, provided that it is also reliable (i.e., not due to measurement errors). This article critically examines the meanings and implications of these cut scores. Contrary to popular beliefs, they are generallynot the test scores for which the probability of belonging to the Functional population is equal to the probability of belonging to the Dysfunctional population. When the Functional population distribution is above that of the Dysfunctional population, persons scoring above these cut scores can, in fact, have much greater probabilities of belonging to the Dysfunctional than to the Functional population. Goals of Jacobson's method can be attained only with Bayesian methods. Bayesian modifications of Jacobson's cut scores are proposed, although their use is limited by the availability of relevant base rates. Bayesian methods (a) can provide information about the probability that an individual belongs to each population, given his (her) score, and (b) are expected to yield total misdiagnosis rates that are many times lower than those of Jacobson's method. Users of Jacobson's method are cautioned against interpreting ratios of likelihoods as if they were ratios of posterior probabilities.     

On a certain class ofm-address machines

Conclusion It follows from the proved theorems that ifM =Q, (whereQ={0,q ₁,q ₂,...,q }) is a machine of the classM _F then there exist machinesM _i such thatM _i(1,c)=M (q _i,c) andQ _i={0, 1, 2, ..., +1} (i=1, 2, ..., ).And thus, if the way in which to an initial function of content of memorycC a machine assigns a final onecC is regarded as the only essential property of the machine then we can deal with the machines of the formM ={0, 1, 2, ..., }, and processes (t) (wheret=1,c,cC) only.Such approach can simplify the problem of defining particular machines of the classM _F , composing and simplifying them.Allatum est die 19 Januarii 1970     

“Anchor-range” results with “same” and “different” responses and similar and dissimilar stimuli

Summary Blocks of pairs of dissimilar (anchor-like) circles were unexpectedly followed by single pairs of similar circles and vice versa. The dissimilar circles were 3 and 10 mm in diameter, and the similar circles were 3 and 5 mm, 5 and 7 mm, and 7 and 10 mm in diameter. In a second experiment, the dissimilar and similar circles did not overlap in size (e.g., they were 1.5 and 5 mm and 7 and 10 mm, respectively). The same responses to the unexpected same pairs of similar circles were faster than the same responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. In contrast, the different responses to the unexpected different pairs of similar circles were slower than the different responses to the identical pairs in the blocks. Similar stimuli accelerate same responses and slow down different responses. So the time results (and the error results as well) suggest that the context of the block dissimilar circles increased the perceived similarity of the unexpected similar circles. These anchor-range results are not explained by Thurstonian theories, which are based on the absolute properties of stimuli. Instead, they imply that the relation between the similar circles in the context of the relation between the dissimilar circles affected performance.