Hearing Spaces

In this paper I argue that empty space can be heard. This position contrasts with the generally held view that the only things that can be heard are sounds, their properties, echoes, and perhaps sound sources. Specifically, I suggest that when sounds reverberate in enclosed environments we auditorily represent the volume of space surrounding us. Clearly, we can learn the approximate size of an enclosed space through hearing a sound reverberate within it, and so any account that denies that we hear empty space must instead show how beliefs about volumes of space can be derived indirectly from what is heard. That is, if space is not auditorily represented when we hear sounds reverberate, what is? I consider whether hearing reverberation can be thought of as hearing a distinct sound, hearing echoes, or hearing a property of a sound. I argue that experiences of reverberation cannot be reduced to the perception of any of these types and that therefore empty space is represented in auditory perceptual content. In the final section I outline two ways in which space might be represented.     

Negative Actions

Some philosophers have argued that refraining from performing an action consists in actively keeping oneself from performing that action or preventing one’s performing it. Since activities must be held to be positive actions, this implies that negative actions are a species of positive actions which is to say that all actions are positive actions. I defend the following claims:

Negative self-hypnosis

A review of recent developments in psychotherapeutic methods of cognitive behavior therapy leads to the conclusion that negative self-hypnosis (NSH) is operative in problematic behavior. NSH is elucidated, and a counteractive, five-stage approach of self-hypnosis is proposed to effectively deal with NSH.The author acknowledges with gratitude the critical comments made by Drs. Theodore X. Barber, Albert Ellis, Brian O'Flanagan and Daniel Lutzker in the preparation of this article.     

Knowledge on Treelike Spaces

This paper presents a bimodal logic for reasoning about knowledge during knowledge acquisitions. One of the modalities represents (effort during) non-deterministic time and the other represents knowledge. The semantics of this logic are tree-like spaces which are a generalization of semantics used for modeling branching time and historical necessity. A finite system of axiom schemes is shown to be canonically complete for the formentioned spaces. A characterization of the satisfaction relation implies the small model property and decidability for this system.     

Independence in Information Spaces

Three different types of interdependence between pieces of information, or ??secrets??, are discussed and compared. Two of them, functional dependence and nondeducibility, have been studied and axiomatized before. This article introduces a third type of interdependence and provides a complete and decidable axiomatization of this new relation.     

Negative Perfectionism: Examining Negative Excessive Behavior in the Workplace

The present paper explores the concept of negative perfectionism in the workplace. Negative perfectionism is unremitting and compulsive behavior in the process of striving to meet one's goals. We proposed that 4 types of negative or excessive behavior result from negative perfectionism in organizational settings: compulsive behavior, neurotic behavior, imposter behavior, and narcissistic behavior. Self-concept-based motivation theory was used as a framework for understanding how inaccuracies or inconsistencies between the evaluation of one's behavior in the workplace (goal-setting behavior) and the type of feedback cues to which one decides to attend (feedback-seeking behavior) might lead to these types of negative or excessive behaviors. Personal and managerial implications of negative perfectionism in organizational settings are discussed.

. . . when personal characteristics grate harmfully on others or significantly derail the success of the persons themselves, psychologists regard them not just as personality traits, but as personality disorders.

—Miller (1998)     

Formal Ontologies and Coherent Spaces

The paper contains a short summary – oriented by a logical point of view – of a joint work on Formal Ontologies. We shall show how Formal Ontologies correspond to Coherent Spaces, and operations on Formal Ontologies correspond to operations on corresponding Coherent Spaces. So, we are offering a new way to establish the semantics of Formal Ontologies. Surely, we are giving a contribution towards a geometrical treatment of Formal Ontologies (as decidable organizations of digital data).     

Private Announcements on Topological Spaces

In this work, we present a multi-agent logic of knowledge and change of knowledge interpreted on topological structures. Our dynamics are of the so-called semi-private character where a group G of agents is informed of some piece of information \(\varphi \), while all the other agents observe that group G is informed, but are uncertain whether the information provided is \(\varphi \) or \(\lnot \varphi \). This article follows up on our prior work (van Ditmarsch et al. in Proceedings of the 15th TARK. pp 95-102, 2015) where the dynamics were public events. We provide a complete axiomatization of our logic, and give two detailed examples of situations with agents learning information through semi-private announcements.     

Images, Spaces, Representations

The contribution deals with some key problems of cognitive science, whose plurality transcends the boundaries of the disciplines drawn by classical epistemology. In particular, it addresses the issues of mental images, spaces of representation, and the architecture of cognitive processes in vision theory. The thesis presented is that a proper treatment of vision within psychophysics entails an analysis of a series of interconnected spaces, objects and methodologies, from psychophysics to the many virtual realities of representation.     

子集空间下的邻域扩张

子集空间逻辑是刻画知识及其在证据支持度提升时发生变化的一种具有拓扑逻辑风格的简单架构的模态认知逻辑。与关系语义学不同,子集空间逻辑的语义学借助"邻域"而非"可通达关系"来表达不确定性区间。邻域的缩小体现不确定性的减少;在认知语境下,这种不确定性的减少就表现为知识的增长。子集空间逻辑主要刻画邻域的缩小。与邻域缩小相对应的邻域扩张同样具有理论研究的价值,然而却没有在子集空间逻辑中得到刻画。本文在子集空间逻辑的框架下探讨邻域的扩张。主要成果是给出带有邻域扩张算子的子集空间逻辑,为其引入关系语义学和公理系统,并证明该系统的完全性。