One's Modus Ponens: Modality,Coherence and Logic

Recently, there has been a shift away from traditional truth‐conditional accounts of meaning towards non‐truth‐conditional ones, e.g., expressivism, relativism and certain forms of dynamic semantics. Fueling this trend is some puzzling behavior of modal discourse. One particularly surprising manifestation of such behavior is the alleged failure of some of the most entrenched classical rules of inference; viz., modus ponens and modus tollens. These revisionary, non‐truth‐conditional accounts tout these failures, and the alleged tension between the behavior of modal vocabulary and classical logic, as data in support of their departure from tradition, since the revisionary semantics invalidate some of these patterns. I, instead, offer a semantics for modality with the resources to accommodate the puzzling data while preserving classical logic, thus affirming the tradition that modals express ordinary truth‐conditional content. My account shows that the real lesson of the apparent counterexamples is not the one the critics draw, but rather one they missed: namely, that there are linguistic mechanisms, reflected in the logical form, that affect the interpretation of modal language in a context in a systematic and precise way, which have to be captured by any adequate semantic account of the interaction between discourse context and modal vocabulary. The semantic theory I develop specifies these mechanisms and captures precisely how they affect the interpretation of modals in a context, and do so in a way that both explains the appearance of the putative counterexamples and preserves classical logic.     

Creation of visual long-term memory

Currently, it is not known by which mechanisms novel visual representations are stored in long-term memory (LTM). Here we report evidence that visual working memory (WM) plays an important role in the formation of visual LTM. By varying exposure times and perceptual difficulty of the stimuli, we find that the rate-limiting factor constraining storage in LTM is the amount of information that can be simultaneously kept in WM, whereas the time needed to store this information into LTM is constant irrespective of the size of the WM content. These results support the hypothesis that visual WM serves as a gate for the storage of information into LTM.     

Trauma-related and neutral false memories in war-induced Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Recent models of cognition in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) predict that trauma-related, but not neutral, processing should be differentially affected in these patients, compared to trauma-exposed controls. This study compared a group of 50 patients with PTSD related to the war in Bosnia and a group of 50 controls without PTSD but exposed to trauma from the war, using the DRM method to induce false memories for war-related and neutral critical lures. While the groups were equally susceptible to neutral critical lures, the PTSD group mistakenly recalled more war-related lures. Both false and correct recall were related more to depression than to self-rated trauma. Implications for accounts of false memories in terms of source-monitoring are discussed.     

The interactive effects of temperament and maternal parenting on toddlers' externalizing behaviours

The present study aimed to determine the potential moderating effects of temperamental traits on the relation between parenting and toddlers' externalizing behaviours. For that purpose, this study examined the interplay between temperament and maternal parenting behaviours in predicting the level as well as the development of toddlers' externalizing behaviours. Participants were 115 boys (wave 1, M=16.9 months; wave 2, M=23.2 months) and their mothers, who were observed in a 13‐min structured play session at home. With regard to the prediction of the level of externalizing behaviours at wave 1, main effects were found for children's temperamental characteristics. In addition, maternal negative control interacted significantly with children's inhibitory control in predicting this level of externalizing behaviours. The findings with regard to the development of externalizing behaviours showed that the effects of maternal negative control and lack of maternal sensitivity were stronger for toddlers with a difficult temperament: maternal negative control and lack of maternal sensitivity were related to an increase in externalizing behaviours for temperamentally difficult children only. These results offer support for the goodness‐of‐fit hypothesis, stressing the idea that the effects of temperament and the social environment depend to a large extent on their interplay. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pacifism and Moral Integrity

The paper has three parts. The first is a discussion of the values as goals and means. This is a known Moorean distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values, with one other Moorean item - the doctrine of value wholes. According to this doctrine the value wholes are not simply a summation of their parts, which implies a possibility that two evils might be better than one (e. g. crime + punishment, two evils, are better than either one of them taken separately). In this first part I will discuss peace as an end value, and war as a means value. The second part dicsusses briefly the issue of sincerity. The third, last and for me the most important part of the paper explores the issue of moral integrity in pacifism: could a pacifist preserve the integrity of the attacker, or, for that matter her own integrity, or must she destroy anyone’s integrity and dehumanize the attacker and also herself?     

Pacifism: Equipment or Accessory of War?

It is my intention to attempt to define pacifism, in its engagement and concept, as a necessary requisite of war and military action, following a phrase used over a hundred years ago by Franz Rosenzweig when speaking of pacifism as “necessary equipment of war.” I will try to defend the importance of pacifism as an integral part of war (as such, pacifism as a requisite of war ought to shorten the period of war and mitigate destruction) and oppose this concept of pacifism to Jan Narveson’s old attempt at constructing pacifism as a position and then designating it as “untenable and unreasonable,” and then further oppose this to his later attempt to find in pacifism the cause of further (and more) violence for ever more vicious wars.