Beyond Millianism

In Beyond Rigidity, Soames attempts to defend Millianism by articulating a novel account of the semantics and pragmatics of sentences containing names. Soames uses this account both to respond to the objection that Millianism unintuitively allows the unrestricted substitution of coreferential names in propositional attitude contexts, and to generate a positive argument for Millianism. I argue that the positive argument fails, and that Soames’s account of the semantics and pragmatics of sentences containing names is inconsistent with Millianism.

Attitudes of Potential Providers Towards Preconceptional Cystic Fibrosis Carrier Screening

To determine the attitudes of potential providers (general practitioners and Community Health Service workers) towards preconceptual cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier screening and to determine which factors are associated with a positive attitude. A survey was conducted among 200 general practitioners (GPs) and 134 Community Health Service (CHS) workers. Fifty-two percent of the eligible GPs participated and 84% of the CHS workers. Fifty-five percent of the GPs and 73% of the CHS workers had a positive attitude towards routinely offering CF carrier screening, and more than 80% were in favor of informing the target population about the possibility of having a CF carrier test. A positive attitude was associated with (a) high perceived severity of CF, (b) religion (nonreligious compared to Reformed), (c) low perceived barriers, and (d) high perceived test reliability. The care providers who are most likely to be involved in a preconceptual CF carrier screening program, i.e. GPs and CHS workers, generally have a positive attitude towards the implementation of such a program.     

Art as the Silence of the World. An Attempt at a Phenomenological Interpretation

This paper provides an analysis of the paradoxical definition of art as the silence of the world, as presented in Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature. The definition is analysed phenomenologically, by treating the world as the universal horizon of all experiences. The paper presents two possible interpretations of Blanchot’s statement. First, a possibility is considered that, according to Blanchot, in genuine artistic experience the mundane everyday life falls silent, and an autonomous fictional world opens up. The paper argues that while Blanchot does oppose art to everyday life, this interpretation is insufficient. Firstly, because on the basis of the phenomenological premise, all possible worlds fall within the universal world-horizon, and secondly, the function Blanchot attributes to art is considerably more radical, as when he speaks about the directedness of art outside of all possible worlds. While such an aim may seem impossible from the viewpoint of the phenomenological premise, the second part of the paper demonstrates that it can indeed be meaningfully interpreted on the basis of Martin Heidegger’s transcendent approach to the world. According to this interpretation, while the phenomenological premise prevents all discussion of places and experiences outside the world, a liminal experience can nevertheless be discussed. If this is true, it is not an entity within the world which opens up, but rather the world-horizon itself in the form of an anxious silence.     

Construct Validity of the Acquired Capability for Suicide Scale: Factor Structure,Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The Acquired Capability for Suicide Scale (ACSS) assesses one of three main constructs in the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide but evidence of its validity is limited. In two studies (Ns = 287 and 738) validity of the full 20-item ACSS and its shorter versions (ACSS-5, ACSS-8, ACSS-FAD) were examined in terms of factor structure and relation to indices of self-reported suicidal behaviour and self-harm. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) failed to show good fit for one-, two-, or three-factor models of the ACSS in its various versions. Exploratory factor analysis of the 20-item scale in the first study pointed instead to a five-factor structure and this was supported using CFA in the second study. In both studies all scale versions showed moderate negative correlations to fear of death and dying, indicating scale validity for the purpose of assessing fearlessness about death. In the second study, a model in which the five factors were indicators of a latent variable of Capability was found to predict a latent variable of Suicidality as indicated by suicidal behaviours, but the prediction was substantially enhanced by the addition of Item 20 to the model. This single item was also found in the first study to better predict suicidal and self-harming behaviour than the full ACSS or any of its short versions.     

Islamic Female Sexuality and Gender in modern feminist interpretation

Sexuality, gender and patriarchy are modern concepts that Western feminist scholars have unquestioningly utilized in their historical inquiry into women in Islam without ample consideration of periodization or problemization. Within the revelation of the Qur'an, the sexes were gendered in relation to each other in a reflection of their physical and biological complementarity. There was not, however, the construction of sexuality and gendering that is evident in the patriarchal society of the modern world. In this essay, I will attempt to trace the historiographical evolution of female sexuality from the time of the Prophet until the Middle Ages, particularly through the development of the female gendered roles of wifehood and motherhood as found in the Qur'an, hadith and fiqh. Additionally, I will argue that until the present these modern constructs have been taken for granted by postmodern scholarship on the topic across many academic disciplines. This has led to scholarship that superimposes modern conceptual frameworks upon earlier time periods. Although these are modern concepts, they may be aptly applied to discourses evident in the period under review, but they must be properly clarified and situated. Furthermore, I myself will work with these concepts, but I will problematize them to show history as a process through which one can find the precursors for modern sexuality and gender construction.     

Evidence for a specific cross-modal association deficit in dyslexia: an electrophysiological study of letter-speech sound processing

The phonological deficit theory of dyslexia assumes that degraded speech sound representations might hamper the acquisition of stable letter-speech sound associations necessary for learning to read. However, there is only scarce and mainly indirect evidence for this assumed letter-speech sound association problem. The present study aimed at clarifying the nature and the role of letter-speech sound association problems in dyslexia by analysing event-related potentials (ERP) of 11-year-old dyslexic children to speech sounds in isolation or combined with letters, which were presented either simultaneously with or 200 ms before the speech sounds. Recent studies with normal readers revealed that letters systematically modulated speech sound processing in an early (mismatch negativity or MMN) and late (Late Discriminatory Negativity or LDN) time-window. The amplitude of the MMN and LDN to speech sounds was enhanced when speech sounds were presented with letters. The dyslexic readers in the present study, however, did not exhibit any early influences of letters on speech sounds even after 4 years of reading instruction, indicating no automatic integration of letters and speech sounds. Interestingly, they revealed a systematic late effect of letters on speech sound processing, probably reflecting the mere association of letters and speech sounds. This pattern is strongly divergent from that observed in age-matched normal readers, who showed both early and late effects, but reminiscent of that observed in beginner normal readers in a previous study (Froyen, Bonte, van Atteveldt & Blomert, 2009). The finding that the quality of letter-speech sound processing is directly related to reading fluency urges further research into the role of audiovisual integration in the development of reading failure in dyslexia.     

Marital Breakdown,Shame, and Suicidality in Men: A Direct Link?

The influence of feelings of shame originating from marital breakdown on suicidality is examined. The role of mental health problems as probable mediating factors is also considered. Internalized shame, state (related to separation) shame, and mental health problems were significantly correlated with the score for suicidality during separation in both genders. Tested structural equation model indicated that internalized shame was not directly linked to suicidality, but was mediated either by state shame or mental health problems in males in the context of separation. Our findings seem to indicate that separated males are more vulnerable to the experience of state shame in the context of separation, which might lead to the development of suicidality.     

The Unity of Language and Logic in Wittgenstein's Tractatus

The purpose of this paper is to offer an interpretation of the Tractatus’ proof of the unity of logic and language. The kernel of the proof is the thesis that the sole logical constant is the general propositional form. I argue that the Grundgedanke, the existence of the sole fundamental operation N and the analyticity thesis, together with the fact that the operation NN can always be seen as having no specific formal difference between its result and its base, imply that NN is intrinsic to every elementary proposition. I also argue that the picture theory of proposition is an account of the generation of propositions via naming, and that its crucial idea is that naming is the instantiation of the form of a name, which consists in arbitrarily picking out an object as the meaning of the name from those objects sorted out by the form of the name. It follows that the existential quantifier, that is, NN, is intrinsic to naming (and therefore to every elementary proposition). It is then proven that the sole logical constant is the general propositional form. This, together with the truth‐functionality of logical necessity, implies that logic and language are unified via a general rule – logical syntax.