Can residual lexical knowledge concern word form rather than word meaning?

We described a patient with a dramatic deficit of both word comprehension and naming but with good preservation of visual pictorial semantics. On word-picture matching, his performances were slightly better than expected based on the observed lexical semantic disorder; in addition, the patient, who maintained good preservation of his underlying phonology, showed a tendency to point to the picture phonologically related to the target. In order to interpret these data, we advanced the hypothesis that the patient, in spite of his virtually complete inability to name, would be able, in a word-picture matching task, to "covertly" (i.e., preverbally) retrieve the name from the picture and to use this name to attempt a match with the phonological form of the stimulus word. This mechanism, that we called "phonological" comprehension, would allow the identification of the correct target and would explain the choice of the phonologically related foil that was sometimes selected.     

Attributional processing style differences in depressed and nondepressed individuals

A series of four studies used different measures to assess the amount of attributional processing following failure and success. It was found that, from an actor's point of view, relatively depressed students consistently differed from relatively nondepressed students in the amount of their attributional processing. The depressed individuals reported more attributions for both hypothetical and real failure, compared to the nondepressed individuals. They also reported fewer attributions for hypothetical success than the nondepressed individuals. In line with previous findings, depressed individuals took less personal credit for their successes and ascribed their failures more pronouncedly to their lack of ability. The findings reflect a depressive attributional processing style that encompasses individual differences, both in the content and in the amount of causal thinking following failure and success. Integration of this style into the attributional helplessness model of depression is suggested. The findings are compatible with a differential self-esteem view of depression and with aspects of Kuhl's functional helplessness model of depression. Implications for depression therapy are briefly discussed.Financial support for the studies was obtained from the University of Bielefeld (Grants 0Z 2760/2774). I wish to thank Karola Bettmer, Thomas Feld, and Stefan Wächter for their participation in the collection and the preparation of the data, as well as Friedrich Försterling, Jonathan Harrow, Wulf-Uwe Meyer, and two unknown reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

Temporal Perspectives of the Nanotechnological Challenge to Regulation: How Human Rights Can Contribute to the Present and Future of Nanotechnologies

Expectations play a central role in understanding scientific and technological changes. Future-oriented representations are also central with regard to nanotechnologies as they can guide policy activities, provide structures and legitimation, attract different interests, focus policy-makers’ attention and foster investments for research. However, the emphasis on future scenarios tends to underrate the complexity of the challenges of the present market of nanotechnologies by flattening them under the needs and promises of scientific research. This is particularly apparent if we consider the viewpoint of the regulator who faces two different ranges of problems with regard to the market and research and is expected, simultaneously, to manage two different types of regulatory instruments, pursuing at the same time the same goals. Instead, by favoring only the future scenarios, the regulator runs the risk of abruptly shifting from more flexible and elastic tools to forms of hard legislation, wasting, thus, the resources of the soft-regulation, in particular those of self-regulation. By referring primarily to the European context, human rights, also thanks to their normative structure of principles, can help in strengthening both the legislation needed for regulating the present market and the soft instruments needed for steering research and for fostering the stakeholders’ participation without sacrificing the coherence of the regulatory response.     

Against Cognitivism About Supposition

A popular view maintains that supposition is a kind of cognitive mental state, very similar to belief in essential respects. Call this view “cognitivism about supposition”. There are at least three grades of cognitivism, construing supposition as (i) a belief, (ii) belief-like imagination or (iii) a species of belief-like imagination. I shall argue against all three grades of cognitivism and claim that supposition is a sui generis form of imagination essentially dissimilar to belief. Since for good reasons (i) is not supported in the literature, I shall dwell on (ii) and (iii). Without further explanation supposition has been very often merely postulated as being nothing but belief-like imagination—that is, (ii). I shall show that at least two considerations undermine (ii). First, supposition and belief-like imagination are governed by different norms, more precisely the former is freer than the latter and requires minimal or no mental effort. Second, contrary to belief-like imagination, supposition is “cold”, in that it is typically dissociated from emotional reactions. Proponents of (iii) face the pressure of explaining these differences between supposition and belief-like imagination too. I shall argue that they have not sufficiently motivated the claim that supposition is belief-like. In particular they fail to accommodate precisely the dimensions of supposition pertaining to its normativity and emotionality. I shall close with a sketch of a new account of supposition.     

Nominalism and Realism. How Not to Read the Tractatus' Conception of a Name

This paper focuses on a central aspect of the “picture theory” in the Tractatus – the “identity requirement” – namely the idea that a proposition represents elements in reality as combined in the same way as its elements are combined. After introducing the Tractatus' views on the nature of the proposition, I engage with a “nominalist” interpretation, according to which the Tractatus holds that relations are not named in propositions. I claim that the nominalist account can only be maintained by rejecting the “identity requirement.” I then consider an opposite – “realist” – interpretation, according to which Tractarian names include names of properties and relations. I argue that, although it can accommodate the “identity requirement,” the realist interpretation falls short of providing a correct interpretation of the Tractatus' conception of a name. I conclude by presenting an alternative account (to both nominalism and realism) of the Tractatus' conception of a name.     

Many-Valued Points And Equality

In 1999, da Silva, D'Ottaviano and Sette proposed a general definition for the term translation between logics and presented an initial segment of its theory. Logics are characterized, in the most general sense, as sets with consequence relations and translations between logics as consequence-relation preserving maps. In a previous paper the authors introduced the concept of conservative translation between logics and studied some general properties of the co-complete category constituted by logics and conservative translations between them. In this paper we present some conservative translations involving classical logic, Lukasiewicz three-valued system L ₃, the intuitionistic system I ¹ and several paraconsistent logics, as for instance Sette's system P ¹, the D'Ottaviano and da Costa system J ₃ and da Costa's systems C _n, 1 n.     

The glare effect does not give rise to a longer-lasting afterimage

The glare effect is an illusion in which a region appears self-luminous when flanked by gradients that decrease in luminance with distance from the region (Zavagno, 1999 Perception 28 835-838). This region also appears brighter than a surface of the same luminance. We investigated, using the paradigm of afterimages, whether a low-level mechanism at the level of the retina or LGN could account for this apparent brighter sensation. We first replicated the result from the literature that brighter and longer-lasting physical stimuli generate longer-lasting afterimages. We then compared the glare-effect stimuli with their counterpart controls, and found that the glare-effect stimuli did not give rise to longer-lasting afterimages. This suggests that the apparent brighter sensation of the glare effect is not due to a retinal or LGN mechanism, but must have a cortical origin.