Variable Priorities and Exclusionary Reasons in Input/Output Logic

Jörg Hansen, John Horty, and Xavier Parent and Leendert van der Torre have all recently described some sort of nonmonotonic logic to model reasons and their interactions. Horty’s framework is broader in scope than the other two, encompassing both reasoning about the relative strengths of reasons and reasoning about which reasons to consider in the first place. Hansen discusses a plethora of approaches and examples, including Horty’s, arguing that his preferred system best captures our intuitions. And Parent and van der Torre present a family of systems of input/output logic, which are in some ways the most flexible. In this paper, I aim to combine these features. Without attempting to answer the question of which intuitions are the best to capture, I first argue that there are good reasons to explore systems that behave more like Hansen’s than Horty’s. I then show that Parent and van der Torre’s framework of input/output logic can exactly duplicate Hansen’s system but is flexible enough to produce other results as well. Finally, I extend their framework to include the additional kinds of reasoning Horty discusses, showing that the resulting theory can handle a wider range of cases than Horty’s.     

How Do Geneticists and Genetic Counselors Counsel Women from High-Risk Breast Cancer Families?

This qualitative study asked Australian Genetic Counselors and Clinical Geneticists working in cancer genetics to describe their practice when a woman attends a consultation about her family history and her risk of developing breast cancer. Twenty-nine out of 36 Clinical Geneticists/Genetic Counselors returned the questionnaire (82%). Participants identified the key goals of the consultation as (a) identifying the individual needs and concerns of the woman, (b) providing information on genes and chromosomes, (c) giving an individual risk assessment in the context of supportive interaction, and (d) discussing the pros and cons of genetic testing and putting a surveillance plan into place. Respondents emphasized the dual importance of counseling/support and information provision in this setting, suggesting that one could not be given without the other. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.     

Cigarette smoking intentions and physical fitness: a multivariate study of high school males

This study was conducted to determine the extent to which several measures of physical fitness, treated compositely and individually, vary among adolescent males differentiated according to cigarette smoking status (i.e., strong intenders, mild intenders, and nonintenders). A total of 381 high school males were administered The Physical Performance Test for California to measure six traits of physical fitness, and a written questionnaire to assess smoking intentions and demographic data. As hypothesized, the teenage males who reported no intentions of smoking cigarettes were significantly more physically fit than were mild intenders and strong intenders, especially the latter. Etiological factors mediating the association are discussed within an underlying theme of prevention and cessation of the habit.     

Precision and power grip priming by observed grasping

The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal participants. Participants were asked to respond with their right- or left-hand to the accuracy of an observed (dynamic) grasp while they were holding precision or power grasp response devices in their hands (e.g., precision device/right-hand; power device/left-hand). The observed hand was making either accurate or inaccurate precision or power grasps and participants signalled the accuracy of the observed grip by making one or other response depending on instructions. Responses were made faster when they matched the observed grip type. The two grasp types differed in their sensitivity to the end-state (i.e., accuracy) of the observed grip. The end-state influenced the power grasp congruency effect more than the precision grasp effect when the observed hand was performing the grasp without any goal object (Experiments 1 and 2). However, the end-state also influenced the precision grip congruency effect (Experiment 3) when the action was object-directed. The data are interpreted as behavioural evidence of the automatic imitation coding of the observed actions. The study suggests that, in goal-oriented imitation coding, the context of an action (e.g., being object-directed) is more important factor in coding precision grips than power grips.