많은 학자들이 지적하듯이, 『순수이성비판』 변증론 부록에 등장하는 ‘상상의 초점’(focus imaginarius) 개념은 1766년 출판된 전(前) 비판기 저작 『시령자의 꿈』에 등장하는 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념과 연관되어 있다. 그런데 대부분의 학자들은 두 저작에서 칸트가 동일한 용어를 통해 광학적 유비를 사용하고 있다는 표면적 유사성만을 간략히 지적하는 것으로 그친다. 그러나 『시령자의 꿈』에 등장하는 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념을 세세히 분석해 보면, 유사성보다는 오히려 차이가 두드러진다. 무엇보다 두 저작에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념이 도입된 목적이 다르다. 『순수이성비판』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념이 초월적 이념의 규제적 역할에 대한 이해를 돕기 위해 도입된 (...) 데에 반해서, 『시령자의 꿈』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념은 주관적으로 만들어낸 표상과 객관적으로 주어진 표상을 구별하는 생리적 기능을 설명하기 위해 도입된다. 이런 차이로 인해 『시령자의 꿈』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념은 『순수이성비판』과 달리 초월적 이념의 세 가지 근본적 특성, 즉 가상성, 초험성, 불가피성을 제대로 반영하지 못한다. 이를 보이기 위해 우리는『시령자의 꿈』에서 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념이 사용되는 세 가지 경우를 구별하고 각각의 경우에서 『순수이성비판』의 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념과 어떻게 유사하고 어떻게 다른지 살펴볼 것이다. 이를 통해 우리는 두 저작에서 사용된 ‘상상의 초점’ 개념의 연관성을 구체적으로 밝혀낼 것이다. (shrink)

Going back to Jacobi, commentators have often considered Kant’s notion of the transcendental object (thing in itself, monad, or object = X) to be concerned merely with empirical affection. Although most agree that this argument of Kant’s forbids the understanding from making illegitimate claims regarding the transcendental object, it is often assumed that no positive function can be ascribed to metaphysical illusions produced by reason. I will show in this paper, in contrast to most commentators, that a positive notion of (...) transcendental illusion is brought about by the cooperation of the imagination and reason in the latter’s pursuit of positing transcendental objects––in the same way that the imagination aids the understanding in determining objects of empirical cognition. When describing reason’s pursuit of systematicity, Kant writes that the transcendent ideas serve as a focus imaginarius that unifies cognition as such (A644/B672). It is not merely the case that metaphysical illusions regarding the soul, the world as such, and God are entirely useless, just because the understanding is prohibited from claiming having knowledge of such concepts.I take it that the transcendental object so considered in Kant’s Dialectic refers only to a representation of the imagination. I show that all three transcendental ideas––namely, God, the World as such, and the soul––are imaginary projections of unity carried out by the power of reason. Drawing on Kant’s notion of the focus imaginarius, I claim that reason regards transcendental illusions as being real objects. This holds as much for the schema of scientific knowledge, which is merely regulative, as it does for the three transcendental ideas. Unlike most commentators, I do not take Kant’s consideration of the transcendental object to concern empirical affection. Rather, reason posits this object in order to transcend the limits of the understanding, and to thereby use its own inner illusions for systematic purposes (cf. A250–53 and A393). To my mind, reason necessarily posits ideas, but the imagination often leads reason into holding that the focus imaginarius of the idea is an actual object. The critical use of reason must then put limits on the imagination (cf. A770/B798). But the imagination nonetheless serves reason’s interest by allowing it to put otherwise negative illusions to work for the sake of systematicity. (shrink)

O objeto dessa investigação é o status sistemático da ideia transcendental como “focus imaginarius” na Crítica da razão pura de Kant. Tentar-se-á mostrar que a teoria da auto-referência do eu fracassa, se for pensada na forma de uma objetivação do eu como objeto. Nesse sentido, a ideia regulativa marca o ponto central de um equívoco tanto da razão especulativa como da prática, como também das consequências resultantes dessa objetivação nos níveis epistemológico, psicológico e da teoria da ação.

Critics of the notion of Necessary Being, and critics of arguments for the existence of God, have often claimed to find flaws in the notion or the arguments, and to find flaws that are due to the presence of concealed tautologies. No theist who recalls the unfortunate of St Anselm and its rejection by St Thomas would dare to claim, his hand on his heart, that tautology has never lurked like a serpent in the garden of natural theology. But the (...) ways in which tautology and talk about God come together on occasion may or may not undermine natural theology in general. I for one am loath to abandon arguments for the existence of God, or give up talk of Necessary Being, since, unlike Professor Findlay, I am unwilling to reverence, much less to worship, a focus imaginarius and I want a real God, or none at all. One of the questions is, of course: does the religious believer want a God who must be too real to be real at all? Another question is: if one can sensibly talk of a God so real as to be Necessary, are there grounds for saying that this possible Necessary Being exists? Between them these questions cover a great part, though by no means all, of the ground of modern discussions on the matter of God. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene por propósito analizar las funciones de las ideas de la razón pura, centrándose en el tratamiento que recibe esta temática en el Apéndice que cierra la Dialéctica trascendental de la Crítica de la razón pura. En particular, se aborda la función sistematizadora de las ideas y el problema del uso hipotético o regulativo de las mismas, así como el vínculo entre ambas funciones. Se mostrará cómo la búsqueda de la unidad sistemática por parte de la razón (...) posibilita el uso coherente del entendimiento, y cómo las ideas, a modo de focus imaginarius, orientan al entendimiento y ensanchan el conocimiento y el ámbito de la experiencia dada desde fuera del campo del conocimiento empírico posible. (shrink)

In the theoretical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the term object has an extensive and far-reaching significance, and it can therefore be understood as a theory of objects. This becomes particularly clear when it is observed that all of his guidelines can be traced to different concepts of objects and their combination. With his concept of the object of experience, he attempts to mediate incompatible aspects in this: in relation to the object of experience, we have apodictic claims but at the (...) same time our knowledge of the object develops and contains the possibility of historical progress. This theory of objects was elaborated by Kant with regard to natural science and the claim of its metaphysical foundation. For this reason, Kant’s concept of object is inherently linked with his concept of science. Astronomy is at the core of his investigation, because it represents a perfect example of a so-called proper and rational natural science. (shrink)

Chapter Introduction. Syntactic focus theory and the phenomenon of secondary predication The primary goal of this monograph is to examine the interaction of ...

There has been extensive discussion of testimonial epistemic injustice, the phenomenon whereby a speaker’s testimony is rejected due to prejudice regarding who they are. But people also have their testimony rejected or preempted due to prejudice regarding what they communicate. Here, the injustice is content focused. We describe several cases of content focused injustice, and we theoretically interrogate those cases by building up a general framework through which to understand them as a genuine form of epistemic injustice that stands in (...) intertwined relationships to other forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each (...) condition [(self-compassion: n = 36, benefit-focused: n = 39) or a control condition (n = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups (p <.001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood (p <.019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed. (shrink)

Most elpistologists now agree that hope for a specific outcome involves more than just desire plus the presupposition that the outcome is possible. This paper argues that the additional element of hope is a disposition to focus on the desired outcome in a certain way. I first survey the debate about the nature of hope in the recent literature, offer objections to some important competing accounts, and describe and defend the view that hope involves a kind of focus (...) or attention. I then suggest that this account makes sense of the intuitive thought that there are moral and pragmatic norms on hope that go beyond the norms on desires and modal presuppositions. I conclude by considering some key questions. (shrink)

Emotion-Focused Counselling (or Therapy) is one of the newer therapies that emerged in the 1980's. It uses a Person-Centred framework but integrates elements of other therapies, mainly Gestalt, attachment thoery and principles of emotion theory. It is mainly short-term. It is therefore a slightly more directive, skills based therapy than Person-Centred. Significantly it also has a robust evidence base to it, which gives it a weight and credibility that perhaps other recently emerged therapies have lacked. Robert Elliott and Les Greenberg (...) developed Emotion Focused Therapy and their names are synonymous with the approach. This book is simple, practice-focused and takes a textbook approach. (shrink)

Focused correlation compares the degree of association within an evidence set to the degree of association in that evidence set given that some hypothesis is true. A difference between the confirmation lent to a hypothesis by one evidence set and the confirmation lent to that hypothesis by another evidence set is robustly tracked by a difference in focused correlations of those evidence sets on that hypothesis, provided that all the individual pieces of evidence are equally, positively relevant to that hypothesis. (...) However, that result depends on a very strong equal relevance condition on individual pieces of evidence. In this essay, we prove tracking results for focused correlation analogous to Wheeler and Scheines’s results but for cases involving unequal relevance. Our result is robust as well, and we retain conditions for bidirectional tracking between incremental confirmation measures and focused correlation. (shrink)

Slurring expressions display puzzling behaviour when embedded, such as under negation and in attitude and speech reports. They frequently appear to retain their characteristic qualities, like offensiveness and propensity to derogate. Yet it is sometimes possible to understand them as lacking these qualities. A theory of slurring expressions should explain this variability. We develop an explanation that deploys the linguistic notion of focus. Our proposal is that a speaker can conversationally implicate metalinguistic claims about the aptness of a focused (...) slurring expression. This explanation of variability relies on independently motivated mechanisms and is compatible with any theory of slurring expressions. (shrink)

The Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) has a pivotal role in a decision to detain an individual under the Mental Health Act 1983. This article is a reflective account demonstrating how a solution-focused approach can enable an AMHP to engage constructively with the person being assessed and apply the values of anti-oppressive practice. Using a solution-focused approach enables a creative and empowering discussion of risk and may lead to a less restrictive outcome. These techniques should be part of the training (...) and ongoing education of AMHPs. (shrink)

Gils-Schmidt and Salloch recognise that human and climate health are inextricably linked, and that mitigating healthcare-associated climate harms is essential for protecting human health.1 They argue that physicians have a duty to consider how their own practices contribute to climate change, including during their interactions with patients. Acknowledging the potential for conflicts between this duty and the provision of individual patient care, they propose the application of Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian account of practical identities to help navigate such scenarios. In this commentary, (...) we argue that by focusing attention on this physician–patient level, the authors overlook the complexity of climate change, both within the healthcare sector and beyond. We recognise the importance of individual agency in tackling this issue, and we also recognise that the authors do briefly acknowledge the importance of considering these broader complexities; however, we emphasise the need for climate and health discussions/action to be situated in a wider framework of systemic change. Our concern is that overemphasis on patient-level interactions risks normalising the prioritisation of individual-level approaches to addressing climate change, detracting from such a broader approach. Physician training emphasises the need for trust, confidentiality and shared decision-making in the doctor–patient relationship. …. (shrink)

"In 2003 the Getty Museum, which holds a collection of about 240 Weston prints, hosted a colloquium on the photographer. This volume in the In Focus series records remarks by the author, Brett Abbott, along with those of six other participants: William Clift, Amy Conger, David Featherstone, Weston Naef, David Travis, and Jennifer Watts. Context for their conversation is provided by the author's introduction, plate texts, and chronology. Approximately fifty of Weston's images demonstrate why his work continues to resonate (...) with a contemporary public and serves as a model for a host of photographers active today."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Why focus on sexism, rather than other kinds of discrimination? In this brief paper, I introduce a reductive explanation which says, “All other prejudices are just varieties of sexism.”.

Sense and Sensitivity explores the semantics and pragmatics of focus in natural language discourse, advancing a new account of focus sensitivity which posits a three-way distinction between different effects of focus. Makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing research in the field of focus sensitivity Discusses the features of QFC, an original theory of focus implying a new typology of focus-sensitive expressions Presents novel cross-linguistic data on focus and focus sensitivity Concludes with (...) a case study of exclusives (like “only”), arguing that the entire existing literature (reviewed in detail) has missed crucial generalizations, and that the focus sensitivity of these expressions must be understood in terms of their meaning and discourse function. (shrink)

In Focus: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy reproduces almost fifty of the artist's photographs, with commentaries on each by katherine Ware, an Assistant Curator in the Musuem's Department of Photographs. Included as well is an edited transcript of a colloquim on Moholy-Nagy's work, with comments by Thomas Barrow, Jeannine Fiedler, Charles Hagen, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Weston Naef, Leland Rice, and Katherine Ware. A chronology of significant events in the artist's life is also provided.

Philosophers of mind and language who advance causal theories face a sort of conjunction problem. When we say that the thing had in mind or the thing referred to is a matter of what causally impacted the thinker or speaker, we must somehow narrow down the long conjunction of items in a causal chain, all of which contributed to the having in mind, but only one of which becomes the object of thought or the linguistic referent. Here, I sketch a (...) notion of cognitive focus intended to do this narrowing. The notion borrows three key aspects from visual focus and some technological aides—causation, amplification, and suppression. I suggest a broader application of this framework to address the conjunction problem not only in ordinary contexts of perceptual focus but also in evidence cases involving non-perceptual cognitive focus. I further suggest cognitive focus is helpful in distinguishing referential vs. attributive thought. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel account of focal stress and pitch contour in English dialogue. We argue that one should analyse and treat focus and pitch contour jointly, since (i) some pragmatic interpretations vary with contour (e.g., whether an utterance accepts or rejects; or whether it implicates a positive or negative answer); and (ii) there are utterances with identical prosodic focus that in the same context are infelicitous with one contour, but felicitous with another. We offer an account (...) of two distinct pitch contours that predicts the correct felicity judgements and implicatures, outclassing other models in empirical coverage or formality. Prosodic focus triggers a presupposition, where what is presupposed and how the presupposition is resolved depends on prosodic contour. If resolving the presupposition entails the proffered content, then the proffered content is uninteresting and hence the utterance is in-felicitous. Otherwise, resolving the presupposition may lead to an implicature. We regiment this account in SDRT. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and discuss two mental phenomena which are somewhat neglected in the philosophy of mind: focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. My aim is to show that their natures are rather distinct, despite the fact that we tend to classify both as instances of daydreaming. The first difference between the two, I argue, is that, while focused daydreaming is an instance of imaginative mental agency, mind-wandering is not—though this does not mean that mind-wandering cannot involve mental agency at (...) all. This personal-level difference in agency and purposiveness has, furthermore, the consequence that instances of mind-wandering do not constitute unified and self-contained segments of the stream of consciousness—in stark contrast to focused daydreams. Besides, the two kinds of mental phenomena differ in whether they possess a narrative structure, and in how we may make sense of the succession of mental episodes involved. (shrink)

An interest in global histories of science is not new. Yet the project envisioned by this Focus section is different from that pursued by natural historians and natural philosophers in the early modern age. Instead of tracing universal patterns, there is value in attending to the connections and disconnections of science on the global stage. Instead of assuming the precision of science's boundaries, historians might consider the categories of “science” and “indigenous knowledge” to have emerged from globalization. New global (...) histories of science will be characterized by critical reflection on the limits of generalization, as well as a creative adoption of new sources, methods, and chronologies, in an attempt to decenter the European history of science. Such a project holds the promise of opening up new conversations between historians, anthropologists, philosophers, and sociologists of science. It is of critical importance if the discipline is not to fragment into regional and national subfields or become dominated by structural frameworks such as imperialism. -/- . (shrink)

Intonational focus can be observed on parts of words that appear to lack intrinsic meaning, and triggers alternatives that are similar in form. In order to provide a unified treatment of focus above and below the word level (they do, after all, behave the same in most respects), I develop a theory of denotations for arbitrary word parts in which focused word parts denote their own sound and the unfocused parts are functions from sounds to word meanings. This (...) allows focus theories to generalize below the word level; any differences with focus above the word level are located in the semantics of word parts. The paper also explores phonological constraints on focus placement, and shows that the focusability of a word part depends solely on its prosodic status, not on any semantic factors. (shrink)

Anaphora resolution is one of the most active research areas in natural language processing. This study examines focusing as a tool for the resolution of pronouns which are a kind of anaphora. Focusing is a discourse phenomenon like anaphora. Candy Sidner formalized focusing in her 1979 MIT PhD thesis and devised several algorithms to resolve definite anaphora including pronouns. She presented her theory in a computational framework but did not generally implement the algorithms. Her algorithms related to focusing and pronoun (...) resolution are implemented in this paper. This implementation provides a better comprehension of the theory both from a conceptual and a computational point of view. The resulting program is tested on different discourse segments, and evaluation and analysis of the experiments are presented together with the statistical results. (shrink)

Due to the close relationship among intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, regulatory focus, and creativity revealed by previous literature, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation may play a mediating role between regulatory focus and creativity. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between regulatory focus and creativity by combining intrinsic/extrinsic motivation. In this study, senior high school students completed the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire, the Working Preference Inventory, the Williams Creativity Assessment Packet, and the Kirton Adaption–Innovation Inventory. The correlation analysis showed that (...) both promotion and prevention focus positively correlated with intrinsic motivation; intrinsic motivation and promotion focus positively correlated with creativity personality and innovative-adaptive cognitive style; and extrinsic motivation and prevention focus negatively correlated with innovative–adaptive cognitive style. Furthermore, a path model showed that promotion focus positively predicted creativity through the mediation of intrinsic motivation. In general, our study suggests that intrinsic motivation plays a mediating role between promotion focus and creativity. Our results complement those of previous studies and serve as inspiration for the cultivation of creativity in classroom or enterprise settings. (shrink)

It is well-known that constructions involving ellipsis share many properties with constructions that involve phonological reduction. The similarity between ECs and PRCs is semantic: the interpretation of both is constrained by the interpretation of an antecedent. Rooth and Tancredi have pointed out that this similarity follows from an independently needed theory of focus.

The script focusFollowsMouse.user.js provides a very simple implementation of "click-free" web browsing: it defines a mouseover method for every HTML link, input, select and text area which calls the focus() method on that control. (Click on the link to install it as a Greasemonkey script.).

Goal-setting theory states that challenging, specific, and concrete goals (i.e., subordinate goals) are powerful motivators and boost performance in goal pursuit more than vague or abstract goals (i.e., superordinate goals). Goal-setting theory predominantly focuses on single, short-term goals and less on broad, long-term challenges. This review article extends goal-setting theory and argues that superordinate goals also fulfill a crucial role in motivating behavior, particularly when addressing broad, long-term challenges. The purpose of this article is to show theoretically that people pursue (...) long-term goals more successfully when they focus on subordinate and superordinate goals simultaneously than when they focus on either subordinate or superordinate goals alone. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION WERNER ABRAHAM, LACI MARÁCZ, SJAAK DE MEY & WIM SCHERPENISSE University of Groningen The Groningen Conference on Topic, ...

Research has examined various cognitive processes underlying ethical decision-making, and has recently begun to focus on the differential effects of specific emotions. The present study examines three self-focused moral emotions and their influence on ethical decision-making: guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Given the potential of these discrete emotions to exert positive or negative effects in decision-making contexts, we also examined their effects on ethical decisions after a cognitive reappraisal emotion regulation intervention. Participants in the study were presented with an ethical (...) scenario and were induced, or not induced, to feel guilt, shame, or embarrassment, and were asked to reappraise, or not reappraise, the situation giving rise to those emotions. Responses to questions about the ethical case were evaluated for the quality of ethical sensemaking, perceptions of moral intensity, and decision ethicality. Findings indicate that guilt, shame, and embarrassment are associated with different sensemaking processes and metacognitive reasoning strategies, and resulted in different perceptions of moral intensity. Additionally, cognitive reappraisal had a negative impact on each of these factors. Implications of these findings for ethical decision-making research are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War looks ever more like a slice of history rather than a contemporary reality. During those same twenty years, scholarship on science, technology, and the state during the Cold War era has expanded dramatically. Building on major studies of physics in the American context—often couched in terms of “big science”—recent work has broached scientific efforts in other domains as well, scrutinizing Cold War scholarship in increasingly international and comparative (...) frameworks. The essays in this Focus section take stock of current thinking about science and the Cold War, revisiting the question of how best to understand tangled (and sometimes surprising) relationships between government patronage and the world of ideas. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of negative polarity items (NPIs) in Hindi. It is noted that NPIs in this language are composed of a (weak) indefinite plus a particle bhii meaning ‘even’. It is argued that the compositional semantics of this combination explains their behavior as NPIs as well as their behavior as free choice (FC) items. I assume that weak Hindi indefinites like ek and koi are to be viewed as a predicate that I call one, a predicate that (...) is true of everything that exists. I further assume that bhii exhibits association with focus with the indefinite, and that this leads to contradictory implicatures in positive contexts. The behavior of these phrases in a variety of syntactic contexts is discussed, including constructions like correlatives. Finally, I provide a comparison with analyses of English any, and discuss the relevance of the analysis presented here for that of any. (shrink)

This paper proposes a third meditation-category—automatic self-transcending— to extend the dichotomy of focused attention and open monitoring proposed by Lutz. Automaticself-transcending includes techniques designed to transcend their own activity. This contrasts with focused attention, which keeps attention focused on an object; and open monitoring, which keeps attention involved in the monitoring process. Each category was assigned EEG bands, based on reported brain patterns during mental tasks, and meditations were categorized based on their reported EEG. Focused attention, characterized by beta/gamma activity, (...) included meditations from Tibetan Buddhist, Buddhist, and Chinese traditions. Open monitoring, characterized by theta activity, included meditations from Buddhist, Chinese, and Vedic traditions. Automaticself-transcending, characterized by alpha1 activity, included meditations from Vedic and Chinese traditions. Between categories, the included meditations differed in focus, subject/object relation, and procedures. These findings shed light on the common mistake of averaging meditations together to determine mechanisms or clinical effects. (shrink)

"A Focus on Images - Sense and Form, an exhibition of selected works from the Permanent Collection with added selections from private collectors, is an occasion to explore a sampling from a variety of artists' images encompassing the 12th century to the present and to reflect upon their importance in human experience. From the mysterious and elegant masks of African tribal arts to the often provocative figurative and abstract wall markings of yesterday's graffitists, artists' images have enjoyed cultural significance (...) quite beyond any apparent contribution to the necessities of day-to- day practical living.". (shrink)

This essay presents results about a deviation from independence measure called focused correlation . This measure explicates the formal relationship between probabilistic dependence of an evidence set and the incremental confirmation of a hypothesis, resolves a basic question underlying Peter Klein and Ted Warfield's ‘truth-conduciveness’ problem for Bayesian coherentism, and provides a qualified rebuttal to Erik Olsson's claim that there is no informative link between correlation and confirmation. The generality of the result is compared to recent programs in Bayesian epistemology (...) that attempt to link correlation and confirmation by utilizing a conditional evidential independence condition. Several properties of focused correlation are also highlighted. Introduction Correlation Measures 2.1 Standard covariance and correlation measures 2.2 The Wayne–Shogenji measure 2.3 Interpreting correlation measures 2.4 Correlation and evidential independence Focused Correlation Conclusion Appendix CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Any counterfactual with a true antecedent and a true consequent is invariably predicted to be true by the standard Stalnaker–Lewis semantics. But many such true–true counterfactuals appear false to ordinary speakers, which is considered by many authors as evidence that the standard semantics should be revised. However, Walters and Williams prove that allowing true–true counterfactuals to be false would unacceptably invalidate some very plausible logical principles. The objective of this paper is to provide a pragmatic account of seemingly false true–true (...) counterfactuals, which explains why such counterfactuals seem false to ordinary speakers while being true semantically. In particular, a pluralistic pragmatic account is pursued: I argue that some true–trues seem false because they conversationally implicate some falsehood, and some others seem false because the focus (intonation stress) involved in them invokes some pragmatic re‐interpretation that affects speakers' truth‐value judgments. (shrink)

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how these skills can be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, judgement and action – (...) and describe the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between these games. (shrink)

Crosslinguistically, questions frequently make crucial use of morphosyntactic elements which also occur outside of questions. Chief among these are focus, disjunctions, and wh-words with indefinite semantics. This paper provides a compositional account of the semantics of wh-, alternative, and polar questions in Yucatec Maya (YM), which are composed primarily of these elements. Key to the account is a theory of disjunctions and indefinites (extending work by others) which recognizes the inherently inquisitive nature of these elements. While disjunctions and indefinites (...) are inquisitive, they differ from questions since they are also truth-conditionally informative. Compositionally, then, the role of focus in YM questions is to presuppose the informative component of an indefinite wh-word or disjunction, rendering the inquisitive component the question’s only new contribution to the discourse. In addition to deriving question denotations compositionally, the account also captures a potentially surprising fact: focused disjunctions in YM can function as either questions or assertions, depending solely on the discourse context. (shrink)

Understanding a sentence and integrating it into the discourse depends upon the identification of its focus, which, in spoken German, is marked by accentuation. In the case of written language, which lacks explicit cues to accent, readers have to draw on other kinds of information to determine the focus. We study the joint or interactive effects of two kinds of information that have no direct representation in print but have each been shown to be influential in the reader’s (...) text comprehension: i. the (low-level) rhythmic-prosodic structure that is based on the distribution of lexically stressed syllables, and ii. the (high-level) discourse context that is grounded in the memory of previous linguistic content. Systematically manipulating these factors, we examine the way readers resolve a syntactic ambiguity involving the scopally ambiguous focus operator auch (engl. `too') in both oral (Experiment 1) and silent reading (Experiment 2). The results of both experiments attest that discourse context and local linguistic rhythm conspire to guide the syntactic and, concomitantly, the focus-structural analysis of ambiguous sentences. We argue that reading comprehension requires the (implicit) assignment of accents according to the focus structure and that, by establishing a prominence profile, the implicit prosodic rhythm directly affects accent assignment. (shrink)

Gentzen’s sequent calculi LK and LJ are landmark proof systems. They identify the structural rules of weakening and contraction as notable inference rules, and they allow for an elegant statement and proof of both cut elimination and consistency for classical and intuitionistic logics. Among the undesirable features of those sequent calculi is that their inferences rules are low-level and frequently permute over each other. As a result, large-scale structures within sequent calculus proofs are hard to identify. In this paper, we (...) present a different approach to designing a sequent calculus for classical logic. Starting with Gentzen’s LK proof system, we examine the proof search meaning of his inference rules and classify those rules as involving either don’t care nondeterminism or don’t know nondeterminism. Based on that classification, we design the focused proof system LKF in which inference rules belong to one of two phases of proof construction depending on which flavor of nondeterminism they involve. We then prove that the cut rule and the general form of the initial rule are admissible in LKF. Finally, by showing that the inference rules for LK are all admissible in LKF, we can give a relative completeness proof for LKF provability with respect to LK provability. We shall also apply these properties of the LKF proof system to establish other meta-theoretic properties of classical logic, including Herbrand’s theorem. (shrink)

Cameron et al ’s1 ethical considerations about the ‘Dualism of Values’ in pandemic response emphasise the need to strike a fair balance between the interests of the less vulnerable to COVID-19 and the interests of the more vulnerable. Those considerations are at the basis of ethical defences of focused protection strategies.2 One example is the proposal put forward in the Great Barrington Declaration. It presented focused protection strategies as more ethical alternatives to lockdowns which would prevent lockdowns’ ‘irreparable damage, with (...) the underprivileged disproportionately harmed’.3 Here we want to suggest that a version of Cameron et al ’s analysis can be applied to the case of vaccines to support a focused protection vaccination strategy. At this stage, we should limit vaccination to the vulnerable and not target children in COVID-19 vaccination strategies. We argue that, given the current state of knowledge about COVID-19, immunity and vaccines, it would be wrong to pose the costs and risks of vaccines on children for three reasons. First, they are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination …. (shrink)

Focusing on Truth explores the question of what truth is, balancing historical with issue-orientated discussion. The book offers a comprehensive survey of all the major theories of truth. Lawrence Johnson investigates a number of closely related matters of truth in his inquiry, such as: What sorts of things are true or false? What is attributed to them when they are said to be true or false? What do facts have to do with truth? What can we learn from previous theories? (...) The book opens with an analysis of the coherence theory of truth and then the correspondence theory of truth, as developed by Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein. Through a study of the semantic conceptions of truth, the author reveals that an adequate theory of truth must take account of the pragmatics of person, purpose, and circumstance. A full understanding of facts and truth bearers is considered central to Johnson's criticism of the opposing truth theories of J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson. Drawing on the merits of these theories and others, while identifying their deficiencies, Johnson presents a new account of truth, based on the correlation of referential foci and the use of linguistic conventions. This account is defended as being adequate to meet the legitimate demands made on a theory of truth. Johnson argues that the account leaves scope for statements of many different sorts to be true in their own widely varying ways, without the existence of a need to posit fundamentally different kinds of truth. (shrink)

We introduce a cyclic proof system for the two-way alternation-free modal μ-calculus. The system manipulates one-sided Gentzen sequents and locally deals with the backwards modalities by allowing analytic applications of the cut rule. The global effect of backwards modalities on traces is handled by making the semantics relative to a specific strategy of the opponent in the evaluation game. This allows us to augment sequents by so-called trace atoms, describing traces that the proponent can construct against the opponent’s strategy. The (...) idea for trace atoms comes from Vardi’s reduction of alternating two-way automata to deterministic one-way automata. Using the multi-focus annotations introduced earlier by Marti and Venema, we turn this trace-based system into a path-based system. We prove that our system is sound for all sequents and complete for sequents not containing trace atoms. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the debate over the so-called “easy argument for numbers”, an argument that uses evidence from natural language to support the metaphysically significant claim that numbers exist. It presents novel data showing that critical examples in the literature are ambiguous between two readings, contrary to previous assumptions. It then accounts for these data using independently motivated linguistic theory. The account developed rescues the easy argument from the primary challenges leveled against it in the literature and sets the (...) agenda for future work to determine whether or not the argument is valid. (shrink)