In this paper we show how to formalise false-belief tasks like the Sally-Anne task and the second-order chocolate task in Dynamic Epistemic Logic. False-belief tasks are used to test the strength of the Theory of Mind of humans, that is, a human’s ability to attribute mental states to other agents. Having a ToM is known to be essential to human social intelligence, and hence likely to be essential to social intelligence of artificial agents as well. It is therefore important to (...) find ways of implementing a ToM in artificial agents, and to show that such agents can then solve false-belief tasks. In this paper, the approach is to use DEL as a formal framework for representing ToM, and use reasoning in DEL to solve false-belief tasks. In addition to formalising several false-belief tasks in DEL, the paper introduces some extensions of DEL itself: edge-conditioned event models and observability propositions. These extensions are introduced to provide better formalisations of the false-belief tasks, but expected to have independent future interest. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the use of event models for automated planning. Event models are the action defining structures used to define a semantics for dynamic epistemic logic. Using event models, two issues in planning can be addressed: Partial observability of the environment and knowledge. In planning, partial observability gives rise to an uncertainty about the world. For single-agent domains, this uncertainty can come from incomplete knowledge of the starting situation and from the nondeterminism of actions. In multi-agent domains, (...) an additional uncertainty arises from the fact that other agents can act in the world, causing changes that are not instigated by the agent itself. For an agent to successfully construct and execute plans in an uncertain environment, the most widely used formalism in the literature on automated planning is “belief states”: sets of different alternatives for the current state of the world. Epistemic logic is a significantly more expressive and theoretically better founded method for representing knowledge and ignorance about the world. Further, epistemic logic allows for planning according to the knowledge (and iterated knowledge) of other agents, allowing the specification of a more complex class of planning domains, than those simply concerned with simple facts about the world. We show how to model multi-agent planning problems using Kripke-models for representing world states, and event models for representing actions. Our mechanism makes use of slight modifications to these concepts, in order to model the internal view of agents, rather than that of an external observer. We define a type of planning domain called epistemic planning domains, a generalisation of classical planning domains, and show how epistemic planning can successfully deal with partial observability, nondeterminism, knowledge and multiple agents. Finally, we show epistemic planning to be decidable in the single-agent case, but only semi-decidable in the multi-agent case. (shrink)

Despite acknowledgment that performance failure among new salespeople is a prevalent issue for organizations, researchers do not fully understand the consequences of repetitive periods of failure on new salespeople’s unethical selling behaviors. Further, little is known about how a sales force’s reward structure and managerial attempts to intervene following failure affect new salespeople’s behavior. Combining an experiment with longitudinal growth models, we show that repetitive periods of failure increase unethical behaviors, and interventions intended to remind the salesperson to behave in (...) the customer’s best interests attenuate this effect under a non-contingent reward structure. However, counter to managerial assumptions, under a contingent reward structure these customer-oriented interventions actually backfire by amplifying the original relationship between repetitive failure and unethical behaviors. The results have potentially important managerial implications for those who manage new salespeople learning how to sell or during other failure-prone periods. (shrink)

An anthology of previously unpublished essays from some of the most outstanding scholars working in philosophy, mathematics, and computer science today, _Self-Reference_ reexamines the latest theories of self-reference, including those that attempt to explain and resolve the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. With a thorough introduction that contextualizes the subject for students, this book will be important reading for anyone interested in the general area of self-reference and philosophy.

Plausibility models are Kripke models that agents use to reason about knowledge and belief, both of themselves and of each other. Such models are used to interpret the notions of conditional belief, degrees of belief, and safe belief. The logic of conditional belief contains that modality and also the knowledge modality, and similarly for the logic of degrees of belief and the logic of safe belief. With respect to these logics, plausibility models may contain too much information. A proper notion (...) of bisimulation is required that characterises them. We define that notion of bisimulation and prove the required characterisations: on the class of image-finite and preimage-finite models, two pointed Kripke models are modally equivalent in either of the three logics, if and only if they are bisimilar. As a result, the information content of such a model can be similarly expressed in the logic of conditional belief, or the logic of degrees of belief, or that of safe belief. This, we found a surprising result. Still, that does not mean that the logics are equally expressive: the logics of conditional and degrees of belief are incomparable, the logics of degrees of belief and safe belief are incomparable, while the logic of safe belief is more expressive than the logic of conditional belief. In view of the result on bisimulation characterisation, this is an equally surprising result. We hope our insights may contribute to the growing community of formal epistemology and on the relation between qualitative and quantitative modelling. (shrink)

An anthology of previously unpublished essays from some of the most outstanding scholars working in philosophy, mathematics, and computer science today, _Self-Reference_ reexamines the latest theories of self-reference, including those that attempt to explain and resolve the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. With a thorough introduction that contextualizes the subject for students, this book will be important reading for anyone interested in the general area of self-reference and philosophy.

In this paper we define a family of many-valued semantics for hybrid logic, where each semantics is based on a finite Heyting algebra of truth-values. We provide sound and complete tableau systems for these semantics. Moreover, we show how the tableau systems can be made terminating and thereby give rise to decision procedures for the logics in question. Our many-valued hybrid logics turn out to be "intermediate" logics between intuitionistic hybrid logic and classical hybrid logic in a specific sense explained (...) in the paper. Our results show that many-valued hybrid logic is indeed a natural enterprise. (shrink)

In this paper we define a family of many-valued semantics for hybrid logic, where each semantics is based on a finite Heyting algebra of truth-values. We provide sound and complete tableau systems for these semantics. Moreover, we show how the tableau systems can be made terminating and thereby give rise to decision procedures for the logics in question. Our many-valued hybrid logics turn out to be "intermediate" logics between intuitionistic hybrid logic and classical hybrid logic in a specific sense explained (...) in the paper. Our results show that many-valued hybrid logic is indeed a natural enterprise. (shrink)

We present a logic which we call Hybrid Duration Calculus. HDC is obtained by adding the following hybrid logical machinery to the Restricted Duration Calculus : nominals, satisfaction operators, down-arrow binder, and the global modality. RDC is known to be decidable, and in this paper we show that decidability is retained when adding the hybrid logical machinery. Decidability of HDC is shown by reducing the satisfiability problem to satisfiability of Monadic Second-Order Theory of Order. We illustrate the increased expressive power (...) obtained in hybridizing RDC by showing that HDC, in contrast to RDC, can express all of the 13 possible relations between intervals. (shrink)

BackgroundOrganizations worldwide increasingly adopt inclusive talent management, and this approach appears to rhyme particularly well with the Nordic welfare model. Questions about its value remain understudied, however. The inclusive approach is rooted in positive psychology and focuses on recognizing each employee's individual talents and assessing whether they fit the long-term needs of the organization, since a fit is assumed to be associated with employees' wellbeing. In the present study, we test this assumption focusing specifically on a key talent management practice, (...) talent identification, and the social dimension of employee wellbeing.MethodData were collected through an employee survey conducted within the Finnish units of four international manufacturing organizations and analyzed using logistic regression.ResultsWe found that the recognition of individual talents for long-term deployment by the organization is positively associated with social wellbeing in terms of supervisor support and social climate in the work unit, as perceived by the employees.ConclusionOur results tentatively suggest that inclusive talent management creates value through the identification of employees' individual talents as this practice can be associated with their enhanced wellbeing. (shrink)

Plausibility models are Kripke models that agents use to reason about knowledge and belief, both of themselves and of each other. Such models are used to interpret the notions of conditional belief, degrees of belief, and safe belief. The logic of conditional belief contains that modality and also the knowledge modality, and similarly for the logic of degrees of belief and the logic of safe belief. With respect to these logics, plausibility models may contain too much information. A proper notion (...) of bisimulation is required that characterises them. We define that notion of bisimulation and prove the required characterisations: on the class of image-finite and preimage-finite models, two pointed Kripke models are modally equivalent in either of the three logics, if and only if they are bisimilar. As a result, the information content of such a model can be similarly expressed in the logic of conditional belief, or the logic of degrees of belief, or that of safe belief. This, we found a surprising result. Still, that does not mean that the logics are equally expressive: the logics of conditional and degrees of belief are incomparable, the logics of degrees of belief and safe belief are incomparable, while the logic of safe belief is more expressive than the logic of conditional belief. In view of the result on bisimulation characterisation, this is an equally surprising result. We hope our insights may contribute to the growing community of formal epistemology and on the relation between qualitative and quantitative modelling. (shrink)

Recent events and popularized stereotypes call into question the ethics of salesperson behaviors. Although prior research demonstrates that salespeople’s emotional exhaustion can have negative consequences for several job outcomes, little is known about the factors that can mitigate such relationships—particularly the relationship between emotional exhaustion and ethical behavior. To remedy this knowledge gap, we draw from self-control theory to propose a novel theoretical framework and develop hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested on a unique dataset consisting of survey data collected from (...) 123 matched business-to-business salesperson–manager dyads. The findings reveal that emotional exhaustion is negatively associated with sales performance, emotional exhaustion is negatively associated with ethical behaviors, ethical behaviors are positively associated with sales performance, ethical behaviors mediate emotional exhaustion’s negative effect on sales performance, perceived supervisor support attenuates the negative association between emotional exhaustion and ethical behaviors, and contrary to expectations, grit strengthens the negative association between emotional exhaustion and ethical behaviors. As we show here, perceived supervisor support may attenuate the undesirable effects of emotional exhaustion on ethical behaviors and sales performance. The article’s broader contribution thus lies in its suggestion that managers pay special attention to these factors. Moreover, factors such as grit can have unexpected and undesirable influences; therefore, we draw attention to the importance of scrutinizing these interactions, even when the factors involved are almost universally touted as beneficial. Theoretical and practical implications of the research are discussed. (shrink)

In ‘The Woman Poet: Her Dilemma’ (1986—7), the Irish poet Eavan Boland argued that women poets were obstructed on the one hand by traditional ideas of femininity and poetry, and on the other by the demands of separatist feminism. In ‘Dilemmas and Developments: Eavan Boland Re-examined’ Sarah Maguire argues that in recent years women poets have clearly achieved greater confidence as a result of changes in their audience. However, the underlying dilemma facing a woman poet — that of (...) the tension between the demands of femininity and the role expected of a post-Romantic lyric poet — continues to remain unresolved. (shrink)

The worsening of the Cold War during the Ronald Reagan administration brought with it the Reagan doctrine and US support for the conservative Central American dictatorships, causing a wave of refugees that reached the United States. In the face of the deportations carried out by the administration, a social movement of religious inspiration, but not confessional, called Sanctuary, with important legal and political consequences was produced.

It has already been argued by Frazer and Boland (1983) that, interpreted in an instrumentalist fashion, Milton Friedman’s well known and much criticized 1953 paper on “The Methodology of Positive Economics”1 proved to be convergent with Popper's falsificationist philosophy of science2. I think that this comparison is flawed. For one can assuredly contest this interpretation in view of the fact that Popper always opposed any kind of instrumentalist philosophy of science3. It is not even clear that what Friedman has (...) to say on the intricate question of the status of theories and on the function of tests has anything to do with what Popper criticizes under the general category of “instrumentalism”. What I will do here is not so much to directly challenge the Frazer-Boland interpretation as to replace it with a completely new comparison of both methodologies in order to get a new look at Friedman's methodological stance. Of course, one has to focus only on the arguments that really are comparable and leave aside those that could easily be proved to be fundamentally different, if not plainly incompatible. But, as I will try to show, the exercise is worthwhile, for this new comparison will force us to reinterpret, at least partially, what seem to me to be the two central tenets of Friedman's methodological doctrine. Of course, in order to find convergence between Friedman's and Popper's views on economic methodology, we have to read.. (shrink)

Throughout the last decade, there has been an increased interest in various forms of dynamic epistemic logics to model the flow of information and the effect this flow has on knowledge in multi-agent systems. This enterprise, however, has mostly been applicationally and semantically driven. This results in a limited amount of proof theory for dynamic epistemic logics. In this paper, we try to compensate for a part of this by presenting terminating tableau systems for full dynamic epistemic logic with action (...) models and for a hybrid public announcement logic. The tableau systems are extensions of already existing tableau systems, in addition to which we have used the reduction axioms of dynamic epistemic logic to define rules for the dynamic part of the logics. Termination is shown using methods introduced by Braüner, Bolander, and Blackburn. (shrink)

The multifaceted work of the late Susan Leigh Star is explored through a selection of her writings and essays by friends and colleagues. Susan Leigh Star (1954–2010) was one of the most influential science studies scholars of the last several decades. In her work, Star highlighted the messy practices of discovering science, asking hard questions about the marginalizing as well as the liberating powers of science and technology. In the landmark work Sorting Things Out, Star and Geoffrey Bowker revealed the (...) social and ethical histories that are deeply embedded in classification systems. Star's most celebrated concept was the notion of boundary objects: representational forms—things or theories—that can be shared between different communities, with each holding its own understanding of the representation. Unfortunately, Leigh was unable to complete a work on the poetics of infrastructure that further developed the full range of her work. This volume collects articles by Star that set out some of her thinking on boundary objects, marginality, and infrastructure, together with essays by friends and colleagues from a range of disciplines—from philosophy of science to organization science—that testify to the wide-ranging influence of Star's work. Contributors Ellen Balka, Eevi E. Beck, Dick Boland, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Janet Ceja Alcalá, Adele E. Clarke, Les Gasser, James R. Griesemer, Gail Hornstein, John Leslie King, Cheris Kramarae, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Karen Ruhleder, Kjeld Schmidt, Brian Cantwell Smith, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm L. Strauss, Jane Summerton, Stefan Timmermans, Helen Verran, Nina Wakeford, Jutta Weber. (shrink)

This article explores the contributions of women scholars, writers and artists to our understanding of the medieval past. Beginning with a contemporary artists book by Liz Mathews that draws on one of Boethius‘s Latin lyrics from the Consolation of Philosophy as translated by Helen Waddell, it traces a network of medieval women scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries associated with Manchester and the John Rylands Library, such as Alice Margaret Cooke and Mary Bateson. It concludes by examining the translation (...) of the Old English poem, The Wife‘s Lament, by contemporary poet, Eavan Boland. The art of Liz Mathews and poetry of Eavan Boland and the scholarship of women like Alice Cooke, Mary Bateson, Helen Waddell and Eileen Power show that women‘s writing of the past – creative, public, scholarly – forms a strand of an archive of women‘s history that is still being put together. (shrink)

This paper examines the literary representation of the beginnings of the Northern Irish Troubles with regard to a gender variable, in the selected poems by Heaney, Durcan, Boland, Meehan and Morrissey. The reading of Heaney’s “Punishment” will attempt to focus not solely on the poem’s repeatedly criticized misogyny but on analyzing it in a broader, historical context of the North’s conflict. In Durcan’s case, his prominent nationalist descent or his declared contempt for any form of paramilitary terrorism do not (...) seem to prevent him entirely from immortalizing female victims of the Troubles. Boland’s attitude seems the most unequivocal: the clear aversion to the language of death and rendering Irish women’s experiences in this discourse. The article concludes with analysis of Meehan’s “Southern” guilt for the situation of Catholics in the North with the simultaneous critique of perpetrated violence and Morrissey’s complicated standpoint: atheist/neutral/Protestant/communist and her striving for the impossible impartiality in a war-ridden and politically divided country. Trying to avoid systemic victimization of Irish women, the paper intends to analyze the historical and political circumstances which made them more susceptible to various forms of attacks at the beginnings of the Troubles, as reflected in the titular labels. (shrink)

Plato Tom Angier -- Aristotle Timothy Chappell -- Stoics Jacob Klein -- Aquinas Vivian Boland O.P -- Hume Peter Millican -- Kant Ralph Walker -- Hegel Kenneth Westphal -- Marx Sean Sayers -- Mill Krister Bykvist -- Nietzsche Ken Gemes and Christoph Schuringa -- Macintyre David Solomon.

This article examines the contribution that poetry written over the last fifty years might make to the established and burgeoning field of Medical Humanities. It takes poems by women about cancer and depression as a case study of how they can offer insight into the impact of these conditions on the sufferer. Collectively, the poems document and effect shifts in knowledge about, and the associated stigmas concerning, illnesses that carry secrecy and shame, specifically cancer and depression. Additionally, drawing on Virginia (...) Woolf’s remarkable essay “On Being Ill”, we see how the non-verbal features of poems, particularly metaphors and symbols, mark the space of what a patient cannot fully articulate. Accordingly, the poems discussed illuminate how literature can express human interiority but at the same time remind the reader – or health professional – that interiority can never be fully presented. Thus, poetry both contributes to and also checks the ways in which literature is appropriated by the biomedical sciences. The poets included are Eavan Boland, Julia Darling, U.A. Fanthorpe, Jackie Kay, Gwyneth Lewis, Carol Satyamurti and Jo Shapcott. Some poems specify a female subjectivity, some express agency as autonomous individuals, while others presume to speak of common human experience. (shrink)

In 1993, the American logic S. Yablo was proposed an original infinitive formulation of the classical ≪Liar≫ paradox. It questioned the traditional notion of self-reference as the basic structure for semantic paradoxes. The article considers the arguments underlying two different approaches to analysis of proposals of the ≪Infinite Liar≫ and understanding of the genuine sources for semantic paradoxes. The first approach (V. Valpola, G.-H. von Wright, T. Bolander, etc.) imposes responsibility for the emergence of semantic paradoxes on the negation of (...) the truth predicate. It deprives the ≪Infinite Liar≫ sentences of consistent truth values. The second approach is based on a modified version of anaphoric prosententialism (D. Grover, R. Brandom, etc.). The concepts of truth and falsehood are treated as special anaphoric operators. Logical constructs similar to the ≪Infinite Liar≫ do not attribute any definite truth values to sentences from which they are composed, but only state certain types of relations between the semantic content of such sentences. (shrink)

In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...) the attendant penetration of permanent liminality into those aspects of the lifeworld where individuals had previously sought some kind of stability and meaning. Through a historical and anthropological examination of this phenomenon, it problematises the underlying logic of limitless technological expansion and our increasing inability to imagine either ourselves or our world in other than technological terms. Drawing on a variety of concepts from political anthropology, including liminality, the trickster, imitation, schismogenesis, participation, and the void, it interrogates the contemporary technological revolution in a manner that will be of interest to sociologists, social and anthropological theorists and scholars of science and technology studies with interests in the digital transformation of social life. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: The Technologisation of the Social: A 21st-Century Megamachine? Paul O’Connor -/- 1. Communication as Theatricalisation: Self-Presentation in the Digital Age Arpad Szakolczai -/- 2. Parasites of the Social: Digital Disruptions of the Labour Market Tom Boland -/- 3. Possessed by Technology: The Metastasis of Absence Agnes Horvath -/- 4. Technologisation of the Social: Symbiosis, Parasitism, or Predation? Daniel Gati -/- 5. J'accuse Zéro: The Technology of Zero and the Making of a Personal Void Ray Griffin -/- 6. Digital Affordances and the Liminal Stephen Turner -/- 7. The Smart Womb: Digital Technologies and the Maze of Trickster Politics Marius Ion Benta -/- 8. Brave New Industry? The Dark Side of Dematerialisation and Industry 4.0 Thomas S.J. Smith -/- 9. ‘What Have You Caught?’: Nannycams and Hidden Cameras as Normalised Surveillance of the Intimate Janos Mark Szakolczai -/- 10. Coercive Visibility: Discipline in the Digital Public Arena Paul O’Connor -/- Conclusion: Is There a Way Out of the Technologisation of the Social? Marius Ion Benta. (shrink)

Ireland has struggled with its ‘feminine’ identity throughout its history. The so-called ‘chasmic dichotomy of male and female' is embedded in colonial and postcolonial constructions of Irishness and it continues to manifest itself in contemporary cultural representations of Ireland and Irishness. This study explores issues of gender and nationality via a reading of a 70-second television advertisement for Caffrey's Irish Ale, titled ‘New York’. The article suggests that, although colonial and postcolonial discourse on Ireland continues to perceive the ‘feminine’ in (...) problematic terms, this is gradually changing as Irish women increasingly, in poet Eavan Boland's words, ‘open a window on those silences, those false pastorals, those ornamental reductions’ that have confined us. (shrink)

This paper explores the dynamic interaction between contemporary Irish women poets and the notion of tradition in Irish poetry. Looking at the work of Eavan Boland, Susan Connolly, Paula Donlon, Mary Dorcey, Paula Meehan and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, the paper suggests that women poets today are subverting tradition and destabilizing a conventionally accepted fusion of the feminine with the national. This is achieved through direct challenge, through dislocation and through establishing a dialogue between the mythical and the real in (...) the context of the lived experience of women in Ireland. Finally, the paper suggests the potential for civil and social effect of the work of women who engage consciously in the process of giving women an active voice. (shrink)