It is a recurring mantra that epistemic must creates a statement that is weaker than the corresponding flat-footed assertion: It must be raining vs. It’s raining. Contrary to classic discussions of the phenomenon such as by Karttunen, Kratzer, and Veltman, we argue that instead of having a weak semantics, must presupposes the presence of an indirect inference or deduction rather than of a direct observation. This is independent of the strength of the claim being made. Epistemic must is therefore quite (...) similar to evidential markers of indirect evidence known from languages with rich evidential systems. We work towards a formalization of the evidential component, relying on a structured model of information states (analogous to some models used in the belief dynamics literature). We explain why in many contexts, one can perceive a lack of confidence on the part of the speaker who uses must. (shrink)

The compositional semantics of sentences like Only mammals give live birth and The flag flies only if the Queen is home is a tough problem. Evidence is presented to show that only here is modifying an underlying proposition (its ‘prejacent’). After discussing the semantics of only, the question of the proper interpretation of the prejacent is explored. It would be nice if the prejacent could be analyzed as having existential quantificational force. But that is difficult to maintain, since the prejacent (...) structures when encountered on their own are naturally read as having a lawlike flavor, which in many analyses is attributed to the semantics of implicit operators alleged to be present in them. In the end, an analysis is presented which attributes some very particular properties to these operators and thereby succeeds in providing the target sentences with intuitively adequate interpretations. These complex constructions can therefore be used as a probe into the nature of implicit quantification in natural language. (shrink)

At first glance, this is an entirely unremarkable kind of sentence. It is easy to find naturally occuring exponents. Its meaning is also clear: taking the A train is a necessary condition for going to Harlem. Hence the term “anankastic conditional”, Ananke being the Greek protogonos of inevitability, compulsion and necessity.

1 This paper has been presented at the workshop “Time and Modality: A Round Table on Tense, Mood, and Modality”, Paris, December 2005, at a CUNY linguistics colloquium in May 2006, and at the 6th Workshop on Formal Linguistics in Florian´opolis, Brazil, August 2006. We thank the audiences at those presentations, in particular Orin Percus, Tim Stowell, Marcel den Dikken, Anna Szabolcsi, Chris Warnasch, Roberta Pires de Oliveira, Renato Miguel Basso, and Ana M¨uller. We thank Noam Chomsky, Cleo Condoravdi, and (...) Irene Heim for very helpful conversations about this material. We thank Bridget Copley for sharing with us her recent manuscript “What Should Should.. (shrink)

The interpretation of if -clauses in the scope of ordinary quantifiers has provoked semanticists into extraordinary measures, such as abandoning compositionality or claiming that if has no meaning. We argue that if -clauses have a normal conditional meaning, even in the scope of ordinary quantifiers, and that the trick is to have the right semantics for conditionals.

SETTING: Medical ethics education has become common, and the integrated ethics curriculum has been recommended in Western countries. It should be questioned whether there is one, universal method of teaching ethics applicable worldwide to medical schools, especially those in non-Western developing countries. OBJECTIVE: To characterise the medical ethics curricula at Asian medical schools. DESIGN: Mailed survey of 206 medical schools in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand. PARTICIPANTS: A total (...) of 100 medical schools responded, a response rate of 49%, ranging from 23%-100% by country. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The degree of integration of the ethics programme into the formal medical curriculum was measured by lecture time; whether compulsory or elective; whether separate courses or unit of other courses; number of courses; schedule; total length, and diversity of teachers' specialties. RESULTS: A total of 89 medical schools (89%) reported offering some courses in which ethical topics were taught. Separate medical ethics courses were mostly offered in all countries, and the structure of vertical integration was divided into four patterns. Most deans reported that physicians' obligations and patients' rights were the most important topics for their students. However, the evaluation was diverse for more concrete topics. CONCLUSION: Offering formal medical ethics education is a widespread feature of medical curricula throughout the study area. However, the kinds of programmes, especially with regard to integration into clinical teaching, were greatly diverse. (shrink)

We show that the morphosyntactic makeup of the SMC is crosslinguistically stable. We show that the semantics of the construction poses a severe compositionality problem. We solve the problem by giving the negation and the exclusive operator differential scope. For only, this means decomposing it into negation and an exclusive other than component.

which he calls general indicatives, are correctly analysed as open indicative conditionals prefixed by universal quantifiers. So they are both analysed as (∀x)(if x gets a chance, x bungee-jumps), where x ranges over girls. This analysis is attributed to Geach.2 Barker then shows that this syntactic analysis, together with other premises, entails that the open conditional occurring under the universal quantifier has to be analysed as having the import of material implication.

Ray and Cooper (2024) argue that bioethicists should take environmental justice seriously as a matter of health justice; as part of this project, they defend a legal right to a healthy environment....

After cataloguing various ‘improper’ sense of only, those which are taken with restricted scope (‘no more than [within a fixed domain]’) as opposed to the purely exclusive ‘proper’ sense, Ockham (1980:137) remarks that These are the senses, then, in which the exclusive expression can be taken improperly. And perhaps there are still other senses in which it can be taken improperly. But since they are not as widely used as the ones we have dealt with, I will leave them to (...) the specialists. Larry Horn: “A glorious picture indeed: monasteries crammed to the spires with specialists on only, laboring away on the fine points of the semantics of exclusive propositions. Those were the days!” (Horn 1996: 26-27). (shrink)

What do we convey with (2)? We somehow manage to say at least the following: going to the North End is (part of ) a way of finding good cheese and going to the North End is relatively easy. Furthermore, we are leaving it open whether there are other places (in Boston) to get good cheese, that is, with (2) we are not claiming that the North End is the only place to find good cheese.

dimensions. As a commenter, I should probably concentrate on the central claim and, if possible, probe its solidity. So, that’s what I’ll be doing.

Our discussion is couched within a compositional implementation of the analysis of the Perfect developed by Iatridou et.al. (a version of Extended Now of McCoard 78, Dowty 72, 79). The basics.

In pathological conditions associated with persistent increases in hemodynamic workload (old myocardial infarction, high blood pressure, valvular heart disease), a number of signalling pathways are activated in the heart, all of which promote hypertrophic growth of the heart, characterised at the cellular level by increases in individual cardiac myocyte size. Some of these pathways are required for a successful adaptation to cardiac injury. Other pathways are maladaptive, however, as they lead to progressive contractile dysfunction and heart failure. The free radical (...) gas nitric oxide and natriuretic peptides, both of which are produced in the heart, have emerged as endogenous inhibitors of maladaptive hypertrophy signalling. Overall, it appears that cardiac hypertrophy is controlled by an interplay of pro‐ and antihypertrophic signalling networks. This delicate balance can tip towards adaptation or heart failure. In the future, patients living with cardiac disease may benefit from therapeutic strategies targeting maladaptive hypertrophy signalling pathways. BioEssays 26:608–615, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

* This work has been evolving for a while now. Some parts trace back to the few pages on the context-dependency of quantifiers in my dissertation. Reading Recanati’s paper on domains of discourse made me rethink some of my earlier conclusions without in the end actually changing them much. Other parts formed the material for several discussions in my seminar on context-dependency at MIT in the fall of 1995, which included several sessions exploring the issues raised in an early version (...) of Kratzer. Connecting the choice function approach to indefinites with a general analysis of contextual domain restriction was an idea that I considered then without however working out any details. Conversations with Lisa Matthewson and studying her paper inspired me to tackle the problem again. Connections to questions about the context-dependency of conditional sentences also tickled my fancy, since I have been working on conditionals for a while now. Having the opportunity to present this material at the Vilem Mathesius Series provided the impetus to flesh out some of my vague thoughts. Major influences come from the work done in recent years at MIT by Lisa Matthewson, Philippe Schlenker, Julie Legate, and Uli Sauerland. I thank Irene Heim, Lisa Matthewson, Orin Percus, Philippe Schlenker, and Jason Stanley for illuminating discussions about this material. At this point, I see this talk as a report on the state of the art, exploring an intriguing possible connection, but I do not claim substantial intellectual property rights. Mistakes are certainly mine, achievements are probably not. (shrink)

Every member of the club was convinced that if a (particular) friend of his from Texas had died in the fire, he would have inherited a fortune.

The relative clause specifies the amount/number of books referred to. It functions as a cardinality modifier. It denotes the number of books on the table. The noun books moves from the RC-internal position into the external head position. We will see that it is semantically active in both positions!

Author’s Note These notes expand on remarks in my paper “A Minimal Theory of Adverbial Quantification” about the difficulties with counting situations. In May 1997, I talked about this topic in an MIT seminar on events co-taught with Irene Heim. These are the slightly updated class notes from that seminar. I have no new thoughts on the issues, but perhaps these notes are still useful. [References still to be added – for now I just appended an old list of references (...) from some class notes.]. (shrink)

way on the information available in the contexts in which they are used, it’s not surprising that there is a minor but growing industry of work in semantics and the philosophy of language concerned with the precise nature of the context-dependency of epistemically modalized sentences. Take, for instance, an epistemic might-claim like..

Standard assumption: lousy must be an intensional adjective (i.e. it takes the intension of its noun as its argument). BUT: we have not seen a credible meaning for lousy of this type, and it seems the McConnell-Ginet/Larson suspicion is quite right that there couldn’t be such a meaning.

Condoravdi shows that the ignorance component is not a presupposition: • Ignorance is not signalled as taken for granted • No presupposition denial • No presupposition filtering So, what else could I have reached for in 2000? Not much, because I tend to buy my tools on the open market rather than develop them myself.

Sly Pete and Mr. Stone are playing poker on a Mississippi riverboat. It is now up to Pete to call or fold. My henchman Zack sees Stone’s hand, which is quite good, and signals its content to Pete. My henchman Jack sees both hands, and sees that Pete’s hand is rather low, so that Stone’s is the winning hand. At this point, the room is cleared. A few minutes later, Zack slips me a note which says “If Pete called, he (...) won,” and Jack slips me a note which says “If Pete called, he lost”. (shrink)

Background Japanese people have become increasingly interested in the expression and enhancement of their individual autonomy in medical decisions made regarding medical treatment at and toward the end of life. However, while many Western countries have implemented legislation that deals with patient autonomy in the case of terminal illness, no such legislation exists in Japan. The rationale for this research is based on the need to investigate patient's preferences regarding treatment at the end of life in order to re-evaluate advance (...) directives policy and practice. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey with 418 members of the general middle-aged and senior adults (aged between 40 and 65) in Tokyo, Japan. Respondents were asked about their attitudes toward advance directives, and preferences toward treatment options. Results Over 60% of respondents agreed that it is better to express their wishes regarding advance directives (treatment preferences in writing, appointment of proxy for care decision making, appointment of legal administrator of property, stating preferences regarding disposal of one's property and funeral arrangements) but less than 10% of them had already done so. About 60% of respondents in this study preferred to indicate treatment preferences in broad rather than concrete terms. Over 80% would like to decide treatment preferences in consultation with others (22.2% with their proxy, 11.0% with the doctor, and 47.8% with both their proxy and the doctor). Conclusion This study revealed that many Japanese people indicate an interest in undertaking advance directives. This study found that there is a range of preferences regarding how advance directives are undertaken, thus it is important to recognize that any processes put into place should allow flexibility in order to best respect patients' wishes and autonomy. (shrink)

Aryeh Goldberg compellingly argues for a Narrative Coherence Standard (NCS) to bolster existing methods of assessing patients' mental capacity. But his account fails to distinguish between the cognitive abilities of children and adults; consequently, worries may be raised about the scope of the NCS, in particular when we consider child patients. In this article, I argue the NCS cannot plausibly apply to children. Since children's self-conception does not arrive fully formed — but rather is a product of both incomplete cognitive (...) development and socializing factors — I claim children may not possess a sufficiently intimate knowledge of self, and therefore a sufficiently coherent sense of self, as Goldberg demands. Therefore, we should either revise the NCS to accommodate children, adopt an incremental view of consent, or revert to the relevant form of the MacArthur competence criteria to establish children’s capacity to consent. (shrink)

Can Aristotle’s idea of practice be made fruitful for music pedagogical action in schools? That this is the case is repeatedly asserted in the music pedagogical discussion. This article takes up this assertion and develops a proposal for class music making based on Aristotle’s theory of action.

I thought the paper by Kai-yee Wong and Chris Fraser was fascinating and insightful. Two things I especially appreciated are the clarity with which they summarize my views. I think they are quite fair and accurate. Second, I appreciate their suggestion that the way to deal with the practical problem of weakness of will has much to do with the role of the Background in shaping our actions. I think they are especially on the right track when they say that (...) the improvement of Background skills may actually narrow the range of real options for action, (p. 21) nonetheless, they do not decrease freedom. As they say, “It is a process of strengthening the self, and the agent is likely to experience the concomitant restriction of ‘live’ options not as a limitation but as strength of character.” (p. 21). That seems to me very much on the right track. What they are suggesting, and it is a powerful addition to my own writings, is that we should not just think of the Background as facilitating languages, games and social practices generally, but for morality as well (p. 23). (shrink)

Several important physical implications left out in The Five Dimension Space-Time Universe: A creation and grand unified field theory model. Book, are presented under rigorous mathematical theorems. It was found that Temperature, a classical variable, must be added as an imaginary component to time, under the Quantum uncertainty dt∙dE = h/2π, so that the Gell-Mann Quark model can be verified, with gauge invariance, to form hadrons at the Bethe Fusion Temperature. Accordingly from the corresponding uncertainty dp∙dr = h/2π. Pairs of (...) Diagonal Long Range Ordered gravitons, with continuous frequency spectrum together with those represented by magnetic monopoles must be formed within the space r, of the homogenous 5D manifold, without the presents of photons, thus defines the 5D as a Black Hole. Then from which we can derive the classical Newtonian Law of attractive Gravity, as the 5D manifold is mapped by Perelmann Ricci-flow entropy mapping and the DLRO graviton pair symmetry is broken and converted into two masses, with motions satisfying Special Relativity in the doughnut shape Lorentz manifold, thus indirectly verifies the principle of Covariant Riemannian curvatures and General Relativity theory. (shrink)

- uneducated in the field authors who defend a consensus they are being TOLD when they enter offices of Ed-Sci, teaching and writing works on learning-theory - but never checked the facts, PART I and PART II.

Although thought suppression is a commonly used self-control strategy that has far-reaching consequences, its effect on ethical decision making is unclear. Whereas ironic process theory suggests that suppressing ethics-related thoughts leads to mental rebounds of ethicality and decreased unethical behavior, ego depletion theory suggests that thought suppression can lead to reduced self-control and increased unethical behavior. Integrating the two theories, I propose that the effect of thought suppression on unethical behavior hinges on the content of the suppressed thoughts. Participants who (...) suppressed ethics-related [-unrelated] thoughts engaged in less [more] cyber bullying, cheating, and dishonesty compared to participants in the control conditions. Explicit and implicit moral awareness was found to mediate this moderated effect. Experiment 4 further demonstrated that suppressing ethics-related thoughts reduces self-control performance on a subsequent amoral task, but not on subsequent ethical decision making. (shrink)

The sense of agency is a basic feature of our subjective experience. Experimental studies usually focus on either its attributional aspects or on its motoric aspects. Here, we combine both aspects and focus on the subjective experience of the time between action and effect. Previous studies [Haggard, P., Aschersleben, G., Gehrke, J., & Prinz, W.. Action, binding and awareness. In W. Prinz, & B. Hommel, Common mechanisms in perception and action: Attention and performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press] have shown a (...) temporal attraction in the perceived times of actions and effects, but did directly not study the relation between them. In three experiments, time estimates of an interval between an action and its subsequent sensory effect were obtained. The actions were either voluntary key press actions performed by the participant or kinematically identical movements applied passively to the finger. The effects were either auditory or visual events or a passive movement induced to another finger. The results first indicated a shortening of the interval between one’s own voluntary action and a subsequent effect, relative to passive movement conditions. Second, intervals initiated by observed movements, either of another person or of an inanimate object, were always perceived like those involving passive movements of one’s own body, and never like those involving active movements. Third, this binding effect was comparable for auditory, somatic and visual effects of action. Our results provide the first direct evidence that agency involves a generalisable relation between actions and their consequences, and is triggered by efferent motor commands. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of the recent financial crisis on the relation between a firm’s risk and social performance using a sample of non-financial U.S. firms covering the period 1991–2012. We find that the relation between SP and risk is significantly different in the crisis period compared to the pre-crisis period. SP reduces volatility during the financial crisis. The risk reduction potential of SP is mainly due to the strengths component of SP. Since the relation of risk is stronger (...) with SP strengths than SP concerns, this implies an asymmetric relation between these SP components and a firm’s risk. Specifically, strengths act as a risk reduction tool during an adverse economic environment. (shrink)

Recently, it has been shown that the perceived times of voluntary movements and their effects are perceived as shifted towards each other. This temporal binding phenomenon was explained by an integrated representation of movement and effect, facilitating operant learning and the experience of intentionality. Here, we investigated whether temporal binding depends on explicit intentional attributions. In Experiment 1, participants intended to either produce or avoid producing an effect by the timing of their movements, with the ratio of success being fixed (...) at 2:1. In Experiments 2 and 3, the influence of the action–effect contingency ratio on temporal binding was controlled for by removing the intentional attribution of the effect. The results indicate that temporal binding is a general associative mechanism that facilitates the learning of movement–effect contingencies. Beyond that, temporal binding is sensitive to explicit intentional attributions, which selectively enhance the link between an intentional movement and the effect a moving agent intends to produce. (shrink)

Representing organizational reality in conceptual models is an important part of IS practice. In this paper we expose and challenge the taken-for-granted ontological and epistemological assumptions that underpin common accounts of conceptual modeling, using process modeling as an example. We argue that, due to an implicit commitment to a dualist ontology and representationalist epistemology, much literature regards the elicitation and representation of reality in the course of modeling as largely unproblematic. We draw on Martin Heidegger's holistic philosophy to give an (...) alternative analysis that brings to the fore challenges in 1) eliciting knowledge of routine activities, 2) capturing knowledge from domain experts and 3) representing organizational reality in authentic ways. As a result we come to see modeling as a practice that performs particular realities rather than simply representing a given reality. We hope to initiate a critical discussion on the implications of the current philosophical grounding of conceptual modeling. (shrink)

I understand (MR) as meaning that there is a way the world is that is independent of our minds or representations. One may also state (MR) in terms of ‘A description/language independent world/reality’ or ‘a conceptual scheme independent world/reality’. For our purposes, we need not distinguish these variants of formulation.