Three experiments investigated the processing of the implicature associated with some using a “gumball paradigm.” On each trial, participants saw an image of a gumball machine with an upper chamber with 13 gumballs and an empty lower chamber. Gumballs then dropped to the lower chamber and participants evaluated statements, such as “You got some of the gumballs.” Experiment 1 established that some is less natural for reference to small sets and unpartitioned sets compared to intermediate sets. Partitive some of was (...) less natural than simple some when used with the unpartitioned set. In Experiment 2, including exact number descriptions lowered naturalness ratings for some with small sets but not for intermediate size sets and the unpartitioned set. In Experiment 3, the naturalness ratings from Experiment 2 predicted response times. The results are interpreted as evidence for a Constraint-Based account of scalar implicature processing and against both two-stage, Literal-First models and pragmatic Default models. (shrink)

Two visual world experiments investigated the processing of the implicature associated with some using a “gumball paradigm.” On each trial, participants saw an image of a gumball machine with an upper chamber with orange and blue gumballs and an empty lower chamber. Gumballs dropped to the lower chamber, creating a contrast between a partitioned set of gumballs of one color and an unpartitioned set of the other. Participants then evaluated spoken statements, such as “You got some of the blue gumballs.” (...) Experiment 1 investigated the time course of the pragmatic enrichment from some to not all when the only utterance alternatives available to refer to the different sets were some and all. In Experiment 2, the number terms two, three, four, and five were also included in the set of alternatives. Scalar implicatures were delayed relative to the interpretation of literal statements with all only when number terms were available. The results are interpreted as evidence for a constraint-based account of scalar implicature processing. (shrink)

The systems Kα of transfinite cumulative types up to α are extended to systems K∞α that include a natural infinitary inference rule, the so-called limit rule. For countable α a semantic completeness theorem for K∞α is proved by the method of reduction trees, and it is shown that every model of K∞α is equivalent to a cumulative hierarchy of sets. This is used to show that several axiomatic first-order set theories can be interpreted in K∞α, for suitable α.

Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework some upper-level ontology which describes the most general, domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper we sketch a new type of upper-level ontology, which is intended to be the basis of a knowledge modelling language GOL (for: 'General Ontological Language'). It turns out that the upper- level ontology underlying standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic and CycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. Set theory has considerable mathematical power and (...) great flexibility as a framework for modelling different sorts of structures. At the same time it has the disadvantage that sets are abstract entities (entities existing outside the realm of time, space and causality), and thus a set-theoretical framework should be supplemented by some other machinery if it is to support applications in the ripe, messy world of concrete objects. In the present paper we partition the entities of the real world into sets and urelements, and then we introduce several new ontological relations between these urelements. In contrast to standard modelling and representation formalisms, the concepts of GOL provide a machinery for representing and analysing such ontologically basic relations. (shrink)

I wish to thank Klaus Kühnle who streamlined in [8] several of my definitions and proofs concerning the subject matter of this paper. Some ideas and results arose from discussions with Klaus Leeb. Jan Johannsen discovered some mistakes in an earlier version.

Faszination ist eine zentrale Form ästhetischen Erlebens in der Gegenwart, deren Merkmale und historisches Profil bislang nur ansatzweise beschrieben sind. Ausgehend vom modernen Verständnis von Faszination entwickelt die begriffsgeschichtlich breit fundierte Untersuchung einen formalen Begriff dieser ästhetischen Emotion, der für zwei bedeutende Epochen der ästhetischen, poetologischen und semiotischen Theoriebildung -- die griechische Antike und das 18. Jahrhundert -- diskutiert wird. In der Auseinandersetzung mit antiken Konzepten der Metapher und des Erhabenen sowie mit ästhetischen Positionen bei Addison, Mendelssohn, Klopstock, Hamann, Kant, (...) Stewart und Goethe werden grundlegende Erklärungskomponenten für die Entstehung und Wirkung sprachlich induzierter Faszination aufgezeigt. Ästhetische Faszination ist kein Pathos-, sondern ein Tiefenkonzept. Sie resultiert aus einer Divergenzerfahrung in der Prozessierbarkeit von Sinnlichkeit und Bedeutung. Faszination bewirkt keine Verabschiedung, sondern eine Stimulierung des Intelligiblen. (shrink)

Das onto-logische Sechseck ist eine Erweiterung des (aristotelischen) onto-logischen Vierecks um singuläre und universelle Sachverhalte. Beide Vielecke inkorporieren ontische, logische und ontisch-logische Relationen. Dies ist der Grund für die Bindestrichschreibung "ontologisch". Das onto-logische Sechseck liefert die Grundlage für eine neue Definition der Wahrheit eines Satzes.

Das onto-logische Sechseck ist eine Erweiterung des (aristotelischen) onto-logischen Vierecks um singuläre und universelle Sachverhalte. Beide Vielecke inkorporieren ontische, logische und ontisch-logische Relationen. Dies ist der Grund für die Bindestrichschreibung "ontologisch". Das onto-logische Sechseck liefert die Grundlage für eine neue Definition der Wahrheit eines Satzes.

Contemporary policymakers, as their predecessors, continue to view nomadic people as a weak minority, and their way of life and raising livestock as a backward and inefficient paradigm. Wherever nomads are not the dominant group, the trend to settle them continues even today as in the past. This book describes the changes forced upon formerly nomadic groups and how they still attempt to maintain their traditional, social, and cultural practices in their new settings. The book deals with the several modes (...) of livelihood of these communities, including entrepreneurship, and demonstrates the impact of investment-oriented urbanization policies leading to eviction from ancestral lands, and hurdles for nomadic mobility, ultimately threatening their survival. The book illustrates how some groups like the Borana and the Maasai practice livelihood diversity and raise productive livestock, and how other groups migrate to urban centers in search of employment and remit money to family members left in the rural areas. The book aims to raise awareness among the research community, especially those who work on regional and demographic labor policies. It helps in understanding why society needs to help build business and livelihood strategies without harming the values of nomadic groups. (shrink)

We shall investigate certain statements concerning the rigidity of unary functions which have connections with forms of the axiom of choice.

Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework some upper-level ontology which describes the most general domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper we sketch a new type of upper-level ontology, and we outline an associated knowledge modelling language called GOL – for: General Ontological Language. It turns out that the upper-level ontology underlying well-known standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic and CycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. In a set theory which allows Urelements, however, there (...) will be ontological relations between these Urelements which the set-theoretic machinery cannot capture. In contrast to standard modelling and representation formalisms, GOL provides a machinery for representing and analysing such ontologically basic relations. GOL is thus a genuine extension of KIF and of similar languages. In GOL entities are divided into sets and Urelements, the latter being divided in their turn into individuals and universals. Foremost among the individuals are things or substances, tropes or moments, and situoids: entities containing facts as components. (shrink)

We investigate infinitary sequent calculi which generate the finitely valid sentences of first-order logic, of simple type theory and of transitive closure logic, respectively.

The modern term >fascination fascination force divided self< allow to indicate them as prototypical descriptions of fascination. References to Plato by Marsilio Ficin and Friedrich Nietzsche expose the importance of Socrates in the conceptual history of fascination.

Zusammenfassung Während der Fahrt der Flotte Alexanders durch den Indischen Ozean sichteten seine Seeleute angeblich ein Seeungeheuer. Die an der Unternehmung beteiligten Autoren Nearchos, Onesikritos und Orthagoras nahmen die ungewöhnliche Begegnung in ihre Werke auf, gaben diese aber in unterschiedlicher Weise wieder. Obwohl es sich dabei um eine in mehrerer Hinsicht interessante Episode handelt, besitzt sie einen besonders hohen Quellenwert, um Rückschlüsse über Alexanders Positionierung gegenüber den altorientalischen Kontexten seiner Herrschaft anzustellen. Schließlich behaupteten bereits die neuassyrischen Herrscher, auf dem Meer (...) am Rande der Welt Seeungeheuer gesichtet zu haben, womit ein allumfassender Herrschaftsanspruch einherging. Die achaimenidischen Großkönige benutzten dasselbe Argument, um Universalherrschaft und dadurch legitime Herrschaft zu kommunizieren. Kontextualisiert man die Sichtung des Seeungeheuers in den Fragmenten der Werke der Feldzugsteilnehmer in den Diskurs um Universalherrschaft des ersten Jahrtausends v. Chr., so lassen sich Alexanders Bestrebungen feststellen, sich zu den Konzepten legitimer Herrschaft nicht-makedonischer Prägung zu positionieren und sich in einer Weise als rechtmäßiger Herrscher zu präsentieren, die auch für seine asiatischen Untertanen verständlich war. Die am Alexanderzug teilnehmenden Autoren nahmen die hierfür benutzten Ideologeme in ihre Werke auf, passten sie aber entsprechend ihrer literarischen Absichten an. (shrink)

For each regular cardinal κ, we set up three systems of infinitary type logic, in which the length of the types and the length of the typed syntactical constructs are $\Sigma _{}$, the global system $\text{g}\Sigma _{}$ and the τ-system $\tau \Sigma _{}$. A full cut elimination theorem is proved for the local systems, and about the τ-systems we prove that they admit cut-free proofs for sequents in the τ-free language common to the local and global systems. These two results (...) follow from semantic completeness proofs. Thus every sequent provable in a global system has a cut-free proof in the corresponding τ-systems. It is, however, an open question whether the global systems in themselves admit cut elimination. (shrink)

We investigate certain statements about factors of unary functions which have connections with weak forms of the axiom of choice. We discuss more extensively the fine structure of Howard and Rubin's Form 314 from [4]. Some of our set-theoretic results have also interesting recursive versions.

New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work style, structure and modus of organizations and society—this means collaborative work and flexible working hours on individual levels, and flat hierarchies and participatory decision-making on organizational levels. Contemporary corporations strive to orient toward the concept of new work to keep up with stakeholder demands, for instance in their branding strategies as an employer. However, studies on organizational practices indicate that alongside explicit values and agendas, organizations (...) tend to slyly exert power to secure their interests. Constructive dismissal is one such instance where contractually protected employees are made to resign their positions because the work environment is altered to become increasingly unbearable. This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency, and equality. The data contain long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal,’ containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation in an effortless manner. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power. (shrink)

We shall investigate certain set-theoretic pigeonhole principles which arise as generalizations of the usual pigeonhole principle; and we shall show that many of them are equivalent to full AC. We discuss also several restricted cases and variations of those principles and relate them to restricted choice principles. In this sense the pigeonhole principle is a rich source of weak choice principles. It is shown that certain sequences of restricted pigeonhole principles form implicational hierarchies with respect to ZF. We state also (...) several open problems in order to indicate the extent to which the whole subject of pigeonhole principles requires further exploration. (shrink)

We translate Socrates’ famous saying I know that I know nothing into the arithmetical sentence I prove that I prove nothing. Then it is easy to show that this translated saying is formally undecidable in formal arithmetic, using Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem. We investigate some variations of this Socrates-Gödel sentence. In an appendix we sketch a ramified epistemic logic with propositional quantifiers in order to analyze the Socrates-Gödel sentence in a more logical way, separated from the arithmetical context.

We propose the beginnings of an intuitionistic propopsitional dynamic logic, and describe several serious open problems.

Studies in adults with mental disorders suggest that the experience of early and chronic trauma is associated with changes in reward expectancy and processing. In addition, severe childhood trauma has been shown to contribute to the development of mental disorders in general. Data on effects of early childhood trauma on reward expectancy and processing in middle childhood currently appear insufficient. The present study aims to fill this research gap by examining the effects of developmental trauma disorder on reward expectancy and (...) processing in children aged 8–12 years, testing the hypothesis that children with multiple complex traumas exhibit altered reward processing as a result of prior disappointing reward experiences. One main feature of developmental trauma disorder is early experiences of multiple separation from important and close relationships alongside other experiences of emotional or physical harm. In the sequel children often show affect regulation disorders. To investigate this, we have developed an adapted version of the Monetary Incentive Delay Task, which examines children’s expectation of reward or frustration. In this first study, behavioral data will be collected from N = 40 children using this adapted version of the MID Task. Children in the experimental group will be recruited from youth welfare centers in Frankfurt a.M., Germany. Healthy control subjects will be recruited from after-school-care facilities. A brief trauma screening will be conducted for both groups, experimental and control. If children show signs of trauma, the presence of a developmental trauma disorder will be further delineated by a German translation of the Developmental Trauma Disorder Structured Interview for Children which was translated the first time in German by our research group. We hypothesize that children in the experimental group will be less accurate in performing the Monetary Incentive Delay Task because of their impaired emotion regulation skills due to emotional avoidance following developmental trauma. If the results of our initial behavioral study are promising, the MID task will be used in a future study to elucidate the relationship between trauma developmental disorder, reward expectancy and processing, and neurobiological processes in middle childhood. (shrink)