1. 1. PROGRAM It will be our aim to reconstruct, with precision, certain views which have been traditionally associated with nominalism and to investigate problems arising from these views in the construction of interpreted formal systems. Several such systems are developed in accordance with the demand that the sentences of a system which is acceptable to a nominalist must not imply the existence of any entities other than individuals. Emphasis will be placed on the constructionist method of philosophical analysis. To (...) follow this method is to introduce the central notions of the subject-matter to be investigated into a system governed by exact rules. For example, the constructionist method of investigating the properties of geometric figures may consist in formulating a system of postulates and definitions which, together with the apparatus of formal logic, generates all necessary truths concerning geometric figures. Similarly, a constructionist analysis of the notion of an individual may take the form of an axiomatic theory whose provable assertions are just those which seem essential to the role played by the concept of an individual in system atic contexts. Such axiomatic theories gain in interest if they are supple mented by precise semantical rules specifying the denotation of all terms and the truth conditions of all sentences of the theory. (shrink)

The conditions are examined under which one theory is said to be replaceable by another, while preserving those features of the original theory which made it serviceable for a given purpose. Among such replacements, special attention is given to ones which qualify as so-called reductions of a theory, and some theorems are proved concerning the notion of a reduction.

Perceptual symbol systems form a theoretically plausible alternative to amodal symbol systems. At this point it is unclear whether there is any truly diagnostic empirical evidence to decide between these systems. We outline some possible avenues of research in the domain of language comprehension that might yield such evidence. Language comprehension will be an important arena for tests of the two types of symbol systems.

A tongue-in-cheek send-up of certain aspects of existentialism written by a well-known logician and philosopher who had a serious affair with existentialism in his youth. It was never submitted for publication and is finally being made available here posthumously with the permission of Helen Eberle. To the best of my recollection it was written some time in the mid/late 1980s. -- Gary H. Merrill.

According to the customary view, logic is a mere subdiscipline or ad junct of philosophy in so far as it is relevant to philosophy at all, and a sub discipline of mathematics to the extent that it is not. Thus, philosophy is taken to have traditional proprietary rights on "its" logic. I would like to examine here the reverse proprietary attitude, according to which philosophy is a branch of logic.

Alonzo Church has repeatedly argued that the semantic analysis of certain contexts requires reference to abstract entities of various kinds. The problem, arising from this argument for nominalists, will be examined first. Then we shall attempt to meet Church’s challenge by constructing and informally describing a semantics which was inspired by Nelson Goodman’s distinction between primary and secondary extensions. According to that semantics, no expression of the object language will make reference to any abstract or non-actual entity while the system (...) is strong enough to lend itself to semantic analysis in Church’s sense. (shrink)

Population counts and longitude and latitude coordinates were estimated for the 50 largest cities in the United States by computational linguistic techniques and by human participants. The mathematical technique Latent Semantic Analysis applied to newspaper texts produced similarity ratings between the 50 cities that allowed for a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of these cities. MDS coordinates correlated with the actual longitude and latitude of these cities, showing that cities that are located together share similar semantic contexts. This finding was replicated using (...) a first‐order co‐occurrence algorithm. The computational estimates of geographical location as well as population were akin to human estimates. These findings show that language encodes geographical information that language users in turn may use in their understanding of language and the world. (shrink)

This paper addresses the potentially interactive effects of descriptive and injunctive norm perceptions on an unethical workplace behavior: counterproductive work behavior perpetration. We draw on the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct and its conceptual distinction between norm types to refine research on this topic. We also test a person-by-environment interaction to determine whether the interactive effects of these norms for CWB are enhanced among employees reporting a stronger need to belong to social groups. In two studies, predictors were assessed in (...) an initial survey and the dependent variable was assessed weeks later. Individuals employed across a range of industries served as participants. In Study 1, descriptive and injunctive norm perceptions of CWB interacted to predict CWB perpetration. This finding was replicated in Study 2. Additionally, Study 2 demonstrated that the interaction between the two norm types was especially strong among individuals high in NTB. Results suggest that to decrease CWB perpetration, organizations may profitably leverage the persuasive effects of “social norms marketing” to alter employee perceptions of the typicality and level of approval for CWBs. This is the first study to demonstrate that both descriptive and injunctive norm perceptions predict CWB perpetration. The demonstrated three-way interaction between the two norm types and NTB advances existing theory regarding the cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying normative social influence. (shrink)

The name of the third author was incomplete in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

This book presents a mathematical programming approach to the analysis of production frontiers and efficiency measurement. The authors construct a variety of production frontiers, and by measuring distances to them are able to develop a model of efficient producer behaviour and a taxonomy of possible types of departure from efficiency in various environments. Linear programming is used as an analytical and computational technique in order to accomplish this. The approach developed is then applied to modelling producer behaviour. By focusing on (...) the empirical relevance of production frontiers and distances to them, and applying linear programming techniques to artificial data to illustrate the type of information they can generate, this book provides a unique study in applied production analysis. It will be of interest to scholars and students of economics and operations research, and analysts in business and government. (shrink)