The revisionary approach to semantic paradox is commonly thought to have a somewhat uncomfortable corollary, viz. that, on pain of triviality, we cannot affirm that all valid arguments preserve truth (Beall2007, Beall2009, Field2008, Field2009). We show that the standard arguments for this conclusion all break down once (i) the structural rule of contraction is restricted and (ii) how the premises can be aggregated---so that they can be said to jointly entail a given conclusion---is appropriately understood. In addition, we briefly rehearse (...) some reasons for restricting structural contraction. (shrink)

Psychiatric research is in crisis because of repeated failures to discover new drugs for mental disorders. Lack of measurement validity could partly account for these failures. If researchers do not actually measure the effects of drugs on the disorders they aim to investigate, one should expect suboptimal treatment outcomes. I argue that this is the case, focusing on depression, and fear & anxiety disorders. In doing so, I show how psychiatric research illustrates a more general phenomenon that I call “validity (...) drift.” A validity drift occurs when, in the course of developing new measurement procedures, researchers end up studying something different from what they originally aimed to study. I analyze the different ways in which scientists attempt to validate procedures for measuring mental disorders for the purpose of testing drugs in animal models. I show how those validation efforts might fail, thereby leading to validity drifts. Overall, this analysis highlights the complex interplay between the development of new measurement procedures, their calibration, and scientific theories of the target phenomena. (shrink)

In the substitutional framework, validity is truth under all substitutions of the nonlogical vocabulary. I develop a theory where □ is interpreted as substitutional validity. I show how to prove soundness and completeness for common modal calculi using this definition.

It has been common in contemporary logic and philosophy of logic to identify the validity of an inference with its conclusion being a (logical) consequence of its premisses.

Many research fields concerned with the processing of information contained in human faces would benefit from face stimulus sets in which specific facial characteristics are systematically varied while other important picture characteristics are kept constant. Specifically, a face database in which displayed expressions, gaze direction, and head orientation are parametrically varied in a complete factorial design would be highly useful in many research domains. Furthermore, these stimuli should be standardised in several important, technical aspects. The present article presents the freely (...) available Radboud Faces Database offering such a stimulus set, containing both Caucasian adult and children images. This face database is described both procedurally and in terms of content, and a validation study concerning its most important characteristics is presented. In the validation study, all frontal images were rated with respect to the shown facial expression, intensity of expression, clarity of expression, genuineness of expression, attractiveness, and valence. The results show very high recognition of the intended facial expressions. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'subjective validation'. An objective validation of a statement can be accomplished by showing that the statement actually matches up to the way the world is; this can be done by comparing the statement to the world itself. Combined with other mistakes, like confirmation bias and availability error, subjective validation can fool people into thinking that psychics can read their minds, predict the future, or even (...) communicate with the dead. Although the subjective validation of Nostradamus's “predictions” doesn't fuel much else besides silly beliefs in the paranormal, falling prey to subjective validation can be much more costly. The same subjective validation “retrodiction” techniques are also used to interpret the prophecies of the Bible, like those that are supposedly in the Book of Revelation. (shrink)

Legal reasoning settles morally pressing matters through a technique that largely bypasses open-ended moral argument. That technique makes central what certain persons validly decided in the past, for example in creating statutes, judicial resolutions, contracts, or wills. Identifying valid decisions is a lawyerly skill and, echoing legal practice, legal philosophy has paid considerable attention to validity criteria. But it has neglected to explore validity's point: whether, and if so exactly how, the special technique of validity contributes to a legal system's (...) ability to realise justice and human rights. Even the most sensible defences of the moral need for positive law have insufficiently probed this key step in the argument. This book lays bare the workings of legal validity, and shows why, and within what general limits, this technique equips legal systems with privileged tools to foster human well-being. In so doing, the book explains how power-conferring norms setting out validity criteria endow agents' intentions with 'performative' effect ('I hereby.') and can secure the requirement of justice that there be widespread convergence on specific patterns of conduct shaped through a cooperative effort. Legal meaning is accordingly systemic, resulting from the valid acts of multiple agents whose decisions can, by virtue of exercising legal power, also exercise moral power (authority). In short, the book articulates why it is morally necessary that validity does not primarily turn on moral considerations. (shrink)

Rationale, aims and objectives Given the increasing prevalence of cataract and demand for cataract extraction surgery, patients must often wait to undergo this procedure. We validated a previously developed priority scoring system in terms of clinical variables, pre-intervention health status, appropriateness of surgery and gain in visual acuity (VA) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL).Methods Explicit prioritization criteria for cataract extraction created by a variation of the Research and Development (RAND) and University of California Los Angeles appropriateness methodology were retrospectively (...) applied to a prospective cohort of 5257 patients on waiting lists to undergo cataract by phacoemulsification at 17 hospitals in Spain. Demographic data, clinical data and data related to surgical technique were collected by trained ophthalmologists. Patients were evaluated by their ophthalmologist before the intervention and 6 weeks afterward. They also completed, by mail, the Visual Function Index (VF-14) before the intervention and 3 months afterward.Results High-priority patients experienced greater improvement in VA and HRQoL than those classified as intermediate or low-priority (P < 0.0001), even after adjusting by VA and the VF-14 score at baseline. The time to intervention was the same for high-priority patients as it was for intermediate and low-priority patients.Conclusions The priority score we developed identified patients most likely to experience the greatest improvements from cataract extraction. Use of this tool could provide a fairer and more rational way to prioritize patients for cataract extraction. (shrink)

This book seeks to offer original answers to all the major open questions in epistemology—as indicated by the book’s title. These questions and answers arise organically in the course of a validation of the entire corpus of human knowledge. The book explains how we know what we know, and how well we know it. The author presents a positive theory, motivated and directed at every step not by a need to reply to skeptics or subjectivists, but by the need (...) of a rational individual to know the world. -/- The author draws heavily from Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts as presented in her book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but departs from her epistemology—especially as explicated by leading exponents of her philosophy—in important ways. Areas of departure include the perception of entities and the role of probability theory in epistemology. -/- A main idea in the book is to begin the validation of the law of causality by identifying that existence causes our consciousness of it. Another key idea is this: The very fact that we perceive entities is the most basic and most extensive evidence that causal forces and causal interactions are regular. -/- Applying Ayn Rand’s principle that characteristics are ranges of measurement, the book offers a philosophical validation of “nonparametric predictive inference,” in turn providing an objective basis for prior probabilities in Bayesian analysis. -/- This book is primarily for a specialized readership—familiar with epistemological ideas and with Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts in particular. The last third of the book uses probability theory and mathematics somewhat beyond basic calculus, but less mathematical explanations are also included to make the general ideas accessible to lay readers. (shrink)

An inference is valid if it guarantees the transferability of knowledge from the premisses to the conclusion. If knowledge is here understood as demonstrative knowledge, and demonstration is explained as a chain of valid inferences, we are caught in an explanatory circle. In recent lectures, Per Martin-Löf has sought to avoid the circle by specifying the notion of knowledge appealed to in the explanation of the validity of inference as knowledge of a kind weaker than demonstrative knowledge. The resulting explanation (...) is the main topic of this article. (shrink)

This paper explores an idea of Stoic descent that is largely neglected nowadays, the idea that an argument is valid when the conditional formed by the conjunction of its premises as antecedent and its conclusion as consequent is true. As it will be argued, once some basic features of our naıve understanding of validity are properly spelled out, and a suitable account of conditionals is adopted, the equivalence between valid arguments and true conditionals makes perfect sense. The account of validity (...) outlined here, which displays one coherent way to articulate the Stoic intuition, accords with standard formal treatments of deductive validity and encompasses an independently grounded characterization of inductive validity. (shrink)

Magnetoencephalography is increasingly used for presurgical planning in people with medically refractory focal epilepsy. Localization of interictal epileptiform activity, a surrogate for the seizure onset zone whose removal may prevent seizures, is challenging and depends on the use of multiple complementary techniques. Accurate and reliable localization of epileptiform activity from spontaneous MEG data has been an elusive goal. One approach toward this goal is to use a novel Bayesian inference algorithm—the Champagne algorithm with noise learning—which has shown tremendous success in (...) source reconstruction, especially for focal brain sources. In this study, we localized sources of manually identified MEG spikes using the Champagne algorithm in a cohort of 16 patients with medically refractory epilepsy collected in two consecutive series. To evaluate the reliability of this approach, we compared the performance to equivalent current dipole modeling, a conventional source localization technique that is commonly used in clinical practice. Results suggest that Champagne may be a robust, automated, alternative to manual parametric dipole fitting methods for localization of interictal MEG spikes, in addition to its previously described clinical and research applications. (shrink)

It is often said that an argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for its premises to be jointly true and its conclusion false. Usually there is little harm in saying this but it places the concept of truth at the very heart of logic and, given how complex and obscure that concept is, one might wonder if trouble arises from this.It does — in at least two contexts. One of these was explored in the first half (...) of the fourteenth century by Jean Buridan and by the mysterious figure known as the Pseudo-Scotus of the Questions on the Prior Analytics printed in the edition of Scotus's works edited by Luke Wadding. Buridan thought that the bearers of truth were particular sentence-tokens; he thought of truth as a .. (shrink)

This paper looks at the question of what it means for a psychological test to have construct validity. I approach this topic by way of an analysis of recent debates about the measurement of implicit social cognition. After showing that there is little theoretical agreement about implicit social cognition, and that the predictive validity of implicit tests appears to be low, I turn to a debate about their construct validity. I show that there are two questions at stake: First, what (...) level of detail and precision does a construct have to possess such that a test can in principle be valid relative to it? And second, what kind of evidence needs to be in place such that a test can be regarded as validated relative to a given construct? I argue that construct validity is not an all-or-nothing affair. It can come in degrees, because both our constructs and our knowledge of the explanatory relation between constructs and data can vary in accuracy and level of detail, and a test can fail to measure all of the features associated with a construct. I conclude by arguing in favor of greater philosophical attention to processes of construct development. (shrink)

What is a valid measuring instrument? Recent philosophy has attended to logic of justification of measures, such as construct validation, but not to the question of what it means for an instrument to be a valid measure of a construct. A prominent approach grounds validity in the existence of a causal link between the attribute and its detectable manifestations. Some of its proponents claim that, therefore, validity does not depend on pragmatics and research context. In this paper, I cast (...) doubt on the possibility of a context-independent causal account of validity. I assess several versions, arguing that all of them fail to judge the validity of measuring instruments correctly. Because different research purposes require different properties from measuring instruments, no account of validity succeeds without referring to the specific research purpose that creates the need for measurement in the first place. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that classical logic is trivialized in the presence of a transparent truth-predicate. In this paper, we will explain why this point of view must be given up. The hierarchy of metainferential logics defined in Barrio et al. and Pailos recovers classical logic, either in the sense that every classical inferential validity is valid at some point in the hierarchy ), or because a logic of a transfinite level defined in terms of the hierarchy shares its validities (...) with classical logic. Each of these logics is consistent with transparent truth—as is shown in Pailos —, and this suggests that, contrary to standard opinions, transparent truth is after all consistent with classical logic. However, Scambler presents a major challenge to this approach. He argues that this hierarchy cannot be identified with classical logic in any way, because it recovers no classical antivalidities. We embrace Scambler’s challenge and develop a new logic based on these hierarchies. This logic recovers both every classical validity and every classical antivalidity. Moreover, we will follow the same strategy and show that contingencies need also be taken into account, and that none of the logics so far presented is enough to capture classical contingencies. Then, we will develop a multi-standard approach to elaborate a new logic that captures not only every classical validity, but also every classical antivalidity and contingency. As a€truth-predicate can be added to this logic, this result can be interpreted as showing that, despite the claims that are extremely widely accepted, classical logic does not trivialize in the context of transparent truth. (shrink)

Beall and Murzi :143–165, 2013) introduce an object-linguistic predicate for naïve validity, governed by intuitive principles that are inconsistent with the classical structural rules. As a consequence, they suggest that revisionary approaches to semantic paradox must be substructural. In response to Beall and Murzi, Field :1–19, 2017) has argued that naïve validity principles do not admit of a coherent reading and that, for this reason, a non-classical solution to the semantic paradoxes need not be substructural. The aim of this paper (...) is to respond to Field’s objections and to point to a coherent notion of validity which underwrites a coherent reading of Beall and Murzi’s principles: grounded validity. The notion, first introduced by Nicolai and Rossi, is a generalisation of Kripke’s notion of grounded truth, and yields an irreflexive logic. While we do not advocate the adoption of a substructural logic, we take the notion of naïve validity to be a legitimate semantic notion that points to genuine expressive limitations of fully structural revisionary approaches. (shrink)

If someone unintentionally breaks the rules, do they break the rules? In the abstract, the answer is obviously “yes.” But, surprisingly, when considering specific examples of unintentional, blameless rule-breaking, approximately half of people judge that no rule was broken. This effect, known as excuse validation, has previously been observed in American adults. Outstanding questions concern what causes excuse validation, and whether it is peculiar to American moral psychology or cross-culturally robust. The present paper studies the phenomenon cross-culturally, focusing (...) on Korean and American adults, and proposes a new explanation of why people engage in excuse validation, in terms of competing forces in human norm-psychology. The principal findings are that Americans and Koreans engaged in excuse validation at similar levels, and older adults were more likely to engage in excuse validation. (shrink)

The idea that there are three types of argumentation, deduction, induction, and a third type variously called hypothesis, abduction, or retroduction, first appeared in an 1867 paper by Charles S. Peirce, “On the Natural Classification of Arguments”. According to Peirce’s tripartite division of argumentation, induction is not merely any form of argument that fails to be deductive, but argumentation that generalizes from a sample. In later writings Peirce broadened his notion to mean any testing of hypotheses through observation—as Peirce said, (...) “trying how things will act”. If we understand an observation to be a sample of experience, as Peirce did in 1901 (R L 409:3... (shrink)

The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has drawn a great amount of scholarly interest in recent years; however, attempts to measure individual differences in this ability remain controversial. Although the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) remains the flagship test of EI, no study has comprehensively examined the full interpretive argument tying variation in observed test performance to variation in the underlying ability. Employing a modern perspective on validation, this article reviews and synthesizes available evidence and discusses sources of concern (...) at every level of the interpretive argument. It is argued that a focus on causal explanation of observed variation in test performance would significantly improve the validity of the MSCEIT as a measure of EI. (shrink)

According to a standard story, part of what we have in mind when we say that an argument is valid is that it is necessarily truth preserving: if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. But—the story continues—that’s not enough, since ‘Roses are red, therefore roses are coloured’ for example, while it may be necessarily truth-preserving, is not so in virtue of form. Thus we arrive at a standard contemporary characterisation of validity: an argument is valid when (...) it is NTP in virtue of form. Here I argue that we can and should drop the N; the resulting account is simpler, less problematic, and performs just as well with examples. (shrink)

Can judging that an agent blamelessly broke a rule lead us to claim, paradoxically, that no rule was broken at all? Surprisingly, it can. Across seven experiments, we document and explain the phenomenon of excuse validation. We found when an agent blamelessly breaks a rule, it significantly distorts people’s description of the agent’s conduct. Roughly half of people deny that a rule was broken. The results suggest that people engage in excuse validation in order to avoid indirectly blaming (...) others for blameless transgressions. Excuse validation has implications for recent debates in normative ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of language. These debates have featured thought experiments perfectly designed to trigger excuse validation, inhibiting progress in these areas. (shrink)

Three experiments are reported which show that in certain contexts subjects reject instances of the valid modus ponens and modus tollens inference form in conditional arguments. For example, when a conditional premise, such as: If she meets her friend then she will go to a play, is accompanied by a conditional containing an additional requirement: If she has enough money then she will go to a play, subjects reject the inference from the categorical premise: She meets her friend, to the (...) conclusion: She will go to a play. Other contexts suppress the conditional fallacies. The first experiment demonstrates the effects of context on conditional reasoning. The second experiment shows that the inference suppression disappears when the categorical premise refers to both of the antecedents, such as: She meets her friend and she has enough money. In this case, subjects make both the valid inferences and the fallacies, regardless of the contextual information. The third experiment establishes that when subjects are given general information about the duration of a situation in which a conditional inducement was uttered, such as: If you shout then I will shoot you, they reject both the valid inferences and the fallacies. The results suggest that the interpretation of premises plays an even more central role in reasoning than has previously been admitted. Trois expériences montrent que dans certains contextes les sujets rejettent des instances valides de modus ponens et de modus tollens dans des énoncés conditionnels. Par exemple, quand une prémisse conditionnelle comme: Si elle rencontre son ami, alors elle ira jouer, est accompagnée par une phrase contenant une condition supplémentaire: Si elle a assez d'argent, alors elle ira jouer, les sujets rejettent l'inférence liant la prémisse catégorielle: Elle rencontre son ami, à la conclusion: Elle ira jouer. D'autres contextes éliminent également les inférences conditionnelles fallacieuses. La premiére expérience démontre l'effet du contexte sur la raisonnement conditionnel. La deuxiéme expérience montre que la suppression de l'inférence disparait quand la prémisse catégorielle fait référence aux deux antécédants, comme: Elle rencontre son ami et elle a assez d'argent. Dans ce cas, les sujets font aussi bien les inférences valides et fallacieuses, quelle que soit l'information contextuelle. La troisiéme expérience établit que quand l'on donne aux sujets des informations générales à propos de la durée d'une situation dans laquelle une conditionnelle a été prononcée, comme Si tu cries, alors je te tire dessus, ils rejettent autant les inférences valides que les inférences fallacieuses. Ces résultats suggèrent que l'interprétation des prémisses joue un rŏle encore plus central dans le raisonnement que l'on admettait auparavant. (shrink)

The concept of a “validator” as a unit of evidence for the validity of a psychiatric category has been important for more than fifty years. Validator evidence is aggregated by expert committees (for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), these are referred to as “workgroups”), which use the results to make nosological decisions. Through an examination of the recent history of psychiatric research, this paper argues that it is time to reassess this traditional practice. It concludes with (...) specific suggestions for going forward. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study was to validate a scale to examine the moral sensitivity of Korean nurses. A pre-existing scale, the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire (MSQ), developed by Lützén, was used after deletion of three items. The reliability and validity of the scale were examined by using Cronbach’s alpha and factor analysis, respectively. According to the results, reliability of the scale was adequate but its construct validity was not fully supported. Through discussion on evidence of validity, five subconstructs emerged. (...) In particular, unlike the factor structure of the MSQ, two subconstructs, patient-oriented care and professional responsibility, were newly extracted. It was assumed that the other three MSQ subconstructs, conflict, meaning and benevolence (expressed as nurses being ethically good), would not be sensitive to cultural background. Given these findings, interpretations about the meaning of moral sensitivity of Korean nurses are discussed. (shrink)

Thomas Hofweber takes the semantic paradoxes to motivate a radical reconceptualization of logical validity, rejecting the idea that an inference rule is valid just in case every instance thereof is necessarily truth-preserving. Rather than this “strict validity”, we should identify validity with “generic validity”, where a rule is generically valid just in case its instances are truth preserving, and where this last sentence is a generic, like “Bears are dangerous”. While sympathetic to Hofweber’s view that strict validity should be replaced (...) by something allowing for exceptions, I argue that this should instead be truth-conduciveness, a matter of a large majority of instances being truth-preserving. The fact that inference rules have uncountably many instances, I argue, can be handled by defining truth-conduciveness as relative to finite sets of instances. Moreover, I argue that Hofweber’s position, while seemingly radical, may be less so under closer scrutiny. For the mere claim that classical rules and unrestricted truth rules are generically valid (or truth-conducive) is not in itself controversial. Also, if there is an answer to the question of which of these are also strictly valid, then the claim that generic validity is the central notion in logic is at most an interest-relative matter, since there is then also a fact of the matter as to which inference rules are (not) strictly valid. If no solution operating with strict validity to the paradoxes can be had, however, then the claim that validity should be identified with a weaker notion is better motivated. I argue that it is reasonable, in view of past failures, to conjecture that no ordinary solution will score high enough relative to standard (uncontroversial) desiderata to merit justified belief. Hence, it is unknowable which solution is correct. I further argue that this is best explained by its being metaphysically indeterminate which solution is correct. If this conjecture is true, then we ought instead to think of validity as allowing exceptions, and then take the “true logic” to be one that takes both the classical rules and the truth rules to be valid, i.e., truth-conducive. This logic scores very high on the desiderata on logics, and is therefore preferable to any logic operating with strict validity. (shrink)

Verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible. This is because natural systems are never closed and because model results are always nonunique. Models can be confirmed by the demonstration of agreement between observation and prediction, but confirmation is inherently partial. Complete confirmation is logically precluded by the fallacy of affirming the consequent and by incomplete access to natural phenomena. Models can only be evaluated in relative terms, and their predictive value is always open to question. (...) The primary value of models is heuristic. (shrink)

While Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions does not specifically deal with validation, the validation of simulations can be related in various ways to Kuhn's theory: 1) Computer simulations are sometimes depicted as located between experiments and theoretical reasoning, thus potentially blurring the line between theory and empirical research. Does this require a new kind of research logic that is different from the classical paradigm which clearly distinguishes between theory and empirical observation? I argue that this is not (...) the case. 2) Another typical feature of computer simulations is their being ``motley'' (Winsberg 2003) with respect to the various premises that enter into simulations. A possible consequence is that in case of failure it can become difficult to tell which of the premises is to blame. Could this issue be understood as fostering Kuhn's mild relativism with respect to theory choice? I argue that there is no need to worry about relativism with respect to computer simulations, in particular. 3) The field of social simulations, in particular, still lacks a common understanding concerning the requirements of empirical validation of simulations. Does this mean that social simulations are still in a pre-scientific state in the sense of Kuhn? My conclusion is that despite ongoing efforts to promote quality standards in this field, lack of proper validation is still a problem of many published simulation studies and that, at least large parts of social simulations must be considered as pre-scientific. (shrink)

The standard approach to what I call “proof-theoretic semantics”, which is mainly due to Dummett and Prawitz, attempts to give a semantics of proofs by defining what counts as a valid proof. After a discussion of the general aims of proof-theoretic semantics, this paper investigates in detail various notions of proof-theoretic validity and offers certain improvements of the definitions given by Prawitz. Particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between semantic validity concepts and validity concepts used in normalization theory. It (...) is argued that these two sorts of concepts must be kept strictly apart. (shrink)

Patient-reported outcomes are increasingly used as dependent variables in studies regarding the effectiveness of clinical interventions. But patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) do not provide intuitively meaningful data. For instance, it is not clear what a five point increase or decrease on a particular scale signifies. Establishing ‘interpretability’ involves making changes in outcomes meaningful. Attempts to interpret PROMs have led to the development of methods for identifying a minimum important difference (MID). In this paper, however, I draw on Charles Taylor’s distinction (...) between weak and strong evaluations to suggest that identifying a MID, specifically, a MID that uses a patient-reported reference group, may not provide an adequate interpretation of these measures. Moreover, I argue that the difficulty with interpreting these measures is tied to a larger problem concerning their validity. If researchers wish to interpret PROMs, they may first need to know more about the constructs they attempt to measure, namely, quality of life. (shrink)

Charles Taylor; X*—The Validity of Transcendental Arguments, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 151–166, https://do.

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical (...) events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed. (shrink)

Several authors have argued that a version of Curry's paradox involving validity motivates rejecting the structural rule of contraction. This paper criticizes two recently suggested alternative responses to “validity Curry.” There are three salient stages in a validity Curry derivation. Rejecting contraction blocks the first, while the alternative responses focus on the second and third. I show that a distinguishing feature of validity Curry, as contrasted with more familiar forms of Curry's paradox, is that paradox arises already at the first (...) stage. Accordingly, blocking the second or third stages won't suffice for resolving the paradox. (shrink)

For semantic inferentialists, the basic semantic concept is validity. An inferentialist theory of meaning should offer an account of the meaning of "valid." If one tries to add a validity predicate to one's object language, however, one runs into problems like the v-Curry paradox. In previous work, I presented a validity predicate for a non-transitive logic that can adequately capture its own meta-inferences. Unfortunately, in that system, one cannot show of any inference that it is invalid. Here I extend the (...) system so that it can capture invalidities. (shrink)

This paper responds to a recent challenge for the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge from laboratory animals to humans. According to this challenge, experimental neurobiology, and thus neuroscience, is in a state of crisis because the knowledge produced in different laboratories hardly generalizes from one laboratory to another. Presumably, this is so because neurobiological laboratories use simplified animal models of human conditions that differ across laboratories. By contrast, I argue that maintaining a multiplicity of experimental protocols and simple models (...) is well justified. It fosters rather than precludes the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge. The discipline is thriving. (shrink)

By demonstrating the uniformity and universality of the principles of valid interpretation of verbal texts of any sort, this closely reasoned examination provides a theoretical foundation for a discipline that is fundamental to virtually all humanistic studies. It defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge, defends that claim against such skeptical attitudes as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation and criticism are (...) correctly understood. It provides perhaps the first genuinely comprehensive account of hermeneutic theory to appear in English and the first systematic presentation of the principles of valid interpretation in any language. Mr. Hirsch, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of _Wordsworth and Schelling _and _Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake._ “Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. Viewing this subject within the tradition of hermeneutics, Mr. Hirsch is able to trace its origins and development with brilliant insight. The result is a lucidly systemic and authoritative account of the premises and procedures applicable to the interpretation of a literary text. Mr. Hirsch has performed a monumental service thereby that of reinstating the credentials of objectivism and defining the limits of the aesthetics of truth. This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature.”—_Virginia Quarterly Review_ “Professor Hirsch demonstrates convincingly that objectivity is attainable in humane studies, and that it is not identified with the subject but with the evidence. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one, but one which is more probably than any other on the basis of existing evidence. He makes a subtle and important distinction between a text’s ‘meaning’ and its ‘significance’, and brilliantly relates meaning to understanding and interpretation to explanation…” In short, this is a work which future students of literary theory cannot afford to neglect.”—_Notes and Queries_ E.D. Hirsch, Jr., is professor of English at the University of Virginia. (shrink)

To address the need for a valid and reliable scale of youth leadership potential based on the development theory of leadership, the current study developed the Youth Leadership Potential Scale (YLPS) and investigated its factor structure and psychometric properties in a sample of 696 students (grades 7-9) in China. Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) identified a five-factor solution comprising leadership information, leadership attitude, communication skills, decision-making skills, and stress management skills. ESEM within confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated an adequate fit for (...) this structure. The scale showed good composite reliability and measurement invariance across different gender and grade/age groups. The scale also showed sufficient concurrent validity with the Coping Self-Efficacy Scale, the Chinese Roets Rating Scale for Leadership, and the Leadership Skills Inventory. Furthermore, criterion-related validity was supported by the relationship between YLPS scores and the length of student leadership positions. The results suggest that the YLPS is a valid and pragmatic measure for assessing youth leadership potential. The current study is the first to develop a youth leadership potential scale based on the development theory of leadership. (shrink)

By demonstrating the uniformity and universality of the principles of valid interpretation of verbal texts of any sort, this closely reasoned examination provides a theoretical foundation for a discipline that is fundamental to virtually all humanistic studies. It defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge, defends that claim against such skeptical attitudes as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation and criticism are (...) correctly understood. It provides perhaps the first genuinely comprehensive account of hermeneutic theory to appear in English and the first systematic presentation of the principles of valid interpretation in any language. Mr. Hirsch, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of _Wordsworth and Schelling _and _Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake._ “Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. Viewing this subject within the tradition of hermeneutics, Mr. Hirsch is able to trace its origins and development with brilliant insight. The result is a lucidly systemic and authoritative account of the premises and procedures applicable to the interpretation of a literary text. Mr. Hirsch has performed a monumental service thereby that of reinstating the credentials of objectivism and defining the limits of the aesthetics of truth. This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature.”—_Virginia Quarterly Review_ “Professor Hirsch demonstrates convincingly that objectivity is attainable in humane studies, and that it is not identified with the subject but with the evidence. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one, but one which is more probably than any other on the basis of existing evidence. He makes a subtle and important distinction between a text’s ‘meaning’ and its ‘significance’, and brilliantly relates meaning to understanding and interpretation to explanation…” In short, this is a work which future students of literary theory cannot afford to neglect.”—_Notes and Queries_ E.D. Hirsch, Jr., is professor of English at the University of Virginia. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the commonly received view that Kripke's formal Possible World Semantics (PWS) reflects the adoption of a metaphysical interpretation of the modal operators. I consider in detail Kripke's three main innovations vis-à-vis Carnap's PWS: a new view of the worlds, variable domains of quantification, and the adoption of a notion of universal validity. I argue that all these changes are driven by the natural technical development of the model theory and its related notion of validity: (...) they are dictated by merely formal considerations, not interpretive concerns. I conclude that Kripke's model theoretic semantics does not induce a metaphysical reading of necessity, and is formally adequate independently of the specific interpretation of the modal operators. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel position in the philosophy of logic: I argue that _validity_ is a thick concept. Hence, I propose to consider _validity_ in analogy to other thick concepts, such as _honesty_, _selfishness_ or _justice_. This proposal is motivated by the debate on the normativity of logic: while logic textbooks seem simply descriptive in their presentation of logical truths, many have argued that logic has consequences for how we ought to reason, for what we ought to believe, or (...) for what we ought to infer. How can logic be normative, if it appears to be descriptive? According to the proposal of this paper, the normativity of logic can be explained because a thick concept is in play: _validity_. Thus, I argue that the debate on how to best characterize validity and the debate on logic’s normativity are more connected than we think, because _validity_ is a thick concept. (shrink)