We present a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the ACT‐R–based model of sentence processing developed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005) (LV05). The predictions of the model are compared with the results of a recent meta‐analysis of published reading studies on retrieval interference in reflexive‐/reciprocal‐antecedent and subject–verb dependencies (Jäger, Engelmann, & Vasishth, 2017). The comparison shows that the model has only partial success in explaining the data; and we propose that its prediction space is restricted by oversimplifying assumptions. We then implement a (...) revised model that takes into account differences between individual experimental designs in terms of the prominence of the target and the distractor in memory‐ and context‐dependent cue‐feature associations. The predictions of the original and the revised model are quantitatively compared with the results of the meta‐analysis. Our simulations show that, compared to the original LV05 model, the revised model accounts for the data better. The results suggest that effects of prominence and variable cue‐feature associations need to be considered in the interpretation of existing empirical results and in the design and planning of future experiments. With regard to retrieval interference in sentence processing and to the broader field of psycholinguistic studies, we conclude that well‐specified models in tandem with high‐powered experiments are needed in order to uncover the underlying cognitive processes. (shrink)

Inductive characterizations of the sets of terms, the subset of strongly normalizing terms and normal forms are studied in order to reprove weak and strong normalization for the simply-typed λ-calculus and for an extension by sum types with permutative conversions. The analogous treatment of a new system with generalized applications inspired by generalized elimination rules in natural deduction, advocated by von Plato, shows the flexibility of the approach which does not use the strong computability/candidate style à la Tait and Girard. (...) It is also shown that the extension of the system with permutative conversions by η-rules is still strongly normalizing, and likewise for an extension of the system of generalized applications by a rule of ``immediate simplification''. By introducing an infinitely branching inductive rule the method even extends to Gödel's T. (shrink)

In typical statistical learning studies, researchers define sequences in terms of the probability of the next item in the sequence given the current item (or items), and they show that high probability sequences are treated as more familiar than low probability sequences. Existing accounts of these phenomena all assume that participants represent statistical regularities more or less as they are defined by the experimenters—as sequential probabilities of symbols in a string. Here we offer an alternative, or possibly supplementary, hypothesis. Specifically, (...) rather than identifying or labeling individual stimuli discretely in order to predict the next item in a sequence, we need only assume that the participant is able to represent the stimuli as evincing particular similarity relations to one another, with sequences represented as trajectories through this similarity space. We present experiments in which this hypothesis makes sharply different predictions from hypotheses based on the assumption that sequences are learned over discrete, labeled stimuli. We also present a series of simulation models that encode stimuli as positions in a continuous two‐dimensional space, and predict the next location from the current location. Although no model captures all of the data presented here, the results of three critical experiments are more consistent with the view that participants represent trajectories through similarity space rather than sequences of discrete labels under particular conditions. (shrink)

In a previous work we studied, from the perspective ofAlgebraic Logic, the implicationless fragment of a logic introduced by O. Arieli and A. Avron using a class of bilattice-based logical matrices called logical bilattices. Here we complete this study by considering the Arieli-Avron logic in the full language, obtained by adding two implication connectives to the standard bilattice language. We prove that this logic is algebraizable and investigate its algebraic models, which turn out to be distributive bilattices with additional implication (...) operations. We axiomatize and state several results on these new classes of algebras, in particular representation theorems analogue to the well-known one for interlaced bilattices. (shrink)

Formulating a metaphysical definition of human play faces three main difficulties. First, for many years the very possibility, or need, for such a definition has been questioned. Second, very often...

Under which conditions are we epistemically justied to believe that what other people tell us is true? Traditionally, the answer has either been reductionist or anti-reductionist: Either our justication reduces to non-testimonial reasons, or we have a presumptive, though defeasible, right to believe what we are told. However, different cases pull in different directions. Intuitively, someone asking for the time is subject to different epistemic standards than a surgeon consulting a colleague before a dangerous operation. Following this line of thought, (...) this paper develops an account of testimonial justication that captures our reductionist as well as our anti-reductionist intuitions. It is argued that the speaker’s commitment to an epistemic norm, as well as the hearer’s understanding of that norm, gives the hearer a presumptive right to believe what she is told. However, this justication doesn’t apply to situations with high practical risks. Here, the hearer needs reductive reasons to believe that her interlocutor is especially qualied to give her the desired information. (shrink)

What is salvific community for Ignatius of Loyola? It is communion with Christ, a dynamic for which Ignatius used the expression ‹societies Jesu›. This wording has a revealing intertextuality. ‹Societas› is the Vulgate’s rendering of Pauline and Johannine koinōnia: «sharing in (Christ)». The NT overtones of the Ignatian experience of communion can be explored regarding a theology of relationship (person), of action (history) and of the Church (representation). Being a person is understood as being friend and servant, history as the (...) salvific kairos of Christ’s activity, and the Church as the communion representing him—each time a typically Christian conception deciding always for that option that cannot be generalised through abstraction. (shrink)

The article analyses the problems and possibilities in saying that Judaism, Christianity and Islam ‹have the same God›.

This short document, appearing for the first time in English translation, concerns the prospects of a made-for-television cultural mini-series inspired by select episodes in Kafka's works. A window is opened onto Guattari's curatorial ambitions, cinematic projects, and theory of minor cinema, bringing into focus how he translated theoretical preoccupations into the cultural sector with reference to diverse semiotic media.

This dialogue took place at the beginning of the process through which Lula became president of Brazil. It analyses the empowerment capacity of the Workers’ Party: it is made of collective discussion and free speech, working class embedding, openness to the whole society, welcome to minorities, respect and distance front other parties, sense of uniqueness. The French socialist party lacks those qualities, which one could, find also in Solidarnosc.

This paper investigates the history of a discursive figure that one could call the intelligent whaler. I argue that this figure's success was made possible by the construal and public distribution of whaling intelligence in an important currency of science – facts – in the preparatory phase for the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). The strongest case for the necessity of the enterprise was New England whalers who were said to cruise uncharted parts of the oceans and whose discoveries of (...) uncharted islands were reported in the local press. The document that stood at the core of the lobbying for an expedition was a table that newspaperman and public lecturer Jeremiah Reynolds had compiled after interviewing whaling captains in the country's principal whaling ports. Presenting whalers’ experience in tabular and synoptic form, Reynolds's table helped forge the figure of the ‘intelligent whaler’, a mariner who had better geographical knowledge than other seafarers. By investigating the paper technologies that produced the ‘intelligent whaler’, this paper shows how Reynolds's translation of ‘whaling intelligence’ from news into facts marks the beginning of the intelligent whaler's long career in US-American debates about expansionism, exploration and science. (shrink)

Rreview of Maughn Rollins Gregory and Megan Jane Laverty, eds.. In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: Childhood, Philosophy, and Education. Routledge, 2018, Pp. 264.

Even though Kant, because of his modus operandi, has been saluted as the renewer of dialectic method (after mature Plato), nonetheless his ars exponiendi, as apparent, for example, in the subjective deduction of categories, has always been characteristically dual (noumenon/phenomenon, understanding/sensibility, theory/praxis, etc.) or fourfold (as in the antinomies, eventually liable to be reduced to two pairs in conflict). However, in the second Critique a notable contradiction arises in a judgment that is pretendedly analytic and also the consequence of the (...) categorical imperative commanding that every man be treated as an end in himself (as representing humanity in his person). There, it is said that such consideration occurs at the same time and in the same regard as the use of man as a means. Far from treating this contradiction as a mere mistake, this article tries to unfold the fruitfulness of that contradictory judgment in order to reconcile the world of politics, based on the spheres of work and private property (characteristic of the realm of means), with the world of morality (beyond mere ethics).With the purpose of elucidating this point, we will resort to the ‘useful fiction’ of a ‘stepmother Nature’ (in the mundane) and to the heterogony of ends, which transform the external freedom (first and most important of passions) into a reflexive and Law-bounded freedom, open to condolence and sacrifice. (shrink)

This contribution examines the relevance of the concept “limit situation” in relation to aging and old age in a geriatric psychotherapy setting. The idea is to bring together concepts from phenomenology and the philosophy of age with methods from the field of qualitative social research. Experiences of groundlessness are viewed through the lens of Karl Jaspers’ terminology, leading to conceptualizing a dynamic of stabilizing beliefs yielding in the context of aging and old age. The results promise to contribute to psychotherapy (...) research and explore new ways for employing phenomenological ideas in clinical practice and research. (shrink)