I present an analysis of Free Choice Items (FCIs), based on Scandinavian, where FCIs are complex and distinct from polarity sensitive items. Scandinavian FCIs are argued to have two components. One is a universal quantifying into modal contexts. The other is an operator mapping a type (s,t) expression onto itself, adjoining to the closest type t or (s,t) expression. Thus invoking Intensional Functional Application, this operator requires the presence of a modal in the scope of the universal quantifier. Facts concerning (...) ‘essential connections’ and ‘existential import’ are accounted for by assuming that the FC determiner has the option of acting like a quantifier. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to use an anaphoric notion of presupposition for solving the problem of zero argument anaphora. Since Shopen (1973) it has been known that many missing arguments have an anaphoric interpretation, but it has not been known how this interpretation arises. I argue that these arguments are involved in presuppositions. On an anaphoric account of presuppositions as in van der Sandt (1992) or Kamp and Roßdeutscher (1992), it can be shown that the zero arguments acquire (...) an anaphoric interpretation through the presuppositions. The analysis rests on the principle that the Discourse Representation Structure for the presupposition is proper, so that the discourse referents for the zero arguments are in its universe and must be anchored to discourse referents in the context. (shrink)

Some propositional attitude verbs require that the complement contain some “subjective predicate”. In terms of the theory proposed by Lasersohn, these verbs would seem to identify the “judge” of the embedded proposition with the matrix subject, and there have been suggestions in this direction. I show that it is possible to analyze these verbs as setting the judge and doing nothing more; then according to whether a judge index or a judge argument is assumed, unless the complement contains a subjective (...) predicate, the whole matrix is redundant or there is a type conflict. I further show that certain clear facts argue for assuming a judge argument which can be filled by a contextually salient entity–or by the subject of a subjective attitude verb. (shrink)

Two main methods for analysing de re readings of definite descriptions in intensional contexts coexist: that of evaluating the description in the actual world, whether by means of scope, actuality operators, or non-local world binding, and that of substituting another description, usually one expressing a salient or ‘vivid’ acquaintance relation to an attitude holder, prior to evaluation. Recent work on so-called descriptive indexicals suggests that contrary to common assumptions, both methods are needed, for different ends. This paper aims to show (...) that there is indeed a division of labour between the two methods of analysis and to identify criteria for choosing among alternative ways to model the second, substitutional method. (shrink)

How questions are understudied in philosophy and linguistics. They can be answered in very different ways, some of which are poorly understood. Jaworski identifies several types: ‘manner’, ‘method, means or mechanism’, ‘cognitive resolution’, and develops a logic designed to enable us to distinguish among them. Some key questions remain open, however, in particular, whether these distinctions derive from an ambiguity in how, from differences in the logical structure of the question or from contextual underspecification. Arguing from two classes of responses, (...) adverbs and by gerunds, I give the answer that the logical structure of the question is indeed relevant: loosely, manners are adjuncts but methods are arguments. (shrink)

The type of mood or tense marking that causes counterfactuality inferences—as figuring prominently, but far from exclusively, in counterfactual conditionals—has not yet received a comprehensive and compositional analysis. Focusing on four languages, the paper presents under-appreciated facts and a novel theory where the mood serves to activate alternatives to modal operators, particularly one: the identity operator, often giving rise to counterfactual implicatures.

The meaning of have is notoriously difficult to define; sometimes it seems to denote possession, but often, it seems to denote nothing, only to complicate composition. This paper focuses on the cases where have embeds a small clause, proposing that all it accomplishes is abstraction, turning the small clause into a predicate. This analysis is extended to the cases where have appears to embed DPs: These objects are interpreted as small clauses as well, with implicit predicates denoting possession or—with relational (...) nouns—nothing. (shrink)

Broad focus (or informational integration or nonautonomy) is lexically and contextually constrained, but these constraints are not well understood. On a standard theory of focus interpretation, the presupposition of a broad focus is verified whenever those of two narrow foci are. I argue that to account for cases where two narrow foci are preferred, it is necessary to assume that broad focus competes with two narrow foci and implicates the opposite of what they presuppose. Central constraints on thetic statements are (...) thus accounted for in an Optimality Theory (OT) enriched Alternative Semantics. (shrink)

This paper aims at an account of the German “reportive subjunctive”, where the mood signals that the proposition is the object of an utterance report. The report can be explicit in the sentence or in the context, or more or less implicit. We interpret these uses as a more or less local verification or accommodation of a presupposition introduced by the subjunctive, thus accounting for a range of facts and contributing to the theory of presuppositions.

Indefinites face competition at two levels: Presupposition and content. The antipresupposition hypothesis predicts that they signal the opposite of familiarity, or uniqueness, namely, novelty, or non-uniqueness. At the level of descriptive content, they are pressured from two sides: definites expressing identity and another phrases expressing difference, and Gricean reasoning predicts that indefinites signal both difference and identity and are infelicitous when definites and another phrases are felicitous. However, occasionally a space opens between the and another, for a to fill. This (...) is in part due to conditions handicapping the or another semantically, in part to another’s phonological handicap. The division of labor between determiners in the field of difference and sameness is thus the result of an intricate competition. We model this competition in a version of game-theoretic pragmatics. (shrink)

In this dialogue Thomas A and Jeito intuitively discuss the difference between a miracle and a fact. They conclude that the doings of God aren’t miracles.

(2013). Hobbes's Account of Distributive Justice as Equity. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 13-33. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.689749.

The vagueness objection seems to block any moderate answer to the Special Composition Question leaving us with the two extreme alternatives that there either is no composite object or that any set of things compose an object. In this technical paper I introduce the notion of causal objects and a definition of a predicate that permits the set of all parts to be divided into equivalence classes. On this view we can use equivalence classes of parts to define the notion (...) of composite objects why vagueness is blocked. The block works in a hypothetical domain where all parts have a cause so the aim is not to suggest empirically detectable parts and composites, nor to claim any kind of existence of the things being defined, but to present a consistent account of a possible moderate answer to the Special Composition Question that avoids the vagueness objection. The underlying idea is that an object, as such, is not caused whereas its parts are. For example, if we have three caused parts A, B and C constituting the composite D, we have three things that are caused whereas the composite D has no cause over and above the three causes of A, B and C. (shrink)

It is natural to assume that every value bearer must be good, bad, or neutral. This paper argues that this assumption is false if value incomparability is possible. More precisely, if value incommensurability is possible, then there is a fourth category of absolute value, in addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral.

When information activated in memory involves emotional associations, the ability to shift attention away from an emotional cue is impaired compared to an emotionally neutral cue. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, and how this is reflected in localised brain electrical activity. Eight emotion and eight neutral words served as cues in a covert attention spatial orienting task. The cues were either valid or invalid indicators of which hemifield the target would (...) be presented to. In the remaining trials, no cue was presented prior to the target. Twenty subjects were instructed to manually respond to the target as fast as possible. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed an enhanced P3 component to the emotion words. The ERPs to the target showed enhanced P1 and P3 components on invalid trials, with emotional cues. There were faster reaction times (RTs) to validly cued targets, but only when the emotion words served as cues. The results demonstrated that the emotional cues elicited sustained focused attention, facilitating an engage mechanism of spatial orienting. (shrink)

The intellectual relationship between Carl Schmitt and Max Weber has been a point of controversy for at least half a century. At the 1964 convention of the German Sociological Association, in honor of Weber's centenary, Schmitt was famously referred to as Weber's ?legitimate student.? This article uses the chapter Schmitt specifically wrote for an edited volume in Weber's memory, published in 1923, as the starting point for juxtaposing the two scholars, and then expands the analysis to encompass a range of (...) sources and commentaries. The comparison focuses on the approach of each of the two scholars to methodology and didactics, theory and conceptual use, as well as to the society/social science nexus. The article concludes by arguing that Schmitt performed a double rhetorical move: while styling himself as Weber's student, he then drew on that authority to assault Weber's liberalism and concept of scientific integrity. (shrink)

Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other things being equal). (...) This upshot rules out, among other things, that the prudential value of standing in the relation that matters in survival to multiple people is equal to their average well-being. (shrink)

The shareholder value conception of the firm and its consequences for the functioning of corporations have been studied from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. In this article we examine in more detail than has been done sofar the origins and early adoption of this particular conception. By investigating public business sources from the perspective of field theory, we argue that the rise and early diffusion of “shareholder value” are best understood as a function of the changing power relations (...) in the economic field during the first half of the 1980s. The deep economic recession at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s led to a crisis in the prevailing management beliefs, offering newcomers the opportunity to promote alternative business strategies, among which the shareholder value conception became dominant. The sources studied indicate that the spokespersons of the new business conception were initially wealthy outsiders, corporate “raiders,” who used the economic crisis to oppose management and acquire shares in undervalued firms with the threat of restructuring and selling parts of them in the name of shareholders’ interests. Although these hostile take-overs, or threats of take-overs, were widely contested, the Reagan administration blocked regulation and stimulated the take-over market. The rivalry between “raiders” and public pension funds over the profits of these takeovers led to the founding the Council of Institutional Investors (1985), which adopted the shareholder value doctrine inaugurating the organized activism of public pension funds with regard to the management of firms. It was thus in all likelihood the competition and conflict among different groups of shareholders, primarily corporate raiders and pension funds, that triggered the shift in the balance of power between managers and shareholders. Since managers found profitable ways to adapt to the new balance of power, the shareholder value ideology spread rapidly through the economic field, becoming the dominant business model of North American firms in the second half of the 1980s. (shrink)

According to Longtermism, our acts’ expected influence on the expected value of the world is mainly determined by their effects in the far future. There is, given total utilitarianism, a straightforward argument for Longtermism due to the enormous number of people that might exist in the future, but this argument does not work on person-affecting views. In this paper, we will argue that these views might also lead to Longtermism if Prudential Longtermism is true. Prudential Longtermism holds for a person (...) if and only if our acts’ overall influence on that person’s expected well-being is mainly determined by the acts’ effects in the far future. We argue that (due to a small chance of anti-ageing and uploading) there could be an enormous amount of prudential value for some contemporary person in the far future and that value may be so large that it dominates their overall expectation of lifetime well-being. (shrink)

Plastic changes in spinal cord function like neuronal wind-up and increased receptive field are too short-lived to explain chronic pain without structural changes. It is possible that learning could be a mechanism for longlasting changes in nociceptive regulation. A learning process localized to the spinal cord has been shown to be important for the development of tolerance to the analgetic effect of ethanol, suggesting that nociceptive control systems may be changed by learning. Long term potentiation (LTP) is regarded as a (...) useful model of learning and memory. LTP-like changes have been observed in invitro preparations from the spinal cord and in spinal cord field potentials. Recently a long term increase in spinal A-[beta] and C-fibre evoked responses after painful stimulation has been observed. [coderre & katz, dickenson, wiesenfeld-hallin et al.]. (shrink)

The sociology of research and knowledge use, argue the authors, could be a way of linking important parts of sociology, such as organization studies, the sociology of science to each other. In the article, they discuss the idea that organizational responses to environments are related to research utilization. Based upon an empirical investigation of city welfare departments, four empirical “utilization strategies” are presented and shown to be related to power and control patterns. While negative utilization strategies are hostile to uncontrolled (...) research utilization and enhance the formation of bureaucratic expertise, conflict-oriented strategies are discursively productive and reinforce research use and alliance formation with social scientists to control the environment. (shrink)

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

The article describes the founding principles, work program, and accomplishments of a Reference Group with both expert and layperson stakeholders for the corrosion of copper canisters in a proposed deep repository in Sweden for spent nuclear fuel. The article sets the Reference Group as a participatory effort within a broader context of stakeholder and public participation. It is argued that for the future it will be necessary to more precisely define the roles of different approaches to public participation in relation (...) to the actual societal decision-making procedures, and the issue is raised whether an increasing level of their institutionalization is required. In particular, the focus is set on the safe-space approach to stakeholder participation designed to suit situations where independence and autonomy are crucial elements for the participants. To illustrate this we compare experiences from Sweden and the Czech Republic. (shrink)

In the pursuit of a dramaturgy of telematics as a compositional practice, the author builds a position on technology as externalized technique, develops a dramaturgic strategy with notions of an extended theatre practice and reports on a realized telematized performance where a practical implementation was explored. The theatrical site is viewed as a construct of attention, generated by the performers through the performance composition. The composition determines the audience experience, orchestrated by how the construction of the site manages their perspectives, (...) and how the performers are situated in the consciousness site of the audience. In the performed event the performers articulate as a collective extended entity, incorporating the transformation of the performance site via the articulation strategies implemented in the staging. Telematics is argued to be a technology facilitating specific modes of thinking, generating specific modes of actions and presence, which enable new performance sites and new modes of situating performance. (shrink)

It is suggested how one can imaginatively use a design strategy utilizing performers as tools in the creation of augmented, performative artwork. In order to establish meaningful constructions of performative and augmentative technology, one can use the formal methodologies of advanced formal body language as a tool in the creation process, and thereby have ‘the actual experience’ present in the process as a monitor and a constructive tool. To use a human being as a design tool is a method that (...) uses the skilled performer as a ‘super-’ or ‘extra-’ human tool to investigate through action and analysis. It is a way to test how realities occur under fluid and dynamic conditions within a controlled environment of time and space. This ‘technical’ use of the body as an extra-human behavioural entity, involves the total complex spectrum of intellect, emotions, desires, memory, actions, etc. as a formalized ‘machine’. (shrink)