Freud proposes that in unconscious processing, logical connections are also (heavily) based upon phonological similarities. Repressed concerns, for example, would also be expressed by way of phonologic ambiguity. In order to investigate a possible unconscious influence of phonological similarity, 31 participants were submitted to a tachistoscopic subliminal priming experiment, with prime and target presented at 1ms. In the experimental condition, the prime and one of the 2 targets were phonological reversed forms of each other, though graphemically dissimilar (e.g., “nice” and (...) “sign”); in the control condition the targets were pseudo-randomly attributed to primes to which they don’t belong. The experimental task was to “blindly” pick the choice most similar to the prime. ERPs were measured with a focus on the N320, which is known to react selectively to phonological mismatch in supraliminal visual word presentations. The N320 amplitude-effects at the electrodes on the midline and at the left of the brain significantly predicted the participants’ net behavioral choices more than half a second later, while their subjective experience is one of arbitrariness. Moreover, the social desirability score (SDS) significantly correlates with both the behavioral and the N320 brain responses of the participants. It is proposed that in participants with low SDS the phonological target induces an expected reduction of N320 and this increases their probability to pick this target. In contrast, high defensive participants have a perplexed brain reaction upon the phonological target, with a negatively peaking N320 as compared to control and this leads them to avoid this target more often. Social desirability, which is understood as reflecting defensiveness, might also manifest itself as a defense against the (energy-consuming) ambiguity of language. The specificity of this study is that all of this is happening totally out of awareness and at the level of very elementary linguistic distinctions. (shrink)

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This book celebrates and expands on J. Michael Dunn’s work on informational interpretations of logic. Dunn, in his Ph.D. thesis, introduced a semantics for first-degree entailments utilizing the idea that a sentence can provide positive or negative information about a topic, possibly supplying both or neither. He later published a related interpretation of the logic R-mingle, which turned out to be one of the first relational semantics for a relevance logic. An incompatibility relation between information states lends itself to (...) a definition of negation and it has figured into Dunn's comprehensive investigations into representations of various negations. The informational view of semantics is also a prominent theme in Dunn’s research on other logics, such as quantum logic and linear logic, and led to the encompassing theory of generalized Galois logics. Dunn’s latest work addresses informational interpretations of the ternary accessibility relation and the very nature of information. The book opens with Dunn’s autobiography, followed by a list of his publications. It then presents a series of papers written by respected logicians working on different aspects of information-based logics. The topics covered include the logic R-mingle, which was introduced by Dunn, and its applications in mathematical reasoning as well as its importance in obtaining results for other relevance logics. There are also interpretations of the accessibility relation in the semantics of relevance and other non-classical logics using different notions of information. It also presents a collection of papers that develop semantics for various logics, including certain modal and many-valued logics. The publication of this book is well timed, since we are living in an "information age.” Providing new technical findings, intellectual history and careful expositions of intriguing ideas, it appeals to a wide audience of scholars and researchers. (shrink)

This comprehensive text shows how various notions of logic can be viewed as notions of universal algebra providing more advanced concepts for those who have an introductory knowledge of algebraic logic, as well as those wishing to delve into more theoretical aspects.

This paper explores allowing truth value assignments to be undetermined or "partial" and overdetermined or "inconsistent", thus returning to an investigation of the four-valued semantics that I initiated in the sixties. I examine some natural consequence relations and show how they are related to existing logics, including ukasiewicz's three-valued logic, Kleene's three-valued logic, Anderson and Belnap's relevant entailments, Priest's "Logic of Paradox", and the first-degree fragment of the Dunn-McCall system "R-mingle". None of these systems have nested implications, and I investigate (...) twelve natural extensions containing nested implications, all of which can be viewed as coming from natural variations on Kripke's semantics for intuitionistic logic. Many of these logics exist antecedently in the literature, in particular Nelson 's "constructible falsity". (shrink)

We give a set of postulates for the minimal normal modal logicK + without negation or any kind of implication. The connectives are simply , , , . The postulates (and theorems) are all deducibility statements . The only postulates that might not be obvious are.

In this paper we introduce canonical extensions of partially ordered sets and monotone maps and a corresponding discrete duality. We then use these to give a uniform treatment of completeness of relational semantics for various substructural logics with implication as the residual(s) of fusion.

We study an application of gaggle theory to unary negative modal operators. First we treat negation as impossibility and get a minimal logic system Ki that has a perp semantics. Dunn 's kite of different negations can be dealt with in the extensions of this basic logic Ki. Next we treat negation as “unnecessity” and use a characteristic semantics for different negations in a kite which is dual to Dunn 's original one. Ku is the minimal logic that has a (...) characteristic semantics. We also show that Shramko's falsification logic FL can be incorporated into some extension of this basic logic Ku. Finally, we unite the two basic logics Ki and Ku together to get a negative modal logic K-, which is dual to the positive modal logic K+ in [7]. Shramko has suggested an extension of Dunn 's kite and also a dual version in [12]. He also suggested combining them into a “united” kite. We give a united semantics for this united kite of negations. (shrink)

Results of a study investigating the relation between personality traits and ethical-orientation indicate sex is not an good predictor for differences in Machiavellian-, Type A personality- or ethical-orientation. Intelligence is found to be positively associated with Machiavellian- and Type A personality-orientation but negatively associated with ethical-orientation. Machiavellians tend to have Type A personalities, but tend to be less ethically-oriented than Nonmachiavellians. Type A personalities are more ethically-orientated than Type B personalities.

Both I and Belnap, motivated the "Belnap-Dunn 4-valued Logic" by talk of the reasoner being simply "told true" (T) and simply "told false" (F), which leaves the options of being neither "told true" nor "told false" (N), and being both "told true" and "told false" (B). Belnap motivated these notions by consideration of unstructured databases that allow for negative information as well as positive information (even when they conflict). We now experience this on a daily basis with the Web. But (...) the 4-valued logic is deductive in nature, and its matrix is discrete: there are just four values. In this paper I investigate embedding the 4-valued logic into a context of probability. Jøsang's Subjective Logic introduced uncertainty to allow for degrees of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. We extend this so as to allow for two kinds of uncertainty— that in which the reasoner has too little information (ignorance) and that in which the reasoner has too much information (conflicted). Jøsang's "Opinion Triangle" becomes an "Opinion Tetrahedron" and the 4-values can be seen as its vertices. I make/prove various observations concerning the relation of non-classical "probability" to non-classical logic. (shrink)

Sexual size dimorphism is generally associated with sexual selection via agonistic male competition in nonhuman primates. These primate models play an important role in understanding the origins and evolution of human behavior. Human size dimorphism is often hypothesized to be associated with high rates of male violence and polygyny. This raises the question of whether human dimorphism and patterns of male violence are inherited from a common ancestor with chimpanzees or are uniquely derived. Here I review patterns of, and causal (...) models for, dimorphism in humans and other primates. While dimorphism in primates is associated with agonistic male mate competition, a variety of factors can affect male and female size, and thereby dimorphism. The causes of human sexual size dimorphism are uncertain, and could involve several non-mutually-exclusive mechanisms, such as mate competition, resource competition, intergroup violence, and female choice. A phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolution of dimorphism, including fossil hominins, indicates that the modern human condition is derived. This suggests that at least some behavioral similarities with Pan associated with dimorphism may have arisen independently, and not directly from a common ancestor. (shrink)

Arnon Avron has written: “Dunn-McCall logic RM is by far the best understood and the most well-behaved in the family of logics developed by the school of Anderson and Belnap.” I agree. There is the famous saying: “Do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.” I might say: “good enough.” In this spirit, I will examine the logic R-Mingle, exploring how it is only a “semi-relevant logic” but still a paraconsistent logic. I shall discuss the history of (...) RM, and compare RM to Anderson and Belnap’s system R of relevant implication and to classical two-valued logic. There is a “consumer’s guide,” evaluating these logics as “tools,” in the light of my recent work on “Humans as Rational Toolmaking Animals.”. (shrink)

Gangestad & Simpson's theory accounts for the existence of male strategic variation admirably well, although it does not specify the precise nature of the adaptation linking male developmental stability to strategic pluralism. In contrast, female strategic variation remains elusive. Empirical data suggest that genetic variation partly underlies such variation, but the causes of female strategic differences largely remain unexplained.

John O’Neill, Alan Holland, and Andrew Light usefully distinguish two ways of thinking about environmental values, namely, end-state and historical views. To value nature in an end-state way is to value it because it instantiates certain properties, such as complexity or diversity. In contrast, a historical view says that nature’s value is (partly) determined by its particular history. Three contemporary defenses of a historical view are explored in order to clarify: (1) the normatively relevant history; (2) how historical considerations are (...) supposed to instruct environmental decision making; and (3) the relative importance of historical and end-state considerations. There are multiple reasons for including historical considerations in an account of environmental values. For example, knowledge of a natural object’s history can add depth and texture to our appreciation of that object. Further, if we were blind to the relevant history, we could not adequately understand and defend environmental policy goals such as preserving the potentials of natural systems or maintaining ecological health, for these goals appear to have irreducibly historical aspects. While historical considerations are important, such considerations are insufficient to guide our normative thinking about nature and how it should be dealt with practically. But they succeed in broadening and deepening our understanding of the nature and sources of environmental value. (shrink)

Prominent philosophers have argued that contradictions contain either too much or too little information to be useful. We dispute this with what we call the “Paradox of the Two Firefighters.” Suppose you are awakened in your hotel room by a fire alarm. You open the door. You see three possible ways out: left, right, straight ahead. You see two firefighters. One says there is exactly one safe route and it is to your left. The other says there is exactly one (...) safe route and it is to your right. While the two firemen are giving you contradictory information, they are also both giving you the perhaps useful information that there is a safe way out and it is not straight ahead. We give two analyses. The first uses the “Opinion Tetrahedron,” introduced by Dunn as a generalization of Audun Jøsang’s “Opinion Triangle.” The Opinion Tetrahedron in effect embeds the values of the “Belnap-Dunn 4-valued Logic” into a context of subjective probability generalized to allow for degrees of belief, disbelief, and two kinds of uncertainty—that in which the reasoner has too little information and that in which the reasoner has too much information. Jøsang had only a single value for uncertainty. We also present an alternative solution, again based on subjective probability but of a more standard type. This solution builds upon “linear opinion pooling.” Kiefer had already developed apparatus for assessing risk using expert opinion, and this influences the second solution. Finally, we discuss how these solutions might apply to “Big Data” and the World Wide Web. (shrink)

Given classical (2 valued) structures and and a homomorphism h of onto , it is shown how to construct a (non-degenerate) 3-valued counterpart of . Classical sentences that are true in are non-false in . Applications to number theory and type theory (with axiom of infinity) produce finite 3-valued models in which all classically true sentences of these theories are non-false. Connections to relevant logic give absolute consistency proofs for versions of these theories formulated in relevant logic (the proof for (...) number theory was obtained earlier by R. K. Meyer and suggested the present abstract development). (shrink)

This chapter begins with an examination of Kierkegaard's historical political contributions, before it describes and evaluates the ways in which some recent scholarship has understood Kierkegaard's positive contributions to social and political thought. It limits the examination to three distinct understandings—postconventional identity as expressed by Habermas, a politics of difference as expressed by Caputo, and religious teleology as expressed by Westphal—as three possible ways to understand Kierkegaard's contribution to social and political thought. The primary aim is to identify common features (...) of these political interpretations of Kierkegaard so as to provide an account of what it would take to describe Kierkegaard's thought as a political theory. (shrink)

This volume includes three previously untranslated transcripts of Kant's logic lectures.

Despite recent attention on the social implications of his work, little has been done to articulate a substantive Kierkegaardian social theory. In this paper, I argue that Kierkegaard's A Literary Review describes four principles of social analysis. Together they reveal the social character of Kierkegaard's thought while presenting significant challenges for more traditional ‘social readings’ of his work.

In this paper two different formulations of Robinson's arithmetic based on relevant logic are examined. The formulation based on the natural numbers (including zero) is shown to collapse into classical Robinson's arithmetic, whereas the one based on the positive integers (excluding zero) is shown not to similarly collapse. Relations of these two formulations to R. K. Meyer's system R# of relevant Peano arithmetic are examined, and some remarks are made about the role of constant functions (e.g., multiplication by zero) in (...) relevant arithmetic. (shrink)