Despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that quantifier scope is a phenomenon that must be treated at the pragmatic level, most computational treatments of scope ambiguities have thus far been a collection of syntactically motivated preference rules. This might be in part due to the prevailing wisdom that a commonsense inferencing strategy would require the storage of and reasoning with a vast amount of background knowledge. In this paper we hope to demonstrate that the challenge in developing a commonsense (...) inferencing strategy is in the discovery of the relevant commonsense data and in a proper formulation of the inferencing strategy itself, and that a massive amount of background knowledge is not always required. In particular, we present a very effective procedure for resolving quantifier scope ambiguities at the pragmatic level using simple quantitative data that is readily available in most database environments. (shrink)

We think recent work in linguistics tells against the traditional claim that a string of words like (1) Every girl pushed some truck has two readings, indicated by the following formal language sentences (with restricted quantifiers): (1a) [!x:Gx]["y:Ty]Pxy (1b) ["y:Ty][!x:Gx]Pxy. In our view, (1) does not have any b-reading in which ‘some truck’ has widest scope.1 The issue turns on details concerning syntactic transformations and terms like ‘every’. This illustrates an important point for the study of natural language: ambiguity (...) hypotheses are indeed hypotheses—i.e., theoretical claims to be justified in light of various considerations, not theses whose truth can be directly observed by speakers. (shrink)

In October 2005, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights . A concept of central importance in the declaration is that of “human dignity”. However, there is lack of clarity about its scope, especially concerning the question of whether prenatal human life has the same dignity and rights as born human beings. This ambiguity has implications for the interpretation of important articles of the delcaration, including 2, 4, 8, 10 (...) and 11. The paper applies relevant provisions of the UDBHR to specific cases, addresses problems of internal consistency and considers attempts at clarifying the scope of “human dignity” by the negotiating parties. An analysis of the important relationship between the UDBHR and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the UDBHR refers in its title and elsewhere, shows that because of a crucial emphatic asymmetry, a broad reading according to which the UDBHR must be understood to ascribe human rights and dignity to prenatal life is untenable. However, the view that the UDBHR confers human rights and dignity on humans from the moment of birth onwards is robust and defensible. This conclusion is important for a proper understanding of the declaration and its use, as stated in Articles 1 and 22, the latter urging states “… to give effect to the principles … in this declaration”. Similarly, it has implications for the use of the declaration in the wider context of bioethics-related law and policy, as well as in academic and other discussions where increasing reference to the UDBHR is likely. (shrink)

Allow me to rehearse a familiar scenario. We all know that which ends you have has something to do with what you ought to do. If Ronnie is keen on dancing but Bradley can’t stand it, then the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight affects what Ronnie and Bradley ought to do in different ways. In short, (HI) you ought, if you have the end, to take the means. But now trouble looms: what if you have (...) dreadful, murderous ends? Ought you to take the means to them? Seemingly not. But fortunately, an assumption made by deontic logics1 comes to the rescue. Since ‘‘ought’’, according to this assumption, is a sentential operator, HI must really be ambiguous. It could be read either as (Narrow) You have the end ! O(you take the means) or as (Wide) O(you have the end ! you take the means). Now if Narrow is true, then you really ought to take the means to your murderous ends. But this doesn’t follow from Wide. All that follows from Wide is that you ought to either take the means to these ends or else give them up. Conclusions: (1) Since HI is on some reading true, but Narrow isn’t, Wide is true. (2) Wide accounts for the relationship between your ends and what you ought to do. This elegant scenario repeats itself in many other domains in which it seems like something can have a bearing on what some particular agent ought to do. Does what you know affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs about what you ought to do affect what you ought to do? Do your promises affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs affect what you ought to believe? On each of these counts, the intuitive answer is ‘‘yes’’. And so each of these questions leaves something for the moral philosopher or the epistemologist to investigate. On each count, it seems that what we all know, is that (Account) you ought, if p, to do A. But on each count, the Narrow-scope reading of the ‘‘ought’’ in this claim yields unintuitive consequences. So since Account is true, it must be true on the Wide-scope reading.. (shrink)

Some descriptivists reply to the modal argument by appealing to scope ambiguities. In this paper, we argue that those replies don’t work in the case of apparently empty names like ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

Ambiguous terms are applicable to different kinds of things, but so are general terms, since a general kind may include various species. Thus a bank may be the side of a river or a certain kind of financial institution, and an animal may be a dog or a cat. Similarly, an ambiguous sentence is true in different kinds of situations, and so is a general sentence in that different specific situations may make the same general sentence true. Thus the sentence, (...) The bank collapsed yesterday,’ can be true of different varieties of banks, and the sentence, The animal is untrained,’ can be true of different varieties of animals. These similarities of ambiguity and generality have led many linguists and philosophers to confuse the two. Basic to this confusion is a failure to notice a difference in the scopes of disjunctions involved in ambiguity and generality. (shrink)

Ambiguous terms are applicable to different kinds of things, but so are general terms, since a general kind may include various species. Thus a bank may be the side of a river or a certain kind of financial institution, and an animal may be a dog or a cat. Similarly, an ambiguous sentence is true in different kinds of situations, and so is a general sentence in that different specific situations may make the same general sentence true. Thus the sentence, (...) The bank collapsed yesterday,’ can be true of different varieties of banks, and the sentence, The animal is untrained,’ can be true of different varieties of animals. These similarities of ambiguity and generality have led many linguists and philosophers to confuse the two. Basic to this confusion is a failure to notice a difference in the scopes of disjunctions involved in ambiguity and generality. (shrink)

The notion of scope as it relates to a model of logical form is discussed. The inability of the accepted definition of scope to account for the contrast between priority scope - the logical priority of different quantifiers & other logical notions via rule ordering - & binding scope - the identification of the connection between variables of quantification & a particular quantifier - is demonstrated. The semantic ambiguity of this dichotomy of scope is explored (...) via examination of donkey sentences. A formal representation of this dichotomy is suggested. The government-binding approach & principle of compositionality that handle scope relations via the logical form is rejected due to the complexity of the mechanism by which syntactic form results in logical forms. A discourse representational approach is also rejected. It is concluded that the interaction of syntax & semantics is instead better represented by a game-theoretical treatment of scope & anaphora. 26 References. T. Rosenberg. (shrink)

We characterize pairs of monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 over finite domains that give rise to an entailment relation between their two relative scope construals. This relation between quantifiers, which is referred to as scope dominance, is used for identifying entailment relations between the two scopal interpretations of simple sentences of the form NP1–V–NP2. Simple numerical or set-theoretical considerations that follow from our main result are used for characterizing such relations. The variety of examples in which they (...) hold are shown to go far beyond the familiar existential-universal type. (shrink)

This paper discusses the apparent scope ambiguities between definite descriptions and modal operators. I argue that we need the theory of presupposition to explain why these ambiguities are not always present, and that once that theory is in hand, Kripke’s modal argument loses much of its force.

This paper is about even in downward entailing contexts. Karttunen and Peters (1979) have shown that there are two different sets of implicatures of even in such contexts. They argue that the two sets of implicatures are derived by allowing even to take scope either higher or lower than a negative polarity licenser. Rooth (1985) argues that even is lexically ambiguous, that is, there is a negative polarity even. I argue against Rooth's ambiguity theory and show that within Rooth's (...) theory of focus, a scope theory of even has better empirical coverage. I also answer objections to the scope theory raised by Rooth (1985) and Karttunen and Karttunen (1977). (shrink)

Stoic work on ambiguity represents one of the most innovative, sophisticated and rigorous contributions to philosophy and the study of language in western antiquity. This book is both a comprehensive survey of the often difficult and scattered sources, and an attempt to locate Stoic material in the rich array of contexts, ancient and modern, which alone can guarantee full appreciation of its subtlety, scope and complexity. The comparisons and contrasts which this book constructs will intrigue not just classical scholars, (...) and philosophers, but also logicians, theoretical linguists, communication theorists and historians of grammar and of literary theory. The Stoics on Ambiguity is designed to be intelligible to readers with no Greek or Latin. (shrink)

According to James McCawley (1981) and Richard Larson and Gabriel Segal (1995), the following sentence is three-ways ambiguous: -/- Harry wants to be the mayor of Kenai. -/- According to them also, the three-way ambiguity cannot be accommodated on the Russellian view that definite descriptions are quantified noun phrases. In order to capture the three-way ambiguity of the sentence, these authors propose that definite descriptions must be ambiguous: sometimes they are predicate expressions; sometimes they are Russellian quantified noun phrases. After (...) explaining why the McCawley-Larson-Segal solution contains an obvious flaw, I discuss how an effort to correct the flaw brings to light certain puzzles about the individuation of desires, about quantifying in, and about the disambiguation of desire ascriptions. (shrink)

This article1 deals with a well-known but still ill-explained fact about German, namely scope inversion under a particular accent contour, as illustrated with the following examples, where “/” and “\” stand for rising and falling accent: (a) Mindestens ein Stu- dent hat jeden Roman gelesen, lit. ‘at least one student has every novel read’, with the reading “For at least one student x: x read every book”, and (b) Mindestens /EIN Student hat \JEDen Roman gelesen, with the additional reading (...) “For every novel y: at least one student read y”. I will derive the scope inversion in this reading from general principles of scope assignment and focus marking in German. In particular, I will argue that focus is assigned to constituents that precede the verbal predicate, which leads to syntactic configurations that in turn result in ambiguous interpretations. This explanation must be couched in a framework of derivational economy that favors shorter derivations. It is argued that the relevant comparison class is defined with respect to phonological form, not, as has been suggested for English, with respect t o identity of semantic interpretation, and that this may be a general property of “free” word order languages. (shrink)

Kuhn argued that scientific theory choice is, in some sense, a rational matter, but one that is not fully determined by shared objective scientific virtues like accuracy, simplicity, and scope. Okasha imports Arrow’s impossibility theorem into the context of theory choice to show that rather than not fully determining theory choice, these virtues cannot determine it at all. If Okasha is right, then there is no function (satisfying certain desirable conditions) from ‘preference’ rankings supplied by scientific virtues over competing (...) theories (or models, or hypotheses) to a single all-things-considered ranking. This threatens the rationality of science. In this paper we show that if Kuhn’s claims about the role that subjective elements play in theory choice are taken seriously, then the threat dissolves. (shrink)

Sentences like _Mary needs to make the fewest mistakes on the upcoming test_ have a ‘split scope’ reading roughly paraphrasable as ‘Mary exceeds all others in terms of how many mistakes she must _not_ make’; that is, her situation is the most precarious. The structural approach to this phenomenon attributes to such sentences a logical form resembling this paraphrase, in which the superlative component of the meaning of _fewest_ scopes above the modal _need to_ and the negative component scopes (...) below it. This paper investigates analogous structures in Syrian Arabic, a language in which superlatives may appear at a distance from their scalar associates in the surface order. The syntax of such expressions in Syrian Arabic, and the range of interpretations available to the various syntactic permutations found there points to two different sources for split scope readings. While some split scope readings are derived by syntactic splitting of _fewest_ across a modal verb, others arise from a semantic ambiguity in the modal verb itself, rather than from a syntactic distinction in logical form. (shrink)

Syntactic and semantic theories of quantificational phenomena traditionally treat all noun phrases alike, thus predicting that noun phrases exhibit a uniform behavior. It is well-known that this is an idealization: in any given case, some noun phrases will support a desired reading more readily than others. Anyone who has lectured on quantifier scope ambiguities to a class of unbrainwashed undergraduates will recall the amount of preparation time that goes into coming up with two or three examples that the (...) class will judge to be ambiguous in exactly the ways the theory under discussion predicts. The same experience with ``good citizens'' and ``bad citizens'' repeats itself in connection with branching, anaphora, distributive versus collective readings, extraction, event quantification, pair-list questions, and so on. (shrink)

The natural duty theory holds that "we have a natural duty to support the laws and institutions of a just state" (Jeremy Waldron). We owe this not because we ever promised to support these laws and institutions, nor because fair play requires we support the cooperative ventures from which we receive benefits. The claim is that we have a general duty to promote institutions that do something justice requires wherever these institutions may be, a duty that does not depend on (...) our having special ties to these institutions, special ties of the sort we have to the institutions of our own government. I argue that we do not need to appeal to the idea of a natural duty to justify compliance with many laws. For example, New Zealanders must not murder, rape, or steal while in France, not because they have a duty to obey laws of a just state, but because it is wrong to murder, rape, or steal. If the natural duty theory is taken to be a statement of the conditions necessary for an obligation to exist, it would wrongly conclude there is no duty to obey laws against murder or rape in a state whose institutions and laws are not just. A second class of laws reflect not moral judgments but, rather, local conventions, conventions that are morally arbitrary but which may be useful in coordinating action. For example, New Zealanders visiting France must drive on the right side of the road, as dictated by French convention. Here, too, the natural duty theory fails to provide a suitable account of the relation noncitizens have to such laws. Our reasons for driving on the right side of the road when this is accepted convention have nothing to do with the justice of the institutions of the state. To flout this convention is not to undermine justice since there is nothing just or unjust about driving on one side of the road or another. I question the advantages of the natural duty theory, especially in light of important ambiguities in the theory. (shrink)

This paper focuses on children’s interpretation of sentences containing negation and a quantifier (e.g., The detective didn’t find some guys). Recent studies suggest that, although children are capable of accessing inverse scope interpretations of such sentences, they resort to surface scope to a larger extent than adults. To account for children’s behavioral pattern, we propose a new factor at play in Truth Value Judgment tasks: the Question–Answer Requirement (QAR). According to the QAR, children (and adults) must interpret the (...) target sentence that they evaluate as an answer to a question that is made salient by the discourse. (shrink)

There is a core to the referential/attributive distinction that reveals a propositional ambiguity that is scope-related and rooted in syntax.

Systematic semantic ambiguities result from the interaction of the two operations that are involved in resolving ellipsis in the presence of scoping elements such as quantifiers and intensional operators: scope determination for the scoping elements and resolution of the elided relation. A variety of problematic examples previously noted - by Sag, Hirschbüihler, Gawron and Peters, Harper, and others - all have to do with such interactions. In previous work, we showed how ellipsis resolution can be stated and solved (...) in equational terms. Furthermore, this equational analysis of ellipsis provides a uniform framework in which interactions between ellipsis resolution and scope determination can be captured. As a consequence, an account of the problematic examples follows directly from the equational method. The goal of this paper is merely to point out this pleasant aspect of the equational analysis, through its application to these cases. No new analytical methods or associated formalism are presented, with the exception of a straightforward extension of the equational method to intensional logic. (shrink)

1 The notion of specicity has played a signicant role in linguistic theory both in the elds of semantics and, increasingly, in work on syntax/semantics interface., Abbott, Kripke, Fodor and Sag, Higginbotham and Enc among many others; see also Pesetsky, Szabolcsi and Zwarts, Diesing, Dobrovie- Sorin, E. Kiss, Mahajan, and Chung for work where specicity is discussed in connection with syntactic matters.) Specicity is interesting for the student of semantics because it is crucially relevant to establishing varieties of reference. For (...) the syntactician, the notion of specicity comes up when attempting to account for the use of various case markers on DOs in languages as diverse as Romanian, Turkish, and Hindi, or when attempting to account for the full spectrum of judgments concerning weak island violations and the interpretation of multiple wh-questions. The rst point I will argue for is that there are several distinct notions of specicity that should be kept apart. More specically, I will argue that there are at least three. The discussion inevitably leads to Fodor and Sag's ambiguity claim, which in turn leads to the issue of the possible scopes of indenite noun phrases versus the possible scope of quanticational noun phrases. Section 3 will establish the relevant empirical generalizations concerning simple indenites and distributives, and Section 4 captures them within a non-congurational theory of scope proposed in Farkas and Farkas. (shrink)

It is well known that in certain environments the scope of a moved quantifier phrase can be determined at either its pre-movement position (“scope reconstruction”) or its postmovement position (“surface scope”). Thus the familiar ambiguity of (1) results from two choices for the scope of the moved QP. Under scope reconstruction, the scope of the moved existential QP is the sister of the pre-movement position (i.e. the sister of t, [to win the lottery]), while (...) under surface scope it is the sister of the post-movement position (i.e. [is likely t to win the lottery]). The two scope possibilities yield different semantic interpretations, corresponding to the paraphrases in (2). (1) Someone from New York is likely t to win the lottery (2) a. It is likely that there will be someone from New York who wins the lottery.. (shrink)

It has long been observed that the superlative construction, exemplified by John climbed the highest mountain, has two readings. On the absolute reading, the heights of the relevant mountains in a relevant context are compared; on the comparative reading, relevant climbers’ achievements of mountain climbing are compared (Szabolcsi, Comparative superlatives, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 1986). Two theories have been proposed regarding this ambiguity. One theory holds that it results from movement of the superlative morpheme -est (movement theory) (Heim, Association (...) with focus, Doctoral Dissertation, 1985, Notes on superlatives, 1999; Szabolcsi 1986).The other theory holds that the ambiguity is derived by assignment of different values to the context variable C, keeping a single LF structure where -est stays in situ (in-situ theory) (Farkas and Kiss, Nat Lang Linguist Theory 18:417–455, 2000; Sharvit and Stateva, Linguist Philos 25:453–504, 2002). As is pointed out by Heim (1999), a choice between these theories is hard to make based solely on English. Through an investigation of Japanese superlative constructions, this paper argues that, in Japanese at least, a movement theory is required. (shrink)

The design of new constitutions is fraught with challenges on both issues of structural design and individual rights. As both a descriptive and normative matter it is exceedingly difficult to believe that one structural solution will fit all cases. The high variation in nation size, economic development, and ethnic division can easily tilt the balance for or against a Presidential or Parliamentary system, and even within these two broad classes the differences in constitutional structure are both large and hard to (...) measure. The only confident claim is that some system of separation of powers coupled with checks and balances is needed. Deciding which system, however, is far harder. In contrast, that same level of doubt does not arise in connection with the correct specification of individual right. Strong systems of negative rights on matters of liberty, property, religion, and speech are preferable across a wide range of social organizations. On the other hand, any effort to create systems of positive entitlements will fail because of the negative effects that they have on wealth creation and the inability to define or limit the scope of the relevant entitlements. (shrink)

This paper argues, on the basis of data from St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish), for a theory of wide-scope indefinites which is similar, though not identical, to that proposed by Kratzer (1998). I show that a subset of S'át'imcets indefinites takes obligatory wide scope with respect to if-clauses, negation, and modals, and is unable to be distributed over by quantificational phrases. These wide-scope effects cannot be accounted for by movement, but require an analysis involving choice functions (Reinhart 1995, 1997). (...) However, Reinhart's particular choice function analysis is unable to account for the St'át'imcets data. A Kratzer-style theory, on the other hand, accounts not only for the wide-scope effects, but also for the emergence of narrower-than-widest interpretations for indefinites which contain bound variables. I depart from Kratzer's analysis in claiming that St'át'imcets choice function indefinites are not 'specific'; the discourse context does not provide a value for the function variable. Therefore, I utilize wide- scope existential closure over choice functions rather than leaving the variables free. However, my analysis provides support for Kratzer's claim that English indefinites are ambiguous between a choice function interpretation and a quantificational interpretation, since St'át'imcets determiners overtly encode the English ambiguity. I conclude by suggesting that the proposed analysis of wide-scope indefinites may be universally valid. (shrink)

In this essay I craft a procedure for evaluating claims of moral personhood that would allow us to answer ethical questions raised by issues like abortion, animal rights, artificial intelligence, etc. I focus specifically on the abortion debate as a case study for applying my procedure. I argue that our moral instincts have evolved to promote group cohesion, a necessary prerequisite of which is reliable identification of other group members. These are “persons” in the moral sense of the word. However, (...) while our moral intuitions may be good at picking out paradigmatic instances of moral persons, peripheral or putative instances of this category are a matter of intense debate. Further, I show that the attempt to clarify the boundaries of moral personhood by appealing to physical traits—what I characterize as the equation of moral personhood with ontological personhood—does not actually resolve the underlying ambiguity, nor does it answer the moral question why we ought to recognize moral rights in the first place. I argue instead for a three pronged inquiry that asks whether the entity in question is capable of articulating its own entitlement to moral consideration; if not, whether recognizing it as a moral person would facilitate the recognition of more paradigmatic instances of moral persons, or whether the failure so to recognize it would impede the recognition of more paradigmatic instances of moral persons; and whether the entity’s moral personhood can be recognized without cancelling or substantially burdening the moral rights of paradigmatic instances of moral persons. I argue that, applying this test, abortion is morally permissible, at least in the early stages of pregnancy when the vast majority of abortions occur anyway. (shrink)

Background: Autonomy is a central concept in both bioethics and rehabilitation. Bioethics has emphasized autonomy as self-governance and its application in treatment decision-making. In addition to discussing decisional autonomy, rehabilitation also focuses on autonomy as functional independence. In practice, responding to patients with diminished autonomy is an important component of rehabilitation care, but also gives rise to tensions and challenges. Our objective was to better understand the complex and distinctive ways that autonomy is understood and upheld in the context of (...) rehabilitation care by reviewing how autonomy is discussed in the rehabilitation literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review addressing issues of autonomy in the context of mental and physical rehabilitation. Our process followed three sequential steps. We extracted and analyzed bibliometric information. We then examined how autonomy was defined and conceptualized. Finally, we examined how the articles discussed the roles of rehabilitation health professionals in responding to patient autonomy. Findings: The articles include 16 empirical reports, 17 case studies and 30 theoretical papers. The most common conceptual accounts of autonomy drew upon principlism, rights-based and legal analyses, and relational/social approaches. We identified four broad approaches for responding to patient autonomy: supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating. Conclusion: This review helps clarify some of the ambiguities and conceptual distinctions underlying discussions and practices related to autonomy in rehabilitation. It also draws attention to a wide range of activities that health professionals can undertake with the goal of supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating for patient autonomy in rehabilitation care. (shrink)

Background: Autonomy is a central concept in both bioethics and rehabilitation. Bioethics has emphasized autonomy as self-governance and its application in treatment decision-making. In addition to discussing decisional autonomy, rehabilitation also focuses on autonomy as functional independence. In practice, responding to patients with diminished autonomy is an important component of rehabilitation care, but also gives rise to tensions and challenges. Our objective was to better understand the complex and distinctive ways that autonomy is understood and upheld in the context of (...) rehabilitation care by reviewing how autonomy is discussed in the rehabilitation literature. Methods: We conducted a scoping review addressing issues of autonomy in the context of mental and physical rehabilitation. Our process followed three sequential steps. We extracted and analyzed bibliometric information. We then examined how autonomy was defined and conceptualized. Finally, we examined how the articles discussed the roles of rehabilitation health professionals in responding to patient autonomy. Findings: The articles include 16 empirical reports, 17 case studies and 30 theoretical papers. The most common conceptual accounts of autonomy drew upon principlism, rights-based and legal analyses, and relational/social approaches. We identified four broad approaches for responding to patient autonomy: supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating. Conclusion: This review helps clarify some of the ambiguities and conceptual distinctions underlying discussions and practices related to autonomy in rehabilitation. It also draws attention to a wide range of activities that health professionals can undertake with the goal of supporting, promoting, respecting and advocating for patient autonomy in rehabilitation care. (shrink)

Background The significance of medical implants goes beyond technical functioning and reaches into everyday life, with consequences for individuals as well as society. Ethical aspects associated with the everyday use of implants are relevant for individuals’ lifeworlds and need to be considered in implant care and in the course of technical developments. Methods This scoping review aimed to provide a synthesis of the existing evidence regarding ethically relevant psychosocial and cultural aspects in cochlear, glaucoma and cardiovascular implants in patient-centered empirical (...) research. Systematic literature searches were conducted in EBSCOhost, Philpapers, PsycNET, Pubmed, Web of Science and BELIT databases. Eligible studies were articles in German or English language published since 2000 dealing with ethically relevant aspects of cochlear, glaucoma and passive cardiovascular implants based on empirical findings from the perspective of (prospective) implant-wearers and their significant others. Following a descriptive-analytical approach, a data extraction form was developed and relevant data were extracted accordingly. We combined a basic numerical analysis of study characteristics with a thematically organized narrative synthesis of the data. Results Sixty-nine studies were included in the present analysis. Fifty were in the field of cochlear implants, sixteen in the field of passive cardiovascular implants and three in the field of glaucoma implants. Implant-related aspects were mainly found in connection with autonomy, freedom, identity, participation and justice, whereas little to no data was found with regards to ethical principles of privacy, safety or sustainability. Conclusions Empirical research on ethical aspects of implant use in everyday life is highly relevant, but marked by ambiguity and unclarity in the operationalization of ethical terms and contextualization. A transparent orientation framework for the exploration and acknowledgment of ethical aspects in “lived experiences” may contribute to the improvement of individual care, healthcare programs and research quality in this area. Ethics-sensitive care requires creating awareness for cultural and identity-related issues, promoting health literacy to strengthen patient autonomy as well as adjusting healthcare programs accordingly. More consideration needs to be given to sustainability issues in implant development and care according to an approach of ethics-by-design. (shrink)

BackgroundIn most Anglophone nations, policy and law increasingly foster an autonomy-based model, raising issues for large numbers of people who fail to fit the paradigm, and indicating problems in translating practical and theoretical understandings of ‘good death’ to policy. Three exemplar populations are frail older people, people with dementia and people with severe traumatic brain injury. We hypothesise that these groups face some over-lapping challenges in securing good end-of-life care linked to their limited agency. To better understand these challenges, we (...) conducted a scoping review and thematic synthesis.MethodsTo capture a range of literature, we followed established scoping review methods. We then used thematic synthesis to describe the broad themes emerging from this literature.ResultsInitial searches generated 22,375 references, and screening yielded 49, highly heterogeneous, studies that met inclusion criteria, encompassing 12 countries and a variety of settings. The thematic synthesis identified three themes: the first concerned the processes of end-of-life decision-making, highlighting the ambiguity of the dominant shared decision-making process, wherein decisions are determined by families or doctors, sometimes explicitly marginalising the antecedent decisions of patients. Despite this marginalisation, however, the patient does play a role both as a social presence and as an active agent, by whose actions the decisions of those with authority are influenced. The second theme examined the tension between predominant notions of a good death as ‘natural’ and the drive to medicalise death through the lens of the experiences and actions of those faced with the actuality of death. The final theme considered the concept of antecedent end-of-life decision-making, its influence on policy and decision-making, and some caveats that arise from the studies.ConclusionsTogether these three themes indicate a number of directions for future research, which are likely to be applicable to other conditions that result in reduced agency. Above all, this review emphasises the need for new concepts and fresh approaches to end of life decision-making that address the needs of the growing population of frail older people, people with dementia and those with severe traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

This article begins by tracing two issues to be kept in mind in discussing the theme of love as far back as Aristotle: on the one hand the polysemy of the term philia in Aristotle, and on the other hand the fact that there is a focal or core meaning of philia that provides order to that polysemy. Secondly, it is briefly suggested that the same issues are, mutatis mutandis, central for understanding the discussion of love or Liebe by Hegel, (...) the central classic reference in debates on recognition. Thirdly, by pointing out a certain ambiguity in Harry Frankfurt’s recent work on love, the article focuses more closely on the thought that love in the simple sense which Aristotle had pinpointed as the focal meaning of philia, which is arguably at the core of Hegel’s discussion of Liebe, and which still forms at least one of the core senses of the term, is a ‘personifying’ attitude of recognition. Finally, drawing on the above points the article addresses the question whether love as a form of recognition is restricted to intimate relations such as those between family-members, ‘lovers’, close friends and so on, or whether it has applications in interhuman relations more broadly. The answer to this question, it is suggested, is essential for the viability of ethically substantial notions of solidarity beyond circles of close acquaintances, whether within the civil society, across nations, or towards future generations. (shrink)

The conventional interpretation of Hannah Arendt's accounts of forgiveness considers them secularistic. The secular features of her thinking that resist grounding the act of forgiving in divine criteria offer a good corrective to religious forgiveness that fosters depoliticization. Arendt's vision of free politics, however, calls for much more nuance and complexity regarding the secular and the religious in realizing forgiveness for transitional politics than the secularist rendition of her thinking allows. After identifying an area of ambiguity in Arendt's thoughts that (...) invites further investigation of religious forgiveness, this study seeks to relieve her misgivings about religion's role in politics by engaging with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology, which emphasizes worldliness and altruism in religious faith. Through constructive engagements with both thinkers, the article presents a balanced Arendtian position that is neither solely secularist nor complacent about religion in politics. (shrink)

This study reports on action research efforts that were aimed at developing institutional arrangements beneficial for soil fertility improvement. Three stages of action research are described and analyzed. We initially began by bringing stakeholders together in a platform to engage in a collaborative design of new arrangements. However, this effort was stymied mainly because conditions conducive for learning and negotiation were lacking. We then proceeded to support experimentation with alternative arrangements initiated by individual landowners and migrant farmers. The implementation of (...) these arrangements too ran into difficulties due to intra-family dynamics and ambiguities regarding land tenure. Further investigations to find out how ambiguities could be tackled revealed that the local actors themselves had taken initiatives towards developing institutional innovations to reduce ambiguities. However, there is still considerable scope for further development of these self-organized innovations. The article ends with a reflection on inter-disciplinary action research, where it is argued that making “mistakes” is an inherent and necessary characteristic in action research that aims to address complex social issues. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite its ubiquity, it is often not clear what organizations and services mean by well-being. Visual impairment has been associated with poorer well-being and well-being has become a key outcome for support and services for adults living with VI. A shared understanding of what well-being means is therefore essential to enable assessment of well-being and cross-service provision of well-being support.ObjectivesTo provide an overview of the ways in which well-being has been conceptualized in research relating to adults living with VI.Eligibility criteriaArticles (...) were included in the review if the article discussed well-being in the context of adults living with VI, was available in English and as a full text.Data sourcesA systematic search using search terms relating to VI and well-being was conducted in EBSCOHost and Ovid.ChartingA team of three reviewers screened titles, abstracts and full-texts articles and extracted data. Ambiguous articles were referred to the research group and discussed.ResultsOf 10,662 articles identified in the search, 249 were included in the review. These referred to 38 types of well-being. The most common types were general well-being emotional well-being and psychological well-being. Most articles referred to one type only, with a maximum of 9 listed in one article. A large number of articles did not clearly define well-being. A wide range of indicators of well-being related to the domains of hedonia, mood, positive and negative affect, quality of life, mental health, eudaimonia, self/identity, health, psychological reactions to disability and health problems, functioning, social functioning and environment, were extracted, many of which were used just once.ConclusionsThere remains a lack of consensus on how well-being is conceptualized and assessed in the context of adult VI. A standardized multi-domain approach derived with input from adults with VI and practitioners working with them is required to enable comparison of findings and cross-organizational provision of support. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses ancient versions of paradoxes today classified as paradoxes of presupposition and how their ancient solutions compare with contemporary ones. Sections 1-4 air ancient evidence for the Fallacy of Complex Question and suggested solutions, introduce the Horn Paradox, consider its authorship and contemporary solutions. Section 5 reconstructs the Stoic solution, suggesting the Stoics produced a Russellian-type solution based on a hidden scope ambiguity of negation. The difference to Russell's explanation of definite descriptions is that in the (...) Horn Paradox the Stoics uncovered a hidden conjunction rather than a hidden existential sentence. Sections 6 and 7 investigate hidden ambiguities in 'to have' and 'to lose' (including inalienable and alienable possession) and ambiguities of quantification based on substitution of indefinite plural expressions for indefinite or anaphoric pronouns, and Stoic awareness of these. Section 8 considers metaphorical readings and allusions that add further spice to the paradox. (shrink)

One of the challenges confronted by language learners is to master the interpretation of sentences with multiple logical operators, where different interpretations depend on different scope assignments. Five-year-old children have been found to access some readings of potentially ambiguous sentences much less than adults do :73–102, 2006; Musolino, Universal Grammar and the acquisition of semantic knowledge, 1998; Musolino and Lidz, Lang Acquis 11:277–291, 2003, among many others). Recently, Gualmini et al. have shown that, by careful contextual manipulation, it is (...) possible to evoke some of the putatively unavailable interpretations from young children. Their proposal is quite general, but the focus of their work was on sentences involving nominal quantifiers and negation. The present paper extends this investigation to sentences with modal expressions. The results of our two experimental studies reveal that, in potentially ambiguous sentences with modal expressions, the kinds of contextual manipulations introduced by Gualmini and colleagues do not suffice to explain children’s initial scope interpretations. In response to the recalcitrant data, we propose a new three-stage model of the acquisition of scope relations. Most importantly, at the initial stage, child grammars make available only one interpretation of negative sentences with modal expressions. We call this the Unique Scope Assignment stage. (shrink)

This paper presents the Constraint Language for Lambda Structures(CLLS), a first-order language for semantic underspecification thatconservatively extends dominance constraints. It is interpreted overlambda structures, tree-like structures that encode -terms. Based onCLLS, we present an underspecified, uniform analysis of scope,ellipsis, anaphora, and their interactions. CLLS solves a variablecapturing problem that is omnipresent in scope underspecification andcan be processed efficiently.

This work presents the structure, distribution and semantic interpretation of quantificational expressions in languages from diverse language families and typological profiles. The current volume pays special attention to underrepresented languages of different status and endangerment level. Languages covered include American and Russian Sign Languages, and sixteen spoken languages from Africa, Australia, Papua, the Americas, and different parts of Asia. The articles respond to a questionnaire the editors constructed to enable detailed crosslinguistic comparison of numerous features. They offer comparable information on (...) semantic classes of quantifiers (generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, partitive), syntactically complex quantifiers (intensive modification, Boolean compounds, exception phrases, et cetera), and several more specific issues such as quantifier scope ambiguities, floating quantifiers, and binary (type 2) quantifiers. The book is intended for semanticists, logicians interested in quantification in natural language, and general linguists as articles are meant to be descriptive and theory independent. The book continues and expands the coverage of the Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language (2012) by the same editors, and extends the earlier work in Matthewson (2008), Gil and others (2013) and Bach et al (1995). (shrink)

_Wh_-questions with the modal verb _can_ admit both mention-some (MS) and mention-all (MA) answers. This paper argues that we should treat MS as a grammatical phenomenon, primarily determined by the grammar of the _wh_-interrogative. I assume that MS and MA answers can be modeled using the same definition of answerhood (Fox in Mention-some interpretations, MIT seminar, 2013 ) and attribute the MS/MA ambiguity to structural variations within the question nucleus. The variations are: (i) the scope ambiguity of the higher-order (...) _wh_-trace and (ii) the absence/presence of an anti-exhaustification operator. However, treating MS answers as complete answers in this way contradicts the widely adopted analysis of uniqueness effects in questions of Dayal (Locality in _wh_ quantification: Questions and relative clauses in Hindi, 1996 ), according to which the uniqueness effects of singular _which_-phrases arise from an exhaustivity presupposition, namely that a question must have a unique exhaustive true answer. To solve this dilemma, I propose that question interpretations presuppose Relativized Exhaustivity: roughly, the exhaustivity in questions is evaluated relative to the accessible worlds as opposed to the anchor/utterance world. Relativized Exhaustivity preserves the merits of Dayal’s exhaustivity presupposition while permitting MS; moreover, it explains the local-uniqueness effects in modalized singular _wh_-questions. (shrink)

Two experiments (N1 = 141, N2 = 40) investigate two versions of Aristotle’s Thesis for the first time. Aristotle’s Thesis is a negated conditional, which consists of one propositional variable with a negation either in the antecedent (version 1) or in the consequent (version 2). This task allows us to infer if people interpret indicative conditionals as material conditionals or as conditional events. In the first experiment I investigate between-participants the two versions of Aristotle’s Thesis crossed with abstract versus concrete (...) task material. The modal response for all four groups is consistent with the conditional event and inconsistentwith the material conditional interpretation. This observation is replicated in the second experiment. Moreover, the second experiment rules out scope ambiguities of the negation of conditionals. Both experiments provide new evidence against thematerial conditional interpretation of conditionals and support the conditional event interpretation. Finally, I discuss implications formodeling indicative conditionals and the relevance of this work for experimental philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a novel analysis of presuppositions, paying particular attention to the interaction between the knowledge resources that are required to The analysis has two main features. First, we capture an analogy between presuppositions, anaphora and scope ambiguity (cf. van der Sandt 1992), by utilizing semantic under-specification (c£ Reyle 1993). Second, resolving this underspecification requires reasoning about how the presupposition is rhetorically connected to the discourse context. This has several consequences. First, since pragmatic information plays a (...) role in computing the rhetorical relation, it also constrains the interpretation of presuppositions. Our account therefore provides a formal framework for analysing problematic data, which require pragmatic reasoning. Second, binding presuppositions to the context via rhetorical links replaces accommodating them, in the sense of adding them to the context (cf. Lewis 1979). The treatment of presupposition is thus generalized and integrated into the discourse update procedure. We formalize this approach in SDRT (Asher 1993; Lascarides & Asher 1993), and demonstrate that it provides a rich framework for interpreting presuppositions, where semantic and pragmatic constraints are integrated. (shrink)

A hyperintensional semantics for natural language is proposed which is agnostic about the question of whether propositions are sets of worlds or worlds are sets of propositions. Montague’s theory of intensional senses is replaced by a weaker theory, written in standard classical higher-order logic, of fine-grained senses which are in a many-to-one correspondence with intensions; Montague’s theory can then be recovered from the proposed theory by identifying the type of propositions with the type of sets of worlds and adding an (...) axiom to the effect that each world is the set of propositions which are true there. Senses are compositionally assigned to linguistic expressions by a categorial grammar with only two rule schemas, based on the implicative fragment of intuitionistic linear propositional logic, and a fully explicit grammar fragment is provided that illustrates the compositional assignment of sense to a variety of constructions, including dummy-subject constructions, infinitive complements, predicative adjectives and nominals, raising to subject, ‘tough-movement’, and quantifier scope ambiguities. Notably, the grammar and the derivations that it licenses never make reference to either worlds or to the extensions of senses. (shrink)