Missing Argument Research Articles

Amazing Grace of Quantum Physics

Amazing Grace of Quantum Physics

Is Technology Value-Neutral?

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology.

The Argument Structure of Passive and Antipassive in Paloor

This paper discusses the argument structure of two valency-reducing processes i.e. passives and antipassives in Paloor, an endangered language spoken in Senegal. It shows the structure of passives in Paloor with a wide range of verbs with a few exceptions. This paper also sheds light on the syntax and semantics of antipassives. In both processes, the missing argument cannot surface contrary to some languages where it can appear as an oblique. Finally, I show that passives are more productive that antipassives as the latter are sensitive to animacy and (im)perfectivity.

It is there whether you hear it or not: Syntactic representation of missing arguments

Many languages allow arguments to be omitted when they are recoverable from the context, but how do people comprehend sentences with a missing argument? We contrast a syntactically-represented account whereby people postulate a syntactic representation for the missing argument, with a syntactically-non-represented account whereby people do not postulate any syntactic representation for it. We report two structural priming experiments in Mandarin Chinese that showed that comprehension of a dative sentence with a missing direct-object argument primed the production of a full-form dative sentence (relative to an intransitive) and that it behaved similarly to a corresponding full-form dative sentence. The results suggest that people construct the same constituent structure for missing-argument sentences and full-form sentences, in accord with the syntactically-represented account. We discuss the implications for syntactic representations in language processing.

The One and Only Argument for Radical Millianism

AbstractRadical Millianism agrees with less radical varieties in claiming that ordinary proper names lack “descriptive senses” and that the semantic content of such a name is just its referent but differs from less radical varieties of Millianism in claiming that any pair of sentences differing only in the exchange of coreferential names cannot differ in truth‐value. This is what makes Radical Millianism radical. The view is surprisingly popular these days, and it is popular despite the fact that, until very recently, there was not a single argument for it. Theodore Sider and David Braun (2006) have tried to provide the missing argument, but, I argue, their attempt fails. I conclude that we (still) have no reason to be Radical Millians.

On C. T. C. Wall's suspension theorem

Almost forty years ago, C.T.C. Wall systematically analyzed the set of of a finite CW complex. Of the results he obtained, probably the most computationally important is the suspension theorem, which is an exact sequence relating the n-dimensional thickenings of a finite complex to its (n+1)-dimensional ones. The object of this note is to fill in what we believe is a missing argument in the proof of that theorem.

Radiographic pelvimetry--its use and possible radiation risk.

Radiographic pelvimetry is widely used in obstetrics. Every fourth primapara in Sweden is submitted to this radiographic examination. The frequency of the examination in the United States is estimated to a mean of 6% of all deliveries. The use of radiographic pelvimetry is now under intense debate and the missing argument in this discussion is a prospective study of an unselected group of parturients where progress and outcome of labour is referred to known pelvic dimension. Since the value of the method is questioned the frequent use of radiographic pelvimetry is justified only by an almost negligible radiation risk to the mother and her baby. Such a low risk is also an indispensable condition to allow the correct scientific evaluation of radiographic pelvimetry mentioned above. This paper presents the measurement results of absorbed radiation dose with the only radiographic pelvimetry method used in Sweden. The estimated radiation risk of the method, based on these figures, is 1 case of childhood malignancy in 50 000 pelvimetries. This corresponds to 4 years routine use of radiographic pelvimetry in Sweden. The annual incidence of childhood malignancy in Sweden is 220. The maternal risk is estimated to one tenth of the fetal risk.