Propositional Statements Research Articles

Degrees of truthlikeness, independence, equality and order in probabilistic propositional knowledge representation

Abstract Probabilistic propositional knowledge representation, as here conceived, deals with knowledge representation in the form of probabilistic (p-)valuations of the atomic propositions of a propositional language, of probability (p-)distributions over propositional state descriptions and with their relation. The aim of the paper is conceptual: introducing and illustrating a number of related, normalized concepts regarding both valuations and distributions: degrees of truthlikeness, (internal) independence, equality and order. The backbone of these concepts is the relevant sum of absolute distances. All degrees are in the unit interval and will be illustrated at the relevant place by data about the co-morbidity of psychiatric syndromes (Van Loo et al., 2016). In a new section we illustrate all concepts by an example of weather conditions, to be precise: (not) windy, (not) hot, (not) rainy days in March 2023, in De Bilt (NL). We also briefly discuss some other approaches: other distance measures, covariance as a measure of mutual dependence and various degrees of equality. In the final section we enlist several further research questions and issues, among which the question whether this paper is relevant for propositional probability logics. The paper is highly inspired by the rich paper of Gustavo Cevolani and Roberto Festa (2021).

Erratum to “The cyclic homology of the group rings”

This erratum corrects the statements of Propositions II and IIp of [Comment. Math. Helv. 60, 354–365 (1985)].

On knowledge in action

What mental states guide the execution of our actions? It is generally agreed that the execution of an action is guided by the relevant knowledge state concerning how to perform that action. However, not all agree on which mental states underlie such a knowledge. Some suggest that knowing how to perform an action has mainly to do with the propositional representation about the way to execute that action. Those opposing this view stress the role of the motor, non-propositional representation as the mental state responsible for action performance. The aim of this article is to overcome this dichotomy by showing that an explanation of the cognitive processes underlying knowing how to perform an action needs both propositional and motor states. We defend this view by providing an account of the way in which our propositional knowledge about an action is constituted by the motor representation that guides the execution of that action.

Identifying key leadership competencies for digital transformation: evidence from a cross-sectoral Delphi study of global managers

PurposeEven with the recognized impact organizational leaders have on the outcome of digital transformation (DT), a comprehensive scholarly understanding of the competencies that leaders must possess to lead a DT to success is lacking.Design/methodology/approachTo derive and list the competencies considered by experts as necessary for managing DT, the authors recruited 18 international senior managers with relevant experience and applied the Delphi method to survey the managers. Upon the completion of three survey rounds and the authors modifying the response list until consensus was reached, 39 items were shortlisted as constituting key competencies for managing DT. Furthermore, the authors engaged in inductive theorizing to derive propositional statements using these findings.FindingsThe practitioners agreed on visionary thinking, agility, understanding the value of data, data-driven decision-making, knowledge of strategy and accepting change as the most important requirements for managing DT. Through inductive theorizing, the authors further derived that the seven discovered clusters fell into two broader competencies – behavioral and strategic – and that each behavioral competency would have varying importance depending on the country and industry that the organization operates in.Research limitations/implicationsAs is typical for Delphi studies that involve multiple survey rounds, the study participant response rate was moderate. The implications of this study, in finding that a variety of leadership competencies are needed to ensure successful DT, validate prior research that people, not technology, drive DT.Practical implicationsThis study helps mitigate assumptions that successful DT processes are only possible by hiring technological experts, as doing so highlights the importance of behavioral leadership competencies.Originality/valueThe study is one of the first to interlink digital leadership with DT by inductively theorizing behavioral and strategic competencies. The authors also establish that contexts are vital in determining which aspects of leadership competencies are deemed most important in driving DT.

Customer's decision and affective assessment of online product recommendation: A recommendation-product congruity proposition.

Online product recommendation (OPR) systems have gained prominence in the context of e-commerce over the past years. Despite the increased research on OPR use, less attention has been paid to examining how decision and affective assessment of the OPR are contingent upon the product type. This study proposes and examines a recommendation-product congruity proposition based on cognitive fit and schema congruity theories. The proposition states that when the content (i.e., a stimulus-based schema) of the OPR [either system-generated recommendation (SGR) or a consumer-generated recommendation (CGR)] matches the brain-stored schema initiated by a particular product (either a search product or an experienced product), then a consumer would use a schema-based information assessment strategy and experience favorable decision and affective assessment of the OPR. This then affects consumers’ intentions to purchase and reuse OPR. The proposition is tested via a 2 × 2 between-respondents factorial design of a cross-sectional survey with 482 Amazon customers. The results support the following two matching conditions of the proposition: (1) SGR describing a search product and (2) CGR explaining an experienced product, which might lead customers to perceive lower decision effort, greater decision quality, and higher enjoyment with the OPR that subsequently have a significant impact on their intentions to purchase and reuse OPR. This study expands our understanding of how recommendation-product congruence influences the consumer’s decision and affective assessment behavior and provides practical implications for the identification and presentation of the recommendation type and product type for a better customer decision.

Jacques Sesiano, An Ancient Greek Treatise on Magic Squares

The two earliest Arabic treatises explaining the construction of magic squares date from the 10th century ad. One is found in the Commentary on the Arithmetical [Introduction] (Kitāb tafsīr al-Arithmāṭīqī) by ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Anṭākī (d. 376 H/ad 987). Only book 3 of the original three books is extant, and that in a single manuscript. This book is divided into three chapters: the first is a collection of arithmetical definitions, statements of propositions, and identities assembled from Greek and Arabic sources; the second is on magic squares; and the third deals with “hidden numbers”, in which a person thinks of a number and another discovers it after operations are performed on it. Curiously, none of these chapters have anything to do with Nicomachus’ Arithmetical Introduction, on which the book is supposed to be a commentary. Reviewed by: Jeffrey A. Oaks Published Online (2022-07-31)Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey A. Oaks Article PDF Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/view/39089/29778 Corresponding Author: Jeffrey A. Oaks,University of IndianapolisE-Mail: oaks@uindy.edu

MODELING OF STOCK RETURNS IN CONTINUOUS VIS-À-VIS DISCRETE TIME IS EQUIVALENT, RESPECTIVELY, TO THE CONDITIONING OF STOCK RETURNS ON A RANDOM WALK PROCESS FOR TRADE IMBALANCES VIS-À-VIS A RANDOM WALK PROCESS FOR EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION

Let [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] denote, respectively, the current stock price, the future stock price that is conditioned on information, the minimum stock market tick size and the realized future stock price. Formal theoretical proofs in this study show modeling of stock returns in continuous time induces stock returns that have parameterization as gambles over lotteries. Stock returns have parameterization as gambles because in the presence of fairness of formation of [Formula: see text], regardless arrival of liquidity and speculative trades feasibly induces [Formula: see text]. Evolution of ‘(conditional) trade imbalances’ as random walks is shown to be a necessary and sufficient condition for parameterization of stock returns as gambles over lotteries. Suppose, on the contrary, a resort to modeling of stock returns in discrete time. The formal theory arrives at two dichotomous sufficiency conditions, which predict directionality and sizes of price changes, and facilitate evolution of stock returns as random walks. In presence of the two dichotomous conditions, fairness of formation of [Formula: see text] necessarily induces, regardless of arrival of liquidity and speculative trades, [Formula: see text]. Risk is parameterized by [Formula: see text], because all else constant, an inversion of the perturbing conditionally positive trade imbalance induces [Formula: see text]. Whereas then, [Formula: see text] has parameterization as ‘materialization of risk’, always, it is [Formula: see text] that is statistic for risk; risk, as such is well parameterized, that is, does not coincide with its materialization (note that whereas volatility is statistic for risk, it is not a statistic for materialization of risk; a statistic for risk necessarily is robust to non-materialization of risk). Given modeling in continuous time does not facilitate either of the two sufficiency conditions, always, risk has parameterization as the probability that [Formula: see text]. Since risk, as such coincides qualitatively with its materialization, it is not well parameterized. Given study findings parameterize general equilibrium, formal theoretical predictions have characterization as axiomatic statements, as opposed to propositional (parameter-dependent) statements.

Skills as Knowledge

ABSTRACT This paper advances a unified theory of skilful and intentional action. According to our theory, the distinguishing feature of both skilful and intentional actions is that they are guided by the agent’s knowledge of the means of performing the task at hand. This theory leads naturally to an intellectualist view of skills, according to which skills are propositional knowledge states. We show that this view enjoys a number of explanatory advantages over more familiar dispositional accounts of skills.

Rhetorical Questions in the Daodejing: Argument Construction, Dialogical Insertion, and Sentimental Expression

This paper provides a typology of rhetorical questions in the Daodejing and examines their functions on rhetorical effects and argumentative construction. This paper argues against a reading of rhetorical questions that translates them directly into propositional statements. Instead, the fact that rhetorical questions appear in one version of the text but not in others shows us the unique subtleties of meaning that rhetorical questions deliver. An awareness of the performative and dialogical functions elicited through rhetorical questions deepens our understanding of the persuasive power of the Daodejing. Furthermore, emotional sentiments within the text can be detected through the use of rhetorical questions which function to impress the readers/listeners while urging a point. A study of rhetorical questions in the Daodejing reveals textual differences across versions that transcend their wording, all the while motivating a new understanding of rhetorical questions based on classical Chinese texts enriches current definitions proposed in the field at large.

The Poetic Way of Thinking

Abstract Heidegger repeatedly performs the encounter of thinking and poetry, explicitly for the sake of inaugurating a non-metaphysical way of thinking. This transformed thinking is to be poetic and non-conceptual, eschewing the comfort of transparent meaning, the grasping power of concepts, the presentational force of images, or the self-evident correctness of propositional statements. The need for such a non-metaphysical thinking arises historically, at the endpoint of the epoch of the completion of metaphysics, when it comes to roost in the Gestell, the technological essencing of being, which pervades and (over)powers all that is in being: all beings, entities and occurrences. Poetic thinking responds to the modern drive to maximum availablity and dispose-ability of being and beings, freeing up the possibility of a path alternative to the dominion of calculative thought and its technological metrics.

Are Propositional Attitudes Mental States?

I present an argument that propositional attitudes are not mental states. In a nutshell, the argument is that if propositional attitudes are mental states, then only minded beings could have them; but there are reasons to think that some non-minded beings could bear propositional attitudes. To illustrate this, I appeal to cases of genuine group intentionality. I argue that these are cases in which some group entities bear propositional attitudes, but they are not subjects of mental states. Although propositional attitudes are not mental states, I propose that they are typically co-instantiated with mental states. In an attempt to explain this co-instantiation, I suggest that propositional attitudes of minded beings are typically realized by mental states.

The Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach

The Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach

A Pragmatic Study of Speech Acts Pertaining to Health Advice in Covid-19 Pandemic

People use the language to make propositional statements, entities, objects, state of affairs, and so on and fulfil functions such as apologising, introducing, requesting and denying, etc. Speech act can be described as the action performed in uttering something, and the directives are functions to direct people's behaviour. Advice is a directive speech act. Different linguists classified the advice into direct, indirect, and conventionally indirect. The use of advice has been applied in communication and the written form of humankind for a long time. The speaker intended to give benefit to the hearer when he /she gives advice. The present study intended to shed light on the notion of the pragmatics of communication of health advice in covid -19. The data of this study were fifteen public health advice related to covid-19 collected from the official website of the World Health Organisation (WHO). They have been analysed pragmatically based on their type, strategies, and advisories. The study also aims to find out the consciousness of EFL learners with the health advice of covid-19 and what degree of conciseness comes and literal comprehension. The results of the pragmatic analysis have shown that the frequent type of advice is directive, the frequent strategy is imperative, and the frequent advisories is advising. At the same time, the results of the conducted interview have shown full consciousness, partial consciousness, and non-consciousness of the health advice of covid-19.

SOCIALIZATION OF THE IMPACT OF VIOLENCE THROUGH MASS MEDIA ON AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR

Society in the current era of reformation has actually been presented with the naked staging of what the French poststructuralist thinker Jean Baudrillard (1983) calls a 'theater of cruelty'. As theater, violence, cruelty and ruthlessness have become a kind of ritual that is staged into the public sphere. Violence has become a discourse in the public sphere. The social learning theory proposition states that humans imitate and identify by learning through observing the behavior of others around them, including through mass media. The purpose of community service activities (PkM) is to socialize the impact of violent broadcasts on aggressive behavior, given the role of the mass media as a double-edged knife, having both a function and a dysfunction. The function of the media to inform reality can ultimately have negative side effects. The method of implementation is done through Learning Methodology, a method that focuses on participant participation. The result of this PkM activity is an increase in public awareness of the impact of the mass media. Because if society is constantly being fed with the values of violence, over time there will be an assumption that violence is commonplace, and will make the community insensitive to violence. As a result, in a broad sense, there will be chaos in the social values and norms of society, where the good and true values are confused.

The Disappearance of Form? Some Methodological Considerations on a Lost Conceptual Dimension in Biology

The Disappearance of Form? Some Methodological Considerations on a Lost Conceptual Dimension in Biology

The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation

The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation

Is interpreting of China’s political discourse becoming more target-oriented?

Abstract Interpreting is an activity embedded in a particular socio-cultural context that underpins norms of interpreting. Adopting the descriptive translation studies approach, this study aims to find out whether the interpretation for the Chinese government by institutional interpreters is becoming more target-oriented in the decade of the 2010s in comparison with the 1990s. Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the Corpus of Interpreted Chinese Government Press Conferences in the 1990s and that of the 2010s, the study reveals that there is a significant increase in the total number of target-oriented shifts in the 2010s, manifested predominantly in “inserting hedges before propositional statements” and “modality shifts to attenuate ST’s categorical force.” Only minimal differences are found for the number of shifts in “explicitation of emphatic meanings,” “specification of Chinese source deictic lexis,” and “explicitation of implicit logic relations” between the two periods. The results thus indicate a general trend of becoming more target-oriented in interpreting, particularly a tendency to mitigate ST’s illocutionary force to a greater extent in the 2010s. Such changes in China’s institutional interpreting are correlated with the evolving socio-political context and the norms of institutional interpreting.

Vitamin S: Why Is Social Contact, Even With Strangers, So Important to Well-Being?

Even before COVID-19, it was well known in psychological science that people’s well-being is strongly served by the quality of their close relationships. But is well-being also served by social contact with people who are known less well? In this article, we discuss three propositions that support the conclusion that the benefits of social contact also derive from interactions with acquaintances and even strangers. The propositions state that most interaction situations with strangers are benign (Proposition 1), that most strangers are benign (Proposition 2), and that most interactions with strangers enhance well-being (Proposition 3). These propositions are supported, first, by recent research designed to illuminate the primary features of interaction situations. This research shows that situations with strangers often represent low conflict of interest. Also, in interactions with strangers, most people exhibit high levels of low-cost cooperation (social mindfulness) and, if the need is urgent, high levels of high-cost helping. We close by sharing research examples showing that even very subtle interactions with strangers yield short-term happiness. Broader implications for COVID-19 and urbanization are discussed.

The presence of semantic content in a visual recognition memory task reduces the severity of neglect

Patients with right hemisphere damage often show a lateral bias when asked to report the left side of mental images held in visual working memory (i.e. representational neglect). The neural basis of representational neglect is not well understood. One hypothesis suggests that it reflects a deficit in attentional-exploratory mechanisms, i.e. an inability to direct attention to the left side of the image. Another proposition states that intact visual working memory (VWM) is necessary for correctly creating a mental image. Here we examined two components of VWM in patients with unilateral spatial neglect (USN): memory for identity, and memory for spatial position. We manipulated the strength of memory representations by presenting two distinct categories of objects, in separate blocks. These were familiar namable objects (fruits, etc.), and unfamiliar abstract objects. The former category elicits stronger working-memory traces, thanks to preexisting visual and semantic representations in long-term memory. We hypothesized that if USN patients show a lateralized deficit in VWM, it should be more pronounced for abstract objects, due to their weaker working-memory traces. Importantly, to isolate a spatially lateralized deficit in memory from a failure to fully perceive the object-arrays, we ensured that all included patients perceived every item during the encoding phase. We used a working-memory task: participants viewed object arrays and had to memorize items' identities and spatial positions. Then, single objects were presented requiring ‘old/new’ recognition, and retrieval of ‘old’ items’ original positions. Our results show a lateral bias in patients’ recognition-memory performance. Remarkably, it was threefold milder for namable objects compared to abstract objects. We conclude that VWM lateralized deficit is substantial in USN patients and could play a role in representational neglect.

Interpretation of Predicative Non-Assertive Relations in Structure of Utterance in Discourse of Russian Orthodox Sermon

The categorical affiliation and semantic characteristics of propositions that do not have the status of assertions in the current utterance are considered. Such propositions are denoted by the term “pre-conservative”. It is shown that the preassertive status of propositions is determined by two main factors: the grammatical factor of precedence / following of explicit or implicit predication with respect to the moment of speech and the discourse factor of presentation in the proposition of the preassertive information reflecting religious mentality and religious ideology. The action of these factors gives rise to the phenomenon of asubjectivation. With asubjectivization, the semantic content of a linguistic expression is determined only by the properties of the described situation, and not by the locutionary activity of the subject of speech. It has been established that whole sentences, including those with non-propositional meanings, can receive the “pre-passive” status. It is shown that, in terms of some properties, the preassertive is comparable to a number of units of different articulations of the semantic-syntactic structure of an utterance, however, its specific manifestation in connection with asubjectivation proves that this is a special category in relation to explicit predication. The research was carried out on the basis of the material of the Russian Orthodox sermon. The novelty of the research consists in the characterization of the preassertive as a new syntactic relation on the axis “assertion — non-assertive component” of the utterance. Relevance is determined by the fact that the work develops a fundamentally new aspect of the study of subjectivity in language.