From punishment to universalism

Many philosophers have claimed that the folk endorse moral universalism. Some have taken the folk view to support moral universalism; others have taken the folk view to reflect a deep confusion. And while some empirical evidence supports the claim that the folk endorse moral universalism, this work has uncovered intra-domain differences in folk judgments of moral universalism. In light of all this, our question is: why do the folk endorse moral universalism? Our hypothesis is that folk judgments of moral universalism are generated in part by a desire to punish. We present evidence supporting this across three studies. On the basis of this, we argue for a debunking explanation of folk judgments of moral universalism. Our results not only further our understanding of the psychological processes underpinning folk judgments of moral universalism. They also bear on philosophical discussions of folk meta-ethics

Critical Thinking

{Excerpt} Blaise Pascal felt that “Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.” A contemporary of René Descartes, Pascal is however best remembered for resisting rationalism, which he thought could not determine major truths: “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” Blaise Pascal and René Descartes are reference points for two major attitudes to conscious representation of the world: although both saw reason as the primary source of knowledge, they disagreed profoundly over the competence of Man—the truth, as always, lies between faith and radical doubt. For sure, pace the propensity of intellectuals to promulgate eternal truths, or at least make a lasting impression, the idea of critical thinking neither begins nor ends with Pascal or Descartes. Socrates set the agenda nearly 2,500 years ago when the “Socratic Method” established the need to seek evidence, analyze basic concepts, scrutinize reasoning and assumptions, and trace the implications not only of what is said but of what is done as well: “Knowledge will not come from teaching but from questioning.” Thereafter, within the overall framework of skepticism, numerous scholars raised awareness of the potential power of reasoning and of the need for that to be systematically cultivated and cross-examined. Critical thinking, by its very nature, demands recognition that all questioning stems from a point of view and occurs within a frame of reference; proceeds from some purpose—presumably, to answer a question or solve a problem; relies on concepts and ideas that rest in turn on assumptions; has an informational base that must be interpreted; and draws on basic inferences to make conclusions that have implications and consequences. To note, each dimension of reasoning is linked simultaneously with the other; problems of thinking in any of them will impact others and should be monitored. Hence, effective, full-spectrum questioning that connects from multiple perspectives must illuminate each element of thought so it may permeate the model

Evidencialidad, fuerza asercional y manejo del common ground en el quechua de Conchucos

The literature on Quechuan languages describes the enclitics =mi and =chi as markers of evidentiality, with the former indicating direct evidence and the latter marking conjecture or inference. In this paper, I argue that in Conchucos Quechua they can be better characterised as markers of two degrees of assertional force, which the speakers use for common ground management purposes. For this, I present an analysis of semi-controlled conversational data under the question-under-discussion model of discourse structure. Additionally, I offer a preliminary version of how these functions could be formalised in such a theoretical framework using the model of the Table.La literatura sobre las lenguas quechuas describe los enclíticos =mi y =chi como marcadores evidenciales: el primero indicando evidencia directa y el segundo marcando conjetura o inferencia. Sostengo que en el quechua de Conchucos estos enclíticos se pueden caracterizar mejor como marcadores de dos grados de fuerza asercional, los que son usados por los hablantes para el manejo del common ground. Para ello, presento un análisis de datos dialógicos semi-controlados bajo el modelo de estructura del discurso question-under-discussion. Adicionalmente, ofrezco una formalización preliminar de sus funciones en este marco teórico utilizando el modelo del tablero

Quality of commitment: Japanese daroo as a speech act operator

This paper proposes a compositional analysis of the meaning of Japanese daroo-utterances with declarative and interrogative force, and final rising and falling intonation. Daroo is analyzed in a framework for speech act felicity as an operator lowering the quality threshold for felicitous assertion. The conveyed meanings of conjecture, confirmation, and doubt uses of darooutterances are predicted from modification of the respective speech act types’ felicity conditions by daroo

Transformation-adversarial network for road detection in LIDAR rings, and model-free evidential road grid mapping.

International audienceWe propose a deep learning approach to perform road-detection in LIDAR scans, at the point level. Instead of processing a full LIDAR point-cloud, LIDAR rings can be processed individually. To account for the geometrical diversity among LIDAR rings, an homothety rescaling factor can be predicted during the classification, to realign all the LIDAR rings and facilitate the training. This scale factor is learnt in a semi-supervised fashion. A performant classification can then be achieved with a relatively simple system. Furthermore, evidential mass values can be generated for each point from an observation of the conflict at the output of the network, which enables the classification results to be fused in evidential grids. Experiments are done on real-life LIDAR scans that were labelled from a lane-level centimetric map, to evaluate the classification performances

Attitudes in discourse: Italian polar questions and the particle mica

This paper explores ways in which discourse participants convey an attitude about another discourse participant's conversational move. We examine the semantics/pragmatics of Italian positive and negative polar questions (building on the literature on biased questions) and propose the first fully compositional analysis of the Italian particle 'mica', appearing in negative polar questions and negative assertions. The core is that 'mica' is member of a family of presuppositional, epistemic 'common ground management' operators, leading to a new account of epistemic inferences in biased polar questions that relies on the presuppositional nature of these operators. We argue that 'mica' is a high-left-periphery particle that indicates a presupposed bias against a proposition being added to the common ground, anchored uniformly to the speaker and therefore not showing 'interrogative flip'. The paper develops connections between common-ground management operators and evidentials, arguing that interrogative flip (and lack thereof) is a phenomenon that should be studied for a wide variety of discourse particles. EARLY ACCES

On the boundaries between syntax and pragmatics in Ibero-Romance

Synopsis: This book offers a comparative perspective on the structural and interpretive properties of root-clause complementizers in Ibero-Romance. The driving question the author seeks to answer is where the boundaries between syntax and pragmatics lie in these languages. Contrary to most previous work on these phenomena, the author argues in favor of a relatively strict distribution of labor between the two components of grammar. The first part of the book is devoted to root complementizers with a reportative interpretation. The second part deals with root complementizers and commitment attribution. Finally, the last part presents the results of empirical studies on the topic