Knowledge, Justification, and Reason-Based Belief

Is knowledge definable as justified true belief ("JTB")? We argue that one can legitimately answer positively or negatively, depending on how the notion of justification is understood. To facilitate our argument, we introduce a simple propositional logic of reason-based belief. We show that this logic is sufficiently flexible to accommodate various useful features, including quantification over reasons. We use our framework to contrast two notions of JTB: one internalist, the other externalist. We argue that Gettier cases essentially challenge the internalist notion but not the externalist one. In particular, we may equate knowledge and JTB if the latter is grounded in what we call "adequate" reasons.Comment: v3 edits acknowledgment

Digital convergence and the information profession in cultural heritage organizations: Reconciling internal and external demands

Nearly twenty years ago, W. Boyd Rayward became one of the first academics to examine how electronic information and the functional integration of libraries, archives, and museums has affected, and will affect, the information profession. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for an entire research agenda on the topic of digital convergence, where the increased use of, and reliance on, digital resources in libraries, archives, and museums has increasingly blurred the traditional distinctions between these institutions. This paper explores how Rayward’s early work in this area influenced the development of this topic over time, focusing on how information professionals in cultural heritage organizations can and should reconcile their internal perceptions of identity with the external expectations of their users, particularly those who do not or cannot clearly distinguish between different institutions or the information resources they manage. In a world where the traditional assumptions we take for granted about information organization and access in libraries, archives, and museums are simply not shared by our users, the future of the information profession depends on the ability of cultural heritage information professionals to transcend the traditional boundaries between libraries, archives, and museums to meet information needs in the digital age.published or submitted for publicationOpe

A Controlled Comparison of Aerobic Exercise and Behavioral Treatment for Recurrent Tension Headache

Tension headache is a widespread problem, with an estimated lifetime prevalence rate of 69% for males and 88% for females. Empirical evidence supports the clinical observation that daily stress is a powerful precipitant of tension headaches. Research also supports the contention that tension headache sufferers tend to appraise and cope with daily stressors in ways which exacerbate or prolong this stress. Because aerobic exercise (EX) has been implicated as a useful stress relieving agent, this study examined the use of aerobic exercise as a treatment for tension headache. A comparison treatment consisting of progressive relaxation, stress management, and biofeedback (PR), was used because of its effectiveness in treating tension headache. A total of eighteen subjects were randomly assigned to either treatment and participated in an eight week treatment. Four weeks prior to treatment, subjects monitored headache activity, and completed three questionnaires (State-Trait Personality Inventory-Trait scale, Orientation to Life Questionnaire, and Headache Locus of Control- Revised scale). Subjects monitored headache activity throughout treatment and four weeks posttreatment. The questionnaires were also completed by subjects immediately after completing treatment. Subjects in the EX treatment group also completed these questionnaires midway through treatment to determine the effectiveness of treatment at that point. ANOVAs were used to compare the dependent measures between and within groups. Although trends toward improvements in average headache intensity and peak headache intensity emerged for both groups, they were not significant. It was also found that neither group showed significant improvements on dimensions measured by the questionnaires, with the exception of the curiosity dimension on the Trait State Personality Inventory-Trait scale and the health professionals externality dimension of the Headache Locus of Control-Revised scale. On these dimensions, those in the EX treatment group scored significantly lower than those in the PR treatment group across pre and posttreatment. When treatment groups were combined, peak headache intensity scores were significantly lower at posttreatment than at pretreatment. The lack of significant findings for both groups were likely due to small sample size; therefore, it is difficult to conclude whether or not aerobic exercise is an effective treatment for tension headache

Presuppositions, implicatures, and contextual equivalence

Maximize Presupposition! (MP), as originally proposed in Heim (Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung, pp. 487–535, 1991) and developed in subsequent works, offers an account of the otherwise mysterious unassertability of a variety of sentences. At the core of MP is the idea that speakers are urged to use a sentence ψ over a sentence ϕ if ψ contributes the same new information as ϕ, yet carries a stronger presupposition. While MP has been refined in many ways throughout the years, most (if not all) of its formulations have retained this characterisation of the MP-competition. Recently, however, the empirical adequacy of this characterisation has been questioned in light of certain newly discovered cases that are infelicitous, despite meeting MP-competition conditions. This has led some researchers to broaden the scope of MP, extending it to competition between sentences which are not contextually equivalent (Spector and Sudo in Linguistics and Philosophy 40(5):473–517, 2017) and whose presuppositions are not satisfied in the context (Anvari in Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 28, pp. 711–726, 2018; Manuscript, IJN-ENS, 2019). In this paper, we present a body of evidence showing that these formulations of MP are sometimes too liberal, sometimes too restrictive: they overgenerate infelicity for a variety of felicitous cases while leaving the infelicity of minimally different cases unaccounted for. We propose an alternative, implicature-based approach stemming from Magri (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2009), Meyer (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2013), and Marty (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2017), which reintroduces contextual equivalence and presupposition satisfaction in some form through the notion of relevance. This approach is shown to account for the classical and most of the novel cases. Yet some of the latter remain problematic for this approach as well. We end the paper with a systematic comparison of the different approaches to MP and MP-like phenomena, covering both the classical and the novel cases. All in all, the issue of how to properly restrict the competition for MP-like phenomena remains an important challenge for all accounts in the literature.publishedVersio

Presupposed free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures

A disjunctive sentence like Olivia took Logic or Algebra conveys that Olivia didn’t take both classes (EXCLUSIVITY) and that the speaker doesn’t know which of the two classes she took (IGNORANCE). The corresponding sentence with a possibility modal, Olivia can take Logic or Algebra, conveys instead that she can take Logic and that she can take Algebra (FREE CHOICE). These EXCLUSIVITY, IGNORANCE and FREE CHOICE inferences are argued by many to be scalar implicatures. Recent work has looked at cases in which EXCLUSIVITY and IGNORANCE appear to be computed instead at the presupposition level, independently from the assertion. On the basis of those data, Spector and Sudo (Linguist Philos 40(5):473–517, 2017) have argued for a hybrid account relying on a pragmatic principle for deriving implicatures in the presupposition. In this paper, we observe that a sentence like Noah is unaware that Olivia can take Logic or Algebra has a reading on which FREE CHOICE appears in the presupposition, but not in the assertion, and we show that deriving this reading is challenging on Spector and Sudo’s (2017) hybrid account. Following the dialectic in Fox (Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, Palgrave, London, pp 71–120, 2007), we argue against a pragmatic approach to presupposition-based implicatures on the ground that it is not able to account for presupposed free choice. In addition, we raise a novel challenge for Spector and Sudo’s (2017) account coming from the conflicting presupposed IGNORANCE triggered by sentences like #Noah is unaware that I have a son or a daughter, which is infelicitous even if it’s not common knowledge whether the speaker has a son or a daughter. More generally, our data reveals a systematic parallelism between the assertion and presupposition levels in terms of EXCLUSIVITY, IGNORANCE, and FREE CHOICE. We argue that such parallels call for a unified analysis and we sketch how a grammatical theory of implicatures where meaning strengthening operates in a similar way at both levels (Gajewski and Sharvit in Nat Lang Semant 20(1):31–57, 2012; Magri in A theory of individual-level predicates based on blind mandatory scalar implicatures, MIT dissertation, 2009; Marty in Implicatures in the DP domain, MIT dissertation, 2017) can account for such parallels.publishedVersio

The Digital Museum in the Life of the User

This panel will explore the fascinating issue of the “digital museum in the life of the user.” As online museums, digital museum collections, and enhanced gallery devices become more common, it is important that we improve our understanding of how museum visitors make use of digital museum resources, online and in house. This panel, therefore, will discuss approaches to and the need for a better understanding of the users and usage of digital museums

Counterfactuals and Undefinedness: Homogeneity vs. Supervaluations

Theories of counterfactuals agree on appealing to a relation of comparative similarity, but disagree on the quantificational force of counterfactuals. We report on two experiments testing the predictions of three main approaches: universal theories, homogeneity theories, and single-world selection theories (plus supervaluations over selection functions). The critical cases in our experiment were constructed so as to discriminate between the three theories. Our results provide empirical support for the selectional theories, while challenging the other two approaches

So You Want To Work In A Museum… Guiding the Careers of Future Museum Information Professionals

Abstract This paper presents results from twenty-one semi-structured interviews with museum information professionals who were asked about their experiences working with information resources, tools, and technologies in the museum environment. These interviews were analyzed to determine common elements in the participants' career paths, educational backgrounds, and on-the-job experiences. Based on this analysis, we identified five factors that we believe will influence the ability of Library and Information Science (LIS) students to succeed as information professionals in museums. This paper will provide guidance for LIS students who wish to pursue museum careers, answering the question, "How do I become an information professional in a museum?&quot

An Implicature-Based Approach to Disjointness Effects

The generation and distribution of disjointness effects raise a descriptive and explanatory challenge to linguistic theories: what are the conditions under which these effects arise and why do these effects arise in the first place? In this paper, I flesh out an account of these effects that takes up both these challenges at once in showing that these effects are derivable from current approaches to implicature-reasoning. In substance, it is argued that these effects follow from a genuine implicature-based reasoning whose outcome may, upon certain contextual pressures, result in conflicting representations, giving rise then to oddity effects. The account is shown to unify various disjointness effects under one roof and to explain the source of some of the classical conditions on co-reference and binding

Investigating the alternative-sensitivity of "know"

Several semantic analyses of know have been proposed in recent years to account for the so-called Gettier Problem. These analyses make distinct predictions regarding the sensitivity of know to the alternative possibilities expressed by its complement, as induced by expressions such as disjunction. These predictions were tested in two experiments. Results show that knowledge sentences with a disjunctive complement (e.g., John knows that Mary has a son or a daughter) are more likely to be judged as false than classically-equivalent sentences with non- disjunctive complements (e.g., John knows that Mary has a child) under Gettier-like scenarios. We discuss how these findings provide evidence for the alternative- sensitive approach to know