This paper considers some aspects of the meaning of sentence-final particles. Such particles have a use on which they serve to emphasize what is said, and a use on which they have a modal semantics. The present paper is an attempt to unify these two uses from the perspective of discourse coherence. The conclusion is that sentence-final particles are used to maintain coherence. This paper is abo...

The impact of technological advances within information and communication technology (ICT) cannot be exaggerated. Instant availability of communication via faxes, mobile telephones, electronic mail, pagers and video conferencing has enabled people to work or do business together and generally interact despite being temporally and spatially “dislocated”. This is all well and good, but if technol...

Research on multitasking harkens back to the beginnings of cognitive psychology. The central question has always been how we manage to perform multiple actions at the same time. Here, we highlight the role of specific inputand output-modalities involved in coordinating multiple action demands (i.e., crossmodal action). For a long time, modalityand content-blind models of multitasking have domin...

Many philosophers accept the following three theses: (1) that probability is amodal concept; (2) that, if determinism is true, therewould still be objective modal facts; and (3) that if determinism is true, there are no genuine objective probabilities (chances). I argue that these 3 claims are inconsistent, and that their widespread acceptance is thus quite troubling. I suggest, as others have,...

Is there something more frozen than A foundations B ? A quick glance at the list A foundations of mathematics B : http ://www.cs.nyu.edu/mailman/listinfo/fom shows a paradigm close to archaic astronomy : truth is a primitive (like Earth), around which several systems and meta-systems gravitate (like the epicycles of Ptolemy). This being orchestrated by Doctors of the Law, in charge of the lates...

Introduction While traditional imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance (MR), computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) have had a dramatic impact on detection and diagnosing tissue abnormalities, their benefit in the early detection and characterization of breast cancer pathology has been limited. As a result, alternative imaging modalities designed to characterize the material propert...

The prevailing view on meaning in logical semantics from its inception at the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the eighties has been one which is aptly summarized in the slogan ‘meaning equals truth conditions’. This view on meaning is one which can rightly be labeled static: it describes the meaning relation between linguistic expressions and the world as a static relation,...

If the property being a methane molecule is a universal, then it is a structural universal: objects instantiate being a methane molecule just in case they have the right sorts of proper parts arranged in the right sort of way. Lewis argued that there can be no satisfactory account of structural universals; in this paper I provide a satisfactory account.

A successful imaging outcome for a patient requires that each step of the workflow, from examination request to timely communication of actionable information, be optimized in order to deliver maximal quality, safety, and patient satisfaction. This series uses the concept of the imaging value chain to understand how this can best be achieved. The prior article discussed imaging protocol optimiz...

We propose a modal logic that enables us to handle self-referential formulae, including ones with negative selfreferences, which on one hand, would introduce a logical contradiction, namely Russell’s paradox, in the conventional setting, while on the other hand, are necessary to capture a certain class of programs such as fixed point combinators and objects with so-called binary methods in obje...