The validity of disjunctive syllogism is not so easily proved.

Adding the Inference Rule Disjunctive Syllogism to Relevant Logics

In order to avoid trivial consequences, the derivability relation of relevant logics (RL) does not support the inference rule disjunctive syllogism (DS). In this paper, I will show that the inference rule DS can be added to this derivability relation in a way that doesn’t lead to trivial or irrelevant consequences. To do so, I will rely on the insights gained from the study of inconsistency–ada...

Rapid acquisition of novel information: Is disjunctive syllogism necessary for fast mapping?

We investigated two possible mechanisms that may mediate the rapid acquisition of novel words and their corresponding referents (i.e., fast mapping, FM). In the standard paradigm that examines FM, a novel label is presented alongside a novel object and a familiar object, and subjects are asked to identify the item that corresponds to the novel label. Acquisition of name-object pairing is subseq...

Francis Bacon and his invisible rooms: human emotions so felt but not so easily seen

Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms (Tate Liverpool 18 May – 18 September 2016) is the first dedicated exhibition to survey an underexplored yet significant element of Bacon’s work, an artist internationally regarded as Britain’s greatest painter of the last century and the biggest one after Turner. This exhibition helps in the re-assessment of his works in the light of the new research that has eme...

Why Have Climate Negotiations Proved So Disappointing?

Mental Rotation is Not Easily Cognitively Penetrable

When participants take part in mental imagery experiments, are they using their "tacit knowledge" of perception to mimic what they believe should occur in the corresponding perceptual task? Two experiments were conducted to examine whether such an account can be applied to mental imagery in general. These experiments both examined tasks that required participants to "mentally rotate" stimuli. I...