This paper addresses nonlocal context effects in the interpretation of ambiguous utterances in natural language. We examine equivocation as a form of discourse ambiguity and demonstrate that nonlocal contexts can resolve ambiguity by providing a method for exploring the effects of global context. Of particular relevance is that the locus of ambiguity within the texts analyzed is within and acro...

The argument of Julian Savulescu’s 2001 paper, “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children” is flawed in a number of respects. Savulescu confuses reasons with obligations and equivocates between the claim that parents have some reason to want the best for their children and the more radical claim that they are morally obligated to attempt to produce the best child possible....

It is of the utmost importance to uncover an equivocation bearing on the term 'judgment', one which, as it seems to me, makes itself felt in the form of confusions in very many logical contexts. On the one hand one understands by 'judgment' what one tends otherwise to characterise as 'conviction', 'certainty', 'belief, also as 'consciousness of validity'. On the other hand one means by this ter...

In recent work, Stalnaker proposes a logical framework in which belief is realized as a weakened form of knowledge [30]. Building on Stalnaker’s core insights, and using frameworks developed in [11] and [4], we employ topological tools to refine and, we argue, improve on this analysis. The structure of topological subset spaces allows for a natural distinction between what is known and (roughly...

How might Science and Technology Studies learn more from the intersection between 'Western' and 'other' forms of knowledge? In this article, we use Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's writing on equivocal translation to explore a moment of encounter in a Chinese Medical consultation in Taiwan in which a practitioner hybridizes Chinese Medicine and biomedicine. Our description is symmetrical, but creat...

Assimilation of a standard ERP system to an organization is difficult. User involvement seems to be the crux of the matter. However, even the best intentions for user involvement may come to nothing. A case study of a five-year ERP implementation process reveals that a main reason may be that the perception of usefulness of the system in any given phase of the implementation is heavily dependen...

Does mood influence people s tendency to engage in evasive, equivocal communication when facing conflict situations? Based on recent affect–cognition theories and research on verbal communication, this experiment predicted that negative mood should increase, and positive mood decrease the level of verbal evasiveness in conflict situations, and that high situational conflict should magnify these...

BACKGROUND Despite the increasing use of positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in the management of patients with breast cancer, its role is yet to be defined. PATIENTS AND METHODS We reviewed PET/CT scans carried out in breast cancer patients, the indication, concordance/discordance with other imaging and whether their use had altered patient management. RESULTS PET/CT ...