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The assertion candidate expresses a potential logical-linguistic object that can be asserted. It differs from both the act and the product of assertion; it needs not to be actually asserted and differs from the assertion made. We investigate the medieval origins of this notion, which are almost neglected in contemporary logic. Our historical analysis suggests an interpretation of the assertion candidate within the system of logic for pragmatics.

In Die Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (I, §48), Frege introduces his rule of the fusion of horizontals, according to which if an occurrence of the horizontal stroke is followed by another occurrence of the same stroke, either in isolation or "contained" in a propositional connective, the two occurrences can be fused with each other. However, the role of this rule, and of the horizontal sign more generally, is controversial; Michael Dummett notoriously claimed, for instance, that the horizontal is "wholly superfluous" in Frege's logical system. In this paper, we challenge Dummett's view by providing a comprehensive analysis of the significance of the horizontal stroke. After some preliminary remarks, we argue that even if Frege's connectives in some sense "contain" the horizontal, yet they are total functions. Then, we take up the question of the sense expressed by the horizontal, and we claim that, unlike other sentential operators, the horizontal is not sense‐compositional. Finally, we consider the semantic and pragmatic aspects of Frege's horizontal in connection to his judgment stroke and the double judgment stroke. Contra Dummett, we argue that the horizontal is a special and indispensable element of Frege's logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is devoted to present two pragmatic logics and their corresponding intended interpretations according to which an illocutionary act of (scientific) hypothesis-making is justified by a scintilla of evidence. The paper first introduces a general pragmatic frame for assertions, expanded to hypotheses, |${\mathsf{AH}}$| and a hypothetical pragmatic logic for evidence |${\mathsf{HLP}}$|⁠. Both |${\mathsf{AH}}$| and |${\mathsf{HLP}}$| are extensions of the Logic for Pragmatics , |$\mathcal{L}^P$|⁠. We compare |${\mathsf{AH}}$| and |$\mathsf{HLP}$|⁠. Then, we underline the expressive and inferential richness of both systems in dealing with hypothetical judgements, especially when based on different, sometimes conflicting, evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents and defends an integrated view of the placebo effect, termed "affective-meaning-making" model, which draws from theoretical reflection, clinical outcomes, and neurophysiological findings. We consider the theoretical limitations of those proposals associated with the "meaning view" on the placebo effect which (a) leave the general aspects of meaning unspecified, (b) fail to analyze fully the role of emotions and affect, and (c) establish no clear connection between the theoretical, physiological, and psychological aspects of the effect. We point out that a promising way to overcome these limitations is given by grounding the placebo effect on Peirce's theory of meaning, in which the role of the meaning constitution and change is placed in logical and objective structures. We also show the connection between our theoretical proposal and the appraisal theory and integrate it with emotion regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments from knowability have largely been concerned with cases for and against realism, or truth as an epistemic vs. non-epistemic concept. This article proposes bringing Peirce's pragmaticism, called here 'action-first' epistemology, to bear on the issue. It is shown that a notion weaker than knowability, namely conjecturability, is epistemologically a better-suited notion to describe an essential component of scientific inquiry. Moreover, unlike knowability, conjecturability does not suffer from paradoxes. Given fundamental uncertainty that permeates inquiry, knowability and what Peirce took to be 'perfect knowledge' lose their appeal in epistemology of science. From the points of view of the logic for pragmatics and the modal translations given in this article, conjecturability and pragmaticism provide an enriched epistemology for scientific practices that can accommodate both epistemic and non-epistemic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reconsider Dalla Pozza and Garola's pragmatic interpretation of intuitionistic logic regarded as a logic of assertions and their justifications and its relations with classical logic. We recall an extension of this approach to a logic dealing with assertions and obligations , related by a notion of causal implication developed especially by K. Ranalter. We focus on the extension to co-intuitionistic logic , seen as a logic of hypotheses in work by G. Bellin and others and on polarized bi-intuitionistic logic as a logic of assertions and hypotheses: looking at the S4 modal translation, we consider variants of the system AHL of bi-intuitionistic logic to represent the duality between the intuitionistic and the co-intuitionistic fragments, correcting and improving on the previous treatment. A computational interpretation of co-intuitionism as a distributed calculus of coroutines is then used to give an operational interpretation of subtraction. Work on linear co-intuitionism is then recalled, a linear calculus of co-intuitionistic coroutines which was used by Bellin to give a categorical model of co-intuitionistic linear logic, and also a probabilistic interpretation of linear co-intuitionism. Also we remark that by extending the language of intuitionistic logic we can express the notion of expectation , an assertion that in all situations the truth of p is possible and that in a logic of expectations the law of double negation holds. Similarly, extending co-intuitionistic logic, we can express the notion of conjecture that p , defined as a hypothesis that in some situation the truth of p is epistemically necessary.            to Carlo Dalla Pozza (1942–2014) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In clinical diagnosis, both causal attribution and the interaction between different types of probability may take place. We deal with a hypothetical, but quite realistic, clinical case and go through various idealized ways in which the case can be framed. In the diverse scenarios linked to our proposed case, the possibility of causal attributions will be taken into account and each one of them will correspond to a distinct role of probabilistic evaluation. For some of these scenarios, it will be necessary to comply with certain requirements such as the construction of a specific partition that serves as a point of reference for the diagnostic analysis. The interaction between probabilities occuring within these scenarios will be critically investigated, as it may shed light on some causality claims in clinical diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes two logical analyses of (the norms of) jus-tification. In a first, realist-minded case, truth is logically independent from justification and leads to a pragmatic logic LP including two epistemic and pragmatic operators, namely, assertion and hypothesis. In a second, antirealist-minded case, truth is not logically independent from justification and results in two logical systems of information and justification: AR4 and AR4▀, respectively, provided with a question-answer semantics. The latter proposes many more epistemic agents, each corresponding to a wide variety of epistemic norms. After comparing the different norms of justification involved in these logical systems, two hexagons expressing Aristotelian relations of opposition will be gathered in order to clarify how (a fragment of) pragmatic formulas can be interpreted in a fuzzy-based question-answer semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursing knowledge stems from a dynamic interplay between population-based scientific knowledge (the general) and specific clinical cases (the particular). We compared the 'cascade model of knowledge translation', also known as 'classical biomedical model' in clinical practice (in which knowledge gained at population level may be applied directly to a specific clinical context), with an emergentist model of knowledge translation. The structure and dynamics of nursing knowledge are outlined, adopting the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values. Then, a (moderately) emergentist approach to nursing knowledge is proposed, based on the assumption of a two-way flow from the general to the particular and vice versa. The case of the 'placebo effect' is analysed as an example of emergentist knowledge. The placebo effect is usually considered difficult to be explained within the classical biomedical model, and we underscore its importance in shaping nursing knowledge. In fact, nurses are primarily responsible for administering placebo in the clinical setting and have an essential role in promoting the placebo effect and reducing the nocebo effect. The beliefs responsible for the placebo effect are as follows: (1) interactive, because they depend on the relationship between patients and health care professionals; (2) situated, because they occur in a given clinical context related to certain rituals; and (3) grounded on higher order beliefs concerning what an individual thinks about the beliefs of others. It is essential to know the clinical context and to understand other people's beliefs to make sense of the placebo effect. The placebo effect only works when the (higher order) beliefs of doctors, nurses and patients interact in a given setting. Finally, we argue for a close relationship between placebo effect and nursing knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the speech act theory, we take hypotheses and assertions as linguistic acts with different illocutionary forces. We assume that a hypothesis is justified if there is at least a scintilla of evidence for the truth of its propositional content, while an assertion is justified when there is conclusive evidence that its propositional content is true. Here we extend the logical treatment for assertions given by Dalla Pozza and Garola (1995, Erkenntnis, 43, 81-109) by outlining a pragmatic logic for assertions and hypotheses. On the basis of this extension we analyse the standard logical opposition relations for assertions and hypotheses. We formulate a pragmatic square of oppositions for assertions and a hexagon of oppositions for hypotheses. Finally, we give a mixed hexagon of oppositions to point out the opposition relations for assertions and hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beliefs involved in the placebo effect are often assumed to be self-fulfilling, that is, the truth of these beliefs would merely require the patient to hold them. Such a view is commonly shared in epistemology. Many epistemologists focused, in fact, on the self-fulfilling nature of these beliefs, which have been investigated because they raise some important counterexamples to Nozick's "tracking theory of knowledge." We challenge the self-fulfilling nature of placebo-based beliefs in multi-agent contexts, analyzing their deep epistemological nature and the role of higher-order beliefs involved in the placebo effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Possibility is one of the most common modalities in reasoning and argumentation. Various kinds of modal concepts have been identified in philosophical and logical discussion of the metaphysics of modality. We focus here on the concept of clinical possibility. A critical analysis of what is intended as clinical possibility has not yet received sufficient examination, although the concept is extensively used in clinical reasoning. We present arguments to emphasize some desirable features associated with the concept of clinical possibility. We argue that almost all clinical possibilities are potentialities, that is, possibilities that may be actualized by effective, appropriate and feasible interventions. However, in some limited cases, even mere possibilities - which may or may not be actualized, since we do not have the required knowledge - may be involved in clinical reasoning, and we present some examples in this paper. We then introduce some basic views on the nature of possibility showing their validity and limitations when applied to the concept of clinical possibility. Lastly, we conjecture that clinical possibility is a normative modality that can be formalized in a multimodal system with epistemic and deontic logical operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of [3] is to sketch the construction of a syntactic cate-gorical model of the bi-intuitionistic logic of assertions and hypotheses AH, axiomatized in a sequent calculus AH-G1, and to show that such a model has a chirality-like structure inspired by the notion of dialogue chirality by P-A. Melliès [8]. A chirality consists of a pair of adjoint functors L ⊣ R, with L: A → B, R: B → A, and of a functor ⋆-: A → Bop satisfying certain conditions. The definition of the logic AH in [3] needs to be modified so that our categories A and B are actually dual. With this modification, a more complex structure emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a "polarized" version of bi-intuitionistic logic [5, 2, 6, 4] as a logic of assertions and hypotheses and show that it supports a "rich proof theory" and an interesting categorical interpretation, unlike the standard approach of C. Rauszer's Heyting-Brouwer logic [28, 29], whose categorical models are all partial orders by Crolard's theorem [8]. We show that P. A. Mellies notion of chirality [21, 22] appears as the right mathematical representation of the mirror symmetry between the intuitionistic and co-intuitionistc sides of polarized bi-intuitionism. Philosophically, we extend Dalla Pozza and Garola's pragmatic interpretation of intuitionism as a logic of assertions [10] to bi-intuitionism as a logic of assertions and hypotheses. We focus on the logical role of illocutionary forces and justification conditions in order to provide "intended interpretations" of logical systems that classify inferential uses in natural language and remain acceptable from an intuitionistic point of view. Although Dalla Pozza and Garola originally provide a constructive interpretation of intuitionism in a classical setting, we claim that some conceptual refinements suffice to make their "pragmatic interpretation" a bona fide representation of intuitionism. We sketch a meaning-asuse interpretation of co-intuitionism that seems to fulfil the requirements of Dummett and Prawitz's justificationist approach. We extend the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation to bi-intuitionism by regarding co-intuitionistic formulas as types of the evidence for them: if conclusive evidence is needed to justify assertions, only a scintilla of evidence suffices to justify hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Epistemologia is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)