Benefits and costs on prospective memory performance, of enactment at encoding and a semantic association between a cue-action word pair, were investigated in two experiments. Findings revealed superior performance for both younger and older adults following enactment, in contrast to verbal encoding, and when cue-action semantic relatedness was high. Although younger adults outperformed older adults, age did not moderate benefits of cue-action relatedness or enactment. Findings from a second experiment revealed that the inclusion of an instruction to (...) perform a prospective memory task led to increments in response latency to items from the ongoing activity in which that task was embedded, relative to latencies when the ongoing task only was performed. However, this task interference ‘cost’ did not differ as a function of either cue-action relatedness or enactment. We argue that the high number of cue-action pairs employed here influenced meta-cognitive consciousness, hence determining attention allocation, in all experimental conditions. (shrink)

This is a review of Action Semantics, by Peter D. Mosses, Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science 26, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

The semantics for a deontic action logic based on Boolean algebra is extended with an interpretation of action expressions in terms of sets of alternative actions, intended as a way to model choice. This results in a non-classical interpretation of action expressions, while sentences not in the scope of deontic operators are kept classical. A deontic structure based on Simons’ supercover semantics is used to interpret permission and obligation. It is argued that these constructions provide (...) ways to handle various problems related to free choice permission. The main result is a sound and complete axiomatization of the semantics. (shrink)

Stit semantics grows out of a modal tradition in the logic of action that concentrates on an operator representing the agency of an individual in seeing to it that some state of affairs holds, rather than on the actions the individual performs in doing so. The purpose of this paper is to enrich stit semantics, and especially epistemic stit semantics, by supplementing the overall framework with an explicit treatment of action types. We show how the (...) introduction of these new action types allows us to define a modal operator capturing an epistemic sense of agency, and how this operator can be used to express an epistemic sense of ability. (shrink)

According to an influential view, the detection of action possibilities and the selection of a plan for action are two segregated steps throughout the processing of visual information. This classical approach is committed with the assumption that two independent types of processing underlie visual perception: the semantic one, which is at the service of the identification of visually presented objects, and the pragmatic one which serves the execution of actions directed to specific parts of the same objects. However, (...) as our knowledge of vision has improved over the years, this established view has turned out to be only an approximation. This paper sets out the details of a non-modularist approach to visual perception of action possibilities and explains how to resist the lure of cognitive segregation. (shrink)

This paper examines an hypothesis put forward by Pettit and Knobe 2009 to account for the Knobe effect. According to Pettit and Knobe, one should look at the semantics of the adjective “intentional” on a par with that of other gradable adjectives such as “warm”, “rich” or “expensive”. What Pettit and Knobe’s analogy suggests is that the Knobe effect might be an instance of a much broader phenomenon which concerns the context-dependence of normative standards relevant for the application of (...) gradable expressions. I adduce further evidence in favor of this view and go on to examine the predictions one obtains when assuming that “intentional” involves a two-dimensional scale, which implies evaluating how much an action or outcome is desired on the one hand, and how much it can be foreseen as a consequence of one’s actions on the other. (shrink)

In the past couple of decades, there were a few major attempts to establish the thesis of pragmatic infringement – that a significant pragmatic ingredient figures significantly in the truth-conditions for knowledge-ascriptions. As candidates, epistemic contextualism and Relativism flaunted conversational standards, and Stanley's SSI promoted stakes. These conceptions were propelled first and foremost by obviously pragmatic examples of knowledge ascriptions that seem to require a pragmatic component in the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions in order to be accounted for. However, if (...) such examples can be adequately explained purely pragmatically, the need that such examples seem to invoke in such a pragmatic component is undermined. Here I lay out a new pragmatic account – of action-directed pragmatics, offering a different account of such examples and their pragmatic flavor. If adequate, it obviates the above need for pragmatic enrichment. Specifically, I develop and I argue for a well-entrenched pragmatic feature – that of a steering role. The assertions of knowledge ascriptions and their denials as well as of simple assertions (that don't invoke knowledge) play a pragmatic role of steering audiences in joint deliberational setups toward, or away from, the speaker's preferred action (as well as in assertions of 'I am sure', of epistemic modals, taste assertions, causal assertions, and more.) Various features and consequences of this account are drawn. Specifically, I explain why in the bank example (and related ones) the husband, in denying the knowledge ascription, neither lies nor misleads. (shrink)

Kleene algebras and action logic were proposed to be solutions to the finite axiomatization problem of the algebra of regular sets (of strings). They are treated here as nonclassical logics—with Hilbert-style axiomatizations and semantics. We also provide intuitive accounts in terms of information states of the semantics which provide further insights into the formalisms. The three types of "Kripke-style'' semantics which we define develop insights from gaggle theory, and from our four-valued and generalized Kripke semantics (...) for the minimal substructural logic. Soundness and completeness are proven each time. (shrink)

Since the publication of Davidson’s influential article ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, semantical considerations are widely thought to support the doctrine that actions are events. I shall argue that the semantics of action sentences do not imply that actions are events. This will involve defending a negative claim and a positive claim, as well as a proposal for how to formalize action sentences. The negative claim is that the semantics of action sentences do (...) not require that we think of actions as events, even if these sentences are best formalized in the manner that Davidson himself favours. The positive claim is that the simplest way of formalizing actions sentences which captures all and only licit inferences requires quantification only, over the results of actions. If this is right, then the argument from semantics evaporates, and the claim that actions are events needs to be freshly argued for – or against. (shrink)

This paper develops some of Austin’s ideas on excuses, stressing their “dimensional” character and relating it to Searle’s distinction between intention-in-action and previous intention, in order to show that the original speech-act shaped distinction between weakness of the will and moral weakness can be embedded in a quite different theoretical framework such as Davidson’s, while Austin’s dimensional classification of actions cannot. Finally, the article analyzes how Grice’s critique of Davidson’s views on akrasia is more faithful to Austin and more (...) radical in its conclusions concerning the justificatory aspect of reasons and the rational features of action. (shrink)

We propose a unified theory of intentions as neural processes that integrate representations of states of affairs, actions, and emotional evaluation. We show how this theory provides answers to philosophical questions about the concept of intention, psychological questions about human behavior, computational questions about the relations between belief and action, and neuroscientific questions about how the brain produces actions. Our theory of intention ties together biologically plausible mechanisms for belief, planning, and motor control. The computational feasibility of these mechanisms (...) is shown by a model that simulates psychologically important cases of intention. (shrink)

This article aims to demonstrate the interdependence of semantics and noetics against the referentialist trend in Abelard studies conceiving semantics as confined to the truth/falsity function. The article takes as a turning point of the argument Abelard’s question “can a true proposition generate a false understanding?” which secondary literature does not take into account. Starting from the analysis of this question, the article aims to show the development of an enhanced notion of understanding compared to the Boethian one. (...) The core of this enhanced notion of understanding is the action of attentio, which is the condition for the elaboration of a coherent and global definition of signification. The analysis of the mental action of attentio entails the description of other kinds of mental actions, leading one to conceive understanding as a multi-layered complex of actions. (shrink)

Action semantics enables us to plan actions with objects and to predict others' object-directed actions as well. Previous studies have suggested that action semantics are represented in a fronto-parietal action network that has also been implicated to play a role in action observation. In the present fMRI study it was investigated how activity within this network changes as a function of the predictability of an action involving multiple objects and requiring the use of (...) action semantics. Participants performed an action prediction task in which they were required to anticipate the use of a centrally presented object that could be moved to an associated target object (e.g., hammer—nail). The availability of actor information (i.e., presenting a hand grasping the central object) and the number of possible target objects (i.e., 0, 1, or 2 target objects) were independently manipulated, resulting in different levels of predictability. It was found that making an action prediction based on actor information resulted in an increased activation in the extrastriate body area (EBA) and the fronto-parietal action observation network (AON). Predicting actions involving a target object resulted in increased activation in the bilateral IPL and frontal motor areas. Within the AON, activity in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and the left premotor cortex (PMC) increased as a function of the level of action predictability. Together these findings suggest that the left IPL represents stored hand-postures that can be used for planning object-directed actions and for predicting other's actions as well. (shrink)

structures, or interpretations, in the sense of first-order logic. In C+, on the other hand, a state is an interpreta-.

Hamblin's Action-State Semantics provides a sound philosophical foundation for understanding the character of the imperative. Taking this as our inspiration, in this paper we present a logic of action, which we call ST, that captures the clear ontological distinction between being responsible for the achievement of a state of affairs and being responsible for the performance of an action. We argue that a relativised modal logic of type RT founded upon a ternary relation over possible worlds (...) integrated with a basic tense logic captures intuitions of the Hamblinian model of imperatives. The logic implements a direct mapping of each of Hamblin's key concepts: strategies, partial strategies and wholehearted satisfaction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reinterpret success semantics, a theory of mental content, according to which the content of a belief is fixed by the success conditions of some actions based on this belief. After arguing that in its present form, success semantics is vulnerable to decisive objections, I examine the possibilities of salvaging the core of this proposal. More specifically, I propose that the content of some very simple, but very important, mental states, the immediate (...) mental antecedents of action, can be explained in this manner. (shrink)

Embodied theories of language postulate that language meaning is stored in modality-specific brain areas generally involved in perception and action in the real world. However, the temporal dynamics of the interaction between modality-specific information and lexical-semantic processing remain unclear. We investigated the relative timing at which two types of modality-specific information (action-based and visual-form information) contribute to lexical-semantic comprehension. To this end, we applied a behavioral priming paradigm in which prime and target words were related with respect to (...) (1) action features, (2) visual features, or (3) semantically associative information. Using a Go/No-Go lexical decision task, priming effects were measured across four different inter-stimulus intervals (ISI = 100, 250, 400, and 1000 ms) to determine the relative time course of the different features. Notably, action priming effects were found in ISIs of 100, 250, and 1000 ms whereas a visual priming effect was seen only in the ISI of 1000 ms. Importantly, our data suggest that features follow different time courses of activation during word recognition. In this regard, feature activation is dynamic, measurable in specific time windows but not in others. Thus the current study (1) demonstrates how multiple ISIs can be used within an experiment to help chart the time course of feature activation and (2) provides new evidence for embodied theories of language. (shrink)

Hamblin’s Action-State Semantics provides a sound philosophical foundation for understanding the character of the imperative. Taking this as our inspiration, in this paper we present a logic of action, which we call ST, that captures the clear ontological distinction between being responsible for the achievement of a state of affairs and being responsible for the performance of an action. We argue that a relativised modal logic of type RT founded upon a ternary relation over possible worlds (...) integrated with a basic tense logic captures intuitions of the Hamblinian model of imperatives. The logic implements a direct mapping of each of Hamblin’s key concepts: strategies, partial strategies and wholehearted satisfaction. (shrink)

According to success semantics, a belief’s content is that which guarantees the success of the actions that the belief, in combination with the relevant desires, would cause. One worry with the view is that it seems to apply only to full beliefs and fares poorly in dealing with partial beliefs. For example, if Ida’s partial belief that p is of strength 0.5, she may act in a way that would fulfill her desires if p were in fact false—assuming that (...) she desires money, she may well accept a bet that pays her $500 if not-p and costs her nothing otherwise. In response to the worry, defenders of success semantics hold that the content of a partial belief is simply that which guarantees the success of the actions it would cause were it a full belief. But, as I’ll argue in this paper, such a response is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce a logically grounded approach to action semantics and action interpretation. The main idea is to present the context of action as a set of questions demanding an action to answer. I introduce (a) a basic procedure of action interpretation, which is a reformulation of Hilpinen's semantical procedure for imperatives; (b) a procedure of what-interpretation; (c) a procedure of why-interpretation. The conditions of mutual reducibility of interpretation procedures (...) are explicated. The paper concludes by putting forth the problem of interpretive bounds of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Jody Azzouni argues that we involuntarily experience certain physical items, certain products of human actions, and certain human actions themselves as having meaning-properties. We understand these items as possessing meaning or as having truth values. For example, a sign on a door reading "Drinks Inside" strikes native English speakers as referring to liquids in the room behind the door. The sign has a truth value--if no drinks are found in the room, the sign is misleading. Someone pointing in a direction (...) has the same effect: we experience her gesture as significant. Azzouni does not suggest that we don't recognize the expectations or intentions of speakers ; we do recognize that the person pointing in a certain direction intends for us to understand her gesture's significance. Nevertheless, Azzouni asserts that we experience that gesture as having significance independent of her intentions. The gesture is meaningful on its own. The same is true of language, both spoken and written. We experience the meanings of language artifacts as independent of their makers' intentions in the same way that we experience an object's shape as a property independent of the object's color. There is a distinctive phenomenology to the experience of understanding language, and Semantic Perception shows how this phenomenology can be brought to bear as evidence for and against competing theories of language. (shrink)

Possible-world semantics are provided for Parikh’s relevance-sensitive model for belief revision. Having Grove’s system-of-spheres construction as a base, we consider additional constraints on measuring distance between possible worlds, and we prove that, in the presence of the AGM postulates, these constraints characterize precisely Parikh’s axiom (P). These additional constraints essentially generalize a criterion of similarity that predates axiom (P) and was originally introduced in the context of Reasoning about Action. A by-product of our study is the identification of (...) two possible readings of Parikh’s axiom (P), which we call the strong and the weak versions of the axiom. An interesting feature of the strong version is that, unlike classical AGM belief revision, it makes associations between the revision policies of different theories. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that children retreat from argument‐structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Don’t giggle me) by inferring that frequently encountered verbs are unlikely to be grammatical in unattested constructions, and by making use of syntax‐semantics correspondences (e.g., verbs denoting internally caused actions such as giggling cannot normally be used causatively). The present study tested a new account based on a unitary learning mechanism that combines both of these processes. Seventy‐two participants (ages 5–6, 9–10, and adults) rated overgeneralization errors with (...) higher (*The funny man’s joke giggled Bart) and lower (*The funny man giggled Bart) degrees of direct external causation. The errors with more‐direct causation were rated as less unacceptable than those with less‐direct causation. This finding is consistent with the new account, under which children acquire—in an incremental and probabilistic fashion—the meaning of particular constructions (e.g., transitive causative = direct external causation) and particular verbs, rejecting generalizations where the incompatibility between the two is too great. (shrink)

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with (...) semantics entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators. (shrink)

We propose a lexical account of event nouns, in particular of deverbal nominalisations, whose meaning is related to the event expressed by their base verb. The literature on nominalisations often assumes that the semantics of the base verb completely defines the structure of action nominals. We argue that the information in the base verb is not sufficient to completely determine the semantics of action nominals. We exhibit some data from different languages, especially from Romance language, which (...) show that nominalisations focus on some aspects of the verb semantics. The selected aspects, however, seem to be idiosyncratic and do not automatically result from the internal structure of the verb nor from its interaction with the morphological suffix. We therefore propose a partially lexicalist approach view of deverbal nouns. It is made precise and computable by using the Montagovian generative lexicon, a type theoretical framework introduced by Bassac, Mery and Retoré in this journal in 2010. This extension of Montague semantics with a richer type system easily incorporates lexical phenomena like the semantics of action nominals in particular deverbals, including their polysemy and felicitous copredications. (shrink)

This dissertation provides a model-theoretic semantics for English sentences atttributing a property or action to a group of objects, either collectively or distributively. It is shown that certain adverbial expressions select for collective predicates; therefore collective and distibutive predicates must be distinguishable. This finding is problematic for recent accounts of distributive predicates which analyze such predicates as taking group-level arguments, and hence as not distinguishable from collective predicates. ;A group-level treatment of distributives is possible, however, if predicate denotations (...) are relativized to a set of events for which a part/whole relation is defined. An event in which a group performs an action distributively will have subevents in which each of the group's members perform the same action; an event in which the group performs the action collectively will not. ;This analysis also makes possible an account of the fact that adverbials expressing collective action commonly have an additional use expressing spatial proximity, both in English and cross-linguistically. . A spatial "trace" function on the set of events allows formal definitions for the spatial uses of such adverbials to exactly parallel the definitions for the collectivizing uses. ;The dissertation also provides arguments for a set-theoretic model for plurality, in which the group membership relation is distinct from the subgroup relation. ;Certain quantifiers are shown sensitive to distinction between different sorts of group-level event. To accommodate this fact, it is suggested that verbal denotations provide, for each event, both an "inclusion set" and an "exclusion set"--corresponding roughly to positive and negative denotations. If the inclusion and exclusion sets are allowed under certain circumstances not to complement each other, correct results obtain. ;The splitting of verbal denotations into inclusion and exclusion sets also allows the solution of certain problems in previous accounts of the semantics of subject-verb agreement for number. The dissertation closes with a defense of the hypothesis that agreement is conditioned primarily by the semantics. (shrink)

Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. , the cross-cultural differences they observed in semantic intuitions about the reference of proper names have proven to be robust. In the present article, we report cross-cultural and individual differences in semantic intuitions obtained using new experimental materials. In light of the pervasiveness of the Knobe effect and the fact that Machery et al.’s original materials incorporated elements of wrongdoing but did not control for their influence, we (...) also examined the question of whether the moral valence of actions described in experimental materials might affect participants’ responses. Our results suggest that uncontrolled moral valence did not distort participants’ judgments in previous research. Our findings provide further confirmation of the robustness of cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions and strengthen the philosophical challenge that they pose. (shrink)

Possible worlds semantics for conditionals leave open the problem of how to construct models for realistic domains. In this paper, we show how to adapt logics of action and change such as John McCarthy’s Situation Calculus to conditional logics. We illustrate the idea by presenting models for conditionals whose antecedents combine a declarative condition with a hypothetical action.

This paper attempts to answer whether the property of “efficacy” can be attributed to constitutive rules. In particular, according to Di Lucia, I will point out some problems that the “semantic conception of efficacy” has concerning constitutive and regulative rules. Then, the main goal of the paper will be to reflect on the possibility of the efficacy of constitutive rules by means of a complex case that the semantic conception seems to disregard: The case of the cheater. Does the (...) class='Hi'>action of the cheater show the inefficacy of constitutive rules? Does she play the game while breaking the rule? Can the semantic conception of efficacy explain this situation, or do we need a more flexible concept of efficacy that takes nomotropism into account? These are some of the questions I will try to answer. (shrink)

We consider the problem of semantic opposition; in particular, theproblem of determining adjective-verb opposition for transitive changeof state verbs and adjectivally modified grammatical objects. Semanticopposition problems of this type are a sub-case of the classic FrameProblem; the well-known problem of knowing what is preserved orchanged in the world as a result of some action or event. Bydefinition, grammatical objects of change of state verbs undergomodification. In cases where the object is adjectivally modified, theproblem reduces to determining whether the property (...) denoted by theadjective still holds true after the event denoted by the verb. Inthis paper, we evaluate the efficacy of WordNet, a network of conceptsorganized around linguistically relevant semantic relations includingantonymy, for this task. Test examples are drawn from the linguisticliterature. Results are analyzed in detail with a view towardsproviding feedback on the concept of a network as an appropriate modelof semantic relations for problems in semantic inference. (shrink)

In this interpretive analysis, Ravin argues that thematic roles are not valid semantic entities, and that syntax and semantics are indeed autonomous and independent of one another. Suggesting a decompositional approach to lexical semantics in the spirit of Katz's semantic theory, the book considers such theoretical issues as indeterminacy and ambiguity, lexical configuration rules, and lexical projection, and analyzes the semantic content of event concepts such as causation, action, and change.