The new field of judgment aggregation aims to merge many individual sets of judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a single collective set of judgments on these propositions. Judgment aggregation has commonly been studied using classical propositional logic, with a limited expressive power and a problematic representation of conditional statements ("if P then Q") as material conditionals. In this methodological paper, I present a simple unified model of judgment aggregation in general logics. I show (...) how many realistic decision problems can be represented in it. This includes decision problems expressed in languages of classical propositional logic, predicate logic (e.g. preference aggregation problems), modal or conditional logics, and some multi-valued or fuzzy logics. I provide a list of simple tools for working with general logics, and I prove impossibility results that generalise earlier theorems. (shrink)

In the framework of judgment aggregation, we assume that some formulas of the agenda are singled out as premisses, and that both Independence (formula-wise aggregation) and Unanimity Preservation hold for them. Whether premiss-based aggregation thus defined is compatible with conclusion-based aggregation, as defined by Unanimity Preservation on the non-premisses, depends on how the premisses are logically connected, both among themselves and with other formulas. We state necessary and sufficient conditions under which the combination of both (...) approaches leads to dictatorship (resp. oligarchy), either just on the premisses or on the whole agenda. This framework is inspired by the doctrinal paradox of legal theory and arguably relevant to this field as well as political science and political economy. When the set of premisses coincides with the whole agenda, a limiting case of our assumptions, we obtain several existing results in judgment aggregation theory. (shrink)

To investigate the relationship between logical reasoning and majority voting, we introduce logic with groups Lg in the style of Gentzen’s sequent calculus, where every sequent is indexed by a group of individuals. We also introduce the set-theoretical semantics of Lg, where every formula is interpreted as a certain closed set of groups whose members accept that formula. We present the cut-elimination theorem, and the soundness and semantic completeness theorems of Lg. Then, introducing an inference rule representing majority voting (...) to Lg, we introduce logic with majority voting Lv. Formalizing the discursive paradox in judgment aggregation theory, we show that Lv is inconsistent. Based on the premise-based and conclusion-based approaches to avoid the paradox, we introduce logic with majority voting for axioms Lva, where majority voting is applied only to non-logical axioms as premises to construct a proof in Lg, and logic with majority voting for conclusions Lvc, where majority voting is applied only to the conclusion of a proof in Lg. We show that both Lva and Lvc are syntactically complete and consistent, and we construct collective judgments based on the provability in Lva and Lvc, respectively. Then, we discuss how these systems avoid the discursive paradox. (shrink)

We generalise the Blok–Jónsson account of structural consequence relations, later developed by Galatos, Tsinakis and other authors, in such a way as to naturally accommodate multiset consequence. While Blok and Jónsson admit, in place of sheer formulas, a wider range of syntactic units to be manipulated in deductions (including sequents or equations), these objects are invariablyaggregatedvia set-theoretical union. Our approach is more general in that nonidempotent forms of premiss and conclusion aggregation, including multiset sum and fuzzy set (...) union, are considered. In their abstract form, thus,deductive relationsare defined as additional compatible preorderings over certain partially ordered monoids. We investigate these relations using categorical methods and provide analogues of the main results obtained in the general theory of consequence relations. Then we focus on the driving example of multiset deductive relations, providing variations of the methods of matrix semantics and Hilbert systems in Abstract Algebraic Logic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe from a semantic perspective the problem of conservativity of classical first-order theories over their intuitionistic counterparts. In particular, we describe a class of formulae for which such conservativity results can be proven in case of any intuitionistic theory T which is complete with respect to a class of T-normal Kripke models. We also prove conservativity results for intuitionistic theories which are closed under the Friedman translation and complete with respect to a (...) class of conversely well-founded Kripke models. The results can be applied to a wide class of intuitionistic theories and can be viewed as generalization of the results obtained by syntactic methods. (shrink)

Zwart and Franssen’s impossibility theorem reveals a conflict between the possible-world-based content-definition and the possible-world-based likeness-definition of verisimilitude. In Sect. 2 we show that the possible-world-based content-definition violates four basic intuitions of Popper’s consequence-based content-account to verisimilitude, and therefore cannot be said to be in the spirit of Popper’s account, although this is the opinion of some prominent authors. In Sect. 3 we argue that in consequence-accounts, content-aspects and likeness-aspects of verisimilitude are not in conflict with each other, but in (...) agreement. We explain this fact by pointing towards the deep difference between possible-world- and the consequence-accounts, which does not lie in the difference between syntactic versus semantic formulations, but in the difference between ‘disjunction-of-possible-worlds’ versus ‘conjunction-of-parts’ representations of theories. Drawing on earlier work, we explain in Sect. 4 how the shortcomings of Popper’s original definition can be repaired by what we call the relevant element approach. We propose a quantitative likeness-definition of verisimilitude based on relevant elements which provably agrees with the qualitative relevant content-definition of verisimilitude on all pairs of comparable theories. We conclude the paper with a plea for consequence-accounts and a brief analysis of the problem of language-dependence. (shrink)

Judgment aggregation theory, which concerns the translation of individual judgments on logical propositions into consistent group judgments, has shown that group consistency generally cannot be guaranteed if each proposition is treated independently from the others. Developing the right method of abandoning independence is thus a high-priority goal. However, little work has been done in this area outside of a few simple approaches. To fill the gap, we compare four methods based on distance metrics between judgment sets. The (...) methods generalize the premise-based and sequential priority approaches to judgment aggregation, as well as distance-based preference aggregation. They each guarantee group consistency and implement a range of distinct functions with different properties, broadening the available tools for social choice. A central result is that only one of these methods (not previously considered in the literature) satisfies three attractive properties for all reasonable metrics. (shrink)

In what follows, I introduce a pragmatics-oriented approach to non-sentential speech, and defend it against two recent attacks. Among other things, I will rehearse and elaborate a defense against the idea that much, or even all, of such speech is actually syntactically elliptical—and hence should be treated semantically, rather than pragmatically. The chapter is structured as follows. In Section 1 I introduce the phenomenon, contrast semantic versus pragmatic approaches to it, and explain some of what hinges on (...) which approach is taken. In Section 2 I present Jason Stanley’s objections to the pragmatics-oriented approach, and his counterproposal that all truth-conditional effects of context on what is asserted can be traced to elements of underlying structure. In Section 3 I canvass numerous varieties of ellipsis. The focus in Section 3 will be on what kind of “ellipsis” is required if the pragmatics-oriented approach is actually to be rejected rather than being recast in other terms. In Section 4 I respond to.. (shrink)

Syntactic approaches in the philosophy of science, which are based on formalizations in predicate logic, are often considered in principle inferior to semantic approaches, which are based on formalizations with the help of structures. To compare the two kinds of approach, I identify some ambiguities in common semantic accounts and explicate the concept of a structure in a way that avoids hidden references to a specific vocabulary. From there, I argue that contrary to common opinion (i) (...) unintended models do not pose a significant problem for syntactic approaches to scientific theories, (ii) syntactic approaches can be at least as language-independent as semantic ones, and (iii) in syntactic approaches, scientific theories can be as well connected to the world as in semantic ones. Based on these results, I argue that syntactic and semantic approaches fare equally well when it comes to (iv) ease of application, (v) accommodating the use of models in the sciences, and (vi) capturing the theory-observation relation. (shrink)

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit (...) by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency and requirements dictated by the environment . We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on judgment aggregation. (shrink)

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit (...) by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency (such as not to affirm both a proposition and its negation) and requirements dictated by the environment (such as budgetary constraints). We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on (unconstrained) judgment aggregation. (shrink)

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit (...) by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency and requirements dictated by the environment . We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on judgment aggregation. (shrink)

This paper contains a proof-theoretic account of unification in transitive reflexive modal logics, which means that the reasoning is syntactic and uses as little semantics as possible. New proofs of theorems on unification types are presented and these results are extended to negationless fragments. In particular, a syntactic proof of Ghilardi’s result that $\mathsf {S4}$ has finitary unification is provided. In this approach the relation between classical valuations, projective unifiers, and admissible rules is clarified.

This study explores the phenomenon of the so-called “third reading” of propositional attitude reports. This reading, which was originally explored in the dissertation of J. Fodor (1973) and has since become one of the significant problems in the formal semantics of natural languages, differs from the more well-known de re and de dicto readings by being an intermediate case. If the de re interpretation can be referred to as transparent specific, and the de dicto interpretation as opaque non-specific, then the (...) third reading is transparent non-specific. Fodor's standard solution has been the subject of much discussion in the literature and has given rise to a series of widely accepted counterexamples that are thought to demonstrate the limitations of Fodor's solution. At the same time, alternative approaches to the explication of these readings also suffer from formal shortcomings (for example, some of them did not satisfy the requirement of meaning compositionality, which is a basic requirement in formal semantic literature). This study points out that the analysis of all complex cases of the third reading did not fully take into account their syntactic structure. This remained unnoticed due to the ellipsis in many of these cases. It is shown that a restoration of the ellided syntactic structure makes it possible to analyze all hard cases as basic ones using the classical standard analysis proposed by Fodor supplemented by the principles of admissibility of substitution of L-equivalent expressions in intensional contexts (known since G. Frege and R. Carnap). In the final part of the work, it is demonstrated how exactly the main complex cases of the “third reading” are explicated in terms of the standard approach. (shrink)

Zwart and Franssen’s impossibility theorem reveals a conflict between the possible-world-based content-definition and the possible-world-based likeness-definition of verisimilitude. In Sect. 2 we show that the possible-world-based content-definition violates four basic intuitions of Popper’s consequence-based content-account to verisimilitude, and therefore cannot be said to be in the spirit of Popper’s account, although this is the opinion of some prominent authors. In Sect. 3 we argue that in consequence-accounts , content-aspects and likeness-aspects of verisimilitude are not in conflict with each other, but (...) in agreement . We explain this fact by pointing towards the deep difference between possible-world- and the consequence-accounts, which does not lie in the difference between syntactic (object-language) versus semantic (meta-language) formulations, but in the difference between ‘disjunction-of-possible-worlds’ versus ‘conjunction-of-parts’ representations of theories. Drawing on earlier work, we explain in Sect. 4 how the shortcomings of Popper’s original definition can be repaired by what we call the relevant element approach. We propose a quantitative likeness-definition of verisimilitude based on relevant elements which provably agrees with the qualitative relevant content-definition of verisimilitude on all pairs of comparable theories. We conclude the paper with a plea for consequence-accounts and a brief analysis of the problem of language-dependence (Sect. 6). (shrink)

A necessary condition for a group being taken as a rational agent is that its choices and judgements are ‘logically contestable’, but this can lead to problems of aggregation, as Arrow impossibility theorem or the discursive dilemma. This paper proposes a contractarian or constitutional approach: the relevant thing is what aggregation mechanisms would be preferred by the members of the group. Two distinctions need to be made: first, judgement aggregation is not aggregation of decisions, and (...) judgement aggregation needs be distinguished from the aggregation of information: we assume that every member of the group has already taken into account the opinions of the other members, by means of a process of public deliberation, but they may end having different opinions; we also assume that the members are rational, so that they have no reasons to accept further changes in their individual opinions. So, from the epistemic point of view, the collective judgment is not a 'better' opinion than those of the individual members. The collective judgement is better seen as a kind of compromise, the outcome of a ‘bargain’, so to say. Basically, we assume that individuals will have an interest in choosing a specific aggregation function by taking into account how are they affected by the collective actions carried out by the group, and grounded on the chosen collective judgement. (shrink)

The systems T N and T M show that necessity can be consistently construed as a predicate of syntactical objects, if the expressive/deductive power of the system is deliberately engineered to reflect the power of the original object language operator. The system T N relies on salient limitations on the expressive power of the language L N through the construction of a quotational hierarchy, while the system T Mrelies on limiting the scope of the modal axioms schemas to the sublanguage (...) L infM +, which corresponds exactly with the restrictive hierarchy of L N. The fact that L infM + is identical to the image of the metalinguistic mapping C + from the normal operator system into L M reveals that iterated operator modality is implicitly hierarchical, and that inconsistency is produced by applying the principles of the modal logic to formulas which have no natural analogues in the operator development. Thus the contradiction discovered by Montague can be diagnosed as the result of instantiating the axiom schemas with modally ungrounded formulas, and thereby adding radically new modal axioms to the predicate system.The predicate treatment of necessity differs significantly from that of the operator in that the cumulative models for the predicate system are strictly first-order. Possible worlds are not used as model-theoretic primitives, but rather alternate models are appealed to in order to specify the extension of N, which is semantically construed as a first-order predicate. In this manner, the intensional aspects of modality are built into the mode of specifying the particular set of objects which the denotation function assigns to N, rather than in the specification of the basic truth conditions for modal formulas. Intensional phenomena are thereby localised to the special requirements for determining the extension of a particular predicate, and this does not constitute a structural modification of the first-order models, but rather limits the relevant class of models to those which possess an appropriate denotation function. (shrink)

Health Level 7 (HL7) is an international standards development organisation in the domain of healthcare information technology. Initially the mission of HL7 was to enable data exchange via the creation of syntactic standards which supported point-to-point messaging. Currently HL7 sees its mission as one of creating standards for semantic interoperability in healthcare IT on the basis of its flagship “version 3” (v3). Unfortunately, v3 has been plagued by quality and consistency issues, and it has not been able to (...) keep pace with recent developments either in semantics and ontology or in computer science and engineering. HL7’s response has been to develop its “Services-Aware Interoperability Framework” (SAIF), which is intended to provide a foundation for work on all aspects of standardization in HL7 henceforth. We here summarise the major design principles that must be satisfied by a semantic interoperability framework – principles relating both to static semantics and to computational behaviour. We then assess the SAIF in light of these principles. We conclude that the SAIF is not in a position to support the needed reform of the HL7 v3 family of standards. (shrink)

Social and environmental problems attributed to current electricity sector restructuring structures are spelled out. The energy source choices and market power of large industrial and commercial users versus residential consumers are compared. An institutional analytic approach is used to reveal the best option to alleviate the social and environmental problems associated with electricity restructuring. Community aggregation emerges with great potential to achieve meaningful social and environmental improvement.

Group decisions must often obey exogenous constraints. While in a preference aggregation problem constraints are modelled by restricting the set of feasible alternatives, this paper discusses the modelling of constraints when aggregating individual yes/no judgments on interconnected propositions. For example, court judgments in breach-of-contract cases should respect the constraint that action and obligation are necessary and sufficient for liability, and judgments on budget items should respect budgetary constraints. In this paper, we make constraints in judgment aggregation explicit (...) by relativizing the rationality conditions of consistency and deductive closure to a constraint set, whose variation yields more or less strong notions of rationality. This approach of modelling constraints explicitly contrasts with that of building constraints as axioms into the logic, which turns compliance with constraints into a matter of logical consistency and thereby conflates requirements of ordinary logical consistency (such as not to affirm both a proposition and its negation) and requirements dictated by the environment (such as budgetary constraints). We present some general impossibility results on constrained judgment aggregation; they are immediate corollaries of known results on (unconstrained) judgment aggregation. (shrink)

The aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on the same propositions has recently drawn much attention. Seemingly reasonable aggregation procedures, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective conclusion. The literature on judgment aggregation refers to such a problem as the \textit{discursive dilemma}. In this paper we assume that the decision which the group is trying to reach is factually right or wrong. Hence, we address (...) the question of how good the various approaches are at selecting the right conclusion. We focus on two approaches: distance-based procedures and a Bayesian analysis. They correspond to group-internal and group-external decision-making, respectively. We compare those methods in a probabilistic model, demonstrate the robustness of our results over various generalizations and discuss their applicability in different situations. The findings vindicate (i) that in judgment aggregation problems, reasons should carry higher weight than conclusions and (ii) that considering members of an advisory board to be highly competent is a better strategy than to underestimate their advice.". (shrink)

Political theorists have offered many accounts of collective decision-making under pluralism. I discuss a key dimension on which such accounts differ: the importance assigned not only to the choices made but also to the reasons underlying those choices. On that dimension, different accounts lie in between two extremes. The ‘minimal liberal account’ holds that collective decisions should be made only on practical actions or policies and that underlying reasons should be kept private. The ‘comprehensive deliberative account’ stresses the importance of (...) giving reasons for collective decisions, where such reasons should also be collectively decided. I compare these two accounts on the basis of a formal model developed in the growing literature on the ‘discursive dilemma’ and ‘judgment aggregation’ and address several questions: What is the trade-off between the (minimal liberal) demand for reaching agreement on outcomes and the (comprehensive deliberative) demand for reason-giving? How large should the ‘sphere of public reason’ be? When do the decision procedures suggested by the two accounts agree and when not? How good are these procedures at truthtracking on factual matters? What strategic incentives do they generate for decision-makers? My discussion identifies what is at stake in the choice between minimal liberal and comprehensive deliberative accounts of collective decisionmaking, and sheds light not only on these two ideal-typical accounts themselves, but also on many characteristics that intermediate accounts share with them. (shrink)

What is the goal of creativity? Is it just a symbolic reshuffling or a moment of semantic extension? Similar to the contrast between syntax and semantics, creativity has an internal and an external aspect. Contrary to the widespread view that emphasises the problem-solving role of creativity, here we consider whether creativity represents an authentic moment of ontological discovery and semantic openness like Schopenhauer and Picasso suggested. To address the semantic aspect of creativity, we take advantage of recent (...) externalist models of the mind suggesting that the mind is more than symbol recombination. (shrink)

This chapter briefly reviews the present state of judgment aggregation theory and tentatively suggests a future direction for that theory. In the review, we start by emphasizing the difference between the doctrinal paradox and the discursive dilemma, two idealized examples which classically serve to motivate the theory, and then proceed to reconstruct it as a brand of logical theory, unlike in some other interpretations, using a single impossibility theorem as a key to its technical development. In the prospective (...) part, having mentioned existing applications to social choice theory and computer science, which we do not discuss here, we consider a potential application to law and economics. This would be based on a deeper exploration of the doctrinal paradox and its relevance to the functioning of collegiate courts. On this topic, legal theorists have provided empirical observations and theoretical hints that judgment aggregation theorists would be in a position to clarify and further elaborate. As a general message, the chapter means to suggest that the future of judgment aggregation theory lies with its applications rather than its internal theoretical development. (shrink)

Cognitivists and non-cognitivists in contemporary meta-ethics tend to assume that moral judgments are semantically uniform. That is, they share the assumption that either all moral judgments express beliefs, or they all express non-beliefs. But what if some moral judgments express beliefs and others do not? Then moral judgments are not semantically uniform and the question “Cognitivist or non-cognitivist?” poses a false dilemma. I will question the assumption that moral judgments are semantically uniform. First, I will explain what I mean by (...) the assumption (section 2). I will call this assumption SUM, the semantic uniformity of moral judgments. Second, I will provide some examples in order to illustrate that SUM cannot be taken for granted (section 3). Third, I will try to understand, using ideas from Wittgenstein, why SUM has nevertheless so often been taken for granted (section 4). Fourth, I will discuss some authors in contemporary meta-ethics who have noted the false dilemma between cognitivism and non-cognitivism and evaluate the solutions they propose for overcoming it (section 5). Fifth, I will indicate, again with some help from Wittgenstein, how meta-ethical research about moral judgments is possible without the assumption that morality is semantically uniform (section 6). (shrink)

A central strand in philosophical debate over the just distribution of resources attempts to juggle three competing imperatives: helping those who are worst off, helping those who will benefit the most, and then – beyond this – determining when to aggregate such ‘worst off’ and ‘benefit’ claims, and when instead to treat no such claim as greater than that which any individual by herself can exert. Yet as various philosophers have observed, ‘we have no satisfactory theoretical characterization’ as to how (...) to weigh each of the three imperatives against one another, we find it ‘difficult to state... precise or comprehensive conclusions’, and we do not yet have a ‘metric for integrating the three measures’. In what follows, I offer an approach to weighing the three criteria against one another that yields resolutions – in Hard Cases of the ‘saving one infant's life versus replacing ten elderly people's hips’ sort – that are cardinally definitive, intuitively satisfactory and theoretically justified. (shrink)

During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels--phonological, syntactic, and semantic--and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar. The (...) Semantics of Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories. (shrink)

In this article I give an overview of some recent work in philosophy of science dedicated to analysing the scientific process in terms of (conceptual) mathematical models of theories and the various semantic relations between such models, scientific theories, and aspects of reality. In current philosophy of science, the most interesting questions centre around the ways in which writers distinguish between theories and the mathematical structures that interpret them and in which they are true, i.e. between scientific theories as (...) linguistic systems and their non-linguistic models. In philosophy of science literature there are two main approaches to the structure of scientific theories, the statement or syntactic approach -- advocated by Carnap, Hempel and Nagel -- and the non- statement or semantic approach --advocated, among others, by Suppes, the structuralists, Beth, Van Fraassen, Giere, Wojcicki. In conclusion, I briefly review some of the usual realist inspired questions about the possibility and character of relations between scientific theories and reality as implied by the various approaches I discuss in the course of the article. The models of a scientific theory should indeed be adequate to the phenomena, but if the theory is 'adequate' to (true in) its conceptual (mathematical) models as well, we have a model-theoretic realism that addresses the possible meaning and reference of 'theoretical entities' without relapsing into the metaphysics typical of the usual scientific realist approaches. (shrink)

The semantic, or model-theoretic, approach to theories has recently come under criticism on two fronts: (i) it is claimed that it cannot account for the wide diversity of models employed in scientific practice—a claim which has led some to propose a “deflationary” account of models; (ii) it is further contended that the sense of “model” used by the approach differs from that given in model theory. Our aim in the present work is to articulate a possible response (...) to these claims, drawing on recent developments within the semantic approach itself. Thus, the first is answered by utilizing the notion of a “partial structure”, first introduced in this context by da Costa and French in 1990. The second claim is undermined by consideration of van Fraassen's understanding of “model” which corresponds well with that evinced by modem mathematicians. This latter discussion, in particular, has an impact on the continuing debate regarding the relative merits of the semantic and syntactic views and the developments presented here can be taken to provide further support to the former. (shrink)

The debate between critics of syntactic and semantic approaches to the formalization of scientific theories has been going on for over 50 years. I structure the debate in light of a recent exchange between Hans Halvorson, Clark Glymour, and Bas van Fraassen and argue that the only remaining disagreement concerns the alleged difference in the dependence of syntactic and semantic approaches on languages of predicate logic. This difference turns out to be illusory.

A complete collection of Frank Sibley's articles on philosophical aesthetics, this volume includes five, remarkable, hitherto unpublished papers written in Sibley's later years. It addresses many topics, among them the nature of aesthetic qualities versus non-aesthetic qualities, the relation of aesthetic description to aesthetic evaluation, the different levels of evaluation, and the objectivity of aesthetic judgement. The later papers constitute both a significant development of Sibley's individual approach to aesthetics, such as his discussion of the distinction between attributive (...) and predicative uses of adjectives and of the aesthetic significance of tastes and smells, a topic Sibley considered to be much neglected. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an analysis of neg-raising inferences as scalar implicatures. The main motivation for this account as opposed to a presupposition-based approach like Gajewski (Linguist Philos 30(3):289–328, 2007) comes from the differences between presuppositions and neg-raising inferences. In response to this issue, Gajewski (2007) argues that neg-raising predicates are soft presuppositional triggers and adopts the account of how their presuppositions arise by Abusch (J Semantics 27(1):1–44, 2010). However, I argue that there is a difference between soft (...) triggers and neg-raising predicates in their behavior in embeddings; a difference that is straightforwardly accounted for in the present approach. Furthermore, by adopting Abusch’s (2010) account of soft triggers, Gajewski (2007) inherits the assumptions of a pragmatic principle of disjunctive closure and of a non-standard interaction between semantics and pragmatics—assumptions that are not needed by the present proposal, which is just based on a regular theory of scalar implicatures. I also show that the arguments that Gajewski (2007) presents in favor of the presuppositional account can be explained also by the scalar implicatures-based approach proposed here. Finally, while the main point of the paper is a comparison with the presuppositional account, I sketch a preliminary comparison with more syntactic approaches to neg-raising. (shrink)

The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...) of logical form—roughly, the level of linguistic representation which feeds into the interpretation procedures—and have substantial implications for traditional philosophical disputes about the nature of language. Specifically, contextualism and semantic minimalism, construed as competing hypotheses about the nature and degree of context-sensitivity at the level of logical form, suggest different approaches to the over-generation problem. In this paper, I explore the implications of pairing logicality with various forms of contextualism and semantic minimalism. I argue that to adequately solve the over-generation problem, logicality should be implemented in a constrained contextualist framework. (shrink)

While it is legitimate to study ideas and concepts related to information in their broadest sense, that formal approaches properly belong in specific contexts is a fact that is too often ignored. That their use outside these contexts amounts to misuse or imprecise use cannot and should not be overlooked. This paper presents a framework based on algorithmic information theory for discussing concepts of relevance to information in philosophical contexts. Special attention will be paid to the intersection of syntactic (...) and semantic variants and connections. (shrink)

‘Case’ and ‘grammatical relations’ are central to syntactic theory, but rigorous treatments of these concepts in surface-oriented grammars such as Dynamic Syntax are pending. In this respect, Japanese is worthy of mention; in this language, the nominative case particle ga, which typically marks a subject, may mark an object in certain syntactic contexts, and more than one instance of ga may be present within a single clause. These patterns cannot be captured if we simply assume that ga marks (...) a subject. In the present article, we aim to advance formal aspects of the framework, especially the mechanism of ‘structural underspecification,’ by proposing that the parse of a case particle maximally excludes potential landing sites of an unfixed node at the time of parsing the case particle, delaying the resolution of the unfixed node until a subsequent stage of structure building. This maximal exclusion approach to structural underspecification accounts for a range of case marking patterns and their connections with grammatical relations. (shrink)

In recent years, some authors have shown a renewed interest in interpretivist theories of folk psychological ascription [Hutto 2013. “Fictionalism About Folk Psychology.” The Monist 96 (4): 582–604.; Mölder 2010. Mind Ascribed: An Elaboration and Defence of Interpretivism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Sanchez-Curry 2020. “Interpretivism and Norms.” Philosophical Studies 177 (4): 905–930.; Mölder 2021. “Interpretivism Without Judgement-Dependence.” Philosophia 49 (2): 611–615.; Slors 2015. "Interpretivism and the Meaning of Mental State Ascriptions." Studia Philosophica Estonica, 10 (2): 18–27.]. Part of the virtue of (...) interpretivism lies in its ability to provide an answer to elminativist arguments without falling into the assumptions and problems of intentional realism. However, some recent developments in semantic expressivism applied to normative expressions could help to build an alternative theory to interpretivism that would enjoy the same virtues. The aim of this paper is to present and defend an expressivist approach to the status of folk psychological ascriptions. According to this view, mental states ascriptions are evaluative and non-descriptive statement that express or reflect certain normative standards or values of the attributor. After presenting the view and contrasting it with interpretivist positions, with which expressivism shares important motivations and claims, I present two arguments to favor the expressivist analysis. In line with the first argument, expressivism can account for fundamental aspects of disagreements regarding mental attributions while the second highlights the capacity of the view to explain the widespread justificatory and exculpatory uses of mental states ascriptions. (shrink)

The past 25 years have seen an increasing interest in later medieval logic and in the theory of supposition. a review of literature reveals, however, wide differences of interpretation of supposition-theory. taking the theory in the widest sense as a contribution to semiotic or the theory of signs, this study shows how supposition has been variously treated as a syntactical, semantical and even pragmatical theory. the main views of p. boehner, e. moody, p. geach, d. p. henry, w. c. kneale (...) and l. m. de rijk are examined, compared and appraised with respect to overall progress in the elucidation of supposition-theory. (shrink)

The problem of merging several ontologies has important applications in the Semantic Web, medical ontology engineering and other domains where information from several distinct sources needs to be integrated in a coherent manner.We propose to view ontology merging as a problem of social choice, i.e. as a problem of aggregating the input of a set of individuals into an adequate collective decision. That is, we propose to view ontology merging as ontology aggregation. As a first step in this (...) direction, we formulate several desirable properties for ontology aggregators, we identify the incompatibility of some of these properties, and we define and analyse several simple aggregation procedures. Our approach is closely related to work in judgment aggregation, but with the crucial difference that we adopt an open world assumption, by distinguishing between facts not included in an agent’s ontology and facts explicitly negated in an agent’s ontology. (shrink)

Synthesizing important research traditions in information theory, structuralist semiotics, and generative linguistics, at least three main types of semiotic indeterminacy must be distinguished: Kolmogorov’s notion of randomness defined as sequential incompressibility, de Saussure’s principle of contingency of sign which ensures the possibility of translation between different sign systems, and Chomsky’s idea of indefiniteness in generative mechanisms as a requirement for the explanation of semiotic creativity. These types of semiotic indeterminacy form an abstract system useful for the description of concrete sign (...) processes in their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic dimension. In his philosophical reflections on modern biology, Jacques Monod used the conceptual opposition chance versus necessity to analyse several phenomena of indeterminacy (especially in molecular biology). The biosemiotic approach to life permits to apply the suggestedsystem of semiotic indeterminacy on these phenomena. (shrink)

In recent years, some authors have shown a renewed interest in interpretivist theories of folk psychological ascription [Hutto 2013. “Fictionalism About Folk Psychology.” The Monist 96 (4): 582–604.; Mölder 2010. Mind Ascribed: An Elaboration and Defence of Interpretivism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Sanchez-Curry 2020. “Interpretivism and Norms.” Philosophical Studies 177 (4): 905– 930.; Mölder 2021. “Interpretivism Without Judgement- Dependence.” Philosophia 49 (2): 611–615.; Slors 2015. "Interpretivism and the Meaning of Mental State Ascriptions." Studia Philosophica Estonica, 10 (2): 18–27.]. Part of the (...) virtue of interpretivism lies in its ability to provide an answer to elminativist arguments without falling into the assumptions and problems of intentional realism. However, some recent developments in semantic expressivism applied to normative expressions could help to build an alternative theory to interpretivism that would enjoy the same virtues. The aim of this paper is to present and defend an expressivist approach to the status of folk psychological ascriptions. According to this view, mental states ascriptions are evaluative and non-descriptive statement that express or reflect certain normative standards or values of the attributor. After presenting the view and contrasting it with interpretivist positions, with which expressivism shares important motivations and claims, I present two arguments to favor the expressivist analysis. In line with the first argument, expressivism can account for fundamental aspects of disagreements regarding mental attributions while the second highlights the capacity of the view to explain the widespread justificatory and exculpatory uses of mental states ascriptions. (shrink)

Over the last few years, a new methodology to address the P versus NP problem has been developed, based on searching for borderlines between the nonefficiency of computing models and the presumed efficiency. These borderlines can be seen as frontiers of efficiency, which are crucial in this methodology. “Translating,” in some sense, an efficient solution in a presumably efficient model to an efficient solution in a nonefficient model would give an affirmative answer to problem P versus NP. In (...) the framework of Membrane Computing, the key of this approach is to detect the syntactic or semantic ingredients that are needed to pass from a nonefficient class of membrane systems to a presumably efficient one. This paper deals with tissue P systems with communication rules of type symport/antiport allowing the evolution of the objects triggering the rules. In previous works, frontiers of efficiency were found in these kinds of membrane systems both with division rules and with separation rules. However, since they were not optimal, it is interesting to refine these frontiers. In this work, optimal frontiers of the efficiency are obtained in terms of the total number of objects involved in the communication rules used for that kind of membrane systems. These optimizations could be easier to translate, if possible, to efficient solutions in a nonefficient model. (shrink)

Experimental data suggest that the division between the visual ventral and dorsal pathways may indeed indicate that static and dynamical information is processed separately. Contrary to Hurford, it is suggested that the ventral pathway primarily generates representations of objects, whereas the dorsal pathway produces representations of events. The semantic object/event distinction may relate to the morpho-syntactic noun/verb distinction.

Two views of scientific theories dominated the philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the syntactic view of the logical empiricists and the semantic view of their successors. I show that neither view is adequate to provide a proper understanding of the connections that exist between theories at different times. I outline a new approach, a hybrid of the two, that provides the right structural connection between earlier and later theories, and that takes due account of the (...) importance of the mathematical models of a theory and of the various distinct formulations that pick out these models. (shrink)

The distinction between the syntactic and the semantic approach to scientific theories emerged in formal philosophy of science. The semantic approach is commonly considered more advanced and more successful than the syntactic one, but the transition from the one approach to the other was not brought about without any loss. In essence, it is the formal analysis of atomic propositions and the analysis of deductive reasoning that dropped out of consideration in at least (...) some of the elaborated versions of the semantic approach. In structuralist theory of science, as founded by Sneed and Stegmüller, the focus is on global propositions concerning the question of whether or not certain empirical systems satisfy a set-theoretic predicate that encodes the axioms of a scientific theory. Hence, an analysis of deductive reasoning from atomic premisses with the help of a given theory is missing. The objective of the present paper is to develop a deductive system on the basis of the structuralist framework. This system comes with a novel formulation of empirical propositions in structuralism. (shrink)

Within the cognitive sciences, most researchers assume that it is the job of linguists to investigate how language is represented, and that they do so largely by building theories based on explicit judgments about patterns of acceptability – whereas it is the task of psychologists to determine how language is processed, and that in doing so, they do not typically question the linguists' representational assumptions. We challenge this division of labor by arguing that structural priming provides an implicit method of (...) investigating linguistic representations that should end the current reliance on acceptability judgments. Moreover, structural priming has now reached sufficient methodological maturity to provide substantial evidence about such representations. We argue that evidence from speakers' tendency to repeat their own and others' structural choices supports a linguistic architecture involving a single shallow level of syntax connected to a semantic level containing information about quantification, thematic relations, and information structure, as well as to a phonological level. Many of the linguistic distinctions often used to support complex (or multilevel) syntactic structure are instead captured by semantics; however, the syntactic level includes some specification of “missing” elements that are not realized at the phonological level. We also show that structural priming provides evidence about the consistency of representations across languages and about language development. In sum, we propose that structural priming provides a new basis for understanding the nature of language. (shrink)

We extend our general approach to characterizing information to multi-agent systems. In particular, we provide a formal description of an agent''s knowledge containing exactly the information conveyed by some (honest) formula . Only knowing is important for dynamic agent systems in two ways. First of all, one wants to compare different states of knowledge of an agent and, secondly, for agent a''s decisions, it may be relevant that (he knows that) agent b does not know more than . There (...) are three ways to study the question whether a formula can be interpreted as minimal information. The first method is semantic and inspects minimal models for (with respect to some information order on states). The second one is syntactic and searches for stable expansions, minimal with respect to some language *. The third method is a deductive test, known as the disjunction property. We present a condition under which the three methods are equivalent. Then, we show how to construct the order by collecting layered orders. Focusing on the multi-agent case we identify languages * for various orders , and show how they yield different notions of honesty for different multi-modal systems. We then provide several tools for studying honesty types and illustrate their usefulness on a number of examples, for three modal systems of particular interest. Finally, we relate the different notions of minimal knowledge, and describe possible patterns of honesty for these systems. (shrink)

Modal inquiry is plagued by methodological problems. The best-developed views on modal semantics and modal ontology take modalstatements to be true in virtue of relations between possible worlds. Unfortunately, such views turn modal epistemology into a mystery, and this paper is about ways to avoid that problem. It looks at different remedies suggested by Quine, Blackburn and Peacocke and finds them all wanting. But although Peacocke’s version of the popular conceptualist approach fails to give a normative account of correct (...) modal judgments, it goes a long way in suggesting how we come to make particular judgments of absolute necessity. Building on that suggestion, the paper explains how conceptualism can be transformed into a radically naturalist account of correct modal judgment that fits into a more general approach to naturalized semantics, represented by the writings of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan, and suggests some lessons for modal epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate AGM belief contraction operators by using the tools of algebraic logic. We generalize the notion of contraction to arbitrary finitary propositional logics, and we show how to switch from a syntactic-based approach to a semantic one. This allows to build a solid bridge between the validity of AGM postulates in a propositional logic and specific algebraic properties of its intended algebraic counterpart. Such a connection deserves particular attention when we deal with maxichoice (...) contractions, as studied in the final part of the paper. (shrink)

We extend our general approach to characterizing information to multi-agent systems. In particular, we provide a formal description of an agent's knowledge containing exactly the information conveyed by some (honest) formula φ. Only knowing is important for dynamic agent systems in two ways. First of all, one wants to compare different states of knowledge of an agent and, secondly, for agent a's decisions, it may be relevant that (he knows that) agent b does not know more than φ. There (...) are three ways to study the question whether a formula φ can be interpreted as minimal information. The first method is semantic and inspects 'minimal' models for φ (with respect to some information order ≤ on states). The second one is syntactic and searches for stable expansions, minimal with respect to some language $\scr{L}^{\ast}$ . The third method is a deductive test, known as the disjunction property. We present a condition under which the three methods are equivalent. Then, we show how to construct the order ≤ by collecting 'layered orders'. Focusing on the multi-agent case we identify languages $\scr{L}^{\ast}$ for various orders ≤, and show how they yield different notions of honesty for different multi-modal systems. We then provide several tools for studying honesty types and illustrate their usefulness on a number of examples, for three modal systems of particular interest. Finally, we relate the different notions of minimal knowledge, and describe possible patterns of honesty for these systems. (shrink)

‘Case’ and ‘grammatical relations’ are central to syntactic theory, but rigorous treatments of these concepts in surface-oriented grammars such as Dynamic Syntax are pending. In this respect, Japanese is worthy of mention; in this language, the nominative case particle ga, which typically marks a subject, may mark an object in certain syntactic contexts, and more than one instance of ga may be present within a single clause. These patterns cannot be captured if we simply assume that ga marks (...) a subject. In the present article, we aim to advance formal aspects of the framework, especially the mechanism of ‘structural underspecification,’ by proposing that the parse of a case particle maximally excludes potential landing sites of an unfixed node at the time of parsing the case particle, delaying the resolution of the unfixed node until a subsequent stage of structure building. This maximal exclusion approach to structural underspecification accounts for a range of case marking patterns and their connections with grammatical relations. (shrink)