We develop a new theory of the cognitive changes around 4 years of age by trying to explain why understanding of false belief and of alternative naming emerge at this age. We make use of the notion of discourse referents as it is used in File Change Semantics, one of the early forms of the more widely known Discourse Representation Theory. The assumed cognitive change exists in how children can link DRs in their mind to external referents. The (...) younger children check whether the conditions for a DR match the conditions of an external entity. The older children, in addition, have an explicit understanding of reference in virtue of making explicit identity assertions. This involves the metarepresentational ability of representing that different DRs represent the same external referent, which — we argue — is required for alternative naming and for the false belief task. (shrink)

Ever since Kripke’s influential arguments against descriptivism philosophers have attempted to provide solutions to Frege’s puzzle of substitution failure that adhere to Naïve Semantics—the view that names contribute their referents and referents alone to propositions expressed by sentences containing them. Recently, philosophers have also appealed to psychological objects called mental files, which are used to represent and store information on individuals, in solving the puzzle. Combining the two promises to revive a simple commonsensical theory while, at least prima facie, (...) doing away with the need to rely on Fregean senses. Though I welcome the combined approach, I argue that the only plausible version of it is a pretense-based one. (shrink)

The inclusion of Semantic Web technologies into the lexicographic ‘Middle High German Conceptual Database’ (MHDBDB) is a challenge for this long-term project. Since the 1970 s the Middle High German Concept Database has aimed to provide an onomasiological dictionary for Middle High German. The latest technological revision dates back to 1992, so there is a growing demand for more contemporary infrastructure and usability. The data models themselves, as well as the linking of data sets with authority files, need to be (...) modernised to ensure compatibility with the Semantic Web. This paper summarises the current discussion on formats and ontologies for online dictionaries with a focus on Middle High German lexicography. (shrink)

In this essay, I appeal to the mental file approach in order to give an anti-realist semantic analysis of statements containing fictional names. I claim that fictive and parafictive uses of them express conceptual, though not general, propositions constituted by mental files, anchored in the conceptual world of the corresponding fictional story. Moreover, by positing a referential shift determined by the presence of a simulative referential intention characteristic of those uses, it is possible to take them to be true (...) with respect to those conceptual worlds. As for metafictive uses, since they are grounded on mixed intentions, they are considered to express hybrid propositions, partly conceptual and partly referential. (shrink)

Fictional names pose a difficult puzzle for semantics. We can truthfully maintain that Frodo is a hobbit, while at the same time admitting that Frodo does not exist. To reconcile this paradox I propose a way to formalize the interpretation of fiction as ‘prescriptions to imagine’ (Walton 1990) within an asymmetric semantic framework in the style of Kamp (1990). In my proposal, fictional statements are analyzed as dynamic updates on an imagination component of the interpreter’s mental state, while plain (...) assertions are updates on a belief component. Proper names – regular, empty, or fictional – are uniformly analyzed as presupposition triggers. The possibility of different attitude components referentially depending on each other is what ultimately allows us to account for the central paradox mentioned above. (shrink)

We offer an interpretation of the mental files framework that eliminates the metaphor of files, information being contained in files, etc. The guiding question is whether, once we move beyond the metaphors, there is any theoretical role for files. We claim not. We replace the file-metaphor with two theses: the semantic thesis that there are irreducibly relational representational facts (viz. facts about the coordination of representations); and the metasemantic thesis that processes tied to information-relations ground those facts. In its (...) canonical statement, the ‘file’-theory makes reference to a certain kind of relational representational feature, and a certain kind of mental activity. Mental files need not come into it. In short, we posit mental filing without mental files. Our interpretation avoids awkward problems that arise on the standard interpretation and clarifies the explanatory commitments of the theory. (shrink)

Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL) is a variant of Predicate Logic introduced by Groenendijk and Stokhof. One rationale behind the introduction of DPL is that it is closer to Natural Language than ordinary Predicate Logic in the way it treats scope.In this paper I develop some variants of DPL that can more easily approximate Natural Language in some further aspects. Specifically I add flexibility in the treatment of polarity and and some further flexibility in the treatment of scope.I develop a framework (...) that is intended to encourage further experimentation with alternative variants of DPL. In this framework the new meanings are, roughly,indexed sets of old meanings. The indices can be viewed as "files'' or "storage devices.''Each such file supports a separate "information stream.''The interaction of the new meanings is "programmed'' with the help of certain monoids acting on the indices. The construction of the new meanings can be viewed as an application of the Grothendieck Construction to monoids. (shrink)

The paper deals with the understanding of proper names. Though the theme goes across various disciplines – e.g. semantics, epistemology, psychology – the paper examines only selected semantic and cognitive aspects of the problem. The question runs: How should we comprehend the thesis of understanding a proper name as knowing what the name refers to? What kind of knowledge is involved here? The question is posed within the direct reference theory framework enriched by the notion of singular proposition and (...) the compositionality principle. The distinction between an expression and an utterance of it is accepted and the original question is split up accordingly. As for expressions , to understand a proper name is to grasp a meaning axiom along the lines of D. Davidson and J. McDowell. As for utterances of expressions, to understand an utterance of a proper name is to know a piece of information concerning the referent of the name; ideally, it is a fact that can be expressed by an identity statement claiming that the referent of the name under discussion is identical with the individual about which the speaker has a mental file at her disposal. (shrink)

Some years ago, Howard Wettstein provided an original defense of the New Theory of Reference (NTR), the doctrine that singular terms such as names and indexicals are directly referential terms (DRTs), contributing only their reference to the truth-conditions of the tokened sentence they occur in. Wettstein maintained that in order to be semantically adequate, NTR does not have to account for what he calls Frege’s data on cognitive significance, those puzzling facts about language that prompt one to think that meaning (...) entails more than reference to (real) objects. He later put forward another, apparently paradoxical, thesis, namely that whatever this cognitive significance that explains Frege’s data is, it cannot be reduced to the representations one has in one’s mind. In what follows, however, I will first apply the notion of referential anaphorical transfer to mixed contexts in order to show that a New Theorist has to reject Wettstein’s initial thesis as it stands, although she may endorse a weaker version of it, one that especially tallies with his second thesis. I will further argue that, insofar as rejecting Wettstein’s initial thesis does not force the New Theorist to revert to a representional conception of cognitive significance, in particular one based on the notion of a mental file, the latter thesis is absolutely correct. It is thus fitted to become a cornerstone of the New Theory, whatever form of non-mentalistic interpretation the New Theorist might wish to give to the notion of cognitive significance. (shrink)

This book is a sequel to Recanati’s Mental Files (OUP 2012), and pursues the exploration of the mental file framework for thinking about concepts and singular reference. Mental files are based on 'epistemically rewarding' relations to objects in the environment. Standing in such relations to objects puts the subject in a position to gain information regarding them—information which goes into the file based on the relevant relation. Files do not merely store information about objects, however. They refer to (...) them and serve as singular terms in the language of thought, with a relational (nondescriptivist) semantics. Crucially, files also play the role of ‘modes of presentation’. They are used to account for cognitive significance phenomena illustrated by so-called ‘Frege cases’. This book considers what happens to mental files in a dynamic setting. Mental files are construed as both continuants (dynamic files) and as time-slices thereof (static files). Dynamic files are needed to account for confusion, recognition and tracking. The book considers what happens to the relation of coreference de jure, central to the functional characterization of files, when one adopts a dynamic perspective. Only a weak form of coreference de jure is said to hold between stages of the same dynamic file. The second part of the book argues that communication involves interpersonal dynamic files. Special attention is paid to the communication of indexical thoughts (de se contents), and to communication using proper names. (shrink)

Princeton University Press, 984. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (3.9 MB).

"Database of medieval Latin Texts on logic and semantics in medieval manuscripts, founded on the card files of Professor em. L.M. de Rijk." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 40(), pp. 129–130.

This is a brief letter outlining speculative ideas for semantic web reasoning about information assurance. Much work has been done on the development of semantic web applications for reasoning about information assurance. A significant portion of this work is focused upon semantic web ontologies and reasoning about security policies and the underlying implementation of those policies. While numerous semantic web-based security policy ontologies and reasoners exist, both academically and commercially, I will briefly focus on ideas related to solutions to the (...) problem of managing semantic web rules using algorithmic information theory. (shrink)

In this work I reply to Zoltán Vecsey’s criticisms of the semantic account of fictional names I put forward in Orlando. The main tenet of that proposal is that fictional names refer to individual concepts, which I understand in terms of mental files. In Vecsey, the author presents three main objections: no referential shift can be ascribed to fictional names, fictional names are supposed to play two conflicting functions, and the mental file framework is incompatible with an antirealist view (...) of fictional objects. Although the objections are deep and thoughtful, the challenge they involve can be met if certain aspects of the proposal are clarified and developed. (shrink)

Linguistic choices have different attributions beyond their literal meaning according to their contexts. This paper looks at the variations in the discourses seen in the written colonial agreements and treaties during the Malabar conquest. The study employs the archived documents of various discourses during this period as a part of power shifting from the local elites to the colonial power. It explores how power is intertwined in the linguistic choices of different communication files. The study employs a hybrid methodology of (...) forensic linguistics and legal history. The analysis progresses in two phases: i) the linguistic attributions of power in the communications between the local elites and the colonial authorities and ii) the comparative analysis of variations in the linguistic choices by the colonial authorities correlating their varying power positions over the given period. It explores the dynamics of the linguistic choices of the local elites initially as a powerful entity in communication with the colonial authorities. The analysis shows a variation in the linguistic choices of the colonial authorities that suggests how they are used to reflect the power positions on a scale from weaker to powerful along the timeline. The paper argues that the linguistic choices of the colonial communication files aided them in projecting their power to society and assisted as one of the tools for reiterating their power position in various contexts. (shrink)

This paper proposes a semantics of anaphora in attitude contexts within the framework of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT). The paper first focuses on intentional identity, a special kind of cross-attitudinal anaphora. Based on the DRT semantics of attitude reports summarized by Kamp et al. (in: D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (Eds.), Handbook of philosophical logic, 2011), the author proposes a semantics of intentional identity that implements the following two ideas: (1) indefinites and pronouns appearing in attitude contexts (...) introduce _metadiscourse referents_, which represent one’s mental files and record appearances of discourse referents in attitude contexts; and (2) what underlies the relevant kind of anaphoric links between indefinites and pronouns across attitude contexts is _the coordination relation_ between mental files, which is represented by using metadiscourse referents. Next, the paper expands the semantics to cover _de re_ anaphora, in which an anaphoric pronoun in an attitude context takes as its antecedent an expression appearing outside any attitude context. (shrink)

The mobile game “Immortal Conquest,” created by NetEase Games, caused a dramatic user dissatisfaction event after an introduction of a sudden and uninvited “pay-to-win” update. As a result, many players filed grievances against NetEase in a court. The official game website issued three apologies, with mix results, to mitigate the crisis. The goal of the present study is to understand user feedback content from the perspective of Situational Crisis Communication Theory through semantic network analysis and sentiment analysis to explore how (...) an enterprise’s crisis communication strategy affects users’ attitudes. First, our results demonstrate that the diminishing crisis communication strategies do not change players’ negative attitudes. It was not a failure because it successfully alleviated the players’ legal complaints and refocused their attention on the game itself. Second, the rebuild strategy was effective because it significantly increased the percentage of positive emotions and regenerated expectations for the game. The litigation crisis was identified within gamer communications with respect to Chinese gaming companies for the first time. Nevertheless, this does not indicate an increase in overall legal awareness among the larger Chinese population. It may only reflect greater legal awareness among Chinese online gamers. Fourth, gamers emphasized that they and enterprises should be equally involved when communicating with each other. Finally, in-game paid items should be reasonably priced, otherwise, they will drive users to competitors. (shrink)

Our paper discusses Recanati’s application of the mental files apparatus to reports of beliefs and other attitudes. While mental files appear early on in Recanati’s work on belief-reports, his latest book introduces the concept of indexed files (a.k.a. vicarious files) and puts it to work to explain how we can report other people’s attitudes and to account for opacity phenomena. Our goal is twofold: we show that the approach in Recanati’s Mental Files (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) departs significantly from (...) his earlier proposals as well as from the very spirit of truth-conditional pragmatics; and we argue that the indexed files approach, qua an attempt to provide a semantics for belief-reports, is untenable. -/- . (shrink)

Le présent travail vise à proposer une description de la métaphore filée dans le cadre de la Théorie des Blocs Sémantiques. Il s’agira de soutenir qu’il existe au moins deux modes de construction pour les discours correspondant à la structure que nous appellerons « minimale » de la métaphore filée. Nous chercherons à montrer que de tels discours se laissent décrire notamment en termes de « schéma argumentatif signifié » et « schéma argumentatif préfiguré ».

I present a concrete DRT-based syntax and semantics for the representation of mental states in the style of Kamp. This system is closely related to Recanati’s Mental Files framework, but adds a crucial distinction between anchors, the analogues of mental files, and attitudes like belief, desire and imagination. Attitudes are represented as separate compartments that can be referentially dependent on anchors. I show how the added distinctions help defend the useful notion of an acquaintance-based mental file against Ninan’s (...) :368–377 2015) recent challenge involving counterfactual de re attitudes. (shrink)

A recent version of the mental file framework argues that the antirealist theory of fictional objects can be reconciled with the claim that fictional utterances involving character names express propositions that are true in the real world. This hybrid view rests on the following three claims: character names lack referents but express a mode of presentation, fictional utterances introduce oblique contexts where character names refer to their modes of presentation, and modes of presentation are mental files. In this critical (...) paper, I will argue that the proposed view runs into a number of theory-internal problems. These problems arise partly from the unclarities inherent in the notion of mental file, and partly from a mistaken semantics for character names. I will also argue that adherents of fictional realism can make use of the notion of mental file without encountering similar difficulties. (shrink)

Accounts for referential communication (and especially communication by means of definite descriptions and indexicals) in the mental file framework.

This paper will critically examine two solutions to Frege’s puzzle: the Millian-Russellian solution proposed by Salmon and Braun, which invokes non-semantic modes of presentation (guises, ways of believing or the like); and Fine’s relationalist solution, which appeals to semantic coordination. Special attention will be devoted to discussing the conception of modes of presentation as mental files and to elucidating the nature of coordination. A third solution to Frege’s puzzle will be explored which, like Salmon’s and Braun’s, adopts the Millian-Russellian (...) class='Hi'>semantics but, like Fine’s, involves coordination instead of modes of presentation; however, coordination will not be conceived as a semantic relation but as a cognitive and subjective relation, which provides no contribution to semantic content. This novel Millian-Russellian account involving cognitive coordination will be labelled cognitive relationism. (shrink)

Our paper proposes to follow the history of the “Burning Bush”, a spiritual and cultural movement in the 1940s in Romania that had proposed the solution of spiritual resistance to communism through culture and faith. The analysis holds as key-concepts: discourse analysis, narrativity, semantics and hermeneutics, following the discourse of the Securitate’s archives with reference to the Burning Bush in terms of: - conflictual discourses: inquisitor vs. imprisoned; - motives and themes of the incriminatory discourse of the Securitate; - (...) the existence of a master narrative of the archives. (shrink)

There are two kinds of semantic theories of anaphora. Some, such as Heim’s File Change Semantics, Groenendijk and Stokhof’s Dynamic Predicate Logic, or Muskens’ Compositional DRT (CDRT), seem to require full coindexing of anaphora and their antecedents prior to interpretation. Others, such as Kamp’s Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), do not require this coindexing and seem to have an important advantage here. In this squib I will sketch a procedure that the first group of theories may help themselves to (...) so that they can interleave interpretation and coindexing in DRT’s way. (shrink)

How do humans manage to keep track of a gradually changing object or person as the same persisting individual despite the fact that the extraction of information about this individual must often rely on heterogeneous information sources and heterogeneous tracking methods? The article introduces the Empirical Tracking of Individuals theory to address this problem. This theory proposes an analysis of the concept of integrated tracking, which refers to the capacity to acquire, store, and update information about the identity and location (...) of individuals in our environment. It hypothesizes that certain functions of attention are a key to explaining how the cognitive flexibility of the human mind overcomes the heterogeneity of sources and methods in integrated tracking. At least two premises lend support to this hypothesis. First, heterogeneity of tracking sources is overcome by the combination of information from multiple perceptual modalities and a phenomenon of multisensory 'transparency'. Second, heterogeneity of tracking sources and methods may also be overcome by inferences that combine information across domains to acquire reasons to believe propositions about the target's location and identity. (shrink)

In this paper, I will provide a counterexample to Recanati's account of first-person communication (1995, 2010, 2012). In particular, I will show that Recanati's constraints are not sufficient for the success of first-person communication. My argument against Recanati's account is parallel to Recanati's argument against neo-Russellian accounts, and shows that the same problem resurfaces even in the presence of linguistically encoded mode of presentation in a neo-Fregean framework of mental files.

In traditional formal semantics the notions of reference, truth and satisfaction are basic and that of representation is derivative and dispensable. If a level of representation is included in the formal presentation of the theory, it is included as a heuristic. Semantics in the traditional sense has no bearing on any form of mental processing. When reference is understood within this framework, cognitive neuroscience cannot possibly provide any insights into the nature of reference. Traditional semantics, however, has (...) numerous shortcomings that render it inadequate as an account of natural language. Dynamic semantic theories, such as discourse representation theory (DRT), treat ever­growing, revisable mental representations as the basic semantic entities. Within this framework, there are two central notions of reference. New information may refer back to previously introduced discourse referents and discourse referents may refer to worldly entities. Because DRT treats mental representations as indispensable elements of the theory, evidence from neuroscience, particularly the recording of electroencephalograms (EEG) and its derivative event-­related potentials (ERPs), can reasonably be thought to shed light on meaning and reference within this framework. In this chapter I first review the advantages of DRT in accommodating linguistic data and then review data from neuroscience that seem to support it. Finally, I consider some methodological concerns that have been raised about the neuroscientific approach to semantics. (shrink)

So-called 'dynamic' semantic theories such as Kamp's discourse representation theory and Heim's file change semantics account for such phenomena as cross-sentential anaphora, donkey anaphora, and the novelty condition on indefinites, but compare unfavorably with Montague semantics in some important respects (clarity and simplicity of mathematical foundations, compositionality, handling of quantification and coordination). Preliminary efforts have been made by Muskens and by de Groote to revise and extend Montague semantics to cover dynamic phenomena. We present a new (...) higher-order theory of discourse semantics which improves on their accounts by incorporating a more articulated notion of context inspired by ideas due to David Lewis and to Craige Roberts. On our account, a context consists of a common ground of mutually accepted propositions together with a set of discourse referents preordered by relative salience. Employing a richer notion of contexts enables us to extend our coverage beyond pronominal anaphora to a wider range of presuppositional phenomena, such as the factivity of certain sentential-complement verbs, resolution of anaphora associated with arbitrarily complex definite descriptions, presupposition 'holes' such as negation, and the independence condition on the antecedents of conditionals. Formally, our theory is expressed within a higher-order logic with natural number type, separation-style subtyping, and dependent coproducts parameterized by the natural numbers. The system of semantic types builds on proposals due to Thomason and to Pollard in which the type of propositions (static meanings of sentential utterances) is taken as basic and worlds are constructed from propositions (rather than the other way around as in standard Montague semantics). (shrink)

An approach in achieving semantic interoperability among heterogeneous systems is to offer infrastructure to assist with linking and integration using a foundational ontology. Due to the creation of multiple foundational ontologies, this also means linking and integrating those ones. In order to achieve this, we have selected the widely used foundational ontologies DOLCE, BFO, and GFO, and their related modules, on which to perform ontology mediation (alignment, mapping, and merging). The foundational ontologies were aligned by identifying correspondences between ontology entities (...) using seven tools, documentation, and our manual alignments, and comparing their effectiveness. Thereafter, based on the alignments, we created correspondences in the ontology files resulting in entity mappings and merged ontologies. However, during the mapping process, it was found that differences in foundational ontologies, such as their hierarchical structure, conflicting axioms due to complement and disjointness, and incompatible domain and range restriction, cause logical inconsistencies in foundational ontology alignments, thereby greatly reducing the number of mappings. We analyse and present these logical inconsistencies with possible solutions to some of them. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion has forcefully criticized both Donnellan's and Evans’ claims on the contingent a priori, and she has developed an “acquaintanceless” account of singular thoughts as an alternative view. Jeshion claims that one can fully grasp a singular thought expressed by a sentence including a proper name, even if its reference has been descriptively fixed and one’s access to the referent is “mediated” by that description. But she still wants to reject “semantic instrumentalism”, the view (...) that “there are no substantive conditions of any sort on having singular thought. We can freely generate singular thoughts at will by manipulating the apparatus of direct reference.” Her account of singular thoughts is a psychological one, rejecting any epistemic requirement. Having singular thoughts is for her a matter of deploying “mental files” or “dossiers” that play a significant role in the cognitive life of the individual. This paper elaborates on an alternative descriptivist-friendly view, which has important points of contact with Jeshion’s. It differs, particularly in that it is an epistemic view; it is only a broadly understood acquaintance view, as it will transpire, but this does not make it a mere terminological variation on Jeshion’s acquaintanceless one. To argue for it, the paper discusses some relevant aspects of the semantics of fictional discourse. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper I present a defence of the Austinian semantic approach to incomplete quantifiers and similar phenomena (section 2-4). It is part of my defence of Austinian semantics that it incorporates a cognitive dimension (section 4). This cognitive dimension makes it possible to connect Austinian semantics to various cognitive theories of discourse interpretation. In the second part of the paper (sections 5-7), I establish connections between Austinian semantics and four particular theories: • (...) the theory of reference and modes of presentation in terms of information files (see e.g. Perry 1993), • the theory of discourse interpretation as involving a process of context selection (see Sperber and Wilson 1986), • the theory of informational structure (for a survey, see Lambrecht 1994), • the theory of mental spaces (Fauconnier 1985). (shrink)

This essay uses a mental files theory of singular thought—a theory saying that singular thought about and reference to a particular object requires possession of a mental store of information taken to be about that object—to explain how we could have such thoughts about abstract mathematical objects. After showing why we should want an explanation of this I argue that none of three main contemporary mental files theories of singular thought—acquaintance theory, semantic instrumentalism, and semantic cognitivism—can give it. I argue (...) for two claims intended to advance our understanding of singular thought about mathematical abstracta. First, that the conditions for possession of a file for an abstract mathematical object are the same as the conditions for possessing a file for an object perceived in the past—namely, that the agent retains information about the object. Thus insofar as we are able to have memory-based files for objects perceived in the past, we ought to be able to have files for abstract mathematical objects too. Second, at least one recently articulated condition on a file’s being a device for singular thought—that it be capable of surviving a certain kind of change in the information it contains—can be satisfied by files for abstract mathematical objects. (shrink)

Stephen Ingram defends a robustly realistic metaethical theory, based on the concept of normative arbitrariness, of which he provides the first in-depth analysis. He argues that, in order to capture the normative non-arbitrariness of moral choice, we must commit to the existence of robustly stance-independent, categorical, irreducibly normative, non-natural moral facts. Specifically, he identifies five ways in which a metaethical theory might fail to capture the non-arbitrariness of moral choice. The first involves claims about the bruteness of moral attitudes or (...) facts. The second involves claims about the privileging of some attitudes over others. The third involves the claim that some metaethical theories leave a normative deficit. The fourth involves a claim about our ownership over moral reality. And the fifth involves the claim that certain metaethical theories introduce a destabilising contingency into the moral domain. Ingram argues that robust realism is the theory that is best placed to avoid all five of these arbitrariness charges. He then goes on to show that, by exploring the nature of interpersonal moral dialogue, robust realists can defend epistemological and meta-semantic theories that are friendly to their view. Specifically, he defends a dualistic form of moral intuitionism on which some moral beliefs are justified on the basis of a priori intuitions, whilst others are justified on the basis of a posteriori moral experiences, and provides a theory of 'moral mental files' to explain how moral terms and concepts are able to refer to robust moral facts. (shrink)

This article compares the ability to track individuals lacking mental states with the ability to track intentional agents. It explains why reference to individuals raises the problem of explaining how cognitive agents track unique individuals and in what sense reference is based on procedures of perceptual-motor and epistemic tracking. We suggest applying the notion of singular-files from theories in perception and semantics to the problem of tracking intentional agents. In order to elucidate the nature of agent-files, three views of (...) the relation between object- and agent-tracking are distinguished: the Independence, Deflationary and Organism-Dependence Views. The correct view is argued to be the latter, which states that perceptual and epistemic tracking of a unique human organism requires tracking both its spatio-temporal object-properties and its agent-properties. (shrink)

Most philosophers appear to have ignored the distinction between the broad concept of Virtual Machine Functionalism (VMF) described in Sloman&Chrisley (2003) and the better known version of functionalism referred to there as Atomic State Functionalism (ASF), which is often given as an explanation of what Functionalism is, e.g. in Block (1995). -/- One of the main differences is that ASF encourages talk of supervenience of states and properties, whereas VMF requires supervenience of machines that are arbitrarily complex networks of causally (...) interacting (virtual, but real) processes, possibly operating on different time-scales, examples of which include many different procesess usually running concurrently on a modern computer performing various tasks concerned with handling interfaces to physical devices, managing the file system, dealing with security, providing tools, entertainments, and games, and possibly processing research data. Another example of VMF would be the kind of functionalism involved in a large collection of possibly changing socio-economic structures and processes interacting in a complex community, and yet another is illustrated by the kind of virtual machinery involved in the many levels of visual processing of information about spatial structures, processes, and relationships (including percepts of moving shadows, reflections, highlights, optical-flow patterns and changing affordances) as you walk through a crowded car-park on a sunny day: generating a whole zoo of interacting qualia. (Forget solitary red patches, or experiences thereof.) -/- Perhaps VMF should be re-labelled "Virtual MachinERY Functionalism" because the word 'machinery' more readily suggests something complex with interacting parts. VMF is concerned with virtual machines that are made up of interacting concurrently active (but not necessarily synchronised) chunks of virtual machinery which not only interact with one another and with their physical substrates (which may be partly shared, and also frequently modified by garbage collection, metabolism, or whatever) but can also concurrently interact with and refer to various things in the immediate and remote environment (via sensory/motor channels, and possible future technologies also). I.e. virtual machinery can include mechanisms that create and manipulate semantic content, not only syntactic structures or bit patterns as digital virtual machines do. -/- Please note: Click on the title above or the link below to read the paper. I prefer to keep all my papers freely accessible on my web site so that I can correct mistakes and add improvements. -/- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/vm-functionalism.html -/- This is now part of the Meta-Morphogenesis project: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/meta-morphogenesis.html. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 39.4 (2006) 333-339MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]On Persuasion, Identification, and Dialectical SymmetryKenneth BurkeEdited with introduction by James ZappenNote: This untitled paper was found in two typed copies among the books and papers in Kenneth Burke's personal library in July 2006—one copy folded into a heavily used Loeb edition of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the other in a small file cabinet in the library.1 The two copies are (...) nearly identical carbon copies, probably typed by Burke's wife Libby; the original has not been found.2 The paper includes brief discussions of persuasion, identification, and dialectical symmetry (hence the current title), plus brief critiques of behaviorism and general semantics, with specific reference to Alfred Korzybski's notion of the structural differential. It was probably written in the mid-1940s, after the second edition of Korzybski's Science and Sanity and The Philosophy of Literary Form, both published in 1941; perhaps at roughly the same time as the more extended discussions of behaviorism and Korzybski in A Grammar of Motives, published in 1945; and before the full development of Burke's ideas about persuasion, identification, and dialectical symmetry in A Rhetoric of Motives, published in 1950. The paper might have been prepared for a public lecture or for circulation among Burke's literary friends, as a brief commentary on some of the key concepts in A Rhetoric of Motives, while he was completing A Grammar of Motives or perhaps shortly following its publication. If so, then it might have been written as late as 1947.3This paper suggests that Burke's concept of identification was in part a creative response to current issues in behaviorism and general semantics, formulated in sympathy with George Herbert Mead's observations on identification, communication, and community in Mind, Self, and Society and The Philosophy of the Act and in opposition to Korzybski's general semantics and his structural differential. Moreover, and more important, this paper suggests that the final section of A Rhetoric of Motives, titled simply "Order," is essential to a complete understanding of Burke's ideas about persuasion and identification since only in this last section does Burke show how competing points of view [End Page 333] might be reconciled in an ultimate identification via the dialectical symmetry that he traces through the long history of Platonic thought.4James P. Zappen Department of Language, Literature, and Communication Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute* * *What, in sum, would be the salient traits of Aristotle's Rhetoric?5 And what would be our attitude towards them?His "art" is constructed about his stress upon persuasion as the purpose of rhetoric. Hence he surveys the resources of rhetoric, to the end that one might use the best means available for a given situation. To narrow down the choice of means, he makes a division into kinds of oratory: deliberative (concerned with the expediency of steps still to be taken); forensic (concerned with the justice or injustice of past acts); and demonstrative or epideictic (concerned with praise and blame, primarily involving the present). But to be effective in any of these kinds, one must appeal to the opinions of one's audience—hence the lists of "topics" reviewing such opinions. First he considers the components of happiness, on the grounds that all men aim at happiness, hence this topic figures in all persuasion and dissuasion. For deliberative oratory specifically, he lists the topics naming men's opinions as to the good, the expedient, and their opposites (along with relevant observations on different forms of government). His topics for epideictic, dealing with praise and blame, comprise the things men consider virtuous and vicious. And his list of forensic topics has to do with the motives and effects of just and unjust acts. Also, there are such general topics as the possible and impossible, the more and the less, the likely and the unlikely.Enthymemes (deductions based on opinion) fit well with forensic, he says. Rhetorical induction (example) best suits the deliberative. And to epideictic, amplification (auxesis... (shrink)

An overview, with links, of original approaches to six significant areas of philosophical concern, including the nature of perception and perceptual content, naturalistic approaches to representation and semantics, a representational explanation of generality, and a dual component theory of propositions. (This file also provides a useful demonstration of how webpage-like features may be simulated in a Word document).

Some of the fundamental activities of the software development process are related to the discipline of Requirements Engineering. Their objectives are to discover, analyze, document, and verify the system’s requirements. The requirements are the conditions or capabilities that software needs to have or fulfill to meet its users’ needs, and problems in its identification can mean the failure of a software project. This study is part of the research that is being developed to propose a model based on Know­ledge Organization (...) Systems to be used in the Requirements engineering process. This article aims to present the results of an analysis on a set of Know­ledge Organization Systems to identify whether they are likely to be applied in the Requirements engineering process and identify at which stage of this process each one of them can be implemented. The Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed were the authority files, gazetteers, glossaries, subject headings, classification systems, thesauri, semantic networks, and ontologies. Based on the results obtained, it was possible to conclude that the Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed can be used in the Requirements engineering process and, consequently, contribute to increasing the software requirements’ quality. (shrink)

The standard way to represent anaphoric dependencies is to co-index the anaphor with its antecedent in the syntactic input to semantic rules, which then interpret such indices as variables. Dynamic theories (e.g. Kamp’s DRT, Heim’s File Change Semantics, Muskens’s Compositional DRT, etc) combine syntactic co-indexation with semantic left-to-right asymmetry. This captures the fact that the anaphor gets its referent from the antecedent and not vice versa. Formally, a text updates the input state of information to the output state. (...) In particular, an indexed antecedent updates the entity assigned to its index, and the output entity is then picked up as the referent by any subsequent co-indexed anaphor. (shrink)

Logic is traditionally considered to be a purely syntactic discipline, at least in principle. However, prof. David Isles has shown that this ideal is not yet met in traditional logic. Semantic residue is present in the assumption that the domain of a variable should be fixed in advance of a derivation, and also in the notion that a numerical notation must refer to a number rather than be considered a mathematical object in and of itself. Based on his work, the (...) central question of this thesis is what kind of logic, if any, results from removing this semantic residue from traditional logic.We differ from traditional logic in two significant ways. The first is that the assumption that a numerical notation must refer to a number is denied. Numerical notations are considered as mathematical objects in their own right, related to each other by means of rewrite rules. The traditional notion of reference is then replaced by the notion of reduction (by means of the rewrite rules) to a normal form. Two numerical notations that reduce to the same normal form would traditionally be considered identical, as they would refer to the same number, and hence they would be interchangeable salva veritate. In the new system, called Buridan-Volpin (BV), the numerical notations themselves are the elements of the domains of variables, and two numerical notations that reduce to the same normal form need not be interchangeable salva veritate, except when they are syntactically identical (i.e., have the same Gödel number).The second is that we do away with the assumption that the domains of variables need to be fixed in advance of a derivation. Instead we focus on what is needed to guarantee preservation of truth in every step of a derivation. These conditions on the domains of the variables, accumulated in the course of a derivation, are combined in a reference grammar. Whereas traditionally a derivation is considered valid when the conclusion follows from the premisses by way of the derivation rules (and possibly axioms), in the BV system a derivation must meet the extra condition that no inconsistency occurs within the reference grammar. For if the reference grammar were to give rise to inconsistency (i.e., it would be impossible to assign domains to all the variables without breaking at least one of the conditions placed on them in the reference grammar), there is no longer a guarantee that truth has been preserved in every step of the derivation, and hence the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the derivation.In Chapter 2 the BV system is introduced in some formal detail. Chapter 3 gives some examples of derivations, notably totality of addition, multiplication and exponentiation, as well as a lemma needed for the proof of Euclid’s Theorem. These examples, taken from prof. Isles’ First-Order Reasoning and Primitive Recursive Natural Number Notations, show that there is a real proof-theoretical difference between traditional logic and the BV system. Here we also find the first major point of departure between myself and prof. Isles, centered on the notion of inheritance of conditions in the reference grammar by way of lemmata. These different points of view are best illustrated in the sections on the totality of exponentiation and on Euclid’s Lemma: prof. Isles maintains that the proof of totality of exponentiation is not BV valid, while I maintain that it is. But I do agree with him that the traditional proof of Euclid’s Lemma is not BV valid. Chapter 6 also expands the arguments for my choice in this matter.Now that it has been shown that there is a difference between traditional logic and BV, the properties of BV need to be examined. In Chapter 4 we give a proof of Cut-elimination for BV minus induction and the subformula property for BV, which allows us to prove the consistency of BV minus induction. We also expand on the reasons for excluding induction. In Chapter 5 we consider in detail the proof of a finite analog to the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem given by prof. Isles in his article with the same title. He proves that under certain conditions it is always possible, given the existence of a (possibly uncountable) model for a derivation, to give a finite model for this derivation. The system he considers deviates from BV as considered in this thesis in two significant ways: it does not contain the induction rule and the domains contain numbers instead of numerical notations. We then go on to show that it is possible to extend the result to include induction, in the sense that the existence of a possibly uncountable model for a derivation guarantees the existence of a model that is at most countable. We also consider the complications that arise from taking numerical expressions instead of numbers as the elements of domains.Finally, in Chapter 6 we consider the philosophical consequences of the BV system, informed by the formal results from the previous chapters. In particular we discuss the relation between reduction and reference, the status of reference grammars, the notion of induction and its function within BV, and some brief considerations on the consequences of the BV system for the discussion regarding nominalism and realism with regard to mathematical objects. The object of the chapter is twofold. On the one hand applying the formal results to philosophical questions, on the other hand arguing that BV is not just a theoretically acceptable alternative to traditional logic, but is in fact deserving of further development and research into its properties. The latter will probably appeal most to those of a nominalist and/or finitist bent.Abstract prepared by Harrie de Swart and Sven Storms.E-mail:sven.storms@tilburguniversity.eduURL:https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/files/6170 1294/Storms_The_Buridan_Volpin_04_05_2022.pdf. (shrink)

With the development of network technology, many online educational resource platforms have emerged, and the number of resources on these platforms is increasing dramatically. Compared with the traditional resources, the interactive educational resources have hidden interactive information and dynamic content. Only when the users perform interactive operations correctly can they acquire the knowledge conveyed by the resources, which makes it a challenge to help the users understand the general content of resources and find the resources that they are interested in. (...) Therefore, in this paper, we propose a method for generating picture previews of IERs. Firstly, we analyze the file that stores interactive resource information, obtain the interactive elements’ information, extract the dependencies, and generate an operation sequence. Secondly, we execute the operation sequence using an automated software tool to mimic the interaction process between the user and the resource and save the screenshots in the process to generate a picture preview of an IER. We apply this method to a dynamic geometry platform, NetPad, and conduct experiments. Experimental results demonstrate that the method can effectively extract interactive semantic information and simulate the interactive process, and the generated picture previews are of great help to the users to understand the content of IERs. (shrink)

The communication of de se attitudes poses a problem for “participant- neutral” analyses of communication in terms of propositions expressed or proposed updates to the common ground: when you tell me “I am an idiot”, you express a first person de se attitude, but as a result I form a different, second person attitude, viz. that you are an idiot. I argue that when we take seriously the asymmetry between speaker and hearer in semantics this problem disappears. To prove (...) this I propose a concrete model of communication as the transmission of information from the speaker’s mental state to the hearer’s. My analysis is couched in Discourse Representation Theory, a formal semantic framework that linguists use for modeling conversational common ground updates, but that can also be applied to describe the individual speech participants’ dynamically changing mental states. (shrink)

I argue that Frege's puzzle can extend beyond semantics and to, for example, pictures and scent. Accordingly, attempted solutions to the puzzle should not focus solely on semantics. Solutions that do so can at best provide a partial solution to the puzzle. They will not provide a solution that explains the broader phenomenon, including the one where I, as a child, learned the identity of Clark Kent and Superman without possessing their names. Below I will provide a solution (...) that accounts for the typical Frege case as well as my childhood case. The solution will, accordingly, not be a semantic solution. Instead it will focus on information we have on objects and how we organize and access the information. The solution I will provide is psychological and not semantic in nature. At the same time I will show that the solution I provide aligns itself well with Millianism. (shrink)

Russellians, Relationists, and Fregeans disagree about the nature of propositional-attitude content. We articulate a framework to characterize and evaluate this disagreement. The framework involves two claims: i) that we should individuate attitude content in whatever way fits best with the explanations that characteristically appeal to it, and ii) that we can understand those explanations by analogy with other ‘higher-level’ explanations. Using the framework, we argue for an under-appreciated form of Russellianism. Along the way we demonstrate that being more explicit about (...) the framework in which debates about attitude content take place allows us to more precisely characterize the space of possible positions and the dialectic between them. (shrink)

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti-individualism is an implicit part (...) of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit the main arguments for a predicate analysis of descriptions in order to determine whether they do in fact undermine Russell's theory. I argue that while the arguments without doubt provide powerful evidence against Russell's original theory, it is far from clear that they tell against a quantificational account of descriptions.