"Semantic Truth Theories" uses the techniques of mathematical logic to develop a new semantic treatment of the concept of truth based on ideas of Saul Kripke. Yael Cohen goes on to solve the Liar paradox, Hempel's raven paradox in the philosophy of science, and other classical problems of philosophy. She does this by enlarging the scope of formal logic to include concepts of presupposition besides the usual implication. The book thus provides a unified treatment of many topics having to (...) do with truth, topics whose deep and unsuspected interconnections are not visible without the insights of mathematical knowledge which the author elaborates. The early chapters of the book contain an accessible introduction to semantic paradoxes which should be useful to students. (shrink)

Some scientific theories are inconsistent, yet non-trivial and meaningful. How is that possible? The present paper aims to show that we can analyse the inferential use of such theories in terms of consistent compositions of the applications of universal axioms. This technique will be represented by a preferred models semantics, which allows us to accept the instances of universal axioms selectively. For such a semantics to be developed, the framework of partial structures by da Costa and (...) French will be extended by a few elements of the Sneed formalism, also known as the structuralist approach to science. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is twofold. I first outline a philosophical theory of concepts based on conceptual role semantics. This approach is explicitly intended as a framework for the study and explanation of conceptual change in science. Then I point to the close similarities between this philosophical framework and the theory theory of concepts, suggesting that a convergence between psychological and philosophical approaches to concepts is possible. An underlying theme is to stress that using a non-atomist account of (...) concepts is crucial for the successful study of conceptual development and change. (shrink)

This volume addresses current issues in the semantics and the pragmatics of discourse and dialogue. Collected papers aim at providing insights on different theoretical approaches, all of them in the dynamic semantics tradition, such as Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL), Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), and Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT). They reflect the current move of formal semantics from short multisentential texts towards structured discourses and dialogues, accounting for more and more phenomena at the semantics-pragmatics interface (e.g., (...) subtleties of anaphora and presupposition, the role of temporal connectives in discourse or the establishment of common references in dialogue). (shrink)

In the formal semantics based on modern type theories, common nouns are interpreted as types, rather than as predicates of entities as in Montague’s semantics. This brings about important advantages in linguistic interpretations but also leads to a limitation of expressive power because there are fewer operations on types as compared with those on predicates. The theory of coercive subtyping adequately extends the modern type theories and, as shown in this paper, plays a very useful role (...) in making type theories more expressive for formal semantics. It not only gives a satisfactory solution to the basic problem of ‘multiple categorisation’ caused by interpreting common nouns as types, but provides a powerful formal framework to model interesting linguistic phenomena such as copredication, whose formal treatment has been found difficult in a Montagovian setting. In particular, we show how to formally introduce dot-types in a type theory with coercive subtyping and study some type-theoretic constructs that provide useful representational tools for reference transfers and multiple word meanings in formal lexical semantics. (shrink)

What is the nature of communicative competence? Carol A. Kates addresses this crucial linguistic question, examining and finally rejecting the rationalistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and elaborated by Jerrold J. Katz, among others. She sets forth three reasons why the rationalistic model should be rejected: (1) it has not been supported by empirical tests; (2) it cannot accommodate the pragmatic relation between speaker and sign; and (3) the theory of universal grammar carries with it unacceptable metaphysical implications unless it (...) is interpreted in light of empiricism. Kates proposes an empiricist model in place of the rationalistic theory—a model that, in her view, is more consistent with recent findings in linguistics and psycholinguistics. In attempting to clarify the nature of utterance meaning, Kates develops theoretical perspectives on phenomenological empiricism and produces an account of reference and intentionality directly relevant to empirically based theories of speaking and understanding. Among the major topics addressed in the book are transformational-generative and universal grammar, cognitive theories of language acquisition, pragmatic structure, predication and topic-comment structure, and empiricism and the philosophical problem of universals. An innovative and probing work, Pragmatics and Semantics: An Empiricist Theory will be welcomed by philosophers, linguists, and psycholinguists. (shrink)

This volume contains selected contributions to the interdisciplinary symposium on 'Models of Meaning' held in Varna, September 25-28, 1988, under the auspices of the Institute of the Bulgarian Language of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The aim of the meeting was to broaden the horizons of meaning research and the modeling of linguistic semantics, with contributions centering on the appropriate modeling of lexical, syntactic, and textual-semantic representations. The papers challenge some basic notions of semantics and reveal two main (...) avenues of development in contemporary investigations. One is toward broadening the scope of investigativeness, the second is toward a greater domain-specificity as expressed in a greater sensitivity to pragmatics and meta-pragmatic concerns. (shrink)

Paul Thompson, John Beatty, and Elisabeth Lloyd argue that attempts to resolve certain conceptual issues within evolutionary biology have failed because of a general adherence to the received view of scientific theories. They maintain that such issues can be clarified and resolved when one adopts a semantic approach to theories. In this paper, I argue that such conceptual issues are just as problematic on a semantic approach. Such issues arise from the complexity involved in providing formal accounts of (...) theoretical laws and scientific explanations. That complexity is due to empirical and pragmatic considerations, not one's adherence to a particular formal approach to theories. This analysis raises a broader question. How can any formal account properly represent the complex nature of empirical phenomena? (shrink)

Semantics is a bridge discipline between linguistics and philosophy; but linguistics student are rarely able to reach that bridge, let alone cross it to inspect and assess the activity on the other side. Professor Kempson's textbook seeks particularly to encourage such exchanges. She deals with the standard linguistic topics like componential analysis, semantic universals and the syntax-semantics controversy. But she also provides for students with no training in philosophy or logic an introduction to such central topics in the (...) philosophy of language as logical form, truth, speech acts, analyticity, entailment and presupposition. The exposition throughout is deliberately argumentative rather than descriptive, introducing the student step by step to the major problems in theoretical semantics. Special emphasis is placed on the need to consider individual arguments within the overall perspective of semantics as an integral part of general linguistic theory. Written primarily as a textbook for undergraduates and graduates in linguistics departments, this book will also be useful to undergraduates in philosophy and in psychology where linguistics is a part of their course. (shrink)

According to the semantic view, a theory is characterized by a class of models. In this paper, we examine critically some of the assumptions that underlie this approach. First, we recall that models are models of something. Thus we cannot leave completely aside the axiomatization of the theories under consideration, nor can we ignore the metamathematics used to elaborate these models, for changes in the metamathematics often impose restrictions on the resulting models. Second, based on a parallel between van (...) Fraassen’s modal interpretation of quantum mechanics and Skolem’s relativism regarding set-theoretic concepts, we introduce a distinction between relative and absolute concepts in the context of the models of a scientific theory. And we discuss the significance of that distinction. Finally, by focusing on contemporary particle physics, we raise the question: since there is no general accepted unification of the parts of the standard model (namely, QED and QCD), we have no theory, in the usual sense of the term. This poses a difficulty: if there is no theory, how can we speak of its models? What are the latter models of? We conclude by noting that it is unclear that the semantic view can be applied to contemporary physical theories. (shrink)

Lewis, D. Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic.--Salomaa, A. Some remarks concerning many-valued propositional logics.--Chellas, B. F. Conditional obligation.--Jeffrey, R.C. Remarks on interpersonal utility theory.--Hintikka, J. On the proper treatment of quantifiers in Montague semantics.--Mayoh, B.H. Extracting information from logical proofs.--Åqvist, L. A new approach to the logical theory of actions and causality.--Pörn, I. Some basic concepts of action.--Bouvère, K. de. Some remarks concerning logical and ontological theories.--Hacking, I. Combined evidence.--Äberg, C. Solution to a problem raised by Stig (...) Kanger and a set theoretical statement equivalent to the axiom of choice.--Lindström, P. On characterizing elementary logic.-- Scott, D. Rules and derived rules.--Hansson, B. A program for pragmatics.--Hermerén, G. Models.--Fenstad, J.E. Remarks on logic and probability.--Stenlund, S. Analytic and synthetic arithmetical statements. (shrink)

An attractive way to model the relation between an underspecified syntactic representation and its completions is to let the underspecified representation correspond to a logical description and the completions to the models of that description. This approach, which underlies the Description Theory of Marcus et al. 1983 has been integrated in Vijay-Shanker 1992 with a pure unification approach to Lexicalized Tree-Adjoining Grammars (Joshi et al. 1975, Schabes 1990). We generalize Description Theory by integrating semantic information, that is, we propose to (...) tackle both syntactic and semantic underspecification using descriptions. (shrink)

Handling exceptions in a knowledge-based system is an important issue in many application domains, such as medical domain. Recently, there is an increasing interest in nonmonotonic extension of description logics to handle exceptions in ontologies. In this paper, we propose three preferential semantics for plausible subsumption to deal with exceptions in description logic-based knowledge bases. Our preferential semantics are defined in the framework of possibility theory, which is an uncertainty theory devoted to handling incomplete information. We consider the (...) properties of these semantics and their relationships. We also discuss the relationship between two of our preferential semantics and two existing preferential semantics. We extend a description logic-based knowledge base by adding preferential subsumptions. Entailment of plausible subsumptions relative to an extended knowledge base is defined. Properties of the preferential subsumption relations relative to an extended description logic-based knowledge base are discussed. Finally, we show that our semantics for plausible subsumption can be reduced to standard semantics of an expressive description logic. Thus, the problem of plausible subsumption checking under our semantics can be reduced to the problem of subsumption checking under the classical semantics. (shrink)

A claim by David K. Lewis (1986) that his counterpart theory provides a semantics for intensional languages is critiqued by showing that basic principles of modal logic fail to be valid in counterpart theory & by investigating problematic counterpart-theoretical translations of instances of universal instantiation. From Lewis's postulate that individuals inhabit only one world & have counterparts in other worlds, it follows that the relation between an object & its counterparts is nontransitive & nonsymmetric; consequently, an object does not (...) need to have exactly one counterpart in any world. The failure of modal principles in counterpart theory is ascribed to the possibility that an object has no counterpart in a given world, whereas universal instantiation becomes invalid when an object has more than one counterpart in a given world. 3 References. Adapted from the source document. (shrink)

Cappelen and Lepore argue against the principle P: A semantic theory ought to assign p to S if uttering S is saying p. An upshot of P’s falsity, they allege, is that some objections to Davidson’s programme (such as Foster’s) turn out to be without force. This essay formulates and defends a qualified version of P against Cappelen and Lepore’s objections. It distinguishes P from the more fundamental Q: A semantic theory ought to assign p to S iff literal utterance (...) of S literally says p. Without some objection to Q—which Cappelen and Lepore do not supply—Foster’s objection to Davidson’s programme stands. (shrink)

Chomsky’s conception of semantics must contend with both philosophical skepticism and contrary traditions in linguistics. In “Two Dogmas” Quine argued that “...it is non-sense, and the root of much non-sense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement.” If so, it follows that language as the object of semantic investigation cannot be separated from collateral information. F. R. Palmer pursues a similar contention in his recent survey of issues in semantic (...) theory: “...it is impossible even in theory to draw a clear line between the meaning of a word or sentence and all possible relevant information about it.” In spite of such skepticism, and through a variety of theories, devotion to lexical decomposition and truth dependent on language has not abated. The purpose of this paper is to focus related criticism and briefly put forward an alternative conception of empirical semantics. (shrink)

This volume comprises thirteen original research papers and three overview papers presenting new work using a number of experimental techniques from psycho- and neurolinguistics in the three key areas of current semantics and pragmatics: implicature, negation and presupposition.

Moral error theory has been criticized on formal grounds for lacking a coherent semantics of moral sentences. In this paper, I provide a truthmaker-based semantics of moral sentences that is compatible with moral error theory. The hyperintensional account draws attention to the exact truth- and falsemakers of moral propositions. Error theorists must assume that propositions that have only moral truthmakers have at least one non-moral falsemaker. A central consequence of the discussion is that moral error theory is compatible (...) with a classical logic of moral notions. (shrink)

In this talk I do three things. First, I review what I take to be fruitful applications of the semantic view of theory structure to evolutionary theory. Second, I list and correct three common misunderstandings about the semantic view. Third, I evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of Horan's paper in this symposium. Specifically, I argue that the criticisms leveled against the semantic view by Horan are inappropriate because they incorporate some basic misconceptions about the semantic view itself.

In chapter 1, I begin the task of giving a semantical theory which is appropriate for the general indeterministic context and which can profitably be applied to the special context of quantum mechanics. I treat the notion of indeterminism, and discuss tree structures. In the second chapter, I consider several theories of tense meant for the indeterministic context. All presuppose tree structures. I defend one of these as the best rendering of simple English future tense. ;In the third chapter, (...) I begin discussing counterfactual conditionals. It is the burden of this chapter to show that one well known analysis of counterfactuals, Stalnaker's theory, is not appropriate for the context of quantum mechanics. I show that his analysis leads all too easily to a contradiction of experimental evidence. Stalnaker's analysis--like many theories of counterfactuals--is based on the relation of comparative similarity between worlds. Recently this basis has been questioned. In chapter 4, I step back a bit from the project of analyzing counterfactuals and consider the foundations for any such analysis. I first argue that the similarity approach is still a promising one. But I go on to argue that a similarity approach requires a non-ordinary notion of 'similarity'. So 'similarity' is in need of explication. This, I argue, is something that should be done on a piecemeal basis. ;In the fifth chapter, I attempt to unify the results of earlier chapters by relating them to the quantum mechanical context. I begin by defending an analysis of counterfactuals which is given in terms of similarity between worlds. I try to show that this theory is a natural one for the quantum mechanical context. And I discuss how, for purposes of the analysis of counterfactuals, 'similarity' is to be understood in the quantum mechanical context. Also, I consider the logical form of quantum mechanical attribution of probability. These attributions, I argue, involve counterfactuals and tense in interesting ways. Utilizing the results of chapters 1 and 2, I argue for a somewhat novel rendering of these quantum mechanical attributions. (shrink)

Stage theory is the metaphysical view that everyday objects like you and the Eiffel tower are stages—instantaneous temporal parts. Existing defenses of stage theory by Katherine Hawley and Ted Sider quite explicitly include certain semantic claims. Thus Sider says that stages are.

Much work in the philosophy of language assumes that a semantic theory T, for a language L should assign p as the semantic content of an utterance u, by A, of a sentence S in L, if and only if “A said that p” is true. This assumption is mistaken. More generally, the aim of semantics cannot be to capture the extension of English expressions such as “meaning” or “what was said”. This provides support for Davidson’s paratactic theory of (...) indirect speech and for the view that a semantic theory should take the form of a truth-theory. (shrink)

Book Information Probability Theory and Probability Semantics. By P. Roeper and H. Leblanc. University of Toronto Press. Toronto. 1999. Pp. xii + 240. Hardback, US$65.00.

In the context of propositional logics, we apply semantics modulo satisfiability—a restricted semantics which comprehends only valuations that satisfy some specific set of formulas—with the aim to efficiently solve some computational tasks. Three possible such applications are developed.We begin by studying the possibility of implicitly representing rational McNaughton functions in Łukasiewicz Infinitely-valued Logic through semantics modulo satisfiability. We theoretically investigate some approaches to such representation concept, called representation modulo satisfiability, and describe a polynomial algorithm that builds representations (...) in the newly introduced system. An implementation of the algorithm, test results and ways to randomly generate rational McNaughton functions for testing are presented. Moreover, we propose an application of such representations to the formal verification of properties of neural networks by means of the reasoning framework of Łukasiewicz Infinitely-valued Logic.Then, we move to the investigation of the satisfiability of joint probabilistic assignments to formulas of Łukasiewicz Infinitely-valued Logic, which is known to be an NP-complete problem. We provide an exact decision algorithm derived from the combination of linear algebraic methods with semantics modulo satisfiability. Also, we provide an implementation for such algorithm for which the phenomenon of phase transition is empirically detected.Lastly, we study the game theory situation of observable games, which are games that are known to reach a Nash equilibrium, however, an external observer does not know what is the exact profile of actions that occur in a specific instance; thus, such observer assigns subjective probabilities to players actions. We study the decision problem of determining if a set of these probabilistic constraints is coherent by reducing it to the problems of satisfiability of probabilistic assignments to logical formulas both in Classical Propositional Logic and Łukasiewicz Infinitely-valued Logic depending on whether only pure equilibria or also mixed equilibria are allowed. Such reductions rely upon the properties of semantics modulo satisfiability. We provide complexity and algorithmic discussion for the coherence problem and, also, for the problem of computing maximal and minimal probabilistic constraints on actions that preserves coherence.prepared by Sandro Márcio da Silva Preto.E-mail: spreto@ime.usp.brURL:https://doi.org/10.11606/T.45.2021.tde-17062021-163257. (shrink)

In his paper ‘Scmantic Theory and Tacit Knowlcdgc’, Gareth Evans uscs a familiar kind of cxamplc in ordcr to render vivid his account of tacit knowledge. We arc to consider a finite language, with just one hundrcd scntcnccs. Each scntcncc is made up of a subjcct (a name) and a prcdicatc. The names are ‘a’, ‘b’, . . ., T. The prcdicatcs arc ‘F’, ‘G’, . . ., ‘O’. Thc scntcnccs have meanings which dcpcnd in a systematic way upon their (...) construction. Thus, all scntcnccs containing ‘a’ mean something about john; all scntcnccs containing ‘b’ mean something about Harry; all scntcnccs containing ‘F’ mean something about being bald; all scntcnccs containing ‘G’ mean something about being happy; and so 011. For this vcry simple language L, wc arc to consider various semantic theories. We could consider thcorics whosc dclivcranccs about wholc scntcnccs are of.. (shrink)

It is widely believed by historians of linguistics that the 19th-century was largely devoted to historical and comparative studies, with the main emphasis on the discovery of soundlaws. Syntax is typically portrayed as a mere sideline of these studies, while semantics is seldom even mentioned. If it comes into view at all, it is usually assumed to have been confined to diachronic lexical semantics and the construction of some (mostly ill-conceived) typologies of semantic change. This book aims to (...) destroy some of these prejudices and to show that in Europe semantics was an important, although controversial, area at that time. Synchronic mechanisms of semantic change were discovered and increasing attention was paid to the context of the sentence, to the speech situation and the users of the language. From being a semantics of transformations', a child of the biological-geological paradigm of historical linguistics with its close links to etymology and lexicography, the field matured into a semantics of comprehension and communication, set within a general linguistics and closely related to the emerging fields of psychology and sociology. (shrink)

This book enhances the understanding of the theoretical framework and leading principles of boundedness, aiming to bridge the gap between biology, artificial intelligence, and physics.

In what follows, I argue that the semantic approach to scientific theories fails as a means to present the Wright—Fisher formalism (WFF) of population genetics. I offer an account of what population geneticist understand insofar as they understand the WFF, a variation on Lloyd's view that population genetics can be understood as a family of models of mid-level generality.

The paper discusses the question whether T-theories explain how it is possible to understand new sentences, or learn an infinite language, as Davidson claimed. I argue against some commentators that for explanatory power we need not require that T-theories are implicitly known or mirror cognitive structures. I note contra Davidson that the recursive nature of T-theories is not sufficient for explanatory power, since humans can work out only what is computationally tractable, and recursiveness by itself allows for (...) intractable computational complexity. I finally consider the complexity of T-theories, transformed into term rewriting systems, and find that the complexity of such systems is indeed tractable. Therefore Davidson's claim stands, even though a further condition had to be met. (shrink)

In 1996, the sociological journal Theory and Society devoted a special issue to “Theory and Theoreticians.”1 My contribution, titled “For Theory,” was intended as an homage to the late Alvin Gouldner, the radical social theorist, self-described “outlaw Marxist,” and founding editor of the journal, among whose many books was one called For Sociology.2 The essay was also dedicated to the memory of Bill Readings, a gifted literary theorist inspired in particular by Jean-François Lyotard, and a participant in the seminar I (...) had led at the School of Criticism and Theory a decade earlier. Best known for his unflinching critique of what he called “the university in ruins,” Bill had lost his life at the age of thirty-four... (shrink)

This study represents a contribution to the theory of meaning in natural language.

Front Cover; Impressum; Contents; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Semantics: aims, explanations and theories; 2.1 The aims of semantic theorising; 2.2 Methods and explanations in semantics; 2.3 Four kinds of semantic theories; 3. The case for Semantic Pluralism; 3.1 The argument from unspecific contexts; 3.2 The argument from explanatory value; 3.3 Objections and replies; 4. Semantic Pluralism; 4.1 Flexible Pluralism; 4.2 Strong Pluralism; 4.3 Pluralist semantics; 4.4 Pluralism from a Gricean model of communication; 4.5 Pluralism and (...) what is said;. (shrink)

This Element gives an introduction to the emerging discipline of natural language ontology. This is an area at the interface of semantics, metaphysics, and philosophy of language that is concerned with which kinds of objects are assumed by our best semantic theories.

What is the relationship between color experience and color? Here, I defend the view that it is semantic: color experience denotes color in a code innately known by the perceiver. This semantic theory contrasts with a variety of theories according to which color is defined as the cause of color experience (in a special set of circumstances). It also contrasts with primary quality theories of color, which treat color as a physical quantity. I argue that the semantic theory (...) better accounts for the kinds of knowledge we have regarding both the color of objects that we see and of the colors themselves. (shrink)

Mark Richard; XIV*—Attitude Ascriptions, Semantic Theory, and Pragmatic Evidence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Page.