Commonsense knowledge representation and reasoning with fuzzy neural networks

This paper highlights the theory of common-sense knowledge in terms of representation and reasoning. A connectionist model is proposed for common-sense knowledge representation and reasoning. A generic fuzzy neuron is employed as a basic element for the connectionist model. The representation and reasoning ability of the model is described through examples

The Competing Philosophical Frameworks Apparent in the Neo-Arian Thoughts of the Late Fourth Century C.E.: A Case Study

In this article I would like to articulate the role of Stoic philosophy as a possible underlying philosophical framework that supported the so called 'Neo-Arian' theology represented by Aetius and Eunomius, the fourth century protagonists of the Arian movement. This movement can be thought of as a result of self-reassessment and regrouping of Arianism in the second half of the fourth century C.E. This time was marked by the Trinitarian debate reaching the state of philosophical subtlety as a number of great rhetoricians joined the controversy. As of today we know a lot about the historical course of events of the controversy and of its major protagonists. However, the very nature of their reasoning is still unclear due to the general lack of knowledge about the competing philosophical paradigms of the time. That is why it is no surprise that contemporary scholarship is quite uncertain about the philosophical roots of the controversy and about the nature of reasoning used during the clash between two competing views on the inner life of the trinity and the relationship between its hypostases. To overcome such uncertainty an appeal is made to the arguments made by the adversaries of Aetius and Eunomius and to the classifications that come out of their circles. Thus many scholars out of anxiety naturally retire to the safe resort of the ancients to make sense of a highly eclectic philosophical theology of Neo-Arians

The Competing Philosophical Frameworks Apparent in the Neo-Arian Thoughts of the Late Fourth Century C.E.: A Case Study

In this article I would like to articulate the role of Stoic philosophy as a possible underlying philosophical framework that supported the so called 'Neo-Arian' theology represented by Aetius and Eunomius, the fourth century protagonists of the Arian movement. This movement can be thought of as a result of self-reassessment and regrouping of Arianism in the second half of the fourth century C.E. This time was marked by the Trinitarian debate reaching the state of philosophical subtlety as a number of great rhetoricians joined the controversy. As of today we know a lot about the historical course of events of the controversy and of its major protagonists. However, the very nature of their reasoning is still unclear due to the general lack of knowledge about the competing philosophical paradigms of the time. That is why it is no surprise that contemporary scholarship is quite uncertain about the philosophical roots of the controversy and about the nature of reasoning used during the clash between two competing views on the inner life of the trinity and the relationship between its hypostases. To overcome such uncertainty an appeal is made to the arguments made by the adversaries of Aetius and Eunomius and to the classifications that come out of their circles. Thus many scholars out of anxiety naturally retire to the safe resort of the ancients to make sense of a highly eclectic philosophical theology of Neo-Arians

The Argument Reasoning Comprehension Task: Identification and Reconstruction of Implicit Warrants

Reasoning is a crucial part of natural language argumentation. To comprehend an argument, one must analyze its warrant, which explains why its claim follows from its premises. As arguments are highly contextualized, warrants are usually presupposed and left implicit. Thus, the comprehension does not only require language understanding and logic skills, but also depends on common sense. In this paper we develop a methodology for reconstructing warrants systematically. We operationalize it in a scalable crowdsourcing process, resulting in a freely licensed dataset with warrants for 2k authentic arguments from news comments. On this basis, we present a new challenging task, the argument reasoning comprehension task. Given an argument with a claim and a premise, the goal is to choose the correct implicit warrant from two options. Both warrants are plausible and lexically close, but lead to contradicting claims. A solution to this task will define a substantial step towards automatic warrant reconstruction. However, experiments with several neural attention and language models reveal that current approaches do not suffice.Comment: Accepted as NAACL 2018 Long Paper; see details on the front pag

A Fuzzy Syllogistic Reasoning Schema for Generalized Quantifiers

In this paper, a new approximate syllogistic reasoning schema is described that expands some of the approaches expounded in the literature into two ways: (i) a number of different types of quantifiers (logical, absolute, proportional, comparative and exception) taken from Theory of Generalized Quantifiers and similarity quantifiers, taken from statistics, are considered and (ii) any number of premises can be taken into account within the reasoning process. Furthermore, a systematic reasoning procedure to solve the syllogism is also proposed, interpreting it as an equivalent mathematical optimization problem, where the premises constitute the constraints of the searching space for the quantifier in the conclusion.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, journal pape

Analogy, Semantics, and Hermeneutics: The “Concept versus Judgment” Critique of Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia

Page range: 241-26

Discussing modalities in the mid-twelfth century: An introductory study of the Introductiones Montane Maiores, the Summa Periermeneias and the Ars Meliduna on the de re/de dicto distinction

In this article, I bring attention to three interesting, still unexplored discussions on modalities that are found in some logical sources datable in the middle and the second half of the twelfth century. Through the examination of the ‘Introductiones Montane Maiores’, the ‘Summa Periermeneias’ and the ‘Ars Meliduna’, I retrace the different positions that masters of the time had on the syntactic structure of modal propositions and their use in modal syllogistic. My reconstruction particularly focuses on the distinction between de re and de dicto modalities, a distinction that authors in the second half of the century inherited from Abelard and his contemporaries, and further developed to support their grammatical and logical analysis of modals