16,125 research outputs found
Bounded Modality
What does 'might' mean? One hypothesis is that 'It might be raining' is essentially an avowal of ignorance like 'For all I know, it's raining'. But it turns out these two constructions embed in different ways, in particular as parts of larger constructions like Wittgenstein's 'It might be raining and it's not' and Moore's 'It's raining and I don't know it', respectively. A variety of approaches have been developed to account for those differences. All approaches agree that both Moore sentences and Wittgenstein sentences are classically consistent. In this paper I argue against this consensus. I adduce a variety of new data which I argue can best be accounted for if we treat Wittgenstein sentences as being classically inconsistent. This creates a puzzle, since there is decisive reason to think that 'Might p' is classically consistent with 'Not p'. How can it also be that 'Might p and not p' and 'Not p and might p' are classically inconsistent? To make sense of this situation, I propose a new theory of epistemic modals and their interaction with embedding operators. This account makes sense of the subtle embedding behavior of epistemic modals, shedding new light on their meaning and, more broadly, the dynamics of information in natural language
What âmustâ adds
There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously use a âmustâ-claim like and those in which one can use the corresponding claim without the âmustâ, as in 'It must be raining out' versus 'It is raining out. It is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is difficult to account for this difference, since assertions of 'Must p' and assertions of p alone seem to have the same basic goal: namely, communicating that p is true. In this paper I give a new account of the conversational role of âmustâ. I begin by arguing that a âmustâ-claim is felicitous only if there is a shared argument for the proposition it embeds. I then argue that this generalization, which I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that âmustâ-claims are felicitous only if the speakerâs evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I propose a pragmatic derivation of Support as a manner implicature
Modality and expressibility
When embedding data are used to argue against semantic theory A and in favor of semantic theory B, it is important to ask whether A could make sense of those data. It is possible to ask that question on a case-by-case basis. But suppose we could show that A can make sense of all the embedding data which B can possibly make sense of. This would, on the one hand, undermine arguments in favor of B over A on the basis of embedding data. And, provided that the converse does not holdâthat is, that A can make sense of strictly more embedding data than B canâit would also show that there is a precise sense in which B is more constrained than A, yielding a pro tanto simplicity-based consideration in favor of B. In this paper I develop tools which allow us to make comparisons of this kind, which I call comparisons of potential expressive power. I motivate the development of these tools by way of exploration of the recent debate about epistemic modals. Prominent theories which have been developed in response to embedding data turn out to be strictly less expressive than the standard relational theory, a fact which necessitates a reorientation in how to think about the choice between these theories
A solution to Karttunen's Problem
There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously assert
a âmustâ-claim versus those in which one can use the corresponding non-modal claim. But it
is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is even harder to account
for this difference, since assertions of 'Must Ï' and assertions of Ï alone seem to have the
same basic goal: namely, coming to agreement that [[Ï]] is true. In this paper I take on this
puzzle, known as Karttunenâs Problem. I begin by arguing that a âmustâ-claim is felicitous
only if there is a shared argument for its prejacent. I then argue that this generalization, which
I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that âmustâ-claims are felicitous
only if the speakerâs evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I sketch a pragmatic
derivation of Support
Probabilistic Approach to Epistemic Modals in the Framework of Dynamic Semantics
In dynamic semantics meaning of a statement is not equated with its truth
conditions but with its context change potential. It has also been claimed
that dynamic framework can automatically account for certain paradoxes
that involve epistemic modals, such as the following one: it seems odd and
incoherent to claim: (1) âIt is raining and it might not rainâ, whereas
claiming (2) âIt might not rain and it is rainingâ does not seem equally odd
(Yalcin, 2007). Nevertheless, it seems that it cannot capture the fact that
statement (2) seems odd as well, even though not as odd as the statement
(1) (Gauker, 2007). I will argue that certain probabilistic extensions to the
dynamic model can account for this subtlety of our linguistic intuitions and
represent if not an improved than at least an alternative framework for
capturing the way contexts are updated and beliefs revised with uncertain
information.Numer zostaĆ przygotowany przy wsparciu Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa WyĆŒszego
How to do things with modals
Mind &Language, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 115-138, February 2020
Composite Correlation Quantization for Efficient Multimodal Retrieval
Efficient similarity retrieval from large-scale multimodal database is
pervasive in modern search engines and social networks. To support queries
across content modalities, the system should enable cross-modal correlation and
computation-efficient indexing. While hashing methods have shown great
potential in achieving this goal, current attempts generally fail to learn
isomorphic hash codes in a seamless scheme, that is, they embed multiple
modalities in a continuous isomorphic space and separately threshold embeddings
into binary codes, which incurs substantial loss of retrieval accuracy. In this
paper, we approach seamless multimodal hashing by proposing a novel Composite
Correlation Quantization (CCQ) model. Specifically, CCQ jointly finds
correlation-maximal mappings that transform different modalities into
isomorphic latent space, and learns composite quantizers that convert the
isomorphic latent features into compact binary codes. An optimization framework
is devised to preserve both intra-modal similarity and inter-modal correlation
through minimizing both reconstruction and quantization errors, which can be
trained from both paired and partially paired data in linear time. A
comprehensive set of experiments clearly show the superior effectiveness and
efficiency of CCQ against the state of the art hashing methods for both
unimodal and cross-modal retrieval
State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity
This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on
the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages
to be carried out within the Rewerse project.
From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of
interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of
the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give
an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs;
in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and
in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks
The Doxastic Interpretation of Team Semantics
We advance a doxastic interpretation for many of the logical connectives
considered in Dependence Logic and in its extensions, and we argue that Team
Semantics is a natural framework for reasoning about beliefs and belief
updates
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