A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

Theories of Meaning for the Internet of Things

In this chapter, we consider the theoretical foundations for representing knowledge in the Internet of Things context. Specifically, we consider (1) the model-theoretic semantics (i.e., extensional semantics), (2) the possible-world semantics (i.e., intensional semantics), (3) the situation semantics, and (4) the cognitive/distributional semantics. Given the peculiarities of the Internet of Things, we pay particular attention to (a) perception (i.e., how to establish a connection to the world), (b) intersubjectivity (i.e., how to align world representations), and (c) the dynamics of world knowledge (i.e., how to model events). We come to the conclusion that each of the semantic theories helps in modeling specific aspects, but does not sufficiently address all three aspects simultaneously

Apperceptive patterning: Artefaction, extensional beliefs and cognitive scaffolding

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog)

Reason Maintenance - State of the Art

This paper describes state of the art in reason maintenance with a focus on its future usage in the KiWi project. To give a bigger picture of the field, it also mentions closely related issues such as non-monotonic logic and paraconsistency. The paper is organized as follows: first, two motivating scenarios referring to semantic wikis are presented which are then used to introduce the different reason maintenance techniques

Concepts in Action

This open access book is a timely contribution in presenting recent issues, approaches, and results that are not only central to the highly interdisciplinary field of concept research but also particularly important to newly emergent paradigms and challenges. The contributors present a unique, holistic picture for the understanding and use of concepts from a wide range of fields including cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. The chapters focus on three distinct points of view that lie at the core of concept research: representation, learning, and application. The contributions present a combination of theoretical, experimental, computational, and applied methods that appeal to students and researchers working in these fields

A Biopsychological Foundation for Linguistics

In this dissertation, I defend the view that natural languages are concrete biopsychological phenomena to be studied empirically. In Section One, I begin with an historical explanation. Some analytic philosophers, I argue, misapply formal logic as an analysis of natural language, when it was in fact originally developed as an alternative to natural language, employed for scientific purposes. Abstract, quasi-mathematical philosophies of language, I argue, are partially a result of this misunderstanding. I respond to Jerrold Katz’ argument that a proper understanding of analytic truth requires this quasi-mathematical philosophy of language through a model-theoretical analysis of analytic truth in modal and intuitionist logics. In Section Two, I offer a positive argument for a biopsychological philosophy of language. While Chomsky and others have emphasized the metaphysical basis of natural languages in psychological representations, I further contribute to understanding by emphasizing the basis of natural language in psychological representations of relevant properties of a specifically constrained biological implementation base. I defend this ontological perspective through a thorough engagement with the subfield of linguistic phonology and its important relations to physiological articulation and perception, along with an analysis of crucial interface relations among phonology, morphology and syntax. In the final section, I engage with the objections to this biopsychological philosophy of language stemming from concerns related to linguistic normativity and communication. If natural language is based metaphysically in the biopsychological representations of individuals, there are apparent paradoxes in the notion of public rules for language use, and in the notion of shared content for the purpose of communication. Drawing on David Forrest Wallace’s pragmatic conception of linguistic prescription, together with analogies from anti-realist metaethical systems, I defend the intelligibility of public linguistics norms without the need for abstract ontological commitment. Drawing on Ray Jackendoff’s internalist semantic and metasemantic analysese, together with Burtrand Russell’s analogy argument on other minds, I also defend intelligibility of linguistic communication equally without need for abstract ontological commitment

Concepts in Action

This open access book is a timely contribution in presenting recent issues, approaches, and results that are not only central to the highly interdisciplinary field of concept research but also particularly important to newly emergent paradigms and challenges. The contributors present a unique, holistic picture for the understanding and use of concepts from a wide range of fields including cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. The chapters focus on three distinct points of view that lie at the core of concept research: representation, learning, and application. The contributions present a combination of theoretical, experimental, computational, and applied methods that appeal to students and researchers working in these fields

Epistemic Modality, Mind, and Mathematics

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality relates to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality; the types of mathematical modality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal profile of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a modal mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's "criterial" identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapter \textbf{4} is availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the modal commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic modality and the epistemology of abstraction. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic in set theory. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the interaction between epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, epistemic set theory, and absolute decidability. Chapter \textbf{11} avails of modal coalgebraic automata to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction of the interpretational and objective modalities thereof. The hyperintensional, topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapter \textbf{2} is applied in chapters \textbf{7}, \textbf{8}, \textbf{10}, and \textbf{11}. Chapter \textbf{12} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides four models of hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory