158 research outputs found

    Knowledge is Closed Under Analytic Content

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    I am concerned with epistemic closure—the phenomenon in which some knowledge requires other knowledge. In particular, I defend a version of the closure principle in terms of analyticity; if an agent S knows that p is true, then S knows that all analytic parts of p are true as well. After targeting the relevant notion of analyticity, I argue that this principle accommodates intuitive cases and possesses the theoretical resources to avoid the preface paradox. I close by arguing that contextualists who maintain that knowledge attributions are closed within—but not between—linguistic contexts are tacitly committed to this principle’s trut

    Semantic monsters

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    This chapter provides a general overview of the issues surrounding so-called semantic monsters. In section 1, I outline the basics of Kaplan’s framework and spell out how and why the topic of “monsters” arises within that framework. In Section 2, I distinguish four notions of a monster that are discussed in the literature, and show why, although they can pull apart in different frameworks or with different assumptions, they all coincide within Kaplan’s framework. In Section 3, I discuss one notion that has spun off into the linguistics literature, namely “indexical shift”. In Section 4, I emphasize the connection between monsters and the compositionality of asserted content in Kaplan’s original discussion. Section 5 discusses monsters and the more general idea of re-interpretation or meaning-shift. Section 6 closes with a brief survey of where monsters may dwell, and pointers to avenues for future research

    On the Topic of Impossibility: a question-sensitive impossible worlds approach to logical omniscience

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    Desde que Hintikka (1962) propôs uma lógica epistémica modal com base na semântica de mundos possíveis que rapidamente se colocou o problema da omnisciência lógica, isto é, de que a lógica em questão implica que os agentes sabem tudo o que se segue logicamente do que sabem. O próprio Hintikka (1975) tentou resolver o problema introduzindo “mundos possíveis impossíveis”. Desde então, os mundos impossíveis têm sido aplicados no tratamento de várias outras questões filosóficas. Berto e Jago (2019) desenvolvem e exploram várias delas. A presente dissertação começa com uma avaliação em detalhe de soluções para o problema da omnisciência lógica que aceitam mundos impossíveis. De forma a melhor considerar esta perspetiva, questões sobre a caracterização da natureza dos mundos impossíveis e de como representam são consideradas. Por outro lado, filósofos como Yalcin (2018) propõem dar resposta ao problema da omnisciência lógica sem acrescentar mundos impossíveis, mas sim tendo por base uma extensão da noção do conteúdo de frases e estados mentais. De acordo com esta segunda família de perspetivas, o conteúdo de uma frase não é dado simplesmente em termos de condições de verdade, mas também em termos daquilo sobre aquilo que a frase versa. O conhecimento de agentes seria fechado sob implicação lógica que não adiciona nenhum novo assunto ao das proposições que o agente sabe, mas não sob implicação lógica simpliciter. Esta segunda família de perspetivas será igualmente considerada, começando pela questão de o que são assuntos, e terminando por considerar se as várias perspetivas disponíveis conseguem dar conta de todas as diferenças entre conteúdos face aos quais agentes podem ter atitudes proposicionais distintas. Finalmente, será desenvolvida uma solução para o problema da omnisciência lógica que aceita tanto mundos impossíveis, como uma relativização a questões ou assuntos.Ever since Hintikka (1962) proposed an epistemic logic based on possible worlds semantics, the problem of logical omniscience, that is, that the logic proposed by Hintikka would have as a consequence that agents know all the logical consequences of what they know, has been posed as a challenge. Hintikka (1975) himself tried to meet the challenge by introducing “impossible possible worlds”. Since then, impossible worlds have been applied to the treatment of various philosophical questions. Berto and Jago (2019) develop and explore several of them. The present dissertation starts by considering in detail solutions for it that accept impossible worlds. In order to more fully consider this family of perspectives, questions regarding the nature of impossible worlds and how they represent are discussed. On the other hand, philosophers like Yalcin (2018) propose to give a solution to the problem of logical omniscience without adding impossible worlds to a standard possible worlds framework, but rather accepting an extension of the notion of the content of statements and mental states. According to this second family of perspectives, the content of a statement is not simply given in terms of truth-conditions, but also in terms of what the statement is about. Agents’ knowledge would be closed entailment that does not add any new subject matter to the subject matter of what the agent knows, not under logical consequence simpliciter. This second family of perspectives will also be considered, starting from the question of what subject matters and including others, such as whether various perspectives on offer are able to account for all the distinctions between contents to which agents might have different propositional attitudes. Finally, a solution for the problem of logical omniscience that accepts both impossible worlds and subject matters will be developed

    Teoria tradicional da informação semântica sem escândalo da dedução : uma reavaliação moderadamente externalista do tópico baseada em semântica urna e uma aplicação paraconsistente

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    Orientador: Walter Alexandre CarnielliTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências HumanasResumo: A presente tese mostra que é possível reestabelecer a teoria tradicional da informação semântica (no que segue apenas TSI, originalmente proposta por Bar-Hillel e Carnap (1952, 1953)) a partir de uma descrição adequada das condições epistemológicas de nossa competência semântica. Uma consequência clássica de TSI é o assim chamado escândalo da dedução (no que segue SoD), tese segundo a qual verdades lógicas têm quantidade nula de informação. SoD é problemático dado que conflita com o caráter ampliativo do conhecimento formal. Baseado nisso, trabalhos recentes (e.g., Floridi (2004)) rejeitam TSI apesar de suas boas intuições sobre a natureza da informação semântica. Por outro lado, esta tese reconsidera a estratégia de assumir a semântica urna (RANTALA, 1979) como o pano de fundo metateórico privilegiado para o reestabelecimento de TSI sem SoD. A presente tese tem o seguinte plano. O capítulo 1 introduz o plano geral da tese. No capítulo 2, valendo-se fortemente de trabalhos clássicos sobre o externalismo semântico, eu apresento algum suporte filosófico para essa estratégia ao mostrar que a semântica urna corretamente caracteriza as condições epistemológicas de nossa competência semântica no uso de quantificadores. O capitulo 3 oferece uma descrição precisa da semântica urna a partir da apresentação de suas definições básicas e alguns de seus teoremas mais funda- mentais. No capítulo 4, eu me concentro mais uma vez no tema da informação semântica ao formalizar TSI em semântica urna e provar que nesse contexto SoD não vale. Finalmente, nos capítulos 5 e 6 eu considero resultados modelo-teóricos mais avançados sobre semântica urna e exploro uma possível aplicação paraconsistente das ideias principais dessa tese, respectivamenteAbstract: This thesis shows that it is possible to reestablish the traditional theory of semantic information (TSI, originally proposed by Bar-Hillel and Carnap (1952, 1953)) by providing an adequate account of the epistemological conditions of our semantic competence. A classical consequence of TSI is the so-called scandal of deduction (hereafter SoD) according to which logical truths have null amount of information. SoD is problematic since it does not make room for the ampliative character of formal knowledge. Based on this, recent work on the subject (e.g., Floridi (2004)) rejects TSI despite its good insights on the nature of semantic information. On the other hand, this work reconsiders the strategy of taking urn semantics (RANTALA, 1979) as a privileged metatheoretic framework for the formalization of TSI without SoD. The present thesis is planned in the following way. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis¿ overall plan. In chapter 2, relying heavily on classical works on semantic externalism, I present some philosophical support for this strategy by showing that urn semantics correctly characterizes the epistemological conditions of our semantic competence in the use of quantifiers. Chapter 3 offers a precise description of urn semantics by characterizing its basic definitions and some of its most fundamental theorems. In chapter 4, turning the focus once again to semantic information, I formalize TSI in urn semantics and show that in this context SoD does not hold. Finally, in chapter 5 and 6 I consider more advanced model-theoretic results on urn semantics and explore a paraconsistent possible application of the present idea, respectivelyDoutoradoFilosofiaDoutor em Filosofia142038/2014-8CNP

    Cognitive synonymy : a dead parrot?

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    Funding: This research is published within the project ‘The Logic of Conceivability’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC CoG), Grant Number 681404.Sentences φ and ψ are cognitive synonyms for one when they play the same role in one’s cognitive life. The notion is pervasive (Sect. 1), but elusive: it is bound to be hyperintensional (Sect. 2), but excessive fine-graining would trivialize it and there are reasons for some coarse-graining (Sect. 2.1). Conceptual limitations stand in the way of a natural algebra (Sect. 2.2), and it should be sensitive to subject matters (Sect. 2.3). A cognitively adequate individuation of content may be intransitive (Sect. 3) due to ‘dead parrot’ series: sequences of sentences φ1,…,φn where adjacent φi and φi+1 are cognitive synonyms while φ1 and φn are not (Sect. 3.1). Finding an intransitive account is hard: Fregean equipollence won’t do (Sect. 3.2) and a result by Leitgeb shows that it wouldn’t satisfy a minimal compositionality principle (Sect. 3.3). Sed contra, there are reasons for transitivity, too (Sect. 3.4). In Sect. 4, we come up with a formal semantics capturing this jumble of desiderata, thereby showing that the notion is coherent. In Sect. 5, we re-assess the desiderata in its light.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

    Making Ranking Theory Useful for Psychology of Reasoning

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    An organizing theme of the dissertation is the issue of how to make philosophical theories useful for scientific purposes. An argument for the contention is presented that it doesn’t suffice merely to theoretically motivate one’s theories, and make them compatible with existing data, but that philosophers having this aim should ideally contribute to identifying unique and hard to vary predictions of their theories. This methodological recommendation is applied to the ranking-theoretic approach to conditionals, which emphasizes the epistemic relevance and the expression of reason relations as part of the semantics of the natural language conditional. As a first step, this approach is theoretically motivated in a comparative discussion of other alternatives in psychology of reasoning, like the suppositional theory of conditionals, and novel approaches to the problems of compositionality and accounting for the objective purport of indicative conditionals are presented. In a second step, a formal model is formulated, which allows us to derive quantitative predictions from the ranking-theoretic approach, and it is investigated which novel avenues of empirical research that this model opens up for. Finally, a treatment is given of the problem of logical omniscience as it concerns the issue of whether ranking theory (and other similar approaches) makes too idealized assumptions about rationality to allow for interesting applications in psychology of reasoning. Building on the work of Robert Brandom, a novel solution to this problem is presented, which both opens up for new perspectives in psychology of reasoning and appears to be capable of satisfying a range of constraints on bridge principles between logic and norms of reasoning, which would otherwise stand in a tension

    The many-property problem is your problem, too

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    The many-property problem has traditionally been taken to show that the adverbial theory of perception is untenable. This paper first shows that several widely accepted views concerning the nature of perception---including both representational and non-representational views---likewise face the many-property problem. It then presents a solution to the many-property problem for these views, but goes on to show how this solution can be adapted to provide a novel, fully compositional solution to the many-property problem for adverbialism. Thus, with respect to the many-property problem, adverbialism and several widely accepted views in the philosophy of perception are on a par, and the problem is solved

    Linguistic and Cultural Competences in Dynamic Possible Worlds

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    Linguistic and Cultural Competences are closely linked, as they involve the ability to infer and trace truths within knowledge stored in memory. Humans respond to three interrelated questions: Logic, Epistemology, and Ontology. This paper defines a place for Cultural Competence within these philosophies through Epistemic Modal Logic and Dynamic Possible Worlds. Cultural Competence is crucial in social robots: pleasantness goes with it, but it also has practical functions, managing incomplete pieces of knowledge and shortening the customisation. The artificial agent simulates empathy and meta-cognition, enacting justified action plans that conform with ontology and its awareness thanks to the Euclidean S5 accessibility relation between possible worlds

    Situation Semantics

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    chapter for the volume Introduction to the Philosophy of John Perry, ed. by Raphael van Riel and Albert NewenInternational audienceThis paper is an occasion to go back to Jon Barwise and John Perry's Situations and Attitudes (1983). The aim is to bring to the foreground the main tenets of situation semantics, and to give the reader with a fair sense of the theoretical motivations that were driving the framework, and that continue to be of major significance to Perry's larger philosophical enterprise. I start by rehearsing some of the central aspects of what can be described as the Fregean heritage, which is important in order to understand the context in which situation semantics saw light, and to appreciate the almost revolutionary nature of some of the ideas behind it. After having clarified the background, I turn to one of the main motivations behind situation semantics: the search for an account of meaning that relies upon an account of information, where the latter is crucially driven by the task of explaining how cognitive agents like us are led to act in ways they do, given how they are attuned to their environment
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