352 research outputs found
Extensional Collapse Situations I: non-termination and unrecoverable errors
We consider a simple model of higher order, functional computation over the
booleans. Then, we enrich the model in order to encompass non-termination and
unrecoverable errors, taken separately or jointly. We show that the models so
defined form a lattice when ordered by the extensional collapse situation
relation, introduced in order to compare models with respect to the amount of
"intensional information" that they provide on computation. The proofs are
carried out by exhibiting suitable applied {\lambda}-calculi, and by exploiting
the fundamental lemma of logical relations
Inductive Definition and Domain Theoretic Properties of Fully Abstract
A construction of fully abstract typed models for PCF and PCF^+ (i.e., PCF +
"parallel conditional function"), respectively, is presented. It is based on
general notions of sequential computational strategies and wittingly consistent
non-deterministic strategies introduced by the author in the seventies.
Although these notions of strategies are old, the definition of the fully
abstract models is new, in that it is given level-by-level in the finite type
hierarchy. To prove full abstraction and non-dcpo domain theoretic properties
of these models, a theory of computational strategies is developed. This is
also an alternative and, in a sense, an analogue to the later game strategy
semantics approaches of Abramsky, Jagadeesan, and Malacaria; Hyland and Ong;
and Nickau. In both cases of PCF and PCF^+ there are definable universal
(surjective) functionals from numerical functions to any given type,
respectively, which also makes each of these models unique up to isomorphism.
Although such models are non-omega-complete and therefore not continuous in the
traditional terminology, they are also proved to be sequentially complete (a
weakened form of omega-completeness), "naturally" continuous (with respect to
existing directed "pointwise", or "natural" lubs) and also "naturally"
omega-algebraic and "naturally" bounded complete -- appropriate generalisation
of the ordinary notions of domain theory to the case of non-dcpos.Comment: 50 page
Language, logic and ontology: uncovering the structure of commonsense knowledge
The purpose of this paper is twofold: (i) we argue that the structure of commonsense knowledge must be discovered, rather than invented; and (ii) we argue that natural
language, which is the best known theory of our (shared) commonsense knowledge, should itself be used as a guide to discovering the structure of commonsense knowledge. In addition to suggesting a systematic method to the discovery of the structure of commonsense knowledge, the method we propose seems to also provide an explanation for a number of phenomena in natural language, such as metaphor, intensionality, and the semantics of nominal compounds. Admittedly, our ultimate goal is quite ambitious, and it is no less than the systematic ‘discovery’ of a well-typed
ontology of commonsense knowledge, and the subsequent formulation of the longawaited goal of a meaning algebra
Reasoning in non-probabilistic uncertainty: logic programming and neural-symbolic computing as examples
This article aims to achieve two goals: to show that probability is not the only way of dealing with uncertainty (and even more, that there are kinds of uncertainty which are for principled reasons not addressable with probabilistic means); and to provide evidence that logic-based methods can well support reasoning with uncertainty. For the latter claim, two paradigmatic examples are presented: Logic Programming with Kleene semantics for modelling reasoning from information in a discourse, to an interpretation of the state of affairs of the intended model, and a neural-symbolic implementation of Input/Output logic for dealing with uncertainty in dynamic normative context
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