Fuzzy Sets and Formal Logics

The paper discusses the relationship between fuzzy sets and formal logics as well as the influences fuzzy set theory had on the development of particular formal logics. Our focus is on the historical side of these developments. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.partial support by the Spanish projects EdeTRI (TIN2012-39348- C02-01) and 2014 SGR 118.Peer reviewe

The biomechanics of human locomotion

Includes bibliographical references. The thesis on CD-ROM includes Animate, GaitBib, GaitBook and GaitLab, four quick time movies which focus on the functional understanding of human gait. The CD-ROM is available at the Health Sciences Library

Conceptualizing uncertainty: the IPCC, model robustness and the weight of evidence

The aim of this thesis is to improve our understanding of how to assess and communicate uncertainty in areas of research deeply afflicted by it, the assessment and communication of which are made more fraught still by the studies’ immediate policy implications. The IPCC is my case study throughout the thesis, which consists of three parts. In Part 1, I offer a thorough diagnosis of conceptual problems faced by the IPCC uncertainty framework. The main problem I discuss is the persistent ambiguity surrounding the concepts of ‘confidence’ and ‘likelihood’; I argue that the lack of a conceptually valid interpretation of these concepts compatible with the IPCC uncertainty guide’s recommendations has worrying implications for both the IPCC authors’ treatment of uncertainties and the interpretability of the information provided in the AR5. Finally, I show that an understanding of the reasons behind the IPCC’s decision to include two uncertainty scales can offer insights into the nature of this problem. In Part 2, I review what philosophers have said about model-based robustness analysis. I assess several arguments that have been offered for its epistemic import and relate this discussion to the context of climate model ensembles. I also discuss various measures of independence in the climate literature, and assess the extent to which these measures can help evaluate the epistemic import of model robustness. In Part 3, I explore the notion of the ‘weight of evidence’ typically associated with Keynes. I argue that the Bayesian (or anyone who believes the role of probability in inductive inference is to quantify the degree of belief to assign to a hypothesis given the evidence) is bound to struggle with this notion, and draw some lessons from this fact. Finally, I critically assess some recent proposals for a new IPCC uncertainty framework that significantly depart from the current one

Knowledge of knots: shapes in action

Logic is to natural language what knot theory is to natural knots. Logic is concerned with some cognitive performances; in particular, some natural language inferences are captured by various types of calculi (propositional, predicate, modal, deontic, quantum, probabilistic, etc.), which in turn may generate inferences that are arguably beyond natural logic abilities, or non-well synchronized therewith (eg. ex falso quodlibet, material implication). Mathematical knot theory accounts for some abilities - such as recognizing sameness or differences of some knots, and in turn generates a formalism for distinctions that common sense is blind to. Logic has proven useful in linguistics and in accounting for some aspects of reasoning, but which knotting performaces are there, over and beyond some intuitive discriminating abilities, that may require extensions or restrictions of the normative calculus of knots? Are they amenable to mathematical treatment? And what role is played in the game by mental representations? I shall draw from a corpus of techniques and practices to show to what extent compositionality, lexical and normative elements are present in natural knots, with the prospect of formally exploring an area of human competence that interfaces thought, perception and action in a complex fabric