3 research outputs found
Taking meaning out of context : essays on the foundations of natural language semantics
David Lewis articulated minimal constraints on a formal theory of natural language
semantics that have been widely adopted by subsequent theorists: compositionality
and sentence truth in a given context. In the process, Lewis distinguished between the
compositional semantic value of an expression and its propositional content relative
to a context. This dissertation consists of a series of essays in which I address several
questions that arise from this distinction, including how we should understand semantic
values, how we should understand propositional content, and how we should understand
the relation between them.
Related to this, I explore and address a number of interesting and unresolved
methodological issues that arise in relation to context-sensitivity, and provide an
account of the role of speaker intentions in a formal theory of natural language
semantics. Additionally, I provide a detailed analysis of the role of context in a theory
of natural language semantics and its connection to various aspects of language use and
communication. I also motivate coherence with syntactic structure (in the tradition of
generative grammar) as an additional constraint on a formal theory of natural language
semantics and assess its import for how we theorize about tense and modality and
issues related to the syntax-semantics interface, including covert structure and logical
form.
In broad strokes, this dissertation addresses issues concerning the aims, scope and
criteria of a theory of natural language semantics. I approach these issues from the
perspective of generative grammar, a theoretical framework that aims to characterize
our understanding of natural language independent of its use. These essays help to
clarify what should be expected of a formal theory of natural language semantics and
its contribution to theories of speech acts and communication
Applying the Free-Energy Principle to Complex Adaptive Systems
The free energy principle is a mathematical theory of the behaviour of self-organising systems that originally gained prominence as a unified model of the brain. Since then, the theory has been applied to a plethora of biological phenomena, extending from single-celled and multicellular organisms through to niche construction and human culture, and even the emergence of life itself. The free energy principle tells us that perception and action operate synergistically to minimize an organism’s exposure to surprising biological states, which are more likely to lead to decay. A key corollary of this hypothesis is active inference—the idea that all behavior involves the selective sampling of sensory data so that we experience what we expect to (in order to avoid surprises). Simply put, we act upon the world to fulfill our expectations. It is now widely recognized that the implications of the free energy principle for our understanding of the human mind and behavior are far-reaching and profound. To date, however, its capacity to extend beyond our brain—to more generally explain living and other complex adaptive systems—has only just begun to be explored. The aim of this collection is to showcase the breadth of the free energy principle as a unified theory of complex adaptive systems—conscious, social, living, or not