Games of Partial Information and Predicates of Personal Taste

A predicate of personal taste occurring in a sentence in which the perspectival information is not linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase may have two different readings. In case the speaker of a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste uses the subjective predicate encoding perspectival information in one way and the hearer interprets it in another way, the agents’ acts are not coordinated. In this paper I offer an answer to the question of how a hearer can strategically interact with a speaker on the intended perspectival information so that both agents can optimally solve their coordination problem. In this sense, I offer a game-theoretical account of the strategic communication with expressions referring to agents’ perspectives, communication which involves the interaction between a speaker who intends to convey some perspectival information and who chooses to utter a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste, instead of a sentence in which the perspectival information is linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase, and a hearer who has to choose between interpreting the uttered sentence in conformity with the speaker’s autocentric use of the predicate of personal taste or in conformity with the speaker’s exocentric use

What are natural concepts? A design perspective

Conceptual spaces have become an increasingly popular modeling tool in cognitive psychology. The core idea of the conceptual spaces approach is that concepts can be represented as regions in similarity spaces. While it is generally acknowledged that not every region in such a space represents a natural concept, it is still an open question what distinguishes those regions that represent natural concepts from those that do not. The central claim of this paper is that natural concepts are represented by the cells of an optimally designed similarity space

Words and objects in information systems development: Six paradigms of information as representation

The notion of ‘information’ is one of the most basic in the Information Systems field. However, a clear consensus of what the term signifies remains evasive to both theorists and practitioners. Even in the applied discipline of Information Systems Development, the notion of information as representation is ambiguous. To motivate the discussion, we demonstrate a variety of contradictory stances held by several researchers in this domain. To make sense out of this perplexing variety, we develop a philosophical framework to highlight the divergence in philosophical assumptions. Our goal in this exercise is to delineate the ontological and epistemological bias of six exemplars of systems development techniques: software engineering, ontological engineering, ontological design, conceptual modeling, database normalization, and formal methods. A deeper understanding of the implicit philosophical premises can enlighten the choice of an appropriate method to address specific, concrete developmental challenges, as well as provide an understanding of the philosophical genesis of widely applied developmental tools

Value Disagreement and Two Aspects of Meaning

The problem of value disagreement and contextualist, relativist and metalinguistic attempts of solving it are laid out. Although the metalinguistic account seems to be on the right track, it is argued that it does not sufficiently explain why and how disagreements about the meaning of evaluative terms are based on and can be decided by appeal to existing social practices. As a remedy, it is argued that original suggestions from Putnam's 'The Meaning of "Meaning"' ought to be taken seriously. The resulting dual aspect theory of meaning can explain value disagreement in much the same way as it deals with disagreement about general terms. However, the account goes beyond Putnam's by not just defending a version of social externalism, but also defending the thesis that the truth conditional meaning of many evaluative terms is not fixed by experts either and instead constantly contested as part of a normal function of language

DIVERSITY WITH COOPERATION IN DATABASE SCHEMATA: SEMANTIC RELATIVISM

Diversity is an asset, as long as it allows cooperation. In the case of information systems and databases, the data model used is a help or a hindrance for this cooperation of diverse views; this is characterized by the semantic relativism of the model. We first analyze diversity within an information system, where cooperation is made possible by the use of external schemata; semantic relativism of the model of the database schema is the key f,ictor. Then we discuss diversity between different information systenis, where they cooperate through interoperability, by schema integration into federated schemata; semantic relativism of the canonical data model is shown to be determinant

Theory-indexed moral contextualism

Metaethical theories that are trying to account for moral disagreement face important challenges. On the one hand, if the semantic treatment of moral terms assigns a meaning too specifically related to a contextual parameter (like culture, religion, etc.) we might be ruling out the substantiality of moral disagreements, since disagreeing parties can be both correct under their own terms. On the other hand, if our treatment of moral terms ignores their relation to a contextual parameter, we might be unable to explain the nature of the very disagreement, as we ignored how parties ended up believing different things. This M.A thesis explores the theoretical room for one particular contextualist account of the meaning of moral terms: Theory-Indexed Moral Contextualism; in such a way that is able to model the substantiality of moral disagreements in a way both compatible with non-exclusionary disagreements and with standard externalist semantics.https://www.ester.ee/record=b5449080*es

Possibilities and impossibilities of meaning: A study in semantics

N.A

A Call to Arms: Revisiting Database Design

Good database design is crucial to obtain a sound, consistent database, and - in turn - good database design methodologies are the best way to achieve the right design. These methodologies are taught to most Computer Science undergraduates, as part of any Introduction to Database class. They can be considered part of the "canon", and indeed, the overall approach to database design has been unchanged for years. Moreover, none of the major database research assessments identify database design as a strategic research direction. Should we conclude that database design is a solved problem? Our thesis is that database design remains a critical unsolved problem. Hence, it should be the subject of more research. Our starting point is the observation that traditional database design is not used in practice - and if it were used it would result in designs that are not well adapted to current environments. In short, database design has failed to keep up with the times. In this paper, we put forth arguments to support our viewpoint, analyze the root causes of this situation and suggest some avenues of research.Comment: Removed spurious column break. Nothing else was change

Reflections on Moral Disagreement, Relativism, and Skepticism about Rules

Part 1 of this paper discusses some uses of arguments from radical moral disagreement—in particular, as directed against absolutist cognitivism—and surveys some semantic issues thus made salient. It may be argued that parties to such a disagreement cannot be using the relevant moral claims with exactly the same absolutist cognitive content. That challenges the absolutist element of absolutist cognitivism, which, combined with the intractable nature of radical moral disagreement, in turn challenges the viability of a purely cognitivist account of moral judgments. Such a conclusion could be staved off if it could be held that a sufficient condition for commonality of cognitive content in moral judgments could consist, despite the presence of radical moral disagreement, in the parties’acceptance of a common set of fundamental moral principles. Part 1 begins, and Part 2 further develops, a destructive critique of that idea, leading thereby to a skeptical appraisal of the important role sometimes assigned, in metaethical theorizing, to moral rules. Inter alia the paper is intended to suggest the possibility of overlap between relativist and particularist agendas