Confidence Reports

We advocate and develop a states-based semantics for both nominal and adjectival confidence reports, as in "Ann is confident/has confidence that it's raining", and their comparatives "Ann is more confident/has more confidence that it's raining than that it's snowing". Other examples of adjectives that can report confidence include "sure" and "certain". Our account adapts Wellwood's account of adjectival comparatives in which the adjectives denote properties of states, and measure functions are introduced compositionally. We further explore the prospects of applying these tools to the semantics of probability operators. We emphasize three desirable and novel features of our semantics: (i) probability claims only exploit qualitative resources unless there is explicit compositional pressure for quantitative resources; (ii) the semantics applies to both probabilistic adjectives (e.g., "likely") and probabilistic nouns (e.g., "probability"); (iii) the semantics can be combined with an account of belief reports that allows thinkers to have incoherent probabilistic beliefs (e.g. thinking that A & B is more likely than A) even while validating the relevant purely probabilistic claims (e.g. validating the claim that A & B is never more likely than A). Finally, we explore the interaction between confidence-reporting discourse (e.g., "I am confident that...") and belief-reports about probabilistic discourse (e.g.,"I think it's likely that..")

A general mechanism of humor: reformulating the semantic overlap

This article proposes a cognitive mechanism of humour of general applicability, not restricted to verbal communication. It is indebted to Raskin's concept of script overlap, and conforms to the incongruity-resolution theoretical framework, but it is built on the notion of constraint, an abstract correspondence between sets of data. Under this view, script overlap is an outcome of a more abstractly described phenomenon, constraint overlap. The important concept of the overlooked argument is introduced to characterise the two overlapping constraints -- overt and covert. Their inputs and outputs are not directly encoded in utterances, but implicated by them, and their overlap results in another overlap at the level of the communicated utterances, that the incongruity reveals. Our hypothesis assumes as a given that the evocation of such constraints is a cognitive effect of the inferential process by which a hearer interprets utterances. We base this assumption on Hofstadter's theory of analogy-making as the essence of human thought. By substituting "stimuli" of any kind for "utterances" in this model, we obtain a mechanism as easily applicable to non-verbal communication -- slapstick, cartoons -- and we propose it describes the necessary and sufficient conditions for a communicative act in any modality to carry humour.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure

Conceptualizing Response Capacity and Flood Action in the City of Vancouver and District of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada

Attention to effective local flood response has become a necessity in urban governance as issues pertaining to floods become increasingly visible with disasters rising. This research identifies components of response capacity to floods and municipal action, and potential mechanisms to increase response capacity in the City of Vancouver and District of Maple Ridge using interviews (n=7), Q methodology (n=12), and a literature review. Findings show that legislation, institutional behaviour and collective action, technological pathways and resource management are fundamental to an institution or organization’s response capacity. Municipal action is influenced by competing priorities as determined through legal responsibility and liability, collective agreements, public behaviour, risk, vulnerability and uncertainty, and the politics of municipal governance. It is viewed by participants that resource efficiency, collaborative, co-management and adaptive co-management techniques could lead to greater response capacity. The findings presented provide a proposed conceptual framework to response capacity to floods and municipal action