Related papers: Why Bother With Syntax?
Many interesting and useful symbolic computation algorithms manipulate mathematical expressions in mathematically meaningful ways. Although these algorithms are commonplace in computer algebra systems, they can be surprisingly difficult to…
Understanding the semantic relationships between terms is a fundamental task in natural language processing applications. While structured resources that can express those relationships in a formal way, such as ontologies, are still scarce,…
Over the past few decades the notion of symmetry has played a major role in physics and in the philosophy of physics. Philosophers have used symmetry to discuss the ontology and seeming objectivity of the laws of physics. We introduce…
The article bridges between two major paradigms in computation, the functional, at basis computation from input to output, and the interactive, where computation reacts to its environment while underway. Central to any compositional theory…
We discuss the problem of defining a logic for analogical reasoning, and sketch a solution in the style of the semantics for Counterfactual Conditionals, Preferential Structures, etc.
Game semantics is a trace-like denotational semantics for programming languages where the notion of legal observable behaviour of a term is defined combinatorially, by means of rules of a game between the term (the "Proponent") and its…
The relationship between language and thought remains an unresolved philosophical issue. Existing viewpoints can be broadly categorized into two schools: one asserting their independence, and another arguing that language constrains…
Hybrid probabilistic logic programs can represent several scenarios thanks to the expressivity of Logic Programming extended with facts representing discrete and continuous distributions. The semantics for this type of programs is crucial…
The aim of this short paper is to give a practical introduction to functional interpretation of proofs for computer scientists interested in synthesis.
Are intelligent machines really intelligent? Is the underlying philosophical concept of intelligence satisfactory for describing how the present systems work? Is understanding a necessary and sufficient condition for intelligence? If a…
A logic is defined that allows to express information about statistical probabilities and about degrees of belief in specific propositions. By interpreting the two types of probabilities in one common probability space, the semantics given…
This paper is a reflexion on the computability of natural language semantics. It does not contain a new model or new results in the formal semantics of natural language: it is rather a computational analysis of the logical models and…
I consider issues in distributed computation that should be of relevance to game theory. In particular, I focus on (a) representing knowledge and uncertainty, (b) dealing with failures, and (c) specification of mechanisms.
In machine learning (ML), researchers and engineers seem to be at odds. System implementers would prefer models to be declarative, with detailed type information and semantic restrictions that allow models to be optimised, rearranged and…
Traditional treatments of formal logic provide: 1. A syntax for formulas. 2. An inference relation between sets of formulas. 3. A rule for assigning meaning to formulas (semantics) that is sound with respect to the inference relation. First…
Although synergy is an important concept that is strongly ingrained in games, it has not been widely discussed by the games community. This is due to the vagueness of the concept and the fact that there is no clear agreement on what it…
Theories for reasoning about programs with effects initially focused on basic manipulation of lists and other mutable data. The next challenge was to consider higher-order programming, adding functions as first class objects to mutable…
Syntactic theory has traditionally adopted a constructivist approach, in which a set of atomic elements are manipulated by combinatory operations to yield derived, complex elements. Syntactic structure is thus seen as the result or discrete…
In the game-theoretic approach to controller synthesis, we model the interaction between a system to be controlled and its environment as a game between these entities, and we seek an appropriate (e.g., winning or optimal) strategy for the…
We introduce and investigate a range of general notions of a game. Our principal notion is based on a set of agents modifying a relational structure in a discrete evolution sequence. We also introduce and study a variety of ways to model…