Related papers: Pragmatic Nonsense
The class of defeasible logics is only vaguely defined -- it is defined by a few exemplars and the general idea of efficient reasoning with defeasible rules. The recent definition of the defeasible logic $DL(\partial_{||})$ introduced new…
Convincing someone of the truth value of a premise requires understanding and articulating the core logical structure of the argument which proves or disproves the premise. Understanding the logical structure of an argument refers to…
Why is ordinary language vague? We argue that in contexts in which a cooperative speaker is not perfectly informed about the world, the use of vague expressions can offer an optimal tradeoff between truthfulness (Gricean Quality) and…
In the 1950-ies P. F. Strawson proposed the Logic of Presuppositions. In this system sentences with empty subject are considered neither true nor false. Strawson considered only simple sentences with two predicate letters. But the concept…
In Knowledge Representation, it is crucial that knowledge engineers have a good understanding of the formal expressions that they write. What formal expressions state intuitively about the domain of discourse is studied in the theory of the…
Defeasible logic is an efficient logic for defeasible reasoning. It is defined through a proof theory and, until now, has had no model theory. In this paper a model-theoretic semantics is given for defeasible logic. The logic is sound and…
Interpretability is the study of explaining models in understandable terms to humans. At present, interpretability is divided into two paradigms: the intrinsic paradigm, which believes that only models designed to be explained can be…
This paper considers a formalisation of classical logic using general introduction rules and general elimination rules. It proposes a definition of `maximal formula', `segment' and `maximal segment' suitable to the system, and gives…
Some attack scientific rationality, others defend it, but both miss the point. What both parties take to be scientific rationality is actually a species of irrationality masquerading as scientific rationality. The current orthodox…
In many real-world situations, there is often not enough information to know that a certain strategy will succeed in achieving the goal, but there is a good reason to believe that it will. The paper introduces the term ``doxastic'' for such…
In this paper, we provide more evidence for the contention that logical consequence should be understood in normative terms. Hartry Field and John MacFarlane covered the classical case. We extend their work, examining what it means for an…
Among the various forms of reasoning studied in the context of artificial intelligence, qualitative reasoning makes it possible to infer new knowledge in the context of imprecise, incomplete information without numerical values. In this…
This paper introduces conceptual relations that synthesize utilitarian and logical concepts, extending the logics of preference of Rescher. We define first, in the context of a possible worlds model, constraint-dependent measures that…
We define a class of formal systems inspired by Prawitz's theory of grounds. The latter is a semantics that aims at accounting for epistemic grounding, namely, at explaining why and how deductively valid inferences have the power to…
We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion paper. Essentially, an explanation is a…
Neyman and Pearson's theory of testing hypotheses does not warrant minimal epistemic reliability: the feature of driving to true conclusions more often than to false ones. The theory does not protect from the possible negative effects of…
One main goal of argumentation theory is to evaluate arguments and to determine whether they should be accepted or rejected. When there is no clear answer, a third option, being undecided, has to be taken into account. Indecision is often…
For a newcomer, paraconsistent logics can be difficult to grasp. Even experts in logic can find the concept of paraconsistency to be suspicious or misguided, if not actually wrong. The problem is that although they usually have much in…
This paper introduces pragmatic hypotheses and relates this concept to the spiral of scientific evolution. Previous works determined a characterization of logically consistent statistical hypothesis tests and showed that the modal operators…
This draft introduces the technical machinery of a semantic framework for potentialist truthmaking based on our innovation of intentic states, which are structured partial models accounting for our distinction between non-hypothetical and…