Related papers: Pragmatic Nonsense
A definition of what counts as an explanation of mathematical statement, and when one explanation is better than another, is given. Since all mathematical facts must be true in all causal models, and hence known by an agent, mathematical…
I deal with two approaches to proof-theoretic semantics: one based on argument structures and justifications, which I call reducibility semantics, and one based on consequence among (sets of) formulas over atomic bases, called base…
Over the past few decades, non-monotonic reasoning has developed to be one of the most important topics in computational logic and artificial intelligence. Different ways to introduce non-monotonic aspects to classical logic have been…
A hallmark of human language is the ability to effectively and efficiently convey contextually relevant information. One theory for how humans reason about language is presented in the Rational Speech Acts (RSA) framework, which captures…
Mathematics and its relation to the physical universe have been the topic of speculation since the days of Pythagoras. Several different views of the nature of mathematics have been considered: Realism - mathematics exists and is…
Argumentation is a non-monotonic process. This reflects the fact that argumentation involves uncertain information, and so new information can cause a change in the conclusions drawn. However, the base logic does not need to be…
In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out if two theories are "equivalent" (essentially the same) or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide means to measure distances (and explore…
The paper proposes a derivation system for a logic of presuppositions as introduced by P. F. Strawson. It is based on truth-relevant logic described by M. Richard Diaz in 1981. In another paper I outlined a derivation system for t-relevant…
This paper is an original attempt to understand the foundations of economic reasoning. It endeavors to rigorously define the relationship between subjective interpretations and objective valuations of such interpretations in the context of…
In this paper, we take a fresh look at three Popperian concepts: riskiness, falsifiability, and truthlikeness (or verisimilitude) of scientific hypotheses or theories. First, we make explicit the dimensions that underlie the notion of…
An objective definition of pragmatic information and the consideration of recent results about information processing in the human brain can help overcome some traditional difficulties with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Rather…
We investigate a version of linear temporal logic whose propositional fragment is G\"odel-Dummett logic (which is well known both as a superintuitionistic logic and a t-norm fuzzy logic). We define the logic using two natural semantics:…
The apparent failure of individual probabilistic expressions to distinguish uncertainty about truths from uncertainty about probabilistic assessments have prompted researchers to seek formalisms where the two types of uncertainties are…
Our approach is basically a coherence approach, but we avoid the well-known pitfalls of coherence theories of truth. Consistency is replaced by reliability, which expresses support and attack, and, in principle, every theory (or agent,…
There has been a growing interest in model-agnostic methods that can make deep learning models more transparent and explainable to a user. Some researchers recently argued that for a machine to achieve a certain degree of human-level…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
We present an elementary introduction to a new logic for reasoning about behaviors that occur over time. This logic is based on temporal type theory. The syntax of the logic is similar to the usual first-order logic; what differs is the…
The language of probability is used to define several different types of conditional statements. There are four principal types: subjunctive, material, existential, and feasibility. Two further types of conditionals are defined using the…
Rational decision making in its linguistic description means making logical decisions. In essence, a rational agent optimally processes all relevant information to achieve its goal. Rationality has two elements and these are the use of…
Classical logic predicts that everything (thus nothing useful at all) follows from inconsistency. A paraconsistent logic is a logic where an inconsistency does not lead to such an explosion, and since in practice consistency is difficult to…