Rohit Parikh

We offer a probabilistic model of rational consequence relations (Lehmann and Magidor, 1990) by appealing to the extension of the classical Ramsey-Adams test proposed by Vann McGee in (McGee, 1994). Previous and influential models of nonmonotonic consequence relations have been produced in terms of the dynamics of expectations (Gärdenfors and Makinson, 1994; Gärdenfors, 1993).'Expectation' is a term of art in these models, which should not be confused with the notion of expected utility. The expectations of an agent are some form of belief weaker than absolute certainty. Our model offers a modified and extended version of an account of qualitative belief in terms of conditional probability, first presented in (van Fraassen, 1995). We use this model to relate probabilistic and qualitative models of non-monotonic relations in terms of expectations. In doing so we propose a probabilistic model of the notion of expectation. We provide characterization results both for logically finite languages and for logically infinite, but countable, languages. The latter case shows the relevance of the axiom of countable additivity for our probability functions. We show that a rational logic defined over a logically infinite language can only be fully characterized in terms of finitely additive conditional probability

Attempts to give a Logic or Semantics for vague predicates and to defuse the Sorites paradoxes have been largely a failure. We point out yet another problem with these predicates which has not been remarked on before,namely that different people do and must use these predicates in individually different ways. Thus even if there were a semantics for vague predicates, people would not be able to share it. To explain the occurrence nonetheless of these troublesome predicates in language, we propose a different approach based on asking the question, “How do these vague predicates help people to communicate with each other?” We show that in general, even though different people assign different extensions to vague predicates, they usually benefit from receiving information framed in terms of them.

We investigate the semantics of messages, and argue that the meaning ofa message is naturally and usefully given in terms of how it affects theknowledge of the agents involved in the communication. We note thatthis semantics depends on the protocol used by the agents, and thus not only the message itself, but also the protocol appears as a parameter in the meaning. Understanding this dependence allows us to give formal explanations of a wide variety of notions including language dependence, implicature, and the amount of information in a message.

A utility-based approach to the understanding of vague predicates (VPs) is proposed. It is argued that assignment of truth values to propositions containing VPs entails unjustifiable assumptions of consensus; two models of VP semantics are criticized on this basis: (1) the super-truth theory of Kit Fine (1975), which requires an unlikely consensus on base points; (2) the fuzzy logic of Lotfi Zadeh (1975), on fuzzy truth values of sentences. Pragmatism is held to provide a key: successful behavior justifies a person's knowledge of the content of a VP. Instead of attempting to determine a consensus underlying successful communication, the utility of individual communications is held to rest on sufficient approximation of meanings between people. 3 Figures, 17 References. Adapted from the source document

We suggest that the issue of constructing andverifying social procedures, which we suggestively call socialsoftware, be pursued as systematically as computer software is pursued by computer scientists. Certain complications do arise withsocial software which do not arise with computer software, but thesimilarities are nonetheless strong, and tools already exist which wouldenable us to start work on this important project. We give a variety ofsuggestive examples and indicate some theoretical work which alreadyexists.

Both the Beth definability theorem and Craig's lemma (interpolation theorem from now on) deal with the issue of the entanglement of one language L1 with another language L2, that is to say, information transfer—or the lack of such transfer—between the two languages. The notion of splitting we study below looks into this issue. We briefly relate our own results in this area as well as the results of other researchers like Kourousias and Makinson, and Peppas, Chopra and Foo.Section 3 does contain one apparently new theorem