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53Generics and typicality: a bounded rationality approachLinguistics and Philosophy 43 (1): 83-117. 2020.Cimpian et al. observed that we accept generic statements of the form ‘Gs are f’ on relatively weak evidence, but that if we are unfamiliar with group G and we learn a generic statement about it, we still treat it inferentially in a much stronger way: all Gs are f. This paper makes use of notions like ‘representativeness’, ‘contingency’ and ‘relative difference’ from psychology to provide a uniform semantics of generics that explains why people accept generics based on weak evidence. The spirit …Read more
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36A Causal Power Semantics for Generic SentencesTopoi 40 (1): 131-146. 2019.Many generic sentences express stable inductive generalizations. Stable inductive generalizations are typically true for a causal reason. In this paper we investigate to what extent this is also the case for the generalizations expressed by generic sentences. More in particular, we discuss the possibility that many generic sentences of the form ‘ks have feature e’ are true because kind k have the causal power to ‘produce’ feature e. We will argue that such an analysis is quite close to a probabi…Read more
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19Conditionals As Representative InferencesAxiomathes 31 (3): 437-452. 2021.According to Adams, the acceptability of an indicative conditional goes with the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. However, some conditionals seem to be inappropriate, although their corresponding conditional probability is high. These are cases with a missing link between antecedent and consequent. Other conditionals are appropriate even though the conditional probability is low. Finally, we have the so-called biscuit conditionals. In this paper we will generalize …Read more
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64Conditionals, Causality and Conditional ProbabilityJournal of Logic, Language and Information 28 (1): 55-71. 2018.The appropriateness, or acceptability, of a conditional does not just ‘go with’ the corresponding conditional probability. A condition of dependence is required as well. In this paper a particular notion of dependence is proposed. It is shown that under both a forward causal and a backward evidential reading of the conditional, this appropriateness condition reduces to conditional probability under some natural circumstances. Because this is in particular the case for the so-called diagnostic re…Read more
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76Exhaustive interpretation of complex sentencesJournal of Logic, Language and Information 13 (4): 491-519. 2004.In terms of Groenendijk and Stokhofs (1984) formalization of exhaustive interpretation, many conversational implicatures can be accounted for. In this paper we justify and generalize this approach. Our justification proceeds by relating their account via Halpern and Moses (1984) non-monotonic theory of only knowing to the Gricean maxims of Quality and the first sub-maxim of Quantity. The approach of Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) is generalized such that it can also account for implicatures that…Read more
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31Coevolution of Lexical Meaning and Pragmatic UseCognitive Science 42 (8): 2757-2789. 2018.According to standard linguistic theory, the meaning of an utterance is the product of conventional semantic meaning and general pragmatic rules on language use. We investigate how such a division of labor between semantics and pragmatics could evolve under general processes of selection and learning. We present a game‐theoretic model of the competition between types of language users, each endowed with certain lexical representations and a particular pragmatic disposition to act on them. Our mo…Read more
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47Explaining Quantity ImplicaturesJournal of Logic, Language and Information 21 (4): 461-477. 2012.We give derivations of two formal models of Gricean Quantity implicature and strong exhaustivity in bidirectional optimality theory and in a signalling games framework. We show that, under a unifying model based on signalling games, these interpretative strategies are game-theoretic equilibria when the speaker is known to be respectively minimally and maximally expert in the matter at hand. That is, in this framework the optimal strategy for communication depends on the degree of knowledge the s…Read more
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98Revealed preference and satisficing behaviorSynthese 179 (S1). 2011.A much discussed topic in the theory of choice is how a preference order among options can be derived from the assumption that the notion of ' choice' is primitive. Assuming a choice function that selects elements from each finite set of options, Arrow (Económica 26: 121-127,1959) already showed how we can generate a weak ordering by putting constraints on the behavior of such a function such that it reflects utility maximization. Arrow proposed that rational agents can be modeled by such choice…Read more
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74Pragmatic Meaning and Non-Monotonic Reasoning: The Case of Exhaustive InterpretationLinguistics and Philosophy 29 (2). 2006.In this paper an approach to the exhaustive interpretation of answers is developed. It builds on a proposal brought forward by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984). We will use the close connection between their approach and McCarthy's (1980, 1986) predicate circumscription and describe exhaustive interpretation as an instance of interpretation in minimal models, well-known from work on counterfactuals (see for instance Lewis (1973)). It is shown that by combining this approach with independent develo…Read more
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62Game-Theoretic Pragmatics Under Conflicting and Common InterestsErkenntnis 1-52. 2013.This paper combines a survey of existing literature in game-theoretic pragmatics with new models that fill some voids in that literature. We start with an overview of signaling games with a conflict of interest between sender and receiver, and show that the literature on such games can be classified into models with direct, costly, noisy and imprecise signals. We then argue that this same subdivision can be used to classify signaling games with common interests, where we fill some voids in the l…Read more
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89Language Structure: Psychological and Social ConstraintsSynthese 159 (1). 2007.In this article we discuss the notion of a linguistic universal, and possible sources of such invariant properties of natural languages. In the first part, we explore the conceptual issues that arise. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the explanatory potential of horizontal evolution. We particularly focus on two case studies, concerning Zipf's Law and universal properties of color terms, respectively. We show how computer simulations can be employed to study the large scale, emergent…Read more
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439Tolerant, Classical, StrictJournal of Philosophical Logic 41 (2): 347-385. 2012.In this paper we investigate a semantics for first-order logic originally proposed by R. van Rooij to account for the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, that is, for the principle that if x is P, then y should be P whenever y is similar enough to x. The semantics, which makes use of indifference relations to model similarity, rests on the interaction of three notions of truth: the classical notion, and two dual notions simultaneously defined in terms of it, which we call tolerant truth and…Read more
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106Tolerance and Mixed Consequence in the S'valuationist SettingStudia Logica 100 (4): 855-877. 2012.In a previous paper (see ‘Tolerant, Classical, Strict’, henceforth TCS) we investigated a semantic framework to deal with the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, namely that small changes do not affect the applicability of a vague predicate even if large changes do. Our approach there rests on two main ideas. First, given a classical extension of a predicate, we can define a strict and a tolerant extension depending on an indifference relation associated to that predicate. Second, we can us…Read more
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150Identity, Leibniz’s Law and Non-Transitive ReasoningMetaphysica 14 (2): 253-264. 2013.Arguments based on Leibniz's Law seem to show that there is no room for either indefinite or contingent identity. The arguments seem to prove too much, but their conclusion is hard to resist if we want to keep Leibniz's Law. We present a novel approach to this issue, based on an appropriate modification of the notion of logical consequence.
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150Optimal assertions, and what they implicate. A uniform game theoretic approachTopoi 26 (1): 63-78. 2007.To determine what the speaker in a cooperative dialog meant with his assertion, on top of what he explicitly said, it is crucial that we assume that the assertion he gave was optimal. In determining optimal assertions we assume that dialogs are embedded in decision problems (van Rooij 2003) and use backwards induction for calculating them (Benz 2006). In this paper, we show that in terms of our framework we can account for several types of implicatures in a uniform way, suggesting that there i…Read more
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174Reaching Transparent TruthMind 122 (488): 841-866. 2013.This paper presents and defends a way to add a transparent truth predicate to classical logic, such that and A are everywhere intersubstitutable, where all T-biconditionals hold, and where truth can be made compositional. A key feature of our framework, called STTT (for Strict-Tolerant Transparent Truth), is that it supports a non-transitive relation of consequence. At the same time, it can be seen that the only failures of transitivity STTT allows for arise in paradoxical cases
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47Inferences and Metainferences in STJournal of Philosophical Logic 49 (6): 1057-1077. 2020.In a recent paper, Barrio, Tajer and Rosenblatt establish a correspondence between metainferences holding in the strict-tolerant logic of transparent truth ST+ and inferences holding in the logic of paradox LP+. They argue that LP+ is ST+’s external logic and they question whether ST+’s solution to the semantic paradoxes is fundamentally different from LP+’s. Here we establish that by parity of reasoning, ST+ can be related to LP+’s dual logic K3+. We clarify the distinction between internal and…Read more
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77Pragmatic Interpretations of Vague Expressions: Strongest Meaning and Nonmonotonic ConsequenceJournal of Philosophical Logic 44 (4): 375-393. 2015.Recent experiments have shown that naive speakers find borderline contradictions involving vague predicates acceptable. In Cobreros et al. we proposed a pragmatic explanation of the acceptability of borderline contradictions, building on a three-valued semantics. In a reply, Alxatib et al. show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong interpretations for some examples involving disjunction, and propose as a remedy a semantic analysis instead, based on fuzzy logic. In this paper we…Read more
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68New Perspectives on Games and Interactions (edited book)Amsterdam University Press. 2008.This volume is a collection of papers presented at the colloquium, and it testifies to the growing importance of game theory as a tool that can capture concepts ...
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Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |