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According to an intuitive picture of relevant entailment, an entailment is relevant if all the formulas it contains contribute to its validity. In this paper, we provide a ground-theoretic analysis of this notion of contribution, and as a result of relevant entailment. We build a system of bilateral logical grounding within which we can derive classical entailment and analyze the contribution of premises and conclusions, in terms of a certain type of connection between their respective logical grounds. The resulting framework is shown to have a strong unifying and explanatory power by bringing together the notions of grounding and relevance and explaining the commonalities and differences between alternative contribution-based accounts of relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature in semantics and pragmatics provides extensive evidence for the strengthening of linguistic expressions, both in matrix positions and when embedded under various operators. We study the properties of such strengthening using a very simple setting. Specifically, we look at when the expression "crate with a banana" can be understood as a unique crate even though two different crates have a banana in them. By varying the scenarios in which an expression such as "Pick the crate with a banana" is evaluated, we show that the strengthening of "crate with a banana" within the scope of the definite article parallels the entailments of "crate with only a banana" (with an overt exhaustivity operator, 'only'). We use this observation to argue that strengthening in embedded positions follows the logic of an exhaustivity operator rather than that of rational inference. We then note that a similar pattern obtains in matrix positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Case law retrieval is the task of locating truly relevant legal cases given an input query case. Unlike information retrieval for general texts, this task is more complex with two phases (legal case retrieval and legal case entailment) and much harder due to a number of reasons. First, both the query and candidate cases are long documents consisting of several paragraphs. This makes it difficult to model with representation learning that usually has restriction on input length. Second, the concept of relevancy in this domain is defined based on the legal relation that goes beyond the lexical or topical relevance. This is a real challenge because normal text matching will not work. Third, building a large and accurate legal case dataset requires a lot of effort and expertise. This is obviously an obstacle to creating enough data for training deep retrieval models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called supporting model that can deal with both phases. The underlying idea is the case–case supporting relation and the paragraph–paragraph as well as the decision-paragraph matching strategy. In addition, we propose a method to automatically create a large weak-labeling dataset to overcome the lack of data. The experiments showed that our solution has achieved the state-of-the-art results for both case retrieval and case entailment phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bayesian confirmation theory is rife with confirmation measures. Many of them differ from each other in important respects. It turns out, though, that all the standard confirmation measures in the literature run counter to the so-called “Reverse Matthew Effect” (“RME” for short). Suppose, to illustrate, that H1 and H2 are equally successful in predicting E in that pE|H1/pE=pE|H2/pE>1. Suppose, further, that initially H1 is less probable than H2 in that p(H1). Then by RME it follows that the degree to which E confirms H1 is greater than the degree to which it confirms H2. But by all the standard confirmation measures in the literature, in contrast, it follows that the degree to which E confirms H1 is less than or equal to the degree to which it confirms H2. It might seem, then, that RME should be rejected as implausible. Festa (Synthese 184:89-100, 2012), however, argues that there are scientific contexts in which RME holds. If Festa’s argument is sound, it follows that there are scientific contexts in which none of the standard confirmation measures in the literature is adequate. Festa’s argument is thus interesting, important, and deserving of careful examination. I consider five distinct respects in which E can be related to H, use them to construct five distinct ways of understanding confirmation measures, which I call “Increase in Probability”, “Partial Dependence”, “Partial Entailment”, “Partial Discrimination”, and “Popper Corroboration”, and argue that each such way runs counter to RME. The result is that it is not at all clear that there is a place in Bayesian confirmation theory for RME. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concentrates on giving precise content to the general wisdom on the scalar presupposition of even, according to which the prejacent of even, p, is stronger than its relevant focus alternatives, q. To that end I first examine both familiar challenges for the popular 'comparative likelihood' view of the 'stronger than' relation, as well as novel challenges, having to do with the context dependency of even (with entailed and non-entailed alternatives) and with its sensitivity to standards of comparison. To overcome these challenges and to account for the full range of data I develop a revised, 'gradability-based' scalar presupposition for even, which differs from the 'comparative likelihood' one in several respects: instead of directly comparing degrees to which propositions (namely p and q) are more or less likely, we compare extents to which non-focus entities x in p and q (in the accessible p worlds and the exhaustified q worlds) exceed the salient standard on a scale associated with a contextually supplied gradable property G. To capture cases where information about contrastive topics is crucial for fixing two distinct standards on G, I follow theories which view even as a general, two-place alternative-sensitive operator, allowing it to associate with both focus and contrastive topics. Beyond the ability to account for a large range of intricate felicity variations and inferences found with even, a more general contribution of the paper lies in showing the linguistic relevance of tools originally developed in the literature on gradable predicates to the semantics of scalar alternative-sensitive particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I will consider John D. Caputo's hermeneutics of deconstruction or what he calls 'radical hermeneutics', with 'undecidability' as its major theme, in conversation with Martin Heidegger's notion of 'resolute existence'. Through an examination of the different positions of Caputo, Heidegger, and also Kierkegaard, Derrida and Meister Eckhart on the possibility of repetition, the hermeneutical circle and the mystical way of prayer and faith, I am arguing that deconstruction is not the end of hermeneutics, it is not the final destination of an interpretative task, and thus deconstructive hermeneutics has to concede a reconstructive process. Further, I am arguing that Caputo's 'radical hermeneutics' is too reductionist to keep any meaning for the hermeneutic enterprise to aspire to. I am contending, rather, that it is resolute existence that theology aspires to as it is a move beyond 'undecidability'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a principled difference between entailments in natural language that are valid solely in virtue of their form or structure and those that are not? This paper advances an affirmative answer to this question, one that takes as its starting point Gareth Evans's suggestion that semantic theory aims to carve reality at the joints by uncovering the semantic natural kinds of the language. I sketch an Evans-inspired account of semantic kinds and show how it supports a principled account of structural entailment. I illustrate the account by application to a case study involving the entailment properties of adverbs; this involves developing a novel proposal about the semantics for adverbs like 'quickly' and 'slowly'. In the course of the discussion I explore some implications of the account for the place of model-theoretic tools in natural language semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I defend a grammatical account of scalar implicatures. In particular, I submit new evidence in favor of the contextual blindness principle, assumed in recent versions of the grammatical account. I argue that mismatching scalar implicatures can be generated even when the restrictor of the universal quantifier in a universal alternative is contextually known to be empty. The crucial evidence consists of a hitherto unnoticed oddness asymmetry between formally analogous existential sentences with reference failure NPs. I conclude that the generation of mismatching scalar implicatures does not require contextual access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For temporal relations, mutually entailed relations are different to those directly trained; we learn that A occurred 'before' B and derive that B occurred 'after' A. Deriving such relations results in lower accuracy and slower response speeds compared to derived relations identical to those trained. The ability of an individual to derive relations different to those trained is a measure of relational flexibility and predicts performance on standard cognitive tests. In the current study, 23 younger ( M = 19 years) and 23 older ( M = 61 years) participants observed pairs of stimuli presented consecutively (A ... B) and then evaluated statements including the stimuli in the same (A BEFORE B) or reversed order (B AFTER A). Judgements on reversed ('after') statements resulted in lower accuracy and slower response speeds than those presented in the same order ('before') for both older and younger groups. Older adults exhibited deficits in relational flexibility compared to younger adults, such as slower progression through experimental phases, particularly in correctly responding to reversed statements. Older participants also demonstrated higher error rates on foil statements and responded more slowly than younger participants. The findings suggest that older adults may benefit from training strategies focused on relational flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I will claim that the distinction Craig French describes between 'specific realizations of knowledge' and 'means of knowing', after respective theorisations by Timothy Williamson and Quassim Cassam, can be seen as a faultline between epistemology on the one hand, and (merely) the analysis of ordinary language use on the other. The possibility of this disjunction, I believe, raises the question as to whether the latter kind of analysis has anything to contribute to epistemology at all. Cassam's 'explanatory' conception of ways of knowing is shown to be inconsistent as an epistemology, and prone to use of unfair examples even considered as (merely) the analysis of ordinary discourse for expressions of knowledge. Nonetheless, in order to argue that this is the case, the 'explanatory' conception helps us to consider the better mode of analysis for explanations of knowledge in philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their paper Nothing but the Truth Andreas Pietz and Umberto Rivieccio present Exactly True Logic ( ETL), an interesting variation upon the four-valued logic for first-degree entailment FDE that was given by Belnap and Dunn in the 1970s. Pietz & Rivieccio provide this logic with a Hilbert-style axiomatisation and write that finding a nice sequent calculus for the logic will presumably not be easy. But a sequent calculus can be given and in this paper we will show that a calculus for the Belnap-Dunn logic we have defined earlier can in fact be reused for the purpose of characterising ETL, provided a small alteration is made-initial assignments of signs to the sentences of a sequent to be proved must be different from those used for characterising FDE. While Pietz & Rivieccio define ETL on the language of classical propositional logic we also study its consequence relation on an extension of this language that is functionally complete for the underlying four truth values. On this extension the calculus gets a multiple-tree character- two proof trees may be needed to establish one proof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those who wish to claim that all facts about grounding are themselves grounded ('the meta-grounding thesis') must defend against the charge that such a claim leads to infinite regress and violates the well-foundedness of ground. In this paper, we defend. First, we explore three distinct but related notions of 'well-founded', which are often conflated, and three corresponding notions of infinite regress. We explore the entailment relations between these notions. We conclude that the meta-grounding thesis need not lead to tension with any of the three notions of 'well-founded'. Finally, we explore the details of and motivations for further conditions on ground that one might add to generate a conflict between the meta-grounding thesis and a well-founded constraint. We explore these topics by developing and utilizing a formal framework based on the notion of a grounding structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an extended description of SemEval-2014 Task 1, the task on the evaluation of Compositional Distributional Semantics Models on full sentences. Systems participating in the task were presented with pairs of sentences and were evaluated on their ability to predict human judgments on (1) semantic relatedness and (2) entailment. Training and testing data were subsets of the SICK (Sentences Involving Compositional Knowledge) data set. SICK was developed with the aim of providing a proper benchmark to evaluate compositional semantic systems, though task participation was open to systems based on any approach. Taking advantage of the SemEval experience, in this paper we analyze the SICK data set, in order to evaluate the extent to which it meets its design goal and to shed light on the linguistic phenomena that are still challenging for state-of-the-art computational semantic systems. Qualitative and quantitative error analyses show that many systems are quite sensitive to changes in the proportion of sentence pair types, and degrade in the presence of additional lexico-syntactic complexities which do not affect human judgements. More compositional systems seem to perform better when the task proportions are changed, but the effect needs further confirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the results of the joint student response analysis (SRA) and 8th recognizing textual entailment challenge. The goal of this challenge was to bring together researchers from the educational natural language processing and computational semantics communities. The goal of the SRA task is to assess student responses to questions in the science domain, focusing on correctness and completeness of the response content. Nine teams took part in the challenge, submitting a total of 18 runs using methods and features adapted from previous research on automated short answer grading, recognizing textual entailment and semantic textual similarity. We provide an extended analysis of the results focusing on the impact of evaluation metrics, application scenarios and the methods and features used by the participants. We conclude that additional research is required to be able to leverage syntactic dependency features and external semantic resources for this task, possibly due to limited coverage of scientific domains in existing resources. However, each of three approaches to using features and models adjusted to application scenarios achieved better system performance, meriting further investigation by the research community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we give an analytic tableau calculus P L for a functionally complete extension of Shramko and Wansing's logic. The calculus is based on signed formulas and a single set of tableau rules is involved in axiomatising each of the four entailment relations ⊧, ⊧, ⊧, and ⊧ under consideration-the differences only residing in initial assignments of signs to formulas. Proving that two sets of formulas are in one of the first three entailment relations will in general require developing four tableaux, while proving that they are in the ⊧ relation may require six. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle of mass additivity states that the mass of a composite object is the sum of the masses of its elementary components. Mass additivity is true in Newtonian mechanics but false in special relativity. Physicists have explained why mass additivity is true in Newtonian mechanics by reducing it to Newton's microphysical laws. This reductive explanation does not fit well with deducibility theories of reductive explanation such as the modern Nagelian theory of reduction, and the a priori entailment theory of reduction that is prominent in the philosophy of mind. Nonetheless, I argue that a reconstruction of the explanation that incorporates distinctively philosophical concepts in fact fits both theories. I discuss the implications of this result for both theories and for the reductive explanation of consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logicians interested in naive theories of truth or set have proposed logical frameworks in which classical operational rules are retained but structural rules are restricted. One increasingly popular way to do this is by restricting transitivity of entailment. This paper discusses a series of logics in this tradition, in which the transitivity restrictions are effected by a determinacy constraint on assumptions occurring in both the major and minor premises of certain rules. Semantics and proof theory for 3-valued, continuum-valued and surreal-valued semantics are given and the proof theory for the systems outlined. The framework is robust in the sense that no conditional, defined or primitive, which sustains the contraction principles underlying Curry paradoxes can be expressed. Classical recapture is smoothly achievable in the system which however is expressively limited and not semantically closed. The conclusion considers the issue of how to extend the system to capture full naive set theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multiagent systems, agents interact and in particular exchange information to achieve a joint goal, e.g., arrange a meeting, negotiate a sales contract etc. An agent, as a rational reasoner, is able to incorporate new information into her belief about her environment (belief revision) or to share her belief with other agents (query answering). Our agent model is based on a common line of research where belief revision is seen as the process of nonmonotonic reasoning from the available information. Yet, such an agent might be interested to hide confidential parts of her belief from another requesting agent and, thus, must control the respective reaction to a revision or query request. As our first contribution, we define the confidentiality aims of the reacting agent and postulate the requesting agent's capabilities in attacking these interests. In particular, we study an operator by means of which the requesting agent attempts to skeptically entail confidential beliefs of the reacting agent from observed reactions. This skeptical entailment operator is based on a class of nonmonotonic consequence relations such that the reacting agent's reasoning is implemented as an instance of this class. As our second contribution, we give an algorithmic solution for the reacting agent to enforce her confidentiality aims. To this end, we show how skeptical entailment could be computed via deduction with respect to an appropriate axiomatization of the class of consequence relations on which skeptical entailment is based. In particular, we present control procedures using the skeptical entailment operator and prove that these procedures effectively enforce confidentiality by means of refusal even if the requesting agent also takes their execution into consideration (meta-inference). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that there are infinitely many pairwise non-equivalent formulae in one propositional variable p in the pure implication fragment of the logic T of 'ticket entailment' proposed by Anderson and Belnap. This answers a question posed by R. K. Meyer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the adequacy of the model-theoretic definition of logical consequence. Logical consequence is commonly described as a necessary relation that can be determined by the form of the sentences involved. In this paper, necessity is assumed to be a metaphysical notion, and formality is viewed as a means to avoid dealing with complex metaphysical questions in logical investigations. Logical terms are an essential part of the form of sentences and thus have a crucial role in determining logical consequence. Gila Sher and Stewart Shapiro each propose a formal criterion for logical terms within a model-theoretic framework, based on the idea of invariance under isomorphism. The two criteria are formally equivalent, and thus we have a common ground for evaluating and comparing Sher and Shapiro philosophical justification of their criteria. It is argued that Shapiro's blended approach, by which models represent possible worlds under interpretations of the language, is preferable to Sher's formal-structural view, according to which models represent formal structures. The advantages and disadvantages of both views' reliance on isomorphism are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the properties of eight semantic consequence relations defined from a Tarski-logic L and a preference relation ≺ . They are equivalent to Shoham's so-called preferential entailment for smooth model structures, but avoid certain problems of the latter in non-smooth configurations. Each of the logics can be characterized in terms of what we call multi-selection semantics. After discussing this type of semantics, we focus on some concrete proposals from the literature, checking a number of meta-theoretic properties and elaborating on their intuitive motivation. As it turns out, many of their meta-properties only hold in case ≺ is transitive. To tackle this problem, we propose slight modifications of each of the systems, showing the resulting logics to behave better at the intuitive level and in metatheoretic terms, for arbitrary ≺ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proper evaluation of a theory's virtues seems to require taking into account what the theory is indirectly or implicitly committed to, in addition to what it explicitly says. Most extant proposals for criteria of theory choice in the literature spell out the relevant notion of implicit commitment via some notion of entailment. I show that such criteria behave implausibly in application to theories that differ over matters of entailment. A recent defence by Howard Peacock of such a criterion against this objection is examined and rejected. I go on to a develop a better proposal on which, roughly speaking, a theory is counted committed to a claim if and only if its best fully explicit extension is explicitly committed to the claim. Such extensions in turn are evaluated by ordinary standards of theory choice adapted to the case of theories assumed to articulate their intended content in a fully explicit fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking out the window, I see that it's raining outside. Do I know that it's raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell, in Smith (ed.) Reading McDowell on mind and world, ; Turri, Theoria 76(3):197-206, ; Pritchard, Philos Issues (Supplement to Nous) 21:434-455, ; Pritchard, Epistemological disjunctivism, ) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not know that p. In this paper, I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemologists have proposed various norms of assertion to explain when a speaker is in an epistemic position to assert a proposition. In this article I propose a distinct necessary condition on assertibility: that a speaker should assert only what she sensitively believes, where a subject's belief is sensitive just in case the subject would not hold it if it were false. I argue that the Sensitivity Rule underwrites simple explanations for three key features of assertibility that pose explanatory challenges to other prominent proposals: the fact that assertibility is open under known entailment, the general impropriety of assertions that a lottery ticket has lost made purely on the basis of the speaker's knowledge of the odds, and the fact that assertibility varies widely with features of the conversational context. I close by considering three distinct roles the Sensitivity Rule might play in the overall theory of assertibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of supervenience and a regimented concept of grounding are often taken to provide rival explications of pre-theoretical concepts of dependence and determination. Friends of grounding typically point out that supervenience claims do not entail corresponding grounding claims. Every fact supervenes on itself, but is not grounded in itself, and the fact that a thing exists supervenes on the fact that its singleton exists, but is not grounded in it. Common lore has it, though, that grounding claims do entail corresponding supervenience claims. In this article, I show that this assumption is problematic. On one way of understanding it, the corresponding supervenience claim is just an entailment claim under a different name. On another way of understanding it, the corresponding claim is a distinctive supervenience claim, but its specification gives rise to what I call the "reference type problem": to associate the classes of facts that are the relata of grounding with the types of facts that are the relata of supervenience. However it is understood, supervenience rules out prima facie possibilities: alien realizers, blockers, heterogeneous realizers, floaters, and heterogeneous blockers. Instead of being rival explications of one and the same pre-theoretical concept, grounding and supervenience may be complementary concepts capturing different aspects of determination and dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to moral error theory, moral discourse is error-ridden. Establishing error theory requires establishing two claims. These are that moral discourse carries a non-negotiable commitment to there being a moral reality and that there is no such reality. This paper concerns the first and so-called non-negotiable commitment claim. It starts by identifying the two existing argumentative strategies for settling that claim. The standard strategy is to argue for a relation of conceptual entailment between the moral statements that comprise moral discourse and the statement that there is a moral reality. The non-standard strategy is to argue for a presupposition relation instead. Error theorists have so far failed to consider a third strategy, which uses a general entailment relation that doesn't require intricate relations between concepts. The paper argues that both entailment claims struggle to meet a new explanatory challenge and that since the presupposition option doesn't we have prima facie reason to prefer it over the entailment options. The paper then argues that suitably amending the entailment claims enables them to meet this challenge. With all three options back on the table the paper closes by arguing that error theorists should consider developing the currently unrecognised, non-conceptual entailment claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard view in epistemology is that propositional knowledge entails belief. Positive arguments are seldom given for this entailment thesis, however; instead, its truth is typically assumed. Against the entailment thesis, Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel ( Noûs, forthcoming) report that a non-trivial percentage of people think that there can be propositional knowledge without belief. In this paper, we add further fuel to the fire, presenting the results of four new studies. Based on our results, we argue that the entailment thesis does not deserve the default status that it is typically granted. We conclude by considering the alternative account of knowledge that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel propose to explain their results, arguing that it does not explain ours. In its place we offer a different explanation of both sets of findings-the conviction account, according to which belief, but not knowledge, requires mental assent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper we discuss criticisms against David Armstrong's general theory of truthmaking by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Peter Schulte and Benjamin Schnieder, and conclude that Armstrong's theory survives these criticisms. Special attention is given to the problems concerning Entailment Principle, Conjunction Thesis, Disjunction Thesis and to the notion of explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parser Evaluation using Textual Entailments (PETE) is a shared task in the SemEval-2010 Evaluation Exercises on Semantic Evaluation. The task involves recognizing textual entailments based on syntactic information alone. PETE introduces a new parser evaluation scheme that is formalism independent, less prone to annotation error, and focused on semantically relevant distinctions. This paper describes the PETE task, gives an error analysis of the top-performing Cambridge system, and introduces a standard entailment module that can be used with any parser that outputs Stanford typed dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the logic and semantics of knowledge attributions of the form “s knows whether A or B”. We analyze these constructions in an epistemic logic with alternative questions, and propose an account of the context-sensitivity of the corresponding sentences and of their presuppositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom has it that many intriguing features of indicative conditionals aren't shared by subjunctive conditionals. Subjunctive morphology is common in discussions of wishes and wants, however, and conditionals are commonly used in such discussions as well. As a result such discussions are a good place to look for subjunctive conditionals that exhibit features usually associated with indicatives alone. Here I offer subjunctive versions of J. L. Austin's 'biscuit' conditionals-e.g., 'There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them'-and subjunctive versions of Allan Gibbard's 'stand-off' or 'Sly Pete' conditionals, in which speakers with no relevant false beliefs can in the same context felicitously assert conditionals with the same antecedents and contradictory consequents. My cases undercut views according to which the indicative/subjunctive divide marks a great difference in the meaning of conditionals. They also make trouble for treatments of indicative conditionals that cannot readily be generalized to subjunctives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliabilists accept the possibility of basic knowledge-knowledge that p in virtue of the reliability of some belief-producing process r without antecedent knowledge that r is reliable. Cohen (Philos Phenomenol Res 65:309-329, , Philos Phenomenol Res 70:417-430, ) and Vogel (J Philos 97:602-623, , J Philos 105:518-539, ) have argued that one can bootstrap knowledge that r is reliable from basic knowledge. This paper provides a diagnosis of epistemic bootstrapping, and then shows that recent attempts at embracing bootstrapped knowledge are found wanting. Instead it is argued that such arguments are afflicted by a novel kind of generalized epistemic circularity. The ensuing view is defended against various objections, and an explanation of the source of that circularity is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I propose an account truthmaking that provides truthmakers for negative truths. The account replaces Truthmaker Necessitarianism with a 'Duplication Principle', according to which a suitable entity T is a truthmaker for a proposition p just in case the existence of an appropriate counterpart of T entails the truth of p, where the counterpart relation is cashed out in terms of qualitative duplication. My account captures an intuitive notion of truthmakers as 'things the way they are', validates two appealing principles about entailment and containment proposed by David Armstrong, and invalidates the controversial Disjunction Thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard semantic definition of consequence with respect to a selected set X of symbols, in terms of truth preservation under replacement (Bolzano) or reinterpretation (Tarski) of symbols outside X, yields a function mapping X to a consequence relation $\Rightarrow_X$. We investigate a function going in the other direction, thus extracting the constants of a given consequence relation, and we show that this function (a) retrieves the usual logical constants from the usual logical consequence relations, and (b) is an inverse to-more precisely, forms a Galois connection with-the Bolzano-Tarski function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We defend a set of acceptance rules that avoids the lottery paradox, that is closed under classical entailment, and that accepts uncertain propositions without ad hoc restrictions. We show that the rules we recommend provide a semantics that validates exactly Adams' conditional logic and are exactly the rules that preserve a natural, logical structure over probabilistic credal states that we call probalogic. To motivate probalogic, we first expand classical logic to geo-logic, which fills the entire unit cube, and then we project the upper surfaces of the geo-logical cube onto the plane of probabilistic credal states by means of standard, linear perspective, which may be interpreted as an extension of the classical principle of indifference. Finally, we apply the geometrical/logical methods developed in the paper to prove a series of trivialization theorems against question-invariance as a constraint on acceptance rules and against rational monotonicity as an axiom of conditional logic in situations of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the relations among Brandom's three dimensions of semantic inferential articulation, namely, incompatibility entailments, committive consequences, and permissive consequences. In his unpublished manuscript 'Conceptual Content and Discursive Practice' Brandom argues that (1) incompatibility entailment implies committive consequence, and that (2) committive consequence in turn implies permissive consequence. We criticize this hierarchy both on internal and external grounds. Firstly, we prove that, using Brandom's own definitions, the reverse of (1) also holds, and that the reverse of (2) may hold (but the proof relies on substantive assumptions). This suggests that there are no three different notions of inference emerging from Brandom's definitions, but at most two, and perhaps even just one. Secondly, this result puts into question the connections between the three inferential relations and the familiar notions of deduction and induction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crispin Wright has given an explanation of how a first time warrant can fall short of transmitting across a known entailment. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright's informal explanation into cogent Bayesian reasoning. In this paper, I analyse two Bayesian models of Wright's account respectively proposed by Samir Okasha and Jake Chandler. I argue that both formalizations are unsatisfactory for different reasons, and I lay down a third Bayesian model that appears to me to capture the valid kernel of Wright's explanation. After this, I consider a recent development in Wright's account of transmission failure. Wright suggests that his condition sufficient for transmission failure of first time warrant also suffices for transmission failure of supplementary warrant. I propose an interpretation of Wright's suggestion that shields it from objections. I then lay down a fourth Bayesian framework that provides a simplified model of the unified explanation of transmission failure envisaged by Wright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern explanatory inductive logic programming methods like Progol, Residue procedure, CF-induction, HAIL and Imparo use the principle of inverse entailment (IE). Those IE-based methods commonly compute a hypothesis in two steps: by first constructing an intermediate theory and next by generalizing its negation into the hypothesis with the inverse of the entailment relation. Inverse entailment ensures the completeness of generalization. On the other hand, it imposes many non-deterministic generalization operators that cause the search space to be very large. For this reason, most of those methods use the inverse relation of subsumption, instead of entailment. However, it is not clear how this logical reduction affects the completeness of generalization. In this paper, we investigate whether or not inverse subsumption can be embedded in a complete induction procedure; and if it can, how it is to be realized. Our main result is a new form of inverse subsumption that ensures the completeness of generalization. Consequently, inverse entailment can be reduced to inverse subsumption without losing the completeness for finding hypotheses in explanatory induction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often remarked that Indian logic (IL) has no conception of necessity. But what kind of necessity is absent in this system? Logical necessity is presumably absent: the structure of the logical argument in IL is often given as a reason for this claim. However even a cursory understanding of IL illustrates an abiding attempt to formulate the idea of necessity. In Dharmakīrti's classification of inferences, one can detect the formal process of entailment in the inferences arising from class inclusion. In Western philosophy, Leibniz's invocation of 'contingent necessity' as distinguished from the 'necessary necessity' is part of a tradition that finds value in the idea of contingent necessity. In contemporary philosophy, this has been championed by Armstrong, specifically in the context of understanding the necessity inherent in scientific laws. In IL, the analysis of 'invariable concomitance' (vyāpti) is of crucial importance and its definitions are very complex. This paper argues how vyāpti can be understood in terms of contingent necessity and also how the complex definitions can be interpreted as an attempt to define contingent necessity in terms of 'logical' necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief commentary, I consider Hoeksema's data on enig and suggest that there is actually no shift from non-veridicality to downward entailment, but rather from weak to strong negative polarity. This shift in distribution comes with a change in intonation, observed often with strong NPIs crosslinguistically (Greek, Korean, Japanese). The path of enig to strong NPI-hood can therefore be regarded as grammaticalizing intonational properties as well. In comparing the older versus more modern usages of Dutch enig, I suggest that the two major sources for NPI-hood known from the literature, scalarity and referential deficiency, may correlate with the weak versus strong NPI distinction. Finally, it is suggested that the distributional change comes with a concomitant meaning shift and the emergence of an additional scalar dimension in the Modern Dutch NPI enig (e.g. via an EVEN component). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a systematic semantically-based approach to NPI licensing in temporal clauses based on Beaver and Condoravdi (, ). It motivates the presuppositional nature of temporal clauses and shows how temporal ordering induces an ordering of semantic strength in each case. The proposed analysis is uniform across veridical and non-veridical readings of before and brings under the semantic fold seemingly exceptional or pragmatically-based cases of NPI licensing observed with after, since and until. Crucial throughout is the more restricted, presupposition-dependent notion of entailment, Strawson entailment, proposed by von Fintel (). The paper also relates Strawson entailment to the alternative-based analysis of NPIs by Krifka (), proposing a particular kind of contextual update, Strawson update, for calculating informational strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stalnaker () made two seminal claims about presuppositions. The most influential one was that presupposition projection is computed by a pragmatic mechanism based on a notion of ‘local context’. Due to conceptual and technical difficulties, however, the latter notion was reinterpreted in purely semantic terms within ‘dynamic semantics’ (Heim ). The second claim was that some instances of presupposition generation should also be explained in pragmatic terms. But despite various attempts, the definition of a precise ‘triggering algorithm’ has remained somewhat elusive. We discuss possible extensions of both claims. First, we offer a reconstruction of ‘local contexts’ which circumvents some of the difficulties faced by Stalnaker’s original analysis. We preserve the idea that local contexts are computed by a pragmatic mechanism that aggregates the information that follows from an incomplete sentence given the global context; but we crucially rely on a modified notion of entailment (‘R-entailment’), whose plausibility should be assessed on independent grounds. Second, we speculate that local contexts might prove necessary (though by no means sufficient) to understand how some presuppositions are triggered. In a nutshell, we suggest that a presupposition is triggered when the semantic contribution of an expression to its local context is in some sense ‘heterogeneous’. Without giving an analysis of the latter notion, we note that this architecture implies that presuppositions should be triggered on the basis of the meaning that an expression has relative to its local context (what we call its ‘local meaning’); we sketch some possible consequences of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an extension of a decidable fragment of Separation Logic for singly-linked lists, defined by Berdine et al. (). Our main extension consists in introducing atomic formulae of the form ls k( x, y) describing a list segment of length k, stretching from x to y, where k is a logical variable interpreted over positive natural numbers, that may occur further inside Presburger constraints. We study the decidability of the full first-order logic combining unrestricted quantification of arithmetic and location variables. Although the full logic is found to be undecidable, validity of entailments between formulae with the quantifier prefix in the language $\exists^* \{\exists_{\bf \mathbb{N}}, \forall_{\bf \mathbb{N}}\}^*$ is decidable. We provide here a model theoretic method, based on a parametric notion of shape graphs. We have implemented our decision technique, providing a fully automated framework for the verification of quantitative properties expressed as pre- and post-conditions on programs working on lists and integer counters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current evaluation metrics for machine translation have increasing difficulty in distinguishing good from merely fair translations. We believe the main problem to be their inability to properly capture meaning: A good translation candidate means the same thing as the reference translation, regardless of formulation. We propose a metric that assesses the quality of MT output through its semantic equivalence to the reference translation, based on a rich set of match and mismatch features motivated by textual entailment. We first evaluate this metric in an evaluation setting against a combination metric of four state-of-the-art scores. Our metric predicts human judgments better than the combination metric. Combining the entailment and traditional features yields further improvements. Then, we demonstrate that the entailment metric can also be used as learning criterion in minimum error rate training (MERT) to improve parameter estimation in MT system training. A manual evaluation of the resulting translations indicates that the new model obtains a significant improvement in translation quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory revision systems are designed to improve the accuracy of an initial theory, producing more accurate and comprehensible theories than purely inductive methods. Such systems search for points where examples are misclassified and modify them using revision operators. This includes trying to add antecedents to clauses usually following a top-down approach, considering all the literals of the knowledge base. Such an approach leads to a huge search space which dominates the cost of the revision process. ILP Mode Directed Inverse Entailment systems restrict the search for antecedents to the literals of the bottom clause. In this work the bottom clause and mode declarations are introduced in a first-order logic theory revision system aiming to improve the efficiency of the antecedent addition operation and, consequently, also of the whole revision process. Experimental results compared to revision system FORTE show that the revision process is on average 55 times faster, generating more comprehensible theories and still not significantly decreasing the accuracies obtained by the original revision process. Moreover, the results show that when the initial theory is approximately correct, it is more efficient to revise it than learn from scratch, obtaining significantly better accuracies. They also show that using the proposed theory revision system to induce theories from scratch is faster and generates more compact theories than when the theory is induced using a traditional ILP system, obtaining competitive accuracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Universal any and Negative Polarity Item any are uniformly analyzed as 'counterfactual' donkey sentences (in disguise). Their difference in meaning is reduced here to the distinction between strong and weak readings of donkey sentences. It is shown that this explains the universal and existential character of Universal- and NFI-any, respectively, and the positive and negative contexts in which they are licensed. Our uniform analysis extends to the use of any in command and permission sentences. It predicts that whereas the use of any in permission sentences is licensed and gives rise to a universal reading, it is not licensed in command sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critique of mainstream formal semantics. It begins with a statement of widely assumed adequacy conditions: namely, that a good theory must (1) explain relations of entailment, (ii) show how the meanings of complex expressions derive from the meanings of their parts, and (iii) characterize facts of meaning in truth-theoretic terms. It then proceeds to criticize the orthodox conception of semantics that is articulated in these three desiderata. This critique is followed by a sketch of an alternative conception—one that is argued to be more in tune with the empirical objectives of linguistics and the clarificatory aims of philosophy. Finally, the paper proposes and defends a specific theoretical approach—use based rather than truth based—that is suggested by that alternative conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two consecution calculi are introduced: one for the implicational fragment of the logic of entailment with truth and another one for the disjunction free logic of nondistributive relevant implication. The proof technique—attributable to Gentzen—that uses a double induction on the degree and on the rank of the cut formula is shown to be insufficient to prove admissible various forms of cut and mix in these calculi. The elimination theorem is proven, however, by augmenting the earlier double inductive proof with additional inductions. We also give a new purely inductive proof of the cut theorem for the original single cut rule in Gentzen’s sequent calculus $$ LK $$ without any use of mix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Sydney Shoemaker has attempted to save mental causation by a new account of realization. As Brian McLaughlin argues convincingly, the account has to face two major problems. First, realization does not guarantee entailment. So even if mental properties are realized by physical properties, they need not be entailed by them. This is the first, rather general metaphysical problem. A second problem, which relates more directly to mental causation is that Shoemaker must appeal to some kind of proportionality as a constraint on causation in order to avoid redundant mental causation. I argue that, in addition, a “piling problem” arises, since causal powers seem to be bestowed twice. Then, I try to sketch an alternative view of the relation between causal powers and properties—a reductionist view—which fares better on some accounts. But it may have to face another and, perhaps, serious problem, the “problem of the natural unity of properties”. Finally, I will pose a question about the relation between causal powers and causation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  What is the relation between entailment and reasons for belief? In this paper, I discuss several answers to this question, and I argue that these answers all face problems. I then propose the following answer: for all propositions p 1,…,p n and q, if the conjunction of p 1,…, and p n entails q, then there is a reason against a person’s both believing that p 1,…, and that p n and believing the negation of q. I argue that this answer avoids the problems that the other answers to this question face, and that it does not face any other problems either. I end by showing what the relation between deductive logic, reasons for belief and reasoning is if this answer is correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]