Author: Stefan Kaufmann

Talk of interest on 05/02: Yasutada Sudo

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The last Logic Colloquium of the semester will be held on Friday, May 2, 2:30pm in MONT 420 (with a hybrid option; contact Stefan Kaufmann for the zoom link). The speaker is Yasutada Sudo from University College, London.

 

 Specific indefinites and dynamic presuppositions

This is an attempt to explain the exceptional scope behavior of specific indefinites in terms of ‘dynamic presuppositions’—presuppositions with anaphoric content in addition to propositional content. It is also claimed that puzzling interpretive properties of ‘certain’ indefinites are straightforwardly explained as dynamic presuppositions with functional anaphora.

Talk of interest on 04/25: WooJin Chung

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We will have a Logic Colloquium this Friday, April 25, 2:30pm in MONT 420 (with a hybrid option). The speaker is WooJin Chung from Seoul National. Title and abstract below. Contact Stefan Kaufmann for the zoom link.

 

Comparing conditionals under uncertainty
Suppose that Adam is a risk-taker—in general a highly successful one—and Bill prefers to play it safe. You believe that the organization is highly likely to thrive under Adam’s leadership, though there is still a small chance his investment could fail. On the other hand, Bill’s risk-averse strategy will allow the organization to profit to some degree, but it won’t be nearly as successful as in Adam’s best-case—and most likely—scenario. Yet the organization will fare better than Adam’s worst-case—and fairly unlikely—scenario. The following example sounds true in this context:
(1) If Adam takes the lead, the organization will be more successful than (it will be) if Bill takes the lead.
In this talk, I point out that the truth conditions of (1) do not align with the prediction of the standard quantificational view of conditionals (Kratzer 2012), coupled with extant theories on the interaction between comparatives and quantifiers (Schwarzschild & Wilkinson 2002, Heim 2006, Schwarzschild 2008, Beck 2010, among many others). I suggest that a working solution can be developed by dropping the assumption that conditionals are quantifiers over possible worlds.

Talk of interest on 10/25: Paul Portner

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The Linguistics Colloquium on October 25 will feature Paul Portner (Georgetown University). Details as follows:

Friday Oct. 25 (4-6 pm), in person at SHH112.

Title: The Semantics of Profane Quasi-Verbs: Social Relations in a Dynamic Framework

Abstract

Though profane imprecations like F*** you! have received no attention in formal semantics, we might expect our theory of linguistic meaning to have something to say about such common expressions. In this talk, I discuss the nature of the meanings of profane quasi-verbs (Quang 1971) that function syntactically like f*** in the example above, and I provide a formal model that can account for some important aspects of their meaning and conversational use. This analysis throws light on the role of social relations in semantics and pragmatics.

 

Talk of interest on 10/25: Nicole Cruz

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This week’s Logic Colloquium:
Nicole Cruz (University of Potsdam)
Friday, October 25, 2:00-3:30pm
SHH 110 & Zoom
Disentangling conditional dependencies
(joint work with Michael Lee)
Abstract: People draw on event co-occurrences as a foundation for causal and scientific inference, but in which ways can events co-occur? Statistically, one can express a dependency between events A and C as P(C|A) != P(C), but this relation can be further specified in a variety of ways, particularly when A and/or C are themselves conditional events. In the psychology of reasoning, the conditional P(C|A) is often thought to become biconditional when people add the converse, P(A|C), or inverse, P(not-C|not-A), or both, with the effects of these additions largely treated as equivalent. In contrast, from a coherence based logical perspective it makes a difference whether the converse or the inverse is added, and in what way. In particular, the addition can occur by forming the conjunction of two conditionals, or by merely constraining their probabilities to be equal. Here we outline four distinct ways of defining biconditional relationships, illustrating their differences by how they constrain the conclusion probabilities of a set of inference forms. We present a Bayesian latent-mixture model with which the biconditionals can be dissociated from one another, and discuss implications for the interpretation of empirical findings in the field.
Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID: 997 3571 5427
Passcode: 18481108

Talk of interest on 08/30: Fabrizio Cariani (UMD)

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The Logic Colloquium will feature a talk by Fabrizio Cariani (UMD Philosophy):

Fabrizio Cariani (UMaryland):
“Anankastic conditionals and the reason-based analysis of deontic modals”
Friday, August 30, 2:00-3:30pm
Hybrid: Herbst (formerly Oak) 110 & Zoom
Abstract: I identify and develop a solution to the puzzle of anankastic conditionals that is novel in the sense that it has gone largely unnoticed, but also well-worn in that the materials for it have long been available. The solution involves an integration of the classical Kratzerian premise semantics and a default theory of reasons (such as the one presented in Horty, 2012, leveraging several decades of research on default logic). To stress-test the proposal I also investigate how it might be applied to the variety of anankastic-adjacent data discussed by Condoravdi and Lauer (2016). The resulting approach is not just an exceptional fit for the problem of anankastic conditionals, but also an independently promising upgrade on the classical account of modals.
Contact the organizers for zoom login information.

Talk of interest on 10/27: Dorr and Mandelkern

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Logic Colloquium talk this week

Cian Dorr and Matthew Mandelkern (NYU Philosophy)

“The Logic of Sequences”

Friday, October 27, 2:00pm – 3:30pm

hybrid: ROWE 320 and Zoom (link below)

 

Abstract:

In the course of proving a tenability result about the probabilities of conditionals, van Fraassen (1976) introduced a semantics for conditionals based on sequences of worlds, representing a particularly simple special case of ordering semantics for conditionals. According to sequence semantics, ‘If p, then q’ is true at a sequence just in case either q is true at the first truncation of the sequence where p is true, or there is no truncation where p is true. This approach has become increasingly popular in recent years. However, its logic has never been explored. We axiomatize the logic of sequence semantics, showing that it is the result of adding two new axioms to Stalnaker’s logic C2: one which is prima facie attractive, and one which is complex and difficult to assess.  We also show that when sequence models are generalized to allow transfinite sequences, the result is the logic that adds only the first (more attractive) axiom to C2.