Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Rich Situated Attitudes

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10247))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 1160 Accesses

Abstract

We outline a novel theory of natural language meaning, Rich Situated Semantics [RSS], on which the content of sentential utterances is semantically rich and informationally situated. In virtue of its situatedness, an utterance’s rich situated content varies with the informational situation of the cognitive agent interpreting the utterance. In virtue of its richness, this content contains information beyond the utterance’s lexically encoded information. The agent-dependence of rich situated content solves a number of problems in semantics and the philosophy of language (cf. [14, 20, 25]). In particular, since RSS varies the granularity of utterance contents with the interpreting agent’s informational situation, it solves the problem of finding suitably fine- or coarse-grained objects for the content of propositional attitudes. In virtue of this variation, a layman will reason with more propositions than an expert.

We would like to thank two anonymous referees for LENLS 13, Robin Cooper, Sebastian Löbner, Markus Werning, and Dietmar Zaefferer for their valuable comments and suggestions. The research for this paper is supported by the German Research Foundation (via K. Liefke’s grant LI 2562/1-1) and by LMU Munich’s Institutional Strategy LMUexcellent within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    We hereafter sometimes use the expression ‘content of a sentence’ (or ‘sentential content’), instead of ‘content of an utterance of a sentence’. This is merely a terminological shortcut. The reader is asked to keep in mind that sentences are uttered by a speaker (with certain background information) in a spatiotemporal and communicative situation, and are directed at an addressee (with a certain, likely different, background information). The relevance of the addressee’s information for the interpretation of the utterance is the central topic of this paper.

  2. 2.

    One can increase the granularity of situated sentential contents by analyzing them instead as semantically primitive (i.e. non-analyzable) propositions (cf. [8, 29, 32, 41]). The development of hyperfine-grained RSS is left for another occasion.

  3. 3.

    The inclusion of impossible worlds or situations (cf. [12, 35]) captures the possibility of agents’ misinformedness or false belief. For reasons of space, the consideration of impossible worlds or situations is left for future research.

  4. 4.

    To avoid the inclusion of information that does not regard the subject matter, we demand (contra Perry) that both conjuncts be aboutness-relevant. This also avoids the problem of obtaining aboutness-‘relevant’ conjunctions by combining an aboutness-irrelevant sentence with a trivially aboutness-relevant verum, or with falsum.

  5. 5.

    This is due to the fact that the available information about the sentence’s subject matter at these situations will include the sentence’s lexical information. Since we have excluded impossible situations from our considerations (cf. fn. 3), no situation contains both an item of information and its complement.

  6. 6.

    The identification of these sentences’ traditional contents in possible world semantics is due to the fact that, in the actual world at the current time (cf. the adjective exist-ing in (10)), groundhogs are the largest marmot species.

  7. 7.

    The ability of (11b) to extend the reasoner’s knowledge depends on this unfamiliarity.

  8. 8.

    Admittedly, the reasoner may wrongly assume that Len also knows (10). This assumption explains why the reasoner may still make the inference from (12). It can be captured by replacing the reasoner’s required awareness of the inclusion of a particular item of information in the agent’s information state by the reasoner’s belief about this inclusion (which does not entail the factivity of this inclusion).

  9. 9.

    Entailment is here defined in terms of (subset) inclusion of sets of possible worlds.

  10. 10.

    This inference assumes that the complements of the two occurrences of remember from (22) describe the same remembered situation. The intuitive validity of this type of inference is discussed in detail in [20, Sects. 4, 5].

  11. 11.

    These include Pierre’s simultaneous belief that London is pretty and that London is not pretty (cf. [16]).

  12. 12.

    This contrasts with the standard formal semantic representation of modes of presentation as sets of the object’s properties (type (et)t) (cf. [2, 27]).

References

  1. Barsalou, L.W.: Frames, concepts, and conceptual fields. In: Lehrer, A., Kittay, E.F. (eds.) Frames, Fields, and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization. Erlbaum Associate, Erlbaum (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Barwise, J., Cooper, R.: Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguist. Philos. 4(2), 159–219 (1981)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Barwise, J., Perry, J.: Situations and Attitudes. MIT Press, Cambridge (1983)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Carston, R.: Explicit communication and ‘free’ pragmatic enrichment. In: Soria, B., Romero, E. (eds.) Explicit Communication: Robyn Carston’s Pragmatics. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Chalmers, D.: The representational character of experience. In: Leiter, B. (ed.) The Future for Philosophy. Oxford UP, Oxford (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Egan, A., Hawthorne, J., Weatherson, B.: Epistemic modals in context. In: Preyer, G., Peter, G. (eds.) Contextualism in Philosophy. Oxford UP, Oxford (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Fara, D.G.: Specifying desires. Noüs 47(2), 250–272 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Fox, C., Lappin, S., Pollard, C.: A higher-order fine-grained logic for intensional semantics. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Logic and Language (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Fox, C., Lappin, S.: Foundations of Intensional Semantics. Blackwell, Hoboken (2005)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Frege, G.: Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Gottlob Frege: Kleine Schriften. Edition Classic Verlag Dr. Müller (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Groenendijk, J., Stokhof, M.: Dynamic predicate logic. Linguist. Philos. 14(1), 39–100 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Hintikka, J.: Impossible possible worlds vindicated. J. Philos. Logic 4(4), 475–484 (1975)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Kaplan, D.: Demonstratives: an essay on the semantics, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology of demonstratives and other indexicals. In: Almog, J., Perry, J., Wettstein, H. (eds.) Themes from Kaplan. Oxford UP, Oxford (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  14. King, J., Soames, S., Speaks, J.: New Thinking about Propositions. Oxford UP, Oxford (2014)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  15. Kratzer, A.: An investigation into the lumps of thought. Linguist. Philos. 12(5), 607–653 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Kripke, S.: A puzzle about belief. In: Margalit, A. (ed.) Meaning and Use: papers presented at the Second Jerusalem Philosophy Encounter. Reidel, Kufstein (1979)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lewis, D.: Index, context, and content. In: Kanger, S., Ōhman, S. (eds.) Philosophy and Grammar. Synthese Library, vol. 143. Springer, Netherlands, Dordrecht (1981). doi:10.1007/978-94-009-9012-8_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Liefke, K.: A single-type semantics for natural language. Doctoral dissertation, Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Liefke, K.: Towards an account of rich situated semantic content. In: Gamerschlag, T., et al. (eds.) Abstracts of Cognitive Structures: Linguistic, Philosophical, and Psychological Perspectives, Düsseldorf, 15–17 September 2016. http://cognitive-structures.phil.hhu.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Updated-program-brochure-14-09.pdf

  20. Liefke, K., Werning, M.: Evidence for single-type semantics - an alternative to e/t-based dual-type semantics (submitted)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Löbner, S.: Evidence for frames from human language. In: Gamerschlag, T., Gerland, D., Osswald, R., Petersen, W. (eds.) Frames and Concept Types. SLP, vol. 94, pp. 23–67. Springer, Cham (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01541-5_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. MacFarlane, J.: Epistemic modals are assessment-sensitive. In: Egan, A., Weatherson, B. (eds.) Epistemic Modality. Oxford UP, Oxford (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Moltmann, F.: Part structures in situations: the semantics of individual and whole. Linguist. Philos. 28(5), 599–641 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Moltmann, F.: Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language. Oxford UP, Oxford (2013)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  25. Moltmann, F.: Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the distinction between actions and products. Can. J. Philos. 43(5–6), 679–701 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Moltmann, F.: Cognitive products and the semantics of attitude verbs and deontic modals. In: Moltmann, F., Textor, M. (eds.) Act-Based Conceptions of Propositional Content: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives. Oxford UP, Oxford (forthcoming)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Montague, R.: The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English. In: Thomason, R.H. (ed.) Formal Philosophy: selected papers of Richard Montague. Yale UP, New Haven (1974)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Muskens, R.: Meaning and Partiality. CSLI Publications, Stanford (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Muskens, R.: Sense and the computation of reference. Linguist. Philos. 28(4), 473–504 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Perry, J.: Possible worlds and subject matter. In: Sturé, A. (ed.) Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Sciences. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Pollard, C.: Hyperintensions. J. Logic Comput. 18(2), 257–282 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  32. Pollard, C.: Agnostic hyperintensional semantics. Synthese 192, 535–562 (2015)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  33. Prior, A.: Objects of Thought. Clarendon Press, Wotton-under-Edge (1971)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  34. Recanati, F.: Pragmatic enrichment. In: Russell, G., Fara, D.G. (eds.) The Routledge Companoin to Philosophy of Language. Routledge, Abingdon (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Rantala, V.: Quantified modal logic: non-normal worlds and propositional attitudes. Stud. Logica. 41(1), 41–65 (1982)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  36. Salmon, N.: The resilience of illogical belief. Noûs 40(2), 369–375 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Schiffer, S.: The mode-of-presentation problem. In: Anderson, C.A., Owens, J. (eds.) Propositional Attitudes: The Role of Content in Logic, Language, and Mind. CSLI Lecture Notes, vol. 20. CSLI Publications, Stanford (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Schiffer, S.: Belief ascription. J. Philos. 89(10), 499–521 (1992)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  39. Searle, J.: Proper names. Mind 67(266), 166–173 (1958)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Stanovic, K.E.: Who is Rational?: Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning. Routledge Psychology Press, Abingdon (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Thomason, R.H.: A model theory for the propositional attitudes. Linguist. Philos. 4(1), 47–70 (1980)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Veltman, F.: Defaults in update semantics. J. Philos. Logic 25(3), 221–261 (1996)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Faculty 10, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539, Munich, Germany

    Kristina Liefke & Mark Bowker

Authors
  1. Kristina Liefke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Mark Bowker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kristina Liefke .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tokyo, Japan

    Setsuya Kurahashi

  2. Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kanagawa, Japan

    Yuiko Ohta

  3. Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Sachiyo Arai

  4. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Ken Satoh

  5. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

    Daisuke Bekki

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Liefke, K., Bowker, M. (2017). Rich Situated Attitudes. In: Kurahashi, S., Ohta, Y., Arai, S., Satoh, K., Bekki, D. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10247. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61572-1_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61572-1_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61571-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61572-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics