Our topic is logical inference in natural language, as it is done by people and computers.
The first main topic will be monotonicity inference, arguably the best of the simple ideas
in the area. Monotonicity can be incorporated in running systems whereby one can take
parsed real-life sentences and see simple inferences in action. I will present some of the
theory, related to higher-order monotonicity and the syntax-semantics interface offered by
categorial grammar.

In a different direction, these days monotonicity inference can be done by machines as well
as humans. The talk also discusses this development along with some ongoing work on the
borderline of natural logic and machine learning.

The second direction in the talk will be an overview of the large number of logical systems for
various linguistic phenomena. This work begins as an updating of traditional syllogistic logic,
but with much greater expressive power.

Overall, the goal of the talk is to persuade you that the research program of "natural logic"
leads to a lively research area with connections to many areas both inside and outside of more
mainstream areas of logic.

PETER CONSTANTINE is Professor of Translation Studies, Director of the Program in Literary Translation and publisher of World Poetry Books at the University of Connecticut. His recent translations include works by Augustine, Machiavelli, Gogol and Tolstoy. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann, and the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov. As a terminal speaker of Corinthian Arvanitika, he is currently involved in the documentation and conservation of this severely endangered language of Greece.

MICHELANGELO LA LUNA (Harvard University and University of Calabria, http://Ph.Ds.) is Professor of Italian Language and Literature at the University of Rhode Island. His research activity focuses on Girolamo De Rada (1814-1903), the major Italian-Albanian poet of the Romantic period. Moreover, he wrote articles and books about Carmine Abate, Luigi Capuana, Dante Alighieri, Dacia Maraini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. He belongs to the Arbëresh minority and writes poems in the Arbërisht dialect of Southern Italy.

This week: Elena Comay del Junco, "Aristotle and his Others"

A series of informal talks by philosophy faculty and graduate students. For a description and how to sign up, see http://philosophy.uconn.edu/brown-bags/.

One of the major challenges involved in developing semantic theories is that many constructions in natural language given rise to alternatives. Different sources of alternatives have been identified---e.g., questions, indeterminacy, focus, scalarity---and have been investigated in quite some depth. Less attention, however, has been given so far to the question how these different kinds of alternatives interact. I will focus in this talk one one such interaction, namely between referential indeterminacy and questions. Several formal semantic frameworks have been developed to capture referential indeterminacy (dynamic semantics, alternative semantics) and the content of questions (e.g., alternative semantics, structured meanings, partition semantics, inquisitive semantics). I will report on ongoing work with Jakub Dotlacil, which aims to merge dynamic and inquisitive semantics in a principled way. I will present a basic system and suggest some potential applications and extensions.

The Virtual International Consortium for Truth Research (VICTR) presents: a talk by Romy Jaster (Humboldt-University, Berlin), on April 12, 10:00am EDT / 16:00 CEST / 14:00 UTC

Further details for the event will be available soon. Please check VICTR's calendar for updates: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=h9gf3505q784cati3dkip27b60%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America%2FNew_York

You can register for this event at the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIocu-prj4iGdY0NwHUWjPYWLvywnGfLeku

VICTR is sponsored by the Future of Truth Project at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, the University of Alabama, and the University of Waikato

Professor D’Aquino is the UConn Logic Groups 2020/2021 Scholar of Consequence, and will deliver the Annual Logic Lecture.

Abstract: I will concentrate on the ideal theory of models of Peano Arithmetic and some of its weak fragments. I will present a model theoretic analysis of the residue rings of these structures.

Bilateralist Truth-Maker Semantics for ST, TS, LP, K3, ...

Ulf Hlobil, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Abstract:
The talk advocates a marriage of inferentialist bilateralism and truth-maker bilateralism. Inferentialist bilateralists like Restall and Ripley say that a collection of sentences, Y, follows from a collection of sentences, X, iff it is incoherent (or out-of-bounds) to assert all the sentences in X and, at the same time, deny all the sentences in Y. In Fine’s truth-maker theory, we have a partially ordered set of states that exactly verify and falsify sentences, and some of these states are impossible. We can think of making-true as the worldly analogue of asserting, of making-false as the worldly analogue of denying, and of impossibility as the worldly analogue of incoherence. This suggests that we may say that, in truth-maker theory, a collection of sentences, Y, follows (logically) from a collection of sentences, X, iff (in all models) any fusion of exact verifiers of the members of X and exact falsifiers of the member of Y is impossible. Under routine assumptions about truth-making, this yields classical logic. Relaxing one such assumption yields the non-transitive logic ST. Relaxing another assumption yields the non-reflexive logic TS. We can use known facts about the relation between ST, LP, and K3, to provide an interpretation of LP as the logic of falsifiers and K3 as the logic of verifiers. The resulting semantics for ST is more flexible than its usual three-valued semantics because it allows us, e.g., to reject monotonicity. We can also recover fine-grained logics, like Correia’s logic of factual equivalence.

All welcome!

Please contact us for the Zoom log-in information.

We are pleased to announce that the last talk in the speaker series of the Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning Research Group for this academic year will be given by Emeritus Prof. Peter Gärdenfors from Lund University (co-hosted with the Dartmouth PhilLab).

The title of his talk is “Theory of Mind and the Evolution of Cognition”.

For event link please register here: https://ecomresearchgroup.com/prof-peter-gardenfors-talk/

The Virtual International Consortium for Truth Research (VICTR) will have a talk by Eduardo Barrio (University of Buenos Aires), on “Anti-exceptionalism, Truth, and the BA-Plan” on April 26, 10:00am EDT / 14:00 UTC.

Abstract: Anti-exceptionalism about logic states that logical theories have no special epistemological status. Such theories are continuous with scientific theories. Contemporary anti-exceptionalists include data about semantic paradoxes as a part of the logical evidence. Exploring the Buenos Aires Plan, the recent development of the metainferential hierarchy of ST-logics shows that there are multiple options to deal with such paradoxes. There is a whole ST-based hierarchy, of which LP and ST themselves are only the first steps. The logics in this hierarchy are also options to analyze the inferential patterns allowed in a language that contains its own truth predicate. This talk explores these responses analyzing some reasons to go beyond the first steps. I will show that LP, ST, and the logics of the ST-hierarchy offer different diagnoses for the same evidence: the inferences and metainferences the agents endorse in the presence of the truth-predicate. But even if the data are not enough to adopt one of these logics, there are other elements to evaluate the revision of classical logic. How close should we be to classical logic? Which logic should be used during the revision? Should a logic be closed under its own rules? How could a logic obey the validities it contains? And mainly, which is the best explanation for the logical principles to deal with semantic paradoxes? I will argue that, if the answers to these questions are provided from an anti-exceptionalist perspective, ST-metainferential logics in general are the best available options.

You can register for this event at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIocu-prj4iGdY0NwHUWjPYWLvywnGfLeku

VICTR is sponsored by the Future of Truth Project at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, the University of Alabama, and the University of Waikato

This week: Kristin Culbertson, "Buddhism and Moral Anger"
A series of informal talks by philosophy faculty and graduate students. For a description and how to sign up, see http://philosophy.uconn.edu/brown-bags/.