Vagueness Facilitates Search Helsingin yliopistovagueness facilitates Helsingin yliopisto搜索.pptVIP

Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) Objections … Objection 4: “This contradicts Lipman’s theorem” The idea: Lipman (2006) proved that every V predicate can be replaced by a crisp one that has a utility at least as high. Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) Objections … Objection 4: “This contradicts Lipman’s theorem” The idea: Lipman (2006) proved that every V predicate can be replaced by a crisp one that has a utility at least as high. Response: Lipman’s assumptions don’t apply: (1) Theorem models V through probability distribution. (2) Theorem assumes that hearer knows what crisp model the speaker uses (e.g. “185cm”). Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) Lipman’s theorem assumes that hearer knows what crisp model the speaker uses Our starting point: in “continuous” domains, perfect alignment between speakers/hearers would be a miracle (pace epistemicist approaches to V !) Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) Summing up Why information reduction is useful is well understood Why this should involve borderline cases is less clear. (Lipman’s question) Several tentative answers have been published. A new answer, based on mismatches in perception and benefits for search complements earlier answers Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) “Utility and Language Generation: The Case of Vagueness”. Journal of Philosophical Logic 38/6. “Vagueness Facilitates Search”. Proceedings of the 2010 Amsterdam Colloquium, Springer Lecture Notes. Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) “Not Exactly: in Praise of Vagueness”. Oxford University Press, Jan. 2010 Part 1: Vagueness in science and daily life. Part 2: Linguistic and logical models of vagueness. Part 3: Working models of V in Artificial Intelligence. Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec 10) Background on the book: http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~kvdeemte/NotExactly Acknowledgments relating to this talk: Ehud Reiter, Advaith Siddharthan Kees van Deemter (Guangzhou WS, Dec