Event, Assertion and Verification Time

At IMLA 2013 (Intuitionistic Modal Logic and Applications) last week I talked about a constructive modal logic conceived to interpret "conditionals" in English. This system comes from its possible worlds semantics, something that I use to hate...yeah, Kripke semantics was never a source of intuition for me. 

Still isn't, but the idea that the slogan "you know the meaning of a sentence if you know the conditions under which it is true” should be replaced by  “You know the meaning of a sentence if you know the change it brings about in the information state of anyone who wants to incorporate the piece of news conveyed by it" rings true. Call me a coward if you will, but talking about information states of agents and changes that they undergo when new information comes in, feels less threatening than talking about "truth".

The slides are here, but my level of understanding of this stuff is still very far from ideal. 

(hope the two saudi arabian farmers in the picture are making progress faster...)

Unilog and IMLA: Research Horizons

Last week I was in Rio talking at Unilog and IMLA. I had three talks accepted and prepared slides (not very well, but somewhat..) for the three talks.

One talk was not given. This was on 'Contextual Constructive Description Logic', joint work with Natasha Alechina, from Nottingham University. Our main idea was to say that one can construct modal intuitionistic description logics, as well as usual modal description logics. Slides are here.

Tomorrow: CSLI Workshop Perspectives on Modality

CSLI Workshop Perspectives on Modality

Program:

Leon van der Torre (Luxembourg & CSLI): Deontic logic without possible worlds
Thomas Icard III (Stanford) and Wesley Holliday (Berkeley): Measure Semantics and Qualitative Semantics for Epistemic Modals

Stefan Kaufmann (Northwestern & UConn): Independencies in Counterfactuals
Dan Lassiter (Stanford): The weakness of must: In defense of a mantra

Igor Yanovich (MIT): Distinction between 'advice' and 'factual' deontics, or "Mary should buy that laptop" vs "Mary should go to jail"
Anette Frank (Heidelberg): Challenges in the annotation of modal meanings and how to circumvent them