Semantics and the Ontology of Number

Semantics and the Ontology of Number PDF Author: Eric Snyder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108653057
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Get Book Here

Book Description
What are the meanings of number expressions, and what can they tell us about questions of central importance to the philosophy of mathematics, specifically 'Do numbers exist?' This Element attempts to shed light on this question by outlining a recent debate between substantivalists and adjectivalists regarding the semantic function of number words in numerical statements. After highlighting their motivations and challenges, I develop a comprehensive polymorphic semantics for number expressions. I argue that accounting for the numerous meanings and how they are related leads to a strengthened argument for realism, one which renders familiar forms of nominalism highly implausible.

Semantics and the Ontology of Number

Semantics and the Ontology of Number PDF Author: Eric Snyder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108653057
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Get Book Here

Book Description
What are the meanings of number expressions, and what can they tell us about questions of central importance to the philosophy of mathematics, specifically 'Do numbers exist?' This Element attempts to shed light on this question by outlining a recent debate between substantivalists and adjectivalists regarding the semantic function of number words in numerical statements. After highlighting their motivations and challenges, I develop a comprehensive polymorphic semantics for number expressions. I argue that accounting for the numerous meanings and how they are related leads to a strengthened argument for realism, one which renders familiar forms of nominalism highly implausible.

Words Without Objects

Words Without Objects PDF Author: Henry Laycock
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199281718
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description
A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of two main targets of Henry Laycock's book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for stuff like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask 'how many?', but with stuff the question has to be 'how much?' Within philosophy, stuff of certain basic kinds is central to the ancient pre-Socraticworld-view; but it also constitutes the field of modern chemistry and is a major factor in ecology.Philosophers these days, in general, are unlikely to deny that stuff exists. But they are very likely to deny that it is ('ultimately') to be contrasted with things, and it is on this account that logic and semantics figure largely in the framework of the book. Elementary logic is a logic which takes values for its variables; and these values are precisely distinct individuals or things. Existence is then symbolized in just such terms; and this, it is proposed, creates a pressure for 'reducing'stuff to things. Non-singular expressions, which include words for stuff, 'mass' nouns, and also plural nouns, are 'explicated' as semantically singular.Here then is the second target of the book. The posit that both mass and plural nouns name special categories of objects (set-theoretical 'collections' of objects in the one case, mereological 'parcels' or 'portions' of stuff in the other) represents, so Laycock urges, the imposition of an alien logic upon both the many and the much.

Concepts, Frames and Cascades in Semantics, Cognition and Ontology

Concepts, Frames and Cascades in Semantics, Cognition and Ontology PDF Author: Sebastian Löbner
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030502007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Get Book Here

Book Description
This open access book presents novel theoretical, empirical and experimental work exploring the nature of mental representations that support natural language production and understanding, and other manifestations of cognition. One fundamental question raised in the text is whether requisite knowledge structures can be adequately modeled by means of a uniform representational format, and if so, what exactly is its nature. Frames are a key topic covered which have had a strong impact on the exploration of knowledge representations in artificial intelligence, psychology and linguistics; cascades are a novel development in frame theory. Other key subject areas explored are: concepts and categorization, the experimental investigation of mental representation, as well as cognitive analysis in semantics. This book is of interest to students, researchers, and professionals working on cognition in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.

Ontological Semantics

Ontological Semantics PDF Author: Sergei Nirenburg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262140867
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive theory-based approach to the treatment of text meaning in natural language processing applications.

Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language

Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language PDF Author: Friederike Moltmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199608741
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
Friederike Moltmann presents an original approach to philosophical issues to do with abstract objects. She focuses on natural language, and finds that reference to abstract objects such as properties, numbers, and propositions is much more restricted than is generally thought, and she offers a substantially new ontological picture.

Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web

Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web PDF Author: Alexander Maedche
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461509254
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web explores techniques for applying knowledge discovery techniques to different web data sources (such as HTML documents, dictionaries, etc.), in order to support the task of engineering and maintaining ontologies. The approach of ontology learning proposed in Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web includes a number of complementary disciplines that feed in different types of unstructured and semi-structured data. This data is necessary in order to support a semi-automatic ontology engineering process. Ontology Learning for the Semantic Web is designed for researchers and developers of semantic web applications. It also serves as an excellent supplemental reference to advanced level courses in ontologies and the semantic web.

Semantic Knowledge Management: An Ontology-Based Framework

Semantic Knowledge Management: An Ontology-Based Framework PDF Author: Zilli, Antonio
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1605660353
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 457

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This book addresses the Semantic Web from an operative point of view using theoretical approaches, methodologies, and software applications as innovative solutions to true knowledge management"--Provided by publisher.

Austere Realism

Austere Realism PDF Author: Terence E. Horgan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263203
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
A provocative ontological-cum-semantic position asserting that the right ontology is austere in its exclusion of numerous common-sense and scientific posits and that many statements employing such posits are nonetheless true. The authors of Austere Realism describe and defend a provocative ontological-cum-semantic position, asserting that the right ontology is minimal or austere, in that it excludes numerous common-sense posits, and that statements employing such posits are nonetheless true, when truth is understood to be semantic correctness under contextually operative semantic standards. Terence Horgan and Matjaz Potrc argue that austere realism emerges naturally from consideration of the deep problems within the naive common-sense approach to truth and ontology. They offer an account of truth that confronts these deep internal problems and is independently plausible: contextual semantics, which asserts that truth is semantically correct affirmability. Under contextual semantics, much ordinary and scientific thought and discourse is true because its truth is indirect correspondence to the world. After offering further arguments for austere realism and addressing objections to it, Horgan and Potrc consider various alternative austere ontologies. They advance a specific version they call “blobjectivism”—the view that the right ontology includes only one concrete particular, the entire cosmos (“the blobject”), which, although it has enormous local spatiotemporal variability, does not have any proper parts. The arguments in Austere Realism are powerfully made and concisely and lucidly set out. The authors' contentions and their methodological approach—products of a decade-long collaboration—will generate lively debate among scholars in metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy.

Objects and Modalities

Objects and Modalities PDF Author: Tero Tulenheimo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319531190
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book develops a novel generalization of possible world semantics, called ‘world line semantics’, which recognizes worlds and links between world-bound objects (world lines) as mutually independent aspects of modal semantics. Addressing a wide range of questions vital for contemporary debates in logic and philosophy of language and offering new tools for theoretical linguistics and knowledge representation, the book proposes a radically new paradigm in modal semantics. This framework is motivated philosophically, viewing a structure of world lines as a precondition of modal talk. The author provides a uniform analysis of quantification over individuals (physical objects) and objects of thought (intentional objects). The semantic account of what it means to speak of intentional objects throws new light on accounts of intentionality and singular thought in the philosophy of mind and offers novel insights into the semantics of intensional transitive verbs.

Mathematics, Models, and Modality

Mathematics, Models, and Modality PDF Author: John P. Burgess
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113947054X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Get Book Here

Book Description
John Burgess is the author of a rich and creative body of work which seeks to defend classical logic and mathematics through counter-criticism of their nominalist, intuitionist, relevantist, and other critics. This selection of his essays, which spans twenty-five years, addresses key topics including nominalism, neo-logicism, intuitionism, modal logic, analyticity, and translation. An introduction sets the essays in context and offers a retrospective appraisal of their aims. The volume will be of interest to a wide range of readers across philosophy of mathematics, logic, and philosophy of language.