Showing papers by "Nicholas Asher published in 1994"
27 Jun 1994
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them is proposed to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure, in order to provide a theory for the flow of inference between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the domain during discourse processing.
Abstract: This paper is about the flow of inference between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the domain during discourse processing. We augment a theory of discourse interpretation with a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them, in order to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure.
32 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them is proposed to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure, in order to provide a theory for the flow of inference between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the domain during discourse processing.
Abstract: This paper is about the flow of inference between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the domain during discourse processing. We augment a theory of discourse interpretation with a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them, in order to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure.
9 citations
18 Sep 1994
TL;DR: A methodology for defining nonmonotonic inference relations, involving distances between ”labels”, each label being associated with a logical theory, motivated by applications to spatial reasoning and taxonomic reasoning, though it also applies to temporal reasoning.
Abstract: We propose a methodology for defining nonmonotonic inference relations, involving distances (in a non-topological meaning) between ”labels”, each label being associated with a logical theory. Our framework is motivated by applications to spatial reasoning (reasoning by proximity) and taxonomic reasoning, though it also applies to temporal reasoning (degradation of persistence). We propose several ways of defining nonmonotonic inference relations from distances.
7 citations
TL;DR: This paper builds up the spatio-temporal semantic properties of motion verb complexes compositionally, on the basis of the semantic Properties of the verb, its arguments and adjuncts in the complex.
Abstract: This paper yields a semantics for the spatio-temporal 'properties of motion complexes in French By motion complex we understand here a motion verb followed by a spatial prepositional phrase adjunct (PP) Unlike other semantic or syntactic studies, we build up the spatio-temporal semantic properties of motion verb complexes compositionally, on the basis of the semantic properties of the verb, its arguments and adjuncts in the complex We claim that the spatial and temporal semantics of a motion verb complex is a specifiable function of the spatial and temporal semantics of each component of the complex Let us illustrate this by contrasting the complexes given in the following examples
5 citations
4 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that reasoning about change by an agent is to be modeled in terms of the persistence of the agent's beliefs over time rather than persistence of truth and that such persistence is explained by pragmatic factors about how agents acquire information from other agents.
Abstract: A fundamental question in reasoning about change is, what information does a reasoning agent infer about later times from earlier times? I will argue that reasoning about change by an agent is to be modeled in terms of the persistence of the agent's beliefs over time rather than the persistence of truth and that such persistence is explained by pragmatic factors about how agents acquire information from other agents rather than by general principles of persistence about states of the world. AI accounts of persistence have focused on ‘closed world’ examples of change, in which the agent believes that the truth of a proposition is unaltered so long as he or she has no evidence that it has been changed. AI principles of persistence seem plausible in a closed world where one assumes the agent knows everything that is happening. If one drops the assumption of omniscience, however, the analysis of persistence is implausible. To get a good account of persistence and reasoning about change, I argue we should examine ‘open world’ examples of change, in which the agent is ignorant of some of the changes occurring in the world. In open world examples of change, persistence must be formulated, I argue, as a pragmatic principle about the persistence of beliefs. After elaborating my criticisms of current accounts of persistence, I examine how such pragmatic principles fare with the notorious examples of reasoning about action that have collectively characterized the so-called frame problem.
3 citations
13 Mar 1994
TL;DR: It is thought that only a nonmonotonic logic can adequately deal with the question of what beliefs about the world persist in a sufficiently rich framework for belief revision like the one proposed.
Abstract: Several authors (Keller and Winslett 1985, Winslett 1988, Katsuno and Mendelzon 1989, Morreau and Rott 1991) have recently argued for a distinction in the way beliefs are updated with new information. They distinguish between information that tells the agent that the world has changed over time and information that fills in or corrects the agent's picture of the world at a particular time. We provide an explicit representation of this distinction by means of a modal logic that combines epistemic and dynamic features. Furthermore, we develop a completely declarative semantics for belief revision. This semantics enables us to deduce the result of revising a given body of beliefs in the light of new information, given simply the semantic content of the prior beliefs and of the new data. No purely procedural assumptions about the agent's epistemic policies or values (no information about priorities of defaults or degrees of entrenchment) are needed, beyond what is explicitly represented in the objects of the agent's beliefs. We accomplish this by distinguishing hard (incorrigible, unrevisable) belief and soft belief; further, the soft attitudes supervene on the hard level. We use a specific theory of nonmonotonic inference to generate soft attitudes from hard ones. This last point is especially important in attempting to deal with belief change, because when an agent acquires new beliefs there is the question: what beliefs about the world persist? We think that only a nonmonotonic logic can adequately deal with this question in a sufficiently rich framework for belief revision like the one we propose.
3 citations
16 Oct 1994
Proceedings Article•
01 Jan 1994
TL;DR: A theory of discourse interpretation is augmented with a theory of distinct mental attitudes and reasoning about them in order to provide an account of how the attitudes interact with reasoning about discourse structure.