The classical theory of semantic information (ESI), as formulated by Bar-Hillel and Carnap in 1952, does not give a satisfactory account of the problem of what information, if any, analytically and/or logically true sentences have to offer. According to ESI, analytically true sentences lack informational content, and any two analytically equivalent sentences convey the same piece of information. This problem is connected with Cohen and Nagel's paradox of inference: Since the conclusion of a valid argument is contained in the premises, (...) it fails to provide any novel information. Again, ESI does not give a satisfactory account of the paradox. In this paper I propose a solution based on the distinction between empirical information and analytic information. Declarative sentences are informative due to their meanings. I construe meanings as structured hyperintensions, modelled in Transparent Intensional Logic as so-called constructions. These are abstract, algorithmically structured procedures whose constituents are sub-procedures. My main thesis is that constructions are the vehicles of information. Hence, although analytically true sentences provide no empirical information about the state of the world, they convey analytic information, in the shape of constructions prescribing how to arrive at the truths in question. Moreover, even though analytically equivalent sentences have equal empirical content, their analytic content may be different. Finally, though the empirical content of the conclusion of a valid argument is contained in the premises, its analytic content may be different from the analytic content of the premises and thus convey a new piece of information. (shrink)

If concepts are explicated as abstract procedures, then we can easily show that each empirical concept is a not an effective procedure. Some, but not all empirical concepts are shown to be of a special kind: they cannot in principle guarantee that the object they identify satisfies the intended conditions.

CAT4 is proposed as a general method for representing information, enabling a powerful programming method for large-scale information systems. It enables generalised machine learning, software automation and novel AI capabilities. It is based on a special type of relation called CAT4, which is interpreted to provide a semantic representation. This is Part 2 of a five-part introduction. The focus here is on defining key mathematical properties of CAT2, identifying the topology and defining essential functions over a coordinate system. The analysis (...) is from first principles. This develops on from the axioms introduced in Part 1. The interpretation of fact networks is introduced in Part 3, and the full application to semantic theory comes in Part 4, where we introduce general functions, including the language interpretation or linguistic functions. In Part 5, we turn to software design considerations, to show how files, indexes, functions and screens can be defined to implement a CAT4 system efficiently. (shrink)

CAT4 is proposed as a general method for representing information, enabling a powerful programming method for large-scale information systems. It enables generalised machine learning, software automation and novel AI capabilities. It is based on a special type of relation called CAT4, which is interpreted to provide a semantic representation. This is Part 1 of a five-part introduction. The focus here is on defining the key mathematical structures first, and presenting the semantic-database application in subsequent Parts. We focus in Part 1 (...) on general axioms for the structures, and introduce key concepts. Part 2 analyses the CAT2 sub-relation of CAT4 in more detail. The interpretation of fact networks is introduced in Part 3, where we turn to interpreting semantics. We start with examples of relational and graph databases, with methods to translate them into CAT3 networks, with the aim of retaining the meaning of information. The full application to semantic theory comes in Part 4, where we introduce general functions, including the language interpretation or linguistic functions. The representation of linear symbolic languages, including natural languages and formal symbolic languages, is a function that CAT4 is uniquely suited to. In Part 5, we turn to software design considerations, to show how files, indexes, functions and screens can be defined to implement a CAT4 system efficiently. (shrink)

CAT4 is proposed as a general method for representing information, enabling a powerful programming method for large-scale information systems. It enables generalised machine learning, software automation and novel AI capabilities. This is Part 3 of a five-part introduction. The focus here is on explaining the semantic model for CAT4. Points in CAT4 graphs represent facts. We introduce all the formal (data) elements used in the classic semantic model: sense or intension (1st and 2nd joins), reference (3rd join), functions (4th join), (...) time and truth (logical fields), and symbolic content (name/value fields). Concepts are introduced through examples alternating with theoretical discussion. Some concepts are assumed from Part 1 and 2, but key ideas are re-introduced. The purpose is to explain the CAT4 interpretation, and why the data structure and CAT4 axioms have been chosen: to make the semantic model consistent and complete. We start with methods to translate information from database tables into graph DBs and into CAT4. We conclude with a method for translating natural language into CAT4. We conclude with a comparison of the system with an advanced semantic logic, the hyper-intensional logic TIL, which also aims to translate NL into a logical calculus. The CAT4 Natural Language Translator is discussed in further detail in Part 4, when we introduce functions more formally. Part 5 discusses software design considerations. (shrink)

The author defends the view that the notion of concept, if used in the logical tradition, should be explicated procedurally . He argues that Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic is an apt tool for such an explication and derives the respective definition. Some consequences of this definition concern the notions of emptiness, simple concepts, empirical concepts and algorithmic concepts.

In Transparent Intensional Logic we can recognize two distinct notions of computation that loosely correspond to term rewriting and term interpretation as known from lambda calculus. Our goal will be to further explore these two notions and examine some of their properties.

To talk about simple concepts presupposes that the notion of concept has been aptly explicated. I argue that a most adequate explication should abandon the set-theoretical paradigm and use a procedural approach. Such a procedural approach is offered by Tichý´s Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). Some main notions and principles of TIL are briefly presented, and as a result, concepts are explicated as a kind of abstract procedure. Then it can be shown that simplicity, as applied to concepts, is well definable (...) as a property relative to conceptual systems, each of which is determined by a finite set of simple (‘primitive’) concepts. Refinement as a method of replacing simple concepts by compound concepts is defined. (shrink)

This paper defendsintensional essentialism: a property (intensional entity) is not essential relative to an individual (extensional entity), but relative to other properties (or intensional entities). Consequently, an individual can have a property only accidentally, but in virtue of having that property the individual has of necessity other properties. Intensional essentialism is opposed to various aspects of the Kripkean notion of metaphysical modality, eg, varying domains, existence as a property of individuals, and its category of properties which are both empirical and (...) essential with respect to particular individuals and natural kinds. The key notion of intensional essentialism isrequisite. A requisite is explicated as a relation-in-extension between two intensions (functions from possible worlds and moments of time)X, Y such that wherever and wheneverX is instantiatedY is also instantiated. We predict three readings of the sentence. Every wooden table is necessarily wooden , one involving modalityde re and the other two modalityde dicto. The first reading claims that no individual which is a wooden table is necessarily wooden. The claim is backed up by bare particular anti-essentialism. The two other interpretations claim that it is necessary that whatever is a wooden table is wooden. However, as we try to show, one is logically far more perspicuous thanks to the concept of requisite and thus preferable to more standardde dicto formalizations. (shrink)

Some twenty years ago, semanticists of natural language came to be overwhelmed by the problem of semantic analysis of belief sentences (and sentences reporting other kinds of propositional attitudes): the trouble was that sentences of the shapes X believes that A and X believes that B appeared to be able to have different truth values even in cases when A and B shared the same intension, i.e. were, from the viewpoint of intensional semantics, synonymous 1 . Thus, taking intensional semantics (...) for granted, belief sentences appeared to violate the principle of intersubstitutivity of synonyms. The verdict of the gurus of intensional semantics was that hence intensional semantics is inadequate, or at least insufficient for the purposes of analysis of propositional attitudes; and that we need a kind of a ‘hyperintensional semantics’. (shrink)

The paper is based on transparent intensional logic. A sentence denotes a proposition and expresses a construction in the sense of Tichý´s definition . ‘Belief sentences’ refer to an attitude of some individual to the sense of the dependent clause, i.e., to the respective construction, which eliminates such problems as ‘paradox of omniscience’. In the case of empirical dependent clauses we can observe that at least besides this relation to a construction one can define a relation of the subject to (...) the state-of-affairs, represented by a proposition, i.e., by the denotation of the sentence. To stipulate such a kind of attitudes is justified by such cases where X says that he believes that Chicago is smaller than Prague and Y refers to this X’s belief saying that X believes that Prague is larger than Chicago. (shrink)

The paper, as a continuation of the paper Hanzel , provides a methodological generalization of Newton’s method of theory construction as applied in Book I and Book III of his Principia. It reconstructs also the method of measures applied in those books. Finally, it shows how the term “harmonic law” changes its meaning in the Principia.

Pavel Materna proposed valuable explications of concept and conceptual system. After their introduction, we contrast conceptual systems with (a novel notion of) derivation systems. Derivation systems differ from conceptual systems especially in including derivation rules. This enables us to show close connections among the realms of objects, their concepts, and reasoning with concepts.

Jerry Fodor (Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) famously argued that lexical concepts are unstructured. After examining the advantages and disadvantages of both the classical approach to concepts and Fodor's conceptual atomism, I argue that some lexical concepts are, in fact, structured. Roughly stated, I argue that structured lexical concepts bear a necessary biconditional entailment relation to their structural constituents. I develop this account of the structure of lexical concepts within the framework of Pavel (...) Tichy's (The foundations of Frege's logic. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1988) theory of constructions. I argue that concepts are constructions which can be combined by way of Tichy's construction-forming operations of composition and closure and an additional operation, simplification, which I propose in section 6. The last of these construction-forming operations plays a central role in my account of lexical concept structure. Stated generally, structured lexical concepts are a result of simplifying their structural constituents. (shrink)

The paper presents an argument against referential treatment of definite descriptions' semantics. Referentialism with respect to semantics of definite descriptions claims that when descriptions are used referentially, then they are semantically referring expressions. It is argued that this picture does not lead to a satisfactory representation of propositions expressed by utterances involving definite descriptions. For if propositions are what primarily enters the relation of entailment, then referentialism is commited to the view that (i) some inferences usually taken as valid are (...) claimed to be invalid; (ii) some inferences usually taken as invalid are claimed to be valid; (iii) some inferences that are by no means trivially valid must be taken to be such. It is argued that Russellian‐ism with respect to definite descriptions gives us a better representation of propositions expressed by utterances involving descriptions. (shrink)

On the one hand, Pavel Tichý has shown in his Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL) that the best way of explicating meaning of the expressions of a natural language consists in identification of meanings with abstract procedures. TIL explicates objective abstract procedures as so-called constructions. Constructions that do not contain free variables and are in a well-defined sense ´normalized´ are called concepts in TIL. On the second hand, Kolmogorov in (Mathematische Zeitschrift 35: 58–65, 1932) formulated a theory of problems, using NL (...) expressions. He explicitly avoids presenting a definition of problems. In the present paper an attempt at such a definition (explication)—independent of but in harmony with Medvedev´s explication—is given together with the claim that every concept defines a problem. The paper treats just mathematical concepts, and so mathematical problems, and tries to show that this view makes it possible to take into account some links between conceptual systems and the ways how to replace a noneffective formulation of a problem by an effective one. To show this in concreto a wellknown Kleene’s idea from his (Introduction to metamathematics. D. van Nostrand, New York, 1952) is exemplified and explained in terms of conceptual systems so that a threatening inconsistence is avoided. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the problem of identification of laws of nature and their demarcation from other kinds of regularities. The problem is approached from the viewpoint of several metaphysical, epistemological, logical and methodological criteria. Firstly, several dominant approaches to the problem are introduced. Secondly, the logical and semantic explicatory framework – Transparent Intensional Logic – is presented for the sake of clarification of logical forms of sentences that are supposed to express the laws of nature. Finally, a complementary strategy (...) to the demarcation problem is proposed, including reconsideration of relevant metaphysical, epistemological, logical and methodological requirements and principles behind the former conceptions. (shrink)

This paper deals with two issues. First, it identifies structured propositions with logical procedures. Second, it considers various rigorous definitions of the granularity of procedures, hence also of structured propositions, and comes out in favour of one of them. As for the first point, structured propositions are explicated as algorithmically structured procedures. I show that these procedures are structured wholes that are assigned to expressions as their meanings, and their constituents are sub-procedures occurring in executed mode. Moreover, procedures are not (...) mere aggregates of their parts; rather, procedural constituents mutually interact. As for the second point, there is no universal criterion of the structural isomorphism of meanings, hence of co-hyperintensionality, hence of synonymy for every kind of language. The positive result I present is an ordered set of rigorously defined criteria of fine-grained individuation in terms of the structure of procedures. Hence procedural semantics provides a solution to the problem of the granularity of co-hyperintensionality. (shrink)

I present an analysis according to which the current state of the definition of substitution leads to a contradiction in the system of Transparent Intensional Logic. I entail the contradiction using only the basic definitions of TIL and standard results. I then analyse the roots of the contradiction and motivate the path I take in resolving the contradiction. I provide a new amended definition of collision-less substitution which blocks the contradiction in a non-ad hoc way. I elaborate on the consequences (...) of the amended definition, namely the invalidity of the Church-Rosser theorem. I present a counterexample to the validity of the theorem in TIL with an amended definition of substitution. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a new algebra called ‘EQ-algebra’, which is an alternative algebra of truth values for formal fuzzy logics. It is specified by replacing implication as the main operation with a fuzzy equality. Namely, EQ-algebra is a semilattice endowed with a binary operation of fuzzy equality and a binary operation of multiplication. Implication is derived from the fuzzy equality and it is not a residuation with respect to multiplication. Consequently, EQ-algebras overlap with residuated lattices but are not (...) identical with them. We choose one class of suitable EQ-algebras and develop a formal theory of higher-order fuzzy logic called ‘basic fuzzy type theory’ . We develop in detail its syntax and semantics, and we prove some basic properties, including the completeness theorem with respect to generalized models. The paper also provides an overview of the present state of the art of FTT. (shrink)