Several authors have proposed specifying semantics for representational systems by translating them into logic. Unfortunately, such translations often introduce unnecessary detail and complexity. We indicate how many kinds of informal semantics can be transformed directly into formal semantics of no greater complexity. The key to avoiding the diiculties of logical translations is to recognize t...

We develop and defend a new approach to counterlogicals. Non-vacuous counterlogicals, we argue, fall within broader class of counterfactuals known as counterconventionals. Existing semantics for counterconventionals (developed by Einheuser (Philosophical Studies, 127(3), 459–482 (2006)) (Kocurek et al. Philosophers’ Imprint, 20(22), 1–27 (2020)) allow shift the interpretation predicates relatio...

Abstract Since Kripke, philosophers have distinguished a priori true statements from necessarily ones. A statement is if its truth can be established before experience, and it could not been false according to logical or metaphysical laws. This distinction captured formally using two-dimensional semantics. There natural way extend the notions of apriority necessity so they also apply questions....

The paper suggests a definition of "know who" as modality using Grove-Halpern semantics names. It also introduces logical system that describes the interplay between modalities "knows who", "knows", and "for all agents". main technical result is completeness theorem for proposed system.

Inquisitive semantics (cf. Groenendijk, 2008) provides a formal framework for reasoning about information exchange. The central logical notion that the semantics gives rise to is compliance. This paper presents an algorithm that computes the set of compliant responses to a given initiative. The algorithm is sound and complete. The implementation is accessible online via www.illc.uva.nl/inquisit...

Classical results in computability theory, notably Rice's theorem, focus on the extensional content of programs, namely, partial recursive functions that programs compute. Later work investigated intensional generalisations such take into account way which are computed, thus affected by specific computing them. In this paper, we single out a novel class program semantics based abstract domains ...

We present a logic language with encapsulation based on an object-oriented data model. We give a formal account of the semantics of this language by defining a proof theory, a model theory and a fixed point theory. We also show that the different characterizations of the semantics are equivalent. We then study the logical foundations of encapsulation by introducing a mapping from our language t...

This paper presents a novel model–theoretic account of Harel, Pnueli and Shalev’s original step semantics of the visual specification language Statecharts. The graphical syntax of a Statechart is read, directly and structurally, as a formula in propositional logic. This proposition captures all the logical constraints imposed by the diagram on the Statechart’s semantics, i.e., the possible sets...

We introduce dynamic causal calculus, a nonmonotonic formalism that can be viewed as a direct logical counterpart of the action description language C+ from (Giunchiglia et al. 2004). We formulate a nonmonotonic semantics of the associated causal language, and compare this semantics with the indirect, two-stage semantics for C+, given in (Giunchiglia et al. 2004). It will be shown, in particula...