The Logic of ‘Being Informed’ Revisited and Revised

Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies

Abstract

The logic of ‘being informed’ gives a formal analysis of a cognitive state that does not coincide with either belief, or knowledge. To Floridi, who first proposed the formal analysis, the latter is supported by the fact that unlike knowledge or belief, being informed is a factive, but not a reflective state. This paper takes a closer look at the formal analysis itself, provides a pure and an applied semantics for the logic of being informed, and tries to find out to what extent the formal analysis can contribute to an information-based epistemology.

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Noisy vs Merely Equivocal Logics

Paper based on Paraconsistency and the Logic of Ambiguous Connectives

Abstract

Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view that natural language connectives have all (and only) the properties conferred by classical logic, but that particular occurrences of these connectives cannot simultaneously exhibit all these properties. This is just a more sophisticated way of saying that while natural language connectives are ambiguous, they are not so in the way classical logic intends them to be. Since this view is usually framed as a means to resolve paradoxes, little attention is paid to the logical properties of the ambiguous connectives themselves. The present paper sets out to Þll this gap by arguing that substructural logicians should care about these connectives, by describing a consequence relation between a set of ambiguous premises and an ambiguous conclusion, and finally by exhaustively characterising the logical properties of ambiguous connectives.

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Understanding Logical Epistemology

Presented at CAP in Europe 2009 (Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to lay the foundation for a broader meta-theoretical reflection on the practice of the formal modeling of cognitive states and actions. Two examples, one from basic epistemic logic, the other from dynamic epistemic logic are used to illustrate some wellknown challenges. These are further evaluated by means of two oppositions: the contrast between abstraction and idealization and the difference between a properties of the agent reading versus a properties of the model reading. To conclude, some methodological insights inherited from the philosophy of information are proposed as fruitful way of understanding the formal modeling of cognitive states and actions.

Adaptive Logic as Conditional Belief

This paper supersedes Logic in Epistemic Perspective. Adaptive Logic as Conditional Belief.

Abstract

In this paper we reconstruct the Þnal derivability relation of adaptive logic within the framework of conditional doxastic logic (CDL). On the formal level, this is achieved by generalising the preference ordering used in CDL in such a way that it can capture the preferential semantics of adaptive logic. The final result is a class of preferential models wherein a boxed formula is valid iff a corresponding formula can be finally derived using a particular adaptive strategy.

Presently being revised.

Reasoning about Data and Information. Abstraction between states and commodities

Paper based on A two-level approach to logics of data and information

Published in Synthese 167(2) (2009): 231-249.

(Knowledge, Rationality, and Action) special issue on the Philosophy of Information and Logic edited by Luciano Floridi and Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson (Online First).

Abstract

Cognitive states as well as cognitive commodities play central though distinct roles in our epistemological theories. By being attentive to how a difference in their roles affects our way of referring to them, we can undoubtedly accrue our understanding of the structure and functioning of our main epistemological theories. In this paper we propose an analysis of the dichotomy between states and commodities in terms of the method of abstraction, and more specifically by means of infomorphisms between different ways to classify states of information, information-bases, and evidential situations.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9407-6

Some Epistemic Modalities Derived from Adaptive Logic

Talk given at the VAF Conference 2009 (Tilburg).

Abstract

When reformulated as a modal logic for conditional belief, the main properties of adaptive logics can be captured as properties of the resulting modal operators. The purpose of the present paper is to give a broadly epistemic interpretation to these modalities, and use these to bring out the distinctive epistemic character of adaptive logics. Concretely, I want to do three things: (a) give a brief description of a modal logic for conditional belief based on the semantics of adaptive consequence; (b) investigate the role of logical and epistemic or doxastic possibilities in this logic; and (c) show how these modalities can be used to elucidate the relevance of logic for deductive reasoning.