Solves Vann McGee's counterexample to Modus Ponens within classical logic by disclosing the suppressed premises and bringing them /within/ the argument.

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Traditionally, imperatives have been handled with deontic logics, not the logic of propositions which bear truth values. Yet, an imperative is issued by the speaker to cause (stay) actions which change the state of affairs, (...) which is, in turn, described by propositions that bear truth values. Thus, ultimately, imperatives affect truth values. In this paper, we put forward an idea that allows us to reason with imperatives using classical logic by constructing a one-to-one correspondence between imperatives and a particular class of declaratives. (shrink)

Demonstrates that the "paradoxes of material implication" are only apparent, sticking entirely within the confines of classical logic.

See the abstract for the "Abstracts from Logical Form II".

The article distinguishes between charity and philanthropy and answers those who argue that monies spent for either are an inefficient deployment of monies for present consumption that could better be deployed by investing in the production of future wealth. It closes by arguing that philanthropists provide a key leadership role in the free-market economy. -/- The author owns the copyright, and there was no agreement, express or implied, not to use the publisher's PDF.

This has been made available gratis by the publisher. -/- This piece gives the raison d'etre for the development of the converters mentioned in the title. Three reasons are given, one linguistic, one philosophical, and one practical. It is suggested that at least /two/ independent converters are needed. -/- This piece ties together the extended paper "Abstracts from Logical Form I/II," and the short piece providing the comprehensive theory alluded to in the abstract of that extended paper in "Pragmatics, Montague, (...) and 'Abstracts from Logical Form'" by motivating the entire project from beginning to end. (shrink)

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Note also that this is not a mere repetition of the argument in /Mind/, nor merely an application of it; there are subtle differences. -/- Finally, although Christians are likely to take this as applicable (...) to a God who can enter time, Jewish readers who wish a full understanding of its intent are referred to M.R. II:13:3. Note that /some/ free will, however miniscule, must remain, exactly as argued. Also, Maimonides speaks differently, albeit metaphorically, elsewhere, and nothing here contradicts his statements. (shrink)

Uses erotetic logic to model the courtroom objection "Improper Cross!". -/- Readers downloading the article should also please download the erratum et corrigendum, which is locally available.

Proves two simple identities relating the biconditional and exclusive disjunction. -/- The PDF has been made available gratis by the publisher.

This paper deals with Austinian ifs of every stripe within classical logic. It is argued that they are truth-functional and the theory of conditional elements is used. Ellipsis is key. Corrects an error in Fulda (2010) in translation and therefore scope. -/- The PDF is made available gratis by the Publisher.

This experimental study provides further support for a theory of meaning first put forward by Bar-Hillel and Carnap in 1953 and foreshadowed by Asimov in 1951. The theory is the Popperian notion that the meaningfulness of a proposition is its a priori falsity. We tested this theory in the first part of this paper by translating to logical form a long, tightly written, published text and computed the meaningfulness of each proposition using the a priori falsity measure. We then selected (...) the top propositions—by a priori falsity—and strung them together to form ad hoc abstracts and compared these abstracts with the published summary. The results were startling: translation to logical form, followed by application of the Asimovian idea and Bar-Hillel/Carnap mathematics as elaborated into an AI/NLP proposal in Fulda (1986, 1988), produced excellent abstracts, thereby providing a proof-of-concept that merely by knowing the logical form of long text passages, one can produce reasonable abstracts of them—without actually understanding the text. We here report on a second experiment analyzing, in the exact same manner, the correspondence that followed the published text of the first experiment. While the results of this confirming experiment are less startling, they nevertheless provide additional confidence in the promise of the technique. In other words, were the results of these two experiments to generalize, that would show that logical form captures much more semantics than has heretofore been considered likely. Far from (as is commonly supposed) being merely the syntactical rewrite of text into formal notation, translation to logical form, even when undertaken with almost no knowledge about the particular predicates, individual constants, or other objects referred to in that form, might capture the core of the meaning in some important sense. -/- Note: There is a key difference in the /style/ of the texts analyzed in I and II in this long paper, divided into two only for practical reasons—space; the first text analyzed is written in a tight mathematical style, while the second is written in the discursive style of philosophy. -/- Finally, the unusual (for me) length of this two-part paper is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

Note: The author holds the copyright, and there was no agreement, express or implied, not to use a facsimile PDF. -/- Using erotetic logic, the paper defines the "the whole truth" in a manner consistent with U.S. Supreme Court precedent. It cannot mean "the whole story," as witnesses in an adversary system are permitted /only/ to answer the questions put to them, nor are they permitted to speculate, add irrelevant material, etc. Nor can it mean not to add an admixture (...) of falsity, as that is already included in "nothing but the truth," and, strictly speaking, in "the truth," as any such as admixture renders the whole thing false (given bivalence is presupposed) by &-introduction. (shrink)

Gives two pared-down versions of the argument from design, which may prove more persuasive as to a Creator, discusses briefly the mathematics underpinning disbelief and nonbelief and its misuse and some proper uses, moves to why the full argument is needed anyway, viz., to demonstrate Providence, offers a theory as to how miracles (open and hidden) occur, viz. the replacement of any particular mathematics underlying a natural law (save logic) by its most appropriate nonstandard variant. -/- Note: This is an (...) extended abstract; there are no present plans to complete it. (shrink)

Argues that the mathematical structure of a tempting or, more generally, risk-taking situation may prove far more dispositive of the choice made than either character or the lure/pull of the subject/object of temptation/risk-taking. -/- Briefly discusses some implications of this.

Notwithstanding the numerous errors in this piece, the core teaching remains unscathed: Arithmetic (or any other branch of mathematics) cannot do moral work. If it appears otherwise, that simply means some nonstandard version of the relevant area of mathematics will work. -/- Negative results can indeed sometimes be shown using mathematics, but not on such fundamental normative questions as whether something/someone has rights. Also, mathematics can put into relief, sometimes, a fundamental normative question, even though it cannot resolve it.

Reviews Clark and Chalmers (1998) and extends their argument from declarative knowledge (extensional knowledge) to procedural knowledge (algorithmic knowledge-how).

Deals with the problem of enthymemes in expert systems designed to model legal reasoning; suggests that interactivity is crucial.

Shows how, as a consequence of the Arrow Impossibility Theorem, objectivity in grading is chimerical, given a sufficiently knowledgeable teacher (of his students, not his subject) in a sufficiently small class. -/- PDF available from JStor only; permission to post full version previously granted by journal editors and publisher expired. -/- Unpublished reply posted gratis.

Evaluates e-mail critically from four perspectives. Note: This is /not/ the full version. The full version is available upon written request only.

We argued [Since this argument appeared in other journals, I am reprising it here, almost verbatim.] (Fulda in J Law Info Sci 2:230–232, 1991/AI & Soc 8(4):357–359, 1994) that the paradox of the preface suggests a reason why machines cannot, will not, and should not be allowed to judge criminal cases. The argument merely shows that they cannot now and will not soon or easily be so allowed. The author, in fact, now believes that when—and only when—they are ready (...) they actually should be so allowed, in the interests of justice. Both the original argument applied and this detailed reconsideration applies exclusively to trial courts, and both specifically exclude(d) sentencing. The argument highlights some key relevant differences between minds and machines and attempts, also, to explain why automation is of far greater import for the first-level justice system (trial courts) than for higher courts. A final section discusses why sentencing was, is, and should be excluded. (shrink)

Gives what we call "Asimov's Conjecture" that ambiguity can cause lying without lying, in that read one way a statement is tautologous, while read another way presents an iron-clad promise. Solves the conjecture on Asimov's own case by showing how the statement used (as diplomatic deception) is tautologous in propositional logic and an iron-clad promise in predicate logic (with a tense variable). The motivation for the experiment by Fulda & DeFontes (1989) and "Abstracts from Logical Form I/II (2006).".

This article argues that the disclosure, dissemination, sale, and publication of texts—such as text messages, e-mails, and letters—addressed to anyone other than the public at large are gravely and profoundly immoral. The argument has two strands, the first based on a conception of privacy largely due to Steven Davis (2009), and the second based on the concept of authorial autonomy and its reverse, authorial dilution.

This piece is intended to explicate - by providing a precising definition of - the common cinematic figure which I term “the failure of the cinematic imagination,“ while presenting a logical puzzle and its solution within a simple Gricean framework. -/- It should be noted that this is neither fully accurate nor fully precise, because of the audience; one should examine the remaining articles in the issue to understand what I mean.

Solves what is sometimes, but not always, referred to as the third paradox of material implication. Readers downloading this piece should please also download the corrigendum. Note that "pragmatic" is here used in its original sense of context-sensitive, that is, adjacency. (This comment is made in response to an article in a student journal published in the western U.S. which claimed that I said that because something involves translation it must be pragmatic; that is so, in the original sense; only (...) grammaticality can ever be context-free; all meaning is context-sensitive, as "lawful" cannot meaningfully modify "whale."). (shrink)

Presents a /simple/ epistemic solution to the paradox of the surprise test, suitable for undergraduates. Given the Gazette's audience, recalcitrant versions, such as Sorenson's, would have been inappropriate to even mention. It is also classified under "logical paradoxes," because it can be argued that given the existence of logical, rather than epistemic, solutions, so also the paradox is logical, rather than epistemic. -/- The author was not sent proofs, because the /Gazette/ was then run on a "shoestring budget"; the 2009 (...) article is just as intended, and the journal is now typeset well. (shrink)

This paper presents a unified, more-or-less complete, and largely pragmatic theory of indicative conditionals as they occur in natural language, which is entirely truth-functional and does not involve probability. It includes material implication as a special—and the most important—case, but not as the only case. The theory of conditional elements, as we term it, treats if-statements analogously to the more familiar and less controversial other truth-functional compounds, such as conjunction and disjunction.

The full-text of the entire issue is available on the Web; readers seeing this should ensure that there is permission to download. It would be quite difficult to separate just my piece from the others.

Alpha-beta pruning is a technique for pruning trees in artificial intelligence game-playing. This note draws an analogy between the technique, which is, in essence, an application of many-valued logic to the cut-off of the evaluation of conditionals in computer programs (for efficiency).

Discusses a variety of maneuvers that editors and publishers, respectively, use with the untoward result that the author conveys something other than what and only what he intended to convey.

Considers the question of the authorship of the works in the title from a /philosophical/, as opposed to legal, standpoint, using the sense-reference dichotomy, intension-extension dichotomy, and procedural knowledge-declarative knowledge dichotomy. Reaches no conclusion.

This is a review article of Tokuyasu Kakuta, Makoto Haraguchi, and Yoshiaki Okubo, "A Goal-Dependent Abstraction for Legal Reasoning by Analogy," /Artificial Intelligence and Law/ 5(March 1997): 97-118.

Gives a general method as well as some results (inspired by Asimov, 1951; since discovered to be in Bar-Hillel and Carnap [several versions; Charles Parsons referred me to /Language and Information/]) to recover meaning (eventually automatically) from logical form/logical probability, which are mirror images. (Sets are taken as extensions of predicates, and knowledge of the sizes is needed; to that extent the method is a posteriori).

This article argues for substantial ex–post criminal penalties against purveyors of stolen intellectual property, in lieu of current legislation winding its way through both chambers of the United States Congress. Inter alia, it discusses why such a drastic remedy has proven necessary and what other measures the Congress should consider adopting. It concludes with a sobering discussion of Internet mischief more generally. -/- Note: This is in marked contrast to views expressed in 1999 when civil justice would have sufficed, and (...) the problems enumerated herein were foreseen and predicted in print, but because the Internet was still young and largely used constructively, the warning went unheeded. (shrink)

The article is intended to, in Sections I and II, flesh out and put within a metaphilosophical framework the theoretical argument first made in 2002 in “Do Internet Stings Directed at Pedophiles Capture Offenders or Create Offenders? And Allied Questions” (Sexuality & Culture 6(4): 73–100), with some modifications (See note 14). Where there are differences, I stand by this version as the final version of the argument. Section III addresses three experimental or empirical studies which might be thought to contradict (...) or confirm the data of the 2002 study. Section IV compares what we have done with the one other jurisprudential argument made by Summer 2005. Section V discusses why, despite the evidence and the arguments, these sting operations are popular with prosecutors and the public alike. Section VI comments on why my empirical study dating to 2002 does not appear to have gained wide acceptance, and what, if anything, can be said about this. -/- Note: The unusual length (for me) of the article is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

Replies to a letter by Dan Velleman re my my 1989 American Mathematical Monthly piece.

In "Abstracts from Logical Form I/II," it was stated in the abstract that it remained necessary to put the pilot experiments into a "comprehensive theory." It is suggested here that the comprehensive theory is nothing other than classical logic modestly extended to include higher-order predicates, functions, and epistemic predicates, as well as a quantitative quantifier to deal with cases other than "all" (taken literally) or "some" in the sense of at least one. It is further suggested that up to a (...) point the theory should generalize across languages, and that logical form is very powerful. (shrink)

We present a linear formalism which makes explicit and precise the confirming effect of independent multiple observers and repeated trials on composite ratings, taking as parameters quantitative estimates of the subjective inputs discussed. -/- Note that the subjective probability used here is so used to study the past not predict the future and is rather limited to what has been called in artificial intelligence "certainty factors," which are arbitrary, or, more well-known, the arbitrary values ascribed to predicates in fuzzy "logic." (...) This is clear because the scales themselves are arbitrary and of the radio-button type. (shrink)

In "Material Implications" (1992), mathematical discourse was said to be different from ordinary discourse, with the discussion centering around conditionals. This paper shows how.