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CSLI Calendar, 16 March 1995, vol.10:20
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To: friends
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Subject: CSLI Calendar, 16 March 1995, vol.10:20
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From: Tom Burke <burke>
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 15:28:39 -0800
C S L I C A L E N D A R O F P U B L I C E V E N T S
______________________________________________________________________________
16 March 1995 Stanford Vol. 10, No. 20
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A weekly publication of the Center for the Study of Language and
Information (CSLI), Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
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CSLI ACTIVITIES DURING 16 -- 24 MARCH 1995
THURSDAY, 16 MARCH
12:00 - CSLI TINLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Vagueness, Empty Names, and Supervaluations
Ernest Lepore, Rutgers Philosophy
Abstract below
2:15 - CSLI Seminar
Series on Visual Programming
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Visual AppBuilder
Kurt Schmucker, Apple Computer
Abstract below
4:00 - STASS Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Local Logics and the Flow of Information
Jon Barwise, Indiana Philosophy
Abstract below
4:15 - SSP Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
AI-Based Planning for Image Processing Tasks
Amy L. Lansky, NASA Ames Research Center
Abstract below
4:15 - Mathematics Colloquium
Building 380, Room 380-W
The Higher Infinite in Proof Theory
Michael Rathjen, Heisenberg Fellow, visiting Stanford
FRIDAY, 17 MARCH
12:30 - HCI Seminar
Terman Auditorium
Implicit Structures for Pen-Based Systems Within
a Freeform Interaction Paradigm
Tom Moran, Xerox PARC
Abstract below
3:30 - Linguistics Colloquium
Cordura Hall, Room 100
The Once and Future Dictionary
Geoff Nunberg, Xerox PARC and Stanford Linguistics
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 22 MARCH
4:00 - Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Cordura Hall, Room 100
How Ant Colonies Respond to Changing Environments
Deborah Gordon, Stanford Biology
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 23 MARCH
2:15 - CSLI Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Graphical Theorem Proving: An Approach to Reasoning
with the Help of Diagrams
David Barker-Plummer, CSLI
Abstract below
____________
The CSLI Calendar appears on Thursday of each week throughout the academic
year. Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in the
Calendar on a given Thursday should be submitted by e-mail to
incalendar@csli.stanford.edu by 5:00 p.m. on the previous Tuesday.
Past issues of the CSLI Calendar, a quarterly schedule of upcoming CSLI
events, and other information about CSLI are available on the World Wide Web:
<http://csli-www.stanford.edu/>. The Calendar, with available abstracts, is
also posted each week to the csli.bboard newsgroup.
____________
CSLI TINLUNCH
on Thursday, 16 March
12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
Vagueness, Empty Names, and Supervaluations
Ernest Lepore
Rutgers Philosophy
<lefore@zodiac.rutgers.edu>
Sentences with vacuous names and empty predicates are common, perhaps more
common than we know. Even more evident (and inclusive) are sentences whose
presuppositions fail; and there seems to be no shortage of sentences with
vague predicates (by some author's lights -- Kamp and Partee (ms) -- "all of
them"). What ties these sentences together is that many of them are supposed
to be truth valueless. That on its face doesn't seem so bad, but many
apparently worry that once truth-value gaps are introduced into the semantics,
our beloved classical logic will have to go, in particular, the law of
excluded middle; suppose P is some sentence with either a vacuous name, empty
predicate, failed presupposition, or vague predicate (with a subject that
doesn't definitely fall in or out of its extension) and on this basis let us
suppose P without truth value. Then, presumably, so is Not-P, but then so is
[P v Not-P], and [P and Not-P]. Purists can't bear this load. Also,
providing a semantics for gappy language is not a easy task. And then there
are the paradoxes that seem to follow certain kinds of truth-value gaps.
With respect to problems about non-denoting singular terms, supervaluation
techniques have gone pretty much without criticism and have become something
of a status quo position. Supervaluation theory fares less well in
discussions about vagueness. Though it has its proponents, there is
substantial criticism in print. Still, even in the critical literature I know
of no challenge to the intelligibility of applying supervaluation techniques
to vague language and that's exactly what I want to do. If I'm right, then
there is little reason to believe supervaluation techniques have any obvious
philosophical utility. My argument hinges (mostly) on the fact that all the
known uses I'm familiar with are incoherent. In and of itself, this doesn't
impugn the intelligibility of supervaluations as mathematical objects of
study; but that's hardly a defense of its philosophical utility.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
SERIES ON VISUAL PROGRAMMING
on Thursday, 16 March
2:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Visual AppBuilder
Kurt Schmucker
Apple Computer
<schmucker1@applelink.apple.com>
The goal of Novell's Visual AppBuilder product (formerly the Serius Workshop
from Serius Corporation) is to remove the programmer from the development
process for the majority of the desktop application needs of corporations.
They have tried to achieve these aims by designing a visual programming
environment in which large-grain chunks of functionality can be quickly and
easily crafted together to produce a custom application. This talk will
present this environment, examples of what can and cannot be done with it, and
an examination of its strengths and weaknesses. Demonstrations of the
environment and of applications written with it will be given.
KURT SCHMUCKER has been at Apple for over seven years and has lead a variety
of projects in its Advanced Technology Group, including the Scientific
Computing Project and portions of the Human Interface Group. Currently he is
using Prograph CPX to accelerate the transition of ATG research into Apple
products. Prior to Apple, he worked for a decade in the US Department of
Defense as a computational linguist, computer scientist, and research
mathematician.
Kurt is the author of three books, including _Object-Oriented Programming for
the Macintosh_, and is a frequent contributor on Prograph topics in both
Visual News and the MacTech Magazine. He has advanced degrees in both
mathematics and computer science. The brand of shame ("ABD") is on his
forehead, but has faded somewhat with the passing of the years.
____________
STASS Seminar
on Thursday, 16 March
4:00 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Local Logics and the Flow of Information
Jon Barwise
Indiana Philosophy
<barwise@phil.indiana.edu>
There are three rather different ways of looking at semantic information, in
terms of state spaces, inference, and constraints between types of situations.
The first two are the paradigms in probability theory and physics, on the one
hand, and in domain theory (Scott information systems) on the other. The
final of the three is the approach taken in situation theory. In this talk I
will related these three ways of looking at semantic information. The talk is
based on joint work with Jerry Seligman.
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 16 March
4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
AI-Based Planning for Image Processing Tasks
Amy L. Lansky
NASA Ames Research Center
<lansky@ptolemy-ethernet.arc.nasa.gov>
This talk will describe a nontraditional domain-independent planner, COLLAGE,
and its application to the the task of generating image processing plans. In
this domain, COLLAGE can be viewed as a software assistant or advisory agent
that helps Earth scientists working with remotely-sensed imagery. We believe
that this kind of task is representative of a class of fruitful domains for
planning researchers: helping humans navigate through seas of software- and
data-selection possibilities. In such domains, the human user has deep
knowledge of their domain and what they're trying to accomplish, but the
available tools and data at their fingertips may be too vast or complex (e.g.,
there may be hundreds of image processing algorithms available). The planner
helps to bridge this gap by possessing knowledge about the various algorithms
and data sets, what their requirements and purposes are, and how they can be
composed to meet task requirements.
In contrast to traditional state-based planners that use techniques based on
STRIPS action descriptors, COLLAGE uses a unique action-based planning
methodology. A suite of algorithms are utilized that focus on action
decomposition, temporal/causal relationships between actions, and propagation
of CSP-based constraints on parameter variables. One focus of this talk will
be on the utility of this type of planning for realistic domains.
DR. AMY LANSKY is a Senior Computer Scientist in the former Artificial
Intelligence Research Branch (currently Computational Sciences Division) at
NASA Ames Research Center. Since 1989, she has led the design and development
of the COLLAGE planning system. From 1983-1989, Dr. Lansky was a research
computer scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International.
At SRI she developed the GEMPLAN planner and also collaborated in the
development of the reactive planner PRS and its application to diagnostic
tasks for Space Shuttle.
Dr. Lansky received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in
1983 in the area of concurrent program verification and distributed systems.
She has been an NSF fellow, a Hertz fellow, and has been nominated as a AAAI
fellow. In computer science, her research interests include planning and
scheduling, agents, distributed systems, and programming languages. Outside
of computer science, Dr. Lansky has an avid interest alternative healing
systems and their mechanisms. She is also lead singer of the local rock and
roll band, "The Wizards."
____________
MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM
on Thursday, 16 March
4:15 p.m., Building 380, Room 380-W
The Higher Infinite in Proof Theory
Michael Rathjen
Heisenberg Fellow, visiting Stanford
____________
SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
on Friday, 17 March
12:30 p.m., Terman Auditorium
Implicit Structures for Pen-Based Systems
Within a Freeform Interaction Paradigm
Tom Moran
Xerox PARC
<moran@parc.xerox.com>
Computer systems impose formal sets of concepts on their users. In many
situations, such as intellectual and collaborative work, systems are almost
always too formal and thus inhibit the very processes they are designed to
support. An important fundamental problem for human-computer interaction
design is how to "deformalize" systems. Pen-based drawing systems are one
emerging class of "freeform" systems attempting to do this. But these
systems, having traded power for freedom, give little support to even the most
minimal structure in the material created with them.
This talk describes a scheme for extending an informal, pen-based whiteboard
system (Tivoli on the Xerox LiveBoard) to provide a structured editing
capability without violating its free expression and ease of use. The scheme
supports list, text, table, and outline structures over handwritten scribbles
and typed text. The scheme is based on the system temporarily perceiving the
"implicit structure" that humans see in the material, which is called a
WYPIWYG (What You Perceive Is What You Get) capability. The design
techniques, principles, trade-offs, and limitations of the scheme will be
discussed.
TOM MORAN is a Principal Scientist and Manager of the Collaborative Systems
Area at the Xerox PARC. He is also the Editor (and founder) of the journal
Human-Computer Interaction. History: B.~Architecture, University of Detroit;
Ph.D., Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University; joined PARC in 1974;
first Director, Rank Xerox EuroPARC, Cambridge, England (1986-90). Work:
early work on the theoretical foundations of HCI with Stu Card and Allen
Newell, resulting in the book _The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction_
(1983); developed several HCI analysis tools, including the Command Language
Grammar, the external-internal task mapping, analysis of mental models, the
QOC design rationale representation; designed and developed (with many others)
several novel interactive systems, including the NoteCards idea-processing
hypertext system, the Instructional Design Environment, the user-tailorable
Buttons system, the RAVE media space environment, and the Tivoli electronic
whiteboard system.
This is the last week of courses for the Quarter. Watch for the Spring
schedule and change of place [Skilling Auditorium]. We will begin again on
April 7.
____________
LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 17 March
3:30 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
The Once and Future Dictionary
Geoff Nunberg
Xerox PARC and Stanford Linguistics
<nunberg.parc@xerox.com>
The Dictionary is at once the most conservative and conventionalized of print
genres, to the point where it has "grown a capital letter," and represents a
kind of ideal type. In this talk I want to start by considering the
Dictionary as a descriptive template that implies a number of claims about the
lexicon. For example, it entails a picture of compositionality as an absolute
rather than gradient phenomenon. It suggests a "Gricean" view of the relation
of lexical to encyclopedic information, where the latter is a kind of
contextually added inference. It implies a uniformitarian understanding of
the meaning relation, and it supports a notion of the lexicon as a system of
elements that participate in a single, if messy, semantic hierarchy. These
and other implications of the Dictionary form have had a considerable
influence on popular and theoretical conceptions of the lexicon and on the way
that people have tried to use the Dictionary as a model for constructing
lexical knowledge representations. And yet most of these claims are
ultimately grounded neither in empirical reality nor the "informational" needs
that lexicographers invoke when they explain their enterprise. As I'll try to
show here, they follow instead from the symbolic role of the Dictionary, by
which I mean not its prescriptive value (which is slight in any case), but its
role as the embodiment of a certain picture of how discourse operates in a
print culture, as "the book written by books." Finally, I want to argue that
the "on-line" dictionary is in a certain sense a contradiction in terms: we
should think of electronic lexical systems and utilities not simply as
improved dictionaries, but as a different sort of representation entirely.
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Wednesday, 22 March
4:00 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
How Ant Colonies Respond to Changing Environments
Deborah Gordon
Stanford Biology
<gordon@ants.stanford.edu>
Ant colonies perform a variety of tasks outside the nest, such as foraging and
nest maintenance. As the colony's environment changes, and as the requirements
of the colony change, colonies alter the allocation of workers to various
tasks. There is no central control, so task allocation is a consequence of
simple individual decisions based on local information. The talk will
describe theoretical and empirical work that investigates the possibility that
individuals use interaction rates as a cue in decisions about which task to
perform.
The goal of this seminar is to increase communication among local researchers
with interests in computational approaches to learning and adaptation. If you
would like to be added to (or removed from) the mailing list, or if you are
interested in giving a talk in the seminar, please send email to
<langley@cs.stanford.edu>.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
on Thursday, 23 March
2:15 p.m., in Cordura Hall, Room 100
Graphical Theorem Proving: An Approach to Reasoning
with the Help of Diagrams
David Barker-Plummer
CSLI
<dbp@Proof.Stanford.EDU>
The role of diagrams in mathematics is something of a puzzle. On the one
hand, most mathematicians insist that diagrams have no role in formal
mathematics, while on the other mathematics texts frequently utilize diagrams
with abandon. I believe that diagrams are often used to contain information
about the strategy that should be used to carry out a proof. In this talk I
will describe a theorem proving system called GROVER which has been designed
to test this hypothesis. GROVER is novel in that it may be guided in its
search for a proof by information contained in a diagram. There are two parts
to the system: the underlying theorem prover, called &, and the graphical
subsystem which examines the diagram and makes calls to the underlying prover
on the basis of the information found there. I will illustrate GROVER by
describing proofs of the Diamond Lemma, a non-trivial proof in the theory of
well-founded relations, and the Schroeder-Bernstein theorem, a similarly
difficult theorem from the theory of functions.
This is joint work with Sidney C. Bailin of CTA Incorporated, and Samuel M.
Ehrlichman of Swarthmore College.
____________