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CSLI Calendar, 1 June 1995, vol.10:30
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To: friends
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Subject: CSLI Calendar, 1 June 1995, vol.10:30
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From: Tom Burke <burke>
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Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 14:18:06 -0700
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
______________________________________________________________________________
1 June 1995 Stanford Vol. 10, No. 30
______________________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the Center for the Study of Language and
Information (CSLI), Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
____________
CSLI ACTIVITIES DURING 31 MAY -- 12 JUNE 1995
WEDNESDAY, 31 MAY
1:15 - Intensional Logic Lecture
Building 90, Room 92-Q
Modal Theorem Proving
Grisha Mints, Stanford Philosophy
THURSDAY, 1 JUNE
10:00 - STASS Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Constraints on Reciprocity
Stanley Peters, Stanford Linguistics
Abstract below
12:15 - CSLI Seminar
Series on Intelligent Agents
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Modeling the Situated Practices of Social Agents
Michael Fehling, Stanford Laboratory for Intelligent Systems
Abstract below
2:15 - CSLI Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Aspectual Adverbs and their Anaphoric Presuppositions
Alice ter Meulen, Indiana Philosophy
Abstract below
4:15 - SSP Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
Discreteness Run Amok
Brian Cantwell Smith, Xerox-PARC
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 2 JUNE
9:00am- CSLI Workshop (Friday through Sunday, 2-4 June)
Cordura Hall, Room 100
4th CSLI Workshop on Logic, Language, and Computation
Contact: Yookyung Kim <yookyung@csli.stanford.edu> or
Atocha Aliseda-Llera <atocha@csli.stanford.edu>
Schedule below
12:30 - HCI Seminar
Skilling Auditorium
Interfaces to the Digital Library: An Experiment
Martin Roscheisen, Christian Mogensen, and Terry Winograd
Abstract below
3:15 - Philosophy Colloquium
Building 90, Room 91-A
Hobbes' Theory of Voluntary Motion
Tommy Lott, San Jose State Philosophy
3:30 - Linguistics Colloquium
Building 460, Room 146
Simple Present Tense Actions in the Discourse of a Social MUD
Lynn Cherny, Stanford Linguistics
Abstract below
MONDAY, 5 JUNE
1:15 - Intensional Logic Lecture
Building 90, Room 92-Q
Dynamic Modal Logic
Jan Jaspars, CWI Amsterdam
WEDNESDAY, 7 JUNE
4:00 - Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Speechreading by Computers
Marcus Hennecke, Ricoh California Research Center
THURSDAY, 8 JUNE
12:15 - CSLI Seminar
Series on Intelligent Agents
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Intelligent Agents for Interactive Simulation Environments:
Constraints and Design Choices
Milind Tambe, USC Information Sciences Institute
Abstract below
2:15 - CSLI Seminar
Movement of Technology from University to Industry
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Artificial Intelligence, Agents, and Industry
Peter Norvig, Harlequin
FRIDAY, 9 JUNE
12:00 - Linguistics Seminar
Place to be announced
The History of Counterfactual Conditionals in English
Rafal Molencki
MONDAY, 12 JUNE
12:00 - CSLI Seminar
Movement of Technology from University to Industry
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Importance of Students versus Research in Private Industry
James F. Gibbons, Stanford Engineering
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 at URL
<http://www-csli.stanford.edu/>. The Calendar, with available abstracts, is
also posted each week to the csli.bboard newsgroup.
____________
INTENSIONAL LOGIC LECTURE
on Wednesday, 31 May
1:15 p.m., Building 90, Room 92-Q
Modal Theorem Proving
Grisha Mints
Stanford Philosophy
<mints@csli.stanford.edu>
This is one in a series of talks on recent developments in and around modal
logic by some guest speakers, illustrating connections with linguistics,
philosophy, computer science, and AI. The first part of this quarter has been
devoted to basic techniques: models and bisimulation, frame correspondences,
modal deduction, completeness arguments, filtration and finite model property.
All interested persons are welcome! All sessions will be in 90-92Q (upstairs
colloquium room, Philosophy Department), Mondays & Wednesdays 1:15--2:30 p.m.
____________
STASS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 June
10:00 a.m., Building 90, Room 92-Q
Constraints on Reciprocity
Stanley Peters
Stanford Linguistics
<peters@csli.stanford.edu>
Reciprocal statements express differing concepts of reciprocity according to
their situation of utterance, as can be imagined by contextualizing the
following examples.
Legislators refer to each other indirectly.
Five Boston pitchers sat alongside each other.
They stacked tables on top of each other.
The pirates stared at each other in surprise.
The concept of reciprocity expressed by an utterance is constrained to be
consistent with certain nonlinguistic information which pertains in the
utterance situation to interpreting the reciprocal expression, e.g., the
constraint that pitchers, being people, have only two sides; and that surprise
lasts only long enough to allow staring at no more than one person. The
concept expressed is further constrained to be the one that gives the
strongest information content to the reciprocal utterance.
These claims will be supported with data, a situation semantic analysis will
be explored, and some consequences for semantic theory will be discussed.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
SERIES ON INTELLIGENT AGENTS
on Thursday, 1 June
12:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Modeling the Situated Practices of Social Agents
Michael Fehling
Stanford Laboratory for Intelligent Systems
<fehling@lis.stanford.edu>
Unlike previous lectures in this series, the research on which my talk is
based focuses neither on robots nor on softbots, at least directly. My
research aims instead to (a) improve current understanding of practices within
and among human organizations, and (b) produce methods and technology that can
be used to improve those practices. This talk focuses on the particular
notions of intentional agency and multi-agent interaction on which my larger
research effort is based. These notions are based, in turn, on a
dispositional view of practice and purposive action, that owes much to the
ideas of Gilbert Ryle in philosophy and Noam Chomsky in linguistics and
psychology, as well as to the social theories of Kurt Lewin, Pierre Bourdieu,
Anthony Giddens, and Chris Argyris.
I will first outline my dispositional account of intentional agency and
organizational practice and briefly discuss the prior work that has influenced
it. Next, I will discuss the use of computational formalisms for symbolic
problem solving to model and analyze this theory. I will describe a
computational construct called an ACTION SCHEMA, intended to formalize the
essential properties of a disposition as a capacity for situated, purposive
action. Time permitting I will also outline a generic computational
architecture for modeling an organizational system as a collection of
interacting and interdependent constituent agents. By elucidating this
dispositional concept of agency and its formalization in computational terms,
my presentation should interest those exploring computational theories of
agency in artificial intelligence as well as other areas of cognitive science.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 June
2:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Aspectual Adverbs and their Anaphoric Presuppositions
Alice ter Meulen
Indiana Philosophy
<atm@phil.indiana.edu>
The way in which we express information in time about time in natural language
provides a core empirical domain to study the dynamics of interpretive and
inferential processes in context. In this paper the truth-functional content
of aspectual adverbs -- e.g., already, still, not yet, no longer -- is
characterized as a polarity transition, preserving or reversing the given
polarity. But their presuppositions depend systematically upon their content,
creating temporal as well as nominal anaphora between context and content. An
indefinite NP in the scope of a negative polarity is projected into the
restrictor by accommodating the anaphoric presuppositions of the aspectual
adverb. This gives its reference marker universal force and makes it available
for unselective binding, as in (1).
(1) Every farmer who no longer owns a donkey, misses it dearly.
Similar universal force effects are observed in the interaction of aspectual
adverbs with epistemic modalities and tense inflection in (2).
(2) a. John is still asleep.
b. John was asleep.
c. John fell asleep and has been asleep ever since.
d. John must have been asleep.
e. John must be asleep.
Asserting (2a) logically presupposes (2b), but requires the much stronger
anaphoric presupposition (2c) to be entailed by the context as well. After
(2c) is globally accommodated, (2d, e) are entailments. Since (2a) expresses
stative information, the event of John's falling asleep that serves as
temporal antecedent in (2d) must precede now, but cannot be located more
precisely.
The essential difference between asserting information and accommodating it,
is transparent in the different temporal anaphora created by (3a) and (3b),
where only (3a) entails (3c). To express the information contained in (3a)
without aspectual adverbs, (3d) comes closest, but it still fails to establish
the essential indexical connection, triggered only by aspectual adverbs,
between the time of Mary's arrival and John's being asleep.
(3) a. Mary arrived. John was still asleep.
b. Mary arrived. John fell asleep and he has been asleep since.
c. John was asleep when Mary arrived.
d. Mary arrived. John had fallen asleep and he had been asleep since.
When the context contains incompatible information, entered into it by
interpreting prior discourse, accommodating (2c) may even have a
structure-building, dynamic effect, forcing his falling asleep to be preceded
by the incompatible event already in the context. However, if the very last
update of the context introduced that event incompatible with the
presuppositions of (2a), the interpretation halts in tilt, as illustrated by
plainly contradictory (4a), forcing a last resort as-if-interpretation as
metaphor. If just stative information is asserted in between, as in (4b), the
context still does not admit the presupposition. A new reference time must be
introduced by the new sentence, as in (4c), now admitting the anaphoric
inference that John must have fallen asleep again after waking up at 9 and
before I checked on him.
(4) a. John woke up. He was still asleep.
b. John had a horrible night. He woke up at 9 screaming that a
crocodile was eating his toe. He was really upset and shaking
all over. I thought he never would want to go back to bed.
He was still asleep.
c. John had a horrible night. He woke up at 9 screaming that a
crocodile was eating his toe. He was really upset and shaking
all over. I thought he never would want to go back to bed.
When I last checked on him, he was still asleep.
This study shows that information does not just flow from the context to the
content, but just as importantly from the content to the context.
Accommodating anaphoric presuppositions may do much more than adding referents
to the domain, as it may even force new structure into the context. This
requires a relational, two-channel information flow, the co-dependency of
context and content.
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 1 June
4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
Discreteness Run Amok
Brian Cantwell Smith
Xerox-PARC
<bcsmith@parc.xerox.com>
The debates still rage: Penrose, Edelman, Searle, Dreyfus. "We are not
computers," the critics say -- with great confidence. But what <are>
computers, such that we're not them?
Lots of answers are suggested: information processors, digital state machines,
algorithmic engines, nothing but 0s and 1s. Most severe is the claim that
computers are <formal>: formal symbol manipulators, things we can build formal
models of, things that can be studied formally. But what does 'formal' mean?
And are computers that?
No, I will argue. Ultimately, formality is a higher-order form of digitality:
discreteness at the level of properties. Computers are <reputed> to be
discrete, through and through. But it's not so. Or so I claim. So it's not
clear that it's so sure that we're not them.
____________
CSLI WORKSHOP
Friday through Sunday, 2--4 June
Starting 9:00 a.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
4th CSLI Workshop on Logic, Language, and Computation
Contact: Yookyung Kim <yookyung@csli.stanford.edu> or
Atocha Aliseda-Llera <atocha@csli.stanford.edu>
On June 2-4, 1995, the Fourth CSLI Workshop on Logic, Language, and
Computation will be held at Stanford University. This annual event brings
together philosophers, linguists and computer scientists with an interest in
logic, with the overall aim of facilitating interdisciplinary interaction.
The previous three installments have been pleasant and productive, with a mix
of participants from (mainly) California and The Netherlands.
The Workshop is organized by Johan van Benthem, Stanley Peters, Atocha Aliseda
<atocha@csli.stanford.edu> and Yookyung Kim <yookyung@csli.stanford.edu>.
Workshop Program:
Each talk will consist of 30 minutes of presentation followed by
a fifteen minute question and discussion period.
FRIDAY, JUNE 2
Morning
I. Logic and Computation
Chair: John Mitchell
9:00-9:15 Opening Remarks
9:15-10:00 Andreja Prijatelj:
Free Algebras Corresponding to Multiplicative Classical
Linear Logic and Some Extensions
10:00-10:45 Ramesh Viswanathan:
Recursion Theory in the Semantics of Programming Languages
10:45-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-11:45 Rob van Glabbeek:
Process Algebra
11:45-12:30 Robert Staerk:
Reasoning about Pure Prolog Programs in Classical Logic
12:30-1:30 Lunch Break
Afternoon
II. Logic and Computation
Chair: Grigori Mints
1:30-2:15 Ronen Brafman:
Knowledge Considerations in Robotics and the Distribution of
Robotics Task
2:15-3:00 Pat Suppes:
Machine Learning of Natural Language
3:00-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:00 Phil Kremer:
The Prosentential Theory of Truth and the Liar's Paradox
4:00-4:45 Charles Parsons:
Finitism and Intuitive Knowledge
SATURDAY, JUNE 3
Morning
III. Language and Computation
Chair: Solomon Feferman
9:15-10:00 John McCarthy:
Contexts as Objects in Logical Theories
10:00-10:45 John Perry:
Context and Indexicals
10:45-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-11:45 Mark Greaves / Dave Barker-Plummer:
Heterogeneous Reasoning
11:45-12:30 Drew Moshier:
Feature Logics
12:30-1:30 Lunch Break
Afternoon
IV. Language and Computation
Chair: Stanley Peters
1:30-2:15 Livia Polanyi and Martin van den Berg:
Discourse Structure and Discourse Contexts
2:15-3:00 Ann Copestake:
Semantic Representation for Machine Translation in Verbmobil
3:00-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:00 Jan Jaspars and Megumi Kameyama:
Preferences in Dynamic Logic
4:00-4:45 Dag Westerstahl:
Anything Goes? On the Status of the Compositionality Principle
SUNDAY, JUNE 4
Morning
V. Language and Logic
Chair: Tom Wasow
9:15-10:00 Stanley Peters and Yookyung Kim:
Reciprocals in Context
10:00-10:45 Victor Sanchez-Valencia:
On Predicates that License Polarity Items
10:45-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-11:45 Bill Ladusaw:
Negation and Calculus of Saturation
11:45-12:30 Dorit Ben Shalom:
Semantic Trees
12:30-1:30 Lunch Break
Afternoon
VI. Language and Logic
Chair: Johan van Benthem
1:30-2:15 Javier Gutierrez:
Questions as Generalized Quantifiers
2:15-3:00 Cleo Condoravdi:
Strong Conditionals
3:00-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:00 Louise McNally:
Using Property-type NPs to Build Complex Event Descriptions
4:00-4:45 Godehard Link:
Language and Ontology
The program could be changed in the future.
____________
SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
on Friday, 2 June
12:30 p.m., Skilling Auditorium
Interfaces to the Digital Library: An Experiment
Martin Roscheisen, Christian Mogensen, and Terry Winograd
Stanford Computer Science
<{roscheis,mogens,winograd}@cs.stanford.edu>
There is a widespread and accelerating move towards increasing use of on-line
access, both for traditional library materials and existing on-line materials,
as well as newly emerging information genres. One of the key problems is
providing interfaces that make it possible (and even convenient) for people to
navigate this rather chaotic mass of information, both as consumers and as
providers.
In the Digital Libraries project at Stanford, we are developing an underlying
structure for interoperation of heterogeneous sources, services, and
interfaces to the wealth of materials that will form the digital library. In
one experiment, which will be described in this talk, we have implemented an
experimental system that enables people to share structured in-place
annotations attached to material in arbitrary documents on the WWW.
We will lay out the basic conceptual issues, show some prototypical examples
of usage, and discuss other experimental usages of our prototype
implementation, such as collaborative filtering, seals of approval, and
value-added trails. We show how this is a specific instantiation of a more
general "virtual document" architecture in which, with the help of
light-weight distributed meta-information, viewed documents can incorporate
material that is dynamically integrated from multiple distributed sources.
More information on this project is available on
<http://www-diglib.stanford.edu/COMMENTOR/>
MARTIN ROSCHEISEN is a PhD student in the department of Computer Science at
Stanford, working as part of the Project on People, Computers, and Design and
the Digital Library research project. He is currently developing mechanisms
for high-level authorization enabling content customization and privacy.
CHRISTIAN MOGENSEN is a Masters student in the department of Computer Science
at Stanford, working as part of the PCD project and the Digital Libraries
research project. He also serves as the Webmaster for PCD and the Digital
Libraries project, as well as being a world-class web-surfer.
TERRY WINOGRAD is Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, directing the PCD
project and the teaching program in Human-Computer Interaction, and serving as
one of the co-principal investigators of the Digital Libraries project.
____________
PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 2 June
3:15 p.m., Building 90, Room 91-A
Hobbes' Theory of Voluntary Motion
Tommy Lott
San Jose State Philosophy
____________
LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 2 June
3:30 p.m., Building 460, Room 146
Simple Present Tense Actions in the Discourse of a Social MUD
Lynn Cherny
Stanford Linguistics
<cherny@csli.stanford.edu>
Text-based virtual realities accessible via Internet, or MUDs ("multi-user
dimensions"), have become very popular for socializing, teaching, and
academic conferencing. MUD communication is different from that in most other
Internet chat programs in that it allows both speech and action modalities.
The action modality, via the emote command, allows users to simulate physical
actions in third person, "Vivien waves at Bob." Uses of the emote command
and other communication options during conversation are in fact highly
socially conventionalized; a MUD may be considered a speech community (Gumperz
1972) with a particular linguistic register, which is partly dependent on
modality features (Halliday 1985) and communication affordances, as well as
in-group language knowledge. In this talk, I will concentrate on the use of
simple present tense in the MUD register, with which users simulate not only
communicative "gestures," but also narrate their "real life" actions while
they are MUDding (e.g., "Marie packs for her trip"), in a manner reminiscent
of that found in sports commentary register (Ferguson 1983).
Actions within the MUD are always reported in the third person simple present
tense, suggesting a similarity with speech acts like first person
performatives (Searle 1969, 1989), which become true as they are uttered.
Actions that are part of byplay during conversation in the MUD may have no
real world referent, and they are interpreted as punctual, started and
completed at time of utterance: "Jon shines on Lynn." Actions which
describe activity happening external to the MUD show complexity however; for
instance, they may report either intention to do something ("Joe really
disconnects this time"), or report actions already taken ("yduJ sends mail
to the dispute list"). I suggest that in part the aspectual class of the verb
determines which interpretation is valid, along with reference to a world,
either the MUD irrealis world or the real world. Activities are interpreted
as on-going events in the real world, but as punctual in the MUD world; and
achievements/accomplishments are assumed to have just occurred in both worlds
unless a simple futurate is invoked. I offer a DRT analysis inspired by the
event-based discourse treatments of Partee (1984) and Hinrichs (1986), which
generalizes to the data in the literature on sports commentary register, for
which no semantic treatment has been provided.
____________
INTENSIONAL LOGIC LECTURE
on Monday, 5 June
1:15 p.m., Building 90, Room 92-Q
Dynamic Modal Logic
Jan Jaspars
CWI Amsterdam
<jan.jaspars@cwi.nl>
This is one in a series of talks on recent developments in and around modal
logic by some guest speakers, illustrating connections with linguistics,
philosophy, computer science, and AI. The first part of this quarter has been
devoted to basic techniques: models and bisimulation, frame correspondences,
modal deduction, completeness arguments, filtration and finite model property.
All interested persons are welcome! All sessions will be in 90-92Q (upstairs
colloquium room, Philosophy Department), Mondays & Wednesdays 1:15--2:30 p.m.
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Wednesday, 7 June
4:00 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Speechreading by Computers
Marcus Hennecke
Ricoh California Research Center
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
SERIES ON INTELLIGENT AGENTS
on Thursday, 8 June
12:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Intelligent Agents for Interactive Simulation Environments:
Constraints and Design Choices
Milind Tambe
USC Information Sciences Institute
<tambe@isi.edu>
<http://www.isi.edu/soar/tambe/>
Interactive simulation (virtual reality) environments are becoming ubiquitous,
finding applications in areas such as education, training, entertainment, and
manufacturing. Our current research effort is aimed at developing human-like,
intelligent agents (virtual humans) that can interact with each other, as well
as with humans in such virtual environments. These environments have
sufficiently high fidelity and realism that constructing intelligent agents
requires us to face hard research challenges in a variety of specialized agent
capabilities, as well as in their integration; but without the costs and
demands of low-level perceptual processing or robotic control.
To begin our effort, we have focused on the development of intelligent pilot
agents for real-world battlefield simulation environments (as part of a
collaborative effort involving researchers at Information Sciences Institute,
University of Southern California, and at University of Michigan). These
agents are based on the Soar/IFOR system, constructed using the Soar
integrated architecture. They have already participated in simulated combat
against human pilots -- most recently in November 1994, in a large-scale
simulated military exercise.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of the Soar/IFOR project (with video
tapes of pilot agents in simulated helicopters and fighter jets). I will also
discuss the pilot agent design in terms of the two sets of constraints that
influence it, specifically, (i) "top-down" constraints, i.e., capabilities
that pilot agents must possess if they are to succeed in this environment;
(ii) "bottom-up" constraints, i.e., the discipline enforced by the Soar
architecture. If time permits, I will also discuss research on specialized
agent capabilities, such as real-time agent modeling.
MILIND TAMBE is currently a research computer scientist at the Information
Sciences Institute at University of Southern California (USC) and a research
assistant professor with the computer science department at USC. He completed
his undergraduate education in computer science from the Birla Institute of
Technology and Science, Pilani, India, in 1986. He received his Ph.D. in 1991
from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
MOVEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY FROM UNIVERSITY TO INDUSTRY
on Thursday, 8 June
2:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Artificial Intelligence, Agents, and Industry
Peter Norvig
Harlequin
<norvig@harlequin.com>
____________
LINGUISTICS SEMINAR
on Friday, 9 June
12:00 noon, Place to be announced
The History of Counterfactual Conditionals in English
Rafal Molencki
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
MOVEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY FROM UNIVERSITY TO INDUSTRY
on Monday, 12 June
12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
Importance of Students versus Research in Private Industry
James F. Gibbons
Stanford Engineering
<gibbons@soe.stanford.edu>
A large sample of high tech companies in Silicon Valley have been analyzed to
elucidate the basic requirements for a successful venture, the time required
to make a judgment about success, and the approach that a venture capitalist
would take in judging the investment. These elements will be presented
together with some economic histories of firms that were started by graduates
of the School of Engineering over the last 50 years.
JAMES F. GIBBONS is Dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford.
____________