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CSLI Calendar, 16 Nov 1995, vol.11:08
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To: friends
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Subject: CSLI Calendar, 16 Nov 1995, vol.11:08
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From: Tom Burke <burke>
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Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 11:11:37 -0800 (PST)
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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 November 1995 Stanford Vol. 11, No. 8
______________________________________________________________________________
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 15 -- 24 NOVEMBER 1995
WEDNESDAY, 15 NOVEMBER
3:15 - Philosophy of Computation Seminar
Ventura Hall, Room 17
Brian Cantwell Smith, Xerox PARC
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 16 NOVEMBER
10:45 - STASS Seminar (NOTE LATER-THAN-USUAL TIME)
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Mathematical Water in the Refrigerator
Keith Devlin, CSLI & St. Mary's College
Abstract below
12:00 - Cognitive Science Lunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Consciousness as an Information Bearing Medium
Bruce Mangan, UC Berkeley Institute of Cognitive Studies
Abstract below
4:15 - SSP Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
Interpreting Discourse
Henriette de Swart, Stanford Linguistics
Abstract below
4:15 - Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Cordura Hall, Room 100
PAGODA: A Model for Autonomous Learning in
Probabilistic Domains
Marie desJardins, SRI International
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 17 NOVEMBER
12:00 - Logic Lunch
Building 380, Room 383-N
A Logic of Dynamical Systems
Philip Kremer, Grigori Mints, Vladimir Rybakov
Abstract below
12:30 - HCI Seminar
Skilling Auditorium, SITN Channel E1
New Voices, New Visions
Sally Rosenthal, Interval Research
Abstract below
3:30 - Linguistics Colloquium
Building 460, Room 146
Reciprocals in Bantu: Quantification in Morphology?
Sam Mchombo, UC Berkeley Linguistics
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER
7:00 - SSP Film Series
Cubberley Hall, Room 128
N is a Number -- A Portrait of Paul Erdos (1993)
THURSDAY, 23 NOVEMBER
THANKSGIVING RECESS
FRIDAY, 24 NOVEMBER
THANKSGIVING RECESS
TUESDAY, 28 NOVEMBER
7:00 - SSP Film Series
Cubberley Hall, Room 128
Giant Brains (The Machine That Changed the World, Part 1)
____________
The CSLI Calendar appears on Wednesday of each week throughout the academic
year. Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in the
Calendar should be submitted by e-mail to <incalendar@csli.stanford.edu>.
Further information about CSLI and past issues of the CSLI Calendar
are available on the internet at URL <http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/>.
The Calendar is also posted each week to the <csli.bboard> newsgroup.
____________
PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTATION SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 15 November
3:15 p.m., Ventura Hall, Room 17
Digitality (II)
Brian Cantwell Smith
Xerox PARC and Stanford Philosophy
[bcsmith@parc.xerox.com]
Readings: Haugeland's "Analog and Analog"; Chapter 4 of Goodman's _Languages
of Art_; and Smith's "Discreteness Run Amok." There will be no class on 22
November due to Thanksgiving holiday.
____________
STASS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 16 November
10:45 a.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
(NOTE LATER-THAN-USUAL TIME)
Mathematical Water in the Refrigerator
Keith Devlin
CSLI & St.Mary's College
[devlin@csli.stanford.edu]
A common objection to mathematical models of meaning is that they assume words
have fixed meanings, or at most a small finite range of meanings. In their
book _Understanding Computers and Cognition_, Winograd and Flores use the
example of "water" in the refrigerator to illustrate how a seemingly simple
noun can have an indefinite number of "meanings", depending on the context of
use. Likewise, in his book _Arenas of Language Use_, Herb Clark provides
numerous examples of "ad hocing", whereby the meaning of a particular word (or
phrase) is determined by the speaker and listener in a given context.
Objections such as these seem to restrict the applicability of relational
models of meaning such as the situation-theoretic models presented in Barwise
and Perry's _Situations and Attitudes_ and my own _Logic and Information_.
However, I recently discovered a relational model of meaning that does capture
ad hocing. (The model uses standard situation-theoretic apparatus.) The talk
will describe the model, and illustrate its range with examples from
Winograd-Flores, Clark, and Harvey Sacks.
PLEASE NOTE: The seminar will start 45 minutes later than usual, at 10:45am,
as the speaker is flying back from Reno that morning. (Any additional delay
should be blamed on Southwest Airlines.)
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 16 November
12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
Consciousness as an Information Bearing Medium
Bruce Mangan
UC Berkeley Institute of Cognitive Studies
[mangan@cogsci.berkeley.edu]
I propose to formalize the notion of consciousness in a slightly new way:
consciousness is simply one information bearing medium, among many others, at
work in our organism. In general, scientific analysis of a biological
information bearing medium (e.g., of DNA or the fluid in the cochlea) aim to
answer at least two related but different questions: (1) what information does
the medium bear? and (2) in what specific *way* does the medium bear its
information? Answering the first question lets us assert that something
belongs to the *genus* information bearing media, answering the second lets us
assert its uniqueness as a subordinate *species*.
Common-sense notions about consciousness usually emphasize its unique aspect,
while cognitive science usually does the opposite, treating consciousness as
if its generic status as an information bearing medium is all we need to
consider. But each stance tacitly recognizes the other in many cases, and I
believe there is no necessary conflict between them. In particular I will
claim that (1) consciousness tends to bear information that is relevant to
novel evaluations either expected or at hand; (2) consciousness bears its
information as experience, or qualia. In doing so, I hope to sharpen the core
dispute between functionalism and its enemies, and try to show a way out of
one research dead around the notion of qualia.
A description and schedule for the CogLunch series on consciousness can be
found at [http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/9596reps/coglunch.html].
Fall Calendar:
October 12: Owen Flanagan (Philosophy, Duke U.)
19: Ernest Hilgard (Psychology, Stanford U.)
26: John McCarthy (Computer Science, Stanford U.)
November 2: Fred Dretske (Philosophy, Stanford U.)
9: IAP EVENTS (No CogLunch)
16: Bruce Mangan (Cognitive Science, UC Berkeley)
23: THANKSGIVING (No CogLunch)
30: Henry Stapp (Physics, Berkeley Livermore Labs)
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 16 November
4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
Interpreting Discourse
Henriette de Swart
Stanford Linguistics
[deswart@csli.stanford.edu]
Many syntactic and semantic theories focus on the structure and meaning of
sentences. But communication typically involves a sequence of sentences which
hang together in a certain way. This means that we have to look beyond the
meaning of individual sentences and determine the way they are pieced together
to make a coherent discourse. In recent years, a number of linguistic
theories have been developed which take the discourse as their primary
syntactic and semantic unit. In this talk, I give an overview of some of the
general issues involved in the analysis of discourse, such as structure and
use, the role of context and situation, information structuring, etc. I
illustrate some of the similarities and differences between various approaches
to discourse with the way they treat reference to individuals. Questions
which arise are: which form does reference to individuals take? how are
discourse anaphora licensed? how do we find the antecedent of an anaphor? The
answers given to these questions reflect the different perspectives adopted in
the study of natural language in human communication.
HENRIETTE DE SWART is an assistant professor in the Linguistics Department at
Stanford University. She got her PhD from the University of Groningen (the
Netherlands) and was one of the coordinators of the cognitive science program
in Groningen for a year. She continued to be affiliated with the program when
she obtained a research fellowship granted by the Royal Dutch Academy of
Sciences. At Stanford, she teaches classes in semantics and pragmatics. Her
current research focuses on phenomena both at the sentential and at the
discourse level, such as negation, quantification, anaphoric relations, focus,
tense and aspect.
_____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Thursday, 16 November
4:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
PAGODA: A Model for Autonomous Learning in Probabilistic Domains
Marie desJardins
SRI International
[contact: langley@cs.stanford.edu]
PAGODA (Probabilistic Autonomous GOal-Directed Agent) is a model for
autonomous learning in probabilistic domains that incorporates innovative
techniques for using the agent's existing knowledge to guide and constrain the
learning process and for representing, reasoning with, and learning
probabilistic knowledge. This talk presents an overview of the PAGODA
learning model and describes in detail the probabilistic representation and
inference mechanism used in the system. PAGODA forms theories about the
effects of its actions and the world state on the environment over time.
These theories are represented as conditional probability distributions. A
restriction is imposed on the structure of the theories that allows the
inference mechanism to find a unique predicted distribution for any action and
world state description. These restricted theories are called "uniquely
predictive theories." The inference mechanism, Probability Combination using
Independence (PCI), uses minimal independence assumptions to combine the
probabilities in a theory to make probabilistic predictions.
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 17 November
12:00 noon, Building 380, Room 383-N
A Logic of Dynamical Systems
Philip Kremer, Grigori Mints, Vladimir Rybakov
[{kremer,mints,rybakov}@csli.stanford.edu]
A dynamical topological system (DTS) is an ordered pair (X, T) where X is a
topological space and T is an automorphism on X. We consider a propositional
language with standard boolean connectives &,~, modality [] and a new unary
connective o (next).
A dynamical topological model (DTM) is an ordered triple M = (X, T, V) where
(X, T) is a DTS and V assigns a subset of X to each atomic formula. Given a
dynamical topological model M and a formula B, the set M(B) is defined in the
usual way with &,~,[],o interpreted as the intersection, complement, interior
of a set, and T-inverse respectively.
Definition: If M = (X,T,V), then
M |= B iff M(B) = X,
(X, T) |= B iff M |= B for every DTM M = (X, T, V)
X |= B iff (X, T) |= B for every automorphism T of X.
Propositional system S4o is given by the following axioms and rules of
inference: classical propositional calculus, S4-axioms for [], commutativity
of o with all other connectives, modus ponens and necessitation for [],o.
Theorem: The following statements are equivalent:
(a) B is a theorem of S4o;
(b) M(B)=X for every DTM M = (X, T, V);
(c) M(B)=X for every DTM M = (X, T, V) with a compact metric space X.
(d) (REALS, T) |= B, where REALS is the real line with the standard
topology, and where T is the automorphism T(x) = x + 1.
(e) [0, 1] |= B, where [0, 1] is the unit interval with the standard
topology.
This is a stage in a project of investigation of propositional languages
describing dynamical systems.
_____________
SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
on Friday, 17 November
12:30 p.m., Skilling Auditorium
New Voices, New Visions
Sally Rosenthal
Interval Research
[rosenthal@interval.com]
As the personal computer comes of age, it has evolved into an essential tool
for film makers, writers, musicians, animators, photographers, and designers.
As the artistic community becomes more intrigued and integrated with the
available technology, we are witnessing the birth of a new genre: works
created expressly for the computer.
Last year more than 2,000 people from around the world responded to our call
for entries and 550 of them sent their work for review. The winning pieces
were shown to a sell-out audience at the New York Video Festival and were
exhibited for two weeks at Stanford University. We are again seeking digital
works from the creative community. See [http://www.nvnv.org/] for entry
requirements, contact information, and other details.
____________
LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 17 November
3:30 p.m., Building 460, Room 146
Reciprocals in Bantu: Quantification in Morphology?
Sam Mchombo
UC Berkeley Linguistics
[mchombo@garnet.berkeley.edu]
The Bantu languages of sub-Saharan Africa are very stable in their syntactic
representation of the reciprocal construction. With few exceptions, the
reciprocal is morphosyntactically realized by the verbal suffix -an-. The
following examples from Chichewa illustrate the point:
(1) Alenje a-ku-thamangits-a asodzi
2-hunters 2SM-pres-chase-FV 2-fishermen
`The hunters are chasing the fishermen'
(2) Alenje ndi asodzi a-ku-thamangits-an-a
2-hunters and 2-fishermen 2SM-pres-chase-recip-FV
`The hunters and the fishermen are chasing each other'
The elaborate noun classification system in Bantu languages sometimes
introduces problems of noun-verb agreement when coordinate structures
involving nouns from different gender classes are in the subject or object
positions. One strategy to resolve such a problem is to exploit the use of a
comitative construction. The reciprocal construction is thus routinely not
only as (2) above, but also as in (3) below:
(3) Alenje a-ku-thamangits-an-a ndi asodzi
2-hunters 2SM-pres-chase-recip-FV with 2-fishermen
Lit. `The hunters are chasing each other with the fishermen'
As a verbal suffix the reciprocal interacts with other such affixes which
include the causative, the applicative, the stative, the passive, etc; yet,
among Bantuists the reciprocal is rarely ever treated like the other verbal
suffixes. In this work I will review the various proposals about the proper
analysis of the reciprocal in Bantu, arriving at a solution that derives from
a careful examination of the interaction of the overt verbal morphology in
Bantu languages with the information from f-(unctional) structure (f-s) and
a-(rgument) structure (a-s), as outlined in the architecture of the theory of
Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).
Further, I will try to integrate this into the ongoing work, conducted at CSLI
under the directorship of Stanley Peters, on the semantics of the reciprocal
as a quantifier type element.
____________
SSP FILM SERIES
on Tuesday, 21 November
7:00 p.m., Cubberley Hall, Room 128
N is a Number -- A Portrait of Paul Erdos (1993)
____________
SSP FILM SERIES
on Tuesday, 28 November
7:00 p.m., Cubberley Hall, Room 128
Giant Brains (The Machine That Changed
the World, Part 1) (1992)
____________