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CSLI Calendar, 25 Jan 1996, vol.11:13
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To: friends
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Subject: CSLI Calendar, 25 Jan 1996, vol.11:13
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From: Tom Burke <burke>
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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 14:11:33 -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
______________________________________________________________________________
25 January 1996 Stanford Vol. 11, No. 13
______________________________________________________________________________
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 25 JANUARY -- 2 FEBRUARY 1996
THURSDAY, 25 JANUARY
10:00 - STASS Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Barwise-Seligman Reading (cont'd)
Keith Devlin, CSLI & St.Mary's College
Abstract below
12:00 - CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
On the Nature of Phenomenal Consciousness
Guven Guzeldere, Stanford Philosophy & CSLI
Abstract below
4:15 - SSP Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
Propositional Quantification in Modal Logics and
in Other Non-Classical Logics
Philip Kremer, Stanford Philosophy
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 26 JANUARY
12:30 - HCI Seminar
Skilling Auditorium
Multivalent Documents: Documents as Interfaces to
Information in Networked Digital Repositories
Thomas A. Phelps and Robert Wilensky, UC Berkeley
Abstract below
3:15 - Philosophy Department Colloquium
Encina Hall, Room 423
The Metaphysics of Nonfactualism
Michael Devitt, Maryland Philosophy
3:30 - Linguistics Department Colloquium
Building 460, Room 146
Phonological Influences on Articulatory Timing
Dani Byrd, Haskins Laboratories
Abstract below
TUESDAY, 30 JANUARY
2:30 - SRI AI Center Seminar
SRI Conference Room EJ228
A Methodology and Modelling Technique for Systems
of BDI Agents
David Kinny, Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute
Abstract below
7:00 - SSP Film Series
Cubberley Education Bldg, Room 133
The World at Your Fingertips (The Machine That
Changed the World, Part 5) (1992)
Abstract below
7:15 - Philosophy of Computation Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Readings in Computation: The Origin of Objects
Brian Cantwell Smith, Xerox PARC
WEDNESDAY, 31 JANUARY
4:15 - Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation
Ventura Hall, Room 17
Taking the `Naive' Out of Bayesian Classifiers:
Building Classifiers Using Bayesian Networks
Nir Friedman, Stanford Computer Science
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 1 FEBRUARY
10:00 - STASS Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Universal Instantiation: A Study of the Role of
Context in Logic
Christopher Gauker, Cincinnati Philosophy & CSLI
Abstract below
12:00 - CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Disintegrated Experience: Dissociation, Hypnosis, and Trauma
David Spiegel, Stanford Psychiatry
Abstract below
4:30 - SSP Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
Practical Solutions to Game Theoretic Problems
Daphne Koller, Stanford Comuter Science
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 2 FEBRUARY
12:30 - HCI Seminar
Skilling Auditorium
To be announced
3:15 - Philosophy Department Colloquium
Encina Hall, Room 423
Minds and Machines: How Reasons Explain Behavior
Fred Dretske, Stanford Philosophy
3:30 - Linguistics Department Colloquium
Building 460, Room 146
Title to be announced
Abigail Cohn, Cornell Linguistics
____________
The CSLI Calendar appears on Wednesdays weekly throughout the academic year.
Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in the Calendar can
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.
____________
STASS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 25 January
10:00 a.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Barwise-Seligman Reading (cont'd)
Keith Devlin
CSLI & St.Mary's College
[devlin@csli.stanford.edu]
The STASS group will continue its reading of the Barwise-Seligman manuscript.
New attenders welcome. Contact Eric Hammer [ehammer@csli.stanford.edu] for a
copy of the manuscript, and read through the first three chapters. We will
pick up in Chapter 2 and try to make our way to Chapter 3.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 25 January
12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
On the Nature of Phenomenal Consciousness
Guven Guzeldere
Stanford Philosophy & CSLI
[guven@csli.stanford.edu]
What is the nature of the qualitative character of experiences -- e.g., what
it's like to see red or taste something sour, or the hurtfulness of pains?
Such qualities are generally taken to be intrinsic, atomic, and
non-relational. I will argue for an alternative construal, and try to
substantiate the thesis that the phenomenal character of experiences lie in
their causal and representational relations to other experiences and
propositional attitudes, as well as to states of the body (in which they
occur). In this light, I will also reexamine the plausibility of old puzzles
like Absent Qualia.
COGLUNCH WINTER SCHEDULE
Theme: Consciousness
1/18: JOHN FLAVELL (Psychology, Stanford U.) "The Development of Children's
Knowledge About Thinking and Consciousness"
1/25: GUVEN GUZELDERE (Philosophy & CSLI, Stanford U.) "The Nature of
Phenomenal Consciousness"
2/01: DAVID SPIEGEL (Psychiatry, Stanford U.) "Disintegrated Experience:
Dissociation, Hypnosis and Trauma"
2/08: PAT SUPPES (Philosophy, Stanford U.) "The Scientific Study of
Consciousness: Problems and Prospects"
2/15: BRIAN WANDELL (Psychology, Stanford U.) "Imaging Human Brain Activity"
2/22: WALTER FREEMAN (Neurobiology, UC Berkeley) "A Biological View of
Consciousness and Intentionality"
2/29: DAVID CHALMERS (Philosophy, UC Santa Cruz) "On the Search for a Neural
Correlate of Consciousness"
3/07: ALAN WALLACE (Religious Studies, Stanford U.) "Attentional Training,
Introspection, and the Investigation of Consciousness in Tibetan
Buddhism"
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 25 January
4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
Propositional Quantification in Modal Logics and
in Other Non-Classical Logics
Philip Kremer
Stanford Philosophy
[kremer@csli.stanford.edu]
This talk will have two purposes: first, to introduce students to the basics
of modal logic; and second, to indicate how, beginning with these basics, we
can develop a research programme. In particular, Kripke's semantics for modal
logic motivates a notion of a "proposition". This leads to a natural
treatment of propositional quantifiers "for all p" and "for some p". This, in
turn, leads to natural systems of propositionally quantified modal logic --
systems that will be discussed in the talk.
PHILIP KREMER earned a BSc in Math from the University of Toronto, a PhD in
Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, and has been teaching at
Stanford for one and a half years. At Pittsburgh he wrote a dissertation in
Relevance Logic under Nuel Belnap. He has also done work on propositional
quantification in non-classical logics, with three papers on this topic either
published or forthcoming in the Journal of Symbolic Logic: "Quantifying over
propositions in relevance logic"; "Defining relevant implication in a
propositionally quantified S4"; and "On the complexity of propositional
quantification in intuitionistic logic". He is also interested in other areas
of Philosophical Logic as well as in the Philosophy of Language.
____________
SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
on Friday, 26 January
12:30 p.m., Skilling Auditorium
Multivalent Documents: Documents as Interfaces to Information
in Networked Digital Repositories
Thomas A. Phelps and Robert Wilensky
UC Berkeley Computer Science
[wilensky@cs.berkeley.edu]
Digital documents thus far have have largely mirrored their pre-digital
ancestors. As such, they provide little enhancement of non-digital
counterparts other than searching and hyperlinks.
We believe that far greater functionality is desirable and possible. To
achieve such functionality, we have been developing a new model of documents,
called "multivalent documents". A multivalent document comprises any number of
distinct, but intimately related, layers of content, along with small,
dynamically loaded programs, called behaviors. In effect, each document
becomes an interface to its particular set of contents. Multivalent documents
are especially well-suited to the highly networked work, as the various layers
of a document can reside on different machines, or even be created
dynamically.
A prototype version of MVDs has been implemented in Java. This prototype
allows access to our digital library collection of scanned page images, but
with added functionality. In particular, users can search for terms in a page
image, and have the resulting matches outline on the screen; they can select
regions of the image and paste ASCII text created from the image by optical
character recognition; some tables in the images have active properties, such
as sorting themselves in response to mouse clicks. Other functionality under
development includes distributed annotations and geographic information
systems capabilities.
____________
PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 26 January
3:15 p.m., Encina Hall, Room 423
The Metaphysics of Nonfactualism
Michael Devitt
Maryland Philosophy
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 26 January
3:30 p.m., Encina Hall, Room 423
Phonological Influences on Articulatory Timing
Dani Byrd
Haskins Laboratories
[byrd@haskins.yale.edu]
We see evidence of phonological structure in the act of speaking -- not just
in what we speak but in how we speak it. Phonological influences are manifest
in the temporal and spatial patterning of articulation. Despite the
pervasiveness of these influences, however, only a very few temporal
"signatures" of prosodic structure have been identified at the level of
articulatory patterning. This presentation will examine the temporal
organization of oral articulatory gestures as a function of segmental,
syllabic, and phrasal structure. Articulatory data collected with
electropalatography and with a magnetometer will be reported from three
experiments considering the effects of place and manner, syllable structure,
and phrasal structure on the articulation of consonant sequences. The focus
of the discussion will be on the temporal coordination of these articulations.
The implications of these and other experimental results on intergestural
timing will be interpreted within the theory of Articulatory Phonology.
Limitations of this approach will be addressed, and an alternative, Phase
Window framework for articulatory timing will be outlined.
____________
SRI AI CENTER SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 30 January
2:30 p.m., SRI Conference Room EJ228
A Methodology and Modelling Technique for Systems of BDI Agents
David Kinny
Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute
The construction of large-scale embedded software systems demands the use of
design methodologies and modelling techniques that support abstraction,
inheritance, modularity, and other mechanisms for reducing complexity and
preventing error. If multi-agent systems are to become widely accepted as a
basis for large-scale applications, adequate agent-oriented methodologies and
modelling techniques will be essential. This is not just to ensure that
systems are reliable, maintainable, and conformant, but to allow their design,
implementation, and maintenance to be carried out by software analysts and
engineers rather than researchers.
In this talk I will describe an agent-oriented methodology and modelling
technique for systems of agents based upon the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI)
paradigm. The modelling technique extends existing Object-Oriented models,
taking advantage of their maturity to produce an approach that can be easily
learned and understood by those familiar with the OO paradigm.
SRI International is at 333 Ravenswood Avenue in Menlo Park. The talk is in
Building E, the closest building to El Camino. Visitors from outside SRI
should arrive 10 minutes early to be admitted. Come to the lobby and call
x5708.
____________
SSP FILM SERIES
on Tuesday, 30 January
7:00 p.m., Cubberley Education Bldg, Room 133
The World at Your Fingertips (The Machine That Changed
the World, Part 5) (1992)
This 58 minute video is the final installment of "The Machine That Changed the
World," a WGBH-BBC series about the past, present, and future of computing.
Local researchers and Silicon Valley pioneers are featured prominently. "The
World at Your Fingertips" looks at the social revolution wrought by computers,
and at what price: the disappearance of place as an attribute, the loss of
privacy, the pollution of information -- and the transmission, sharing, and
replication of polluted information; and the near-catastrophies that can occur
when (as happened in the October 1987 stock market plunge) computer networks
take on a life of their own.
The Symbolic Systems Film Series showcases films and tapes of general
cognitive science interest. Attendance at film series events can substitute
for attendance at the Symbolic Systems Forum for students enrolled in SSP 10
for one unit. All are welcome at these events. The showing of the videos is
followed by a discussion, and researchers who are knowledgeable about the
program's topic are urged to join us in evaluating it.
____________
PHILOSOPHY OF COMPUTATION SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 30 January
7:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Readings in Computation: The Origin of Objects
Brian Cantwell Smith
Xerox PARC and Stanford Philosophy
[bcsmith@parc.xerox.com]
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION
on Wednesday, 31 January
4:15 p.m., Ventura Hall, Room 17
Taking the `Naive' Out of Bayesian Classifiers:
Building Classifiers Using Bayesian Networks
Nir Friedman
Stanford Computer Science
[nir@cs.stanford.edu]
Recent work in supervised learning has shown that a surprisingly simple
Bayesian classifier with strong assumptions of independence among features,
called "naive Bayes," is competitive with state of the art classifiers such as
C4.5. This fact raises the question of whether a classifier with less
restrictive assumptions can perform even better. In this talk I will describe
approaches for inducing classifiers from data that are based on recent results
in the theory of learning Bayesian networks, which are factored
representations of probability distributions that generalize the naive-Bayes
model and explicitly represent statements about independence. In particular,
I will describe a method we call "tree-augmented naive bayes," which
outperforms naive Bayes yet maintains its computational simplicity (no search
involved) and robustness. I will describe an experimental evaluation of these
approaches, using problems from the Irvine repository, that compares them
against C4.5, naive Bayes, and wrapper methods for feature selection.
This talk describes joint work with Moises Goldszmidt of Rockwell Science
Center.
____________
STASS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 February
10:00 a.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Universal Instantiation: A Study of the Role of Context in Logic
Christopher Gauker
University of Cincinnati Philosophy & CSLI
[gauker@csli.stanford.edu]
The truth of a quantified sentence depends on a contextually determined domain
of discourse. So if I say, "Everyone has seen an airplane," then what I say
may be true given the context. It may be true even though "Socrates has seen
an airplane" is not true. Seemingly, therefore, the sentence "Everyone has
seen an airplane" does not logically imply "Socrates has seen an airplane."
But the systems we teach to undergraduates say just the opposite. These
always include a rule of universal instantiation, according to which, for
every constant c in the language, "For all x, Fx" implies "Fc". So there
seems to be something wrong with the rule of universal instantiation. The
rule of existential generalization, on the other hand, does not seem to have
the same problem. This paper is a survey of ways of responding to this
problem, including attempts to defend universal instantiation and forms of
semantics that invalidate universal instantiation. A radical conclusion is
drawn, namely, that logical validity should be defined in terms of
"assertibility in a context" rather than in terms of truth on an
interpretation. Context is here understood as something objective rather than
as something definable in terms of the attitudes of interlocutors.
Assertibility has to do with cooperation rather than truth or justification.
This paper is part of a larger project aimed at constructing a framework for
pragmatics without commitment to the idea that linguistic communication is a
matter of speakers conveying their thoughts to hearers.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 1 February
12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
Disintegrated Experience: Dissociation, Hypnosis, and Trauma
David Spiegel
Stanford Psychiatry
[dspiegel@leland.stanford.edu]
I would like to discuss the plausibility, evidence for and against, and a
possible understanding of dissociation as a "normal" part of mental
processing, a common response to trauma, and a vehicle for more serious
psychopathology. I would like to link dissociation to connectionist and PDP
theories of mental processing, hypnotic phenomena, and research on responses
to trauma.
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 1 February
4:30 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
Practical Solutions to Game Theoretic Problems
Daphne Koller
Stanford Computer Science
[koller@cs.stanford.edu]
Many situations where a number of agents interact strategically can be
naturally described as multi-player games. These include real-world problems
such as bidding on oilfield drilling rights, as well as many important
problems in computer science such as load sharing in a distributed system or
coordinating the goals and actions of multiple agents on a factory floor. The
representation as a game allows one to reason formally about the situation
using established techniques from the discipline of game theory. In
particular, the game-theoretic notion of a solution to a game often helps in
designing mechanisms for dealing with the original situation. But while the
formal notion of "solution" is well-established, standard techniques for
solving games are computationally impractical for most realistic games.
In this talk, I describe a new framework for specifying and solving games. In
particular, I will present a new paradigm for solving games of incomplete
information, where randomized strategies are typically needed in order to play
the game optimally. I demonstrate algorithms for solving such games that are
exponentially faster than the standard ones, and present experimental results
showing that these algorithms are faster in practice, as well as in theory.
These algorithms allow the solution of games that are orders of magnitude
larger than are currently possible. I then describe the Gala system, which
allows very large games to be easily specified and solved. The system allows
a concise and simple specification of games using a declarative knowledge-
representation language designed particularly for games. These results, and
their implementation within the Gala system, make game theory a practical tool
for analyzing strategic interaction.
Parts of this research are joint work with Nimrod Megiddo, Avi Pfeffer, and
Bernhard von Stengel.
DAPHNE KOLLER completed her Ph.D. at Stanford University in December 1993
under the supervision of Professor Joseph Halpern. She then spent two years
as a postdoctoral researcher at U.C. Berkeley, working with Professor Stuart
Russell. In September 1995 she returned to Stanford as an Assistant Professor
in the Computer Science Department. She has a broad range of interests
spanning both artificial intelligence and theoretical computer science. The
theme underlying most of her work is the idea of using principled techniques
>From decision theory and game theory in computer science. Her current projects
include: reasoning under uncertainty using logic and probability, learning and
inference in belief networks, and practical algorithms for game-theoretic
reasoning.
____________
PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 2 February
3:15 p.m., Encina Hall, Room 423
Minds and Machines: How Reasons Explain Behavior
Fred Dretske
Stanford Philosophy
[dretske@csli.stanford.edu]
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 2 February
3:30 p.m., Building 460, Room 146
Title to be announced
Abigail Cohn
Cornell Linguistics
[acc4@cornell.edu]
____________