Agenda Relevance: A Study in Formal PragmaticsAgenda Relevance is the first volume in the authors' omnibus investigation of the logic of practical reasoning, under the collective title, A Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems. In this highly original approach, practical reasoning is identified as reasoning performed with comparatively few cognitive assets, including resources such as information, time and computational capacity. Unlike what is proposed in optimization models of human cognition, a practical reasoner lacks perfect information, boundless time and unconstrained access to computational complexity. The practical reasoner is therefore obliged to be a cognitive economizer and to achieve his cognitive ends with considerable efficiency. Accordingly, the practical reasoner avails himself of various scarce-resource compensation strategies. He also possesses neurocognitive traits that abet him in his reasoning tasks. Prominent among these is the practical agent's striking (though not perfect) adeptness at evading irrelevant information and staying on task. On the approach taken here, irrelevancies are impediments to the attainment of cognitive ends. Thus, in its most basic sense, relevant information is cognitively helpful information. Information can then be said to be relevant for a practical reasoner to the extent that it advances or closes some cognitive agenda of his. The book explores this idea with a conceptual detail and nuance not seen the standard semantic, probabilistic and pragmatic approaches to relevance; but wherever possible, the authors seek to integrate alternative conceptions rather than reject them outright. A further attraction of the agenda-relevance approach is the extent to which its principal conceptual findings lend themselves to technically sophisticated re-expression in formal models that marshal the resources of time and action logics and label led deductive systems.
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action actual advance agenda agenda relevance agent algorithmic allow analysis answer approach appropriate approximation argument assume assumption atomic bears belief causal chapter classical close cognitive common complexity computation concept consequence Consider consistency context database decision deductive defined definition device distinction effect example fact formal function further give given Harry Harry's holds human idea implication inconsistency individual inference interesting intuitions involved irrelevant kind labels language less logic matter means mind multiset normative notion objective operation performance Perhaps possible practical pragmatic present Principle probability problem processes proof propose propositional prove question reasoning relation relevance requires respect rules Sarah satisfy semantic sense sentences structure suggests suppose task theoretical theorist theory theory of relevance things tion true truth conditions turn
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Page 181 - chancy causation" (in section B of the 1986 postscript to his 1973 paper "Causation") the sort of thing that we perhaps get in quantum phenomena. The following case gives him difficulty: c occurs, e has some chance x of occurring, and as it happens e does occur; if c had not occurred, e would still have had some chance y of occurring, but only a very slight chance since y would have been very much less than x. We cannot quite say that without the cause, the effect would not have occurred; but we...
Page 237 - Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
Page 487 - The concept of truth in formalized languages", in Logic, Semantics, Meta-Mathematics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1956).
Page 161 - In update .semantics, the slogan 'you know the meaning of a sentence if you know the conditions under which it is true" is replaced by 'you know the meaning of a sentence if you know the change it brings about in the information state of anyone who accepts the news conveyed by it.
Page 288 - The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms concerning them.
Page 95 - Thus, it is a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself!
Page 61 - ... psychologism about the unconscious and the prelinguistic simply stretches logic further than it can go, and should therefore be resisted. This is an admonition that we respect but do not intend to honour. In this we draw encouragement from work by Churchland and others [Churchland, 1989; Churchland, 1995] on subconscious abductive processes. As Churchland observes, "... one understands at a glance why one end of the kitchen is filled with smoke: the toast is burning!" [1989, p. 199]. Churchland...
Page 204 - It is designed to ensure that the basic objectives of the enterprise are achieved through proper execution by the organisation.
Page 19 - CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
References to this book
Model-Based Reasoning in Science, Technology, and Medicine Lorenzo Magnani,Ping Li Limited preview - 2007 |