Thursday, April 18, 2013

Event, Assertion and Verification Time

At IMLA 2013 (Intuitionistic Modal Logic and Applications) last week I talked about a constructive modal logic conceived to interpret "conditionals" in English. This system comes from its possible worlds semantics, something that I use to hate...yeah, Kripke semantics was never a source of intuition for me. 

Still isn't, but the idea that the slogan "you know the meaning of a sentence if you know the conditions under which it is true” should be replaced by  “You know the meaning of a sentence if you know the change it brings about in the information state of anyone who wants to incorporate the piece of news conveyed by it" rings true. Call me a coward if you will, but talking about information states of agents and changes that they undergo when new information comes in, feels less threatening than talking about "truth".

The slides are here, but my level of understanding of this stuff is still very far from ideal. 
(hope the two saudi arabian farmers in the picture are making progress faster...)

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