Download link: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-883/

Persistent identifier URN: urn:nbn:de:0074-883-4

If you like to cite an article in the proceedings, please use the following information.

Book title: Proceedings of the Logic & Cognition Workshop at ESSLLI 2012, Opole, Poland, 13-17 August, 2012.
Editors: Jakub Szymanik, Rineke Verbrugge
Series: CEUR Workshop Proceedings
Volume: 883
Publisher: CEUR-WS.org
Year: 2012

Tuesday 14 August
17.00-17.30 Maria Spychalska. Superlative quantifiers and epistemic interpretation of disjunction
17.30-18.00 Barbara Tomaszewicz. Quantifiers and visual cognition: the processing of proportional and superlative most in Bulgarian and Polish
18.00-18.30 Fabian Schlotterbeck and Oliver Bott. Easy solutions for a hard problem? The computational complexity of reciprocals with quantificational antecedents

Wednesday 15 August
17.00-17.30 Yacin Hamami and John Mumma. Euclid’s Diagrammatic Logic and Cognitive Science
17.30-18.00 András Veszelka. The experimental investigation of the updated traditional interpretation of the conditional statement
18.00-18.30 Karolina Krzyżanowska, Sylvia Wenmackers, Igor Douven and Sara Verbrugge. Conditionals, Inference, and Evidentiality

Thursday 16 August
17.00-17.30 Nina Gierasimczuk, Han van der Maas and Maartje Raijmakers. Logical and Psychological Analysis of Deductive Mastermind
17.30-18.00 Justine Jacot. The Double Disjunction Task as a Coordination Problem
18.00-18.30 Rasmus K. Rendsvig. Using Quantified Epistemic Logic as a Modeling Tool in Cognitive Neuropsychology

Friday 17 August
17.00-18.00 David Ripley & Paul Egré. Vagueness and hysteresis: a case study in color categorization
18.00-18.30 Award ceremony for Best Paper Award and Best Student Paper Award, followed by closing remarks – Jakub Szymanik and Rineke Verbrugge

Yacin Hamami and John Mumma. Euclid’s Diagrammatic Logic and Cognitive Science

Justine Jacot. The Double Disjunction Task as a Coordination Problem

Karolina Krzyżanowska, Sylvia Wenmackers, Igor Douven and Sara Verbrugge. Conditionals, Inference, and Evidentiality

Rasmus K. Rendsvig. Using Quantified Epistemic Logic as a Modeling Tool in Cognitive Neuropsychology

Fabian Schlotterbeck and Oliver Bott. Easy solutions for a hard problem? The computational complexity of reciprocals with quantificational antecedents

Maria Spychalska. Superlative quantifiers and epistemic interpretation of disjunction

Barbara Tomaszewicz. Quantifiers and visual cognition: the processing of proportional and superlative most in Bulgarian and Polish

András Veszelka. The experimental investigation of the updated traditional interpretation of the conditional statement

Vagueness and hysteresis: a case study in color categorization

This paper presents the first results of an experimental study concerning the semantic status of borderline cases of vague predicates. Our focus is on the particular case of color predicates (such as “yellow’’, “orange’’, “blue’’, “green”), and on the influence of context in the categorization of color shades at the border between two color categories. In an unpublished study, D. Raffman and colleagues found that subjects have no difficulty in categorizing the same color shade as “blue” or “green” depending on the direction of the transition between the two categories, suggesting a phenomenon of hysteresis or persistence of the initial category. Hysteresis is a particularly intriguing phenomenon for vagueness for two reasons: i) it seems to comport with the tolerance principle, which says that once applied, a category can be extended to cases that differ very little ii) it seems to suggest that borderline cases are cases of overlap, rather than underlap between semantic categories (see Raffman 2009, Egré 2011, Ripley 2012). In our first study, we probed for hysteresis in two different tasks: in the first, subjects had to perform a task of color matching, namely to decide of each shade in a series between yellow and orange (respectively blue and green) whether it was more similar to the most yellow or to the most orange kept on the display. In the second task, subjects had to decide which of the two color labels “yellow” or “orange” was the most suitable. Shades were presented in three different orders, random, ascending from yellow to orange, and descending. While we found no order effect in the perceptual matching task, we found an effect of negative hysteresis in the linguistic task in each color set, namely subjects switched category at a smaller position rather than at a later position depending on the order. In a second study, we used the same design but asked subjects to report agreement or disagreement with various sentential descriptions of the shade (viz. “the shade is yellow/not yellow/yellow and not yellow”). No order effect was found in that task. These findings raise two particular issues concerning the boundaries of vague semantic categories, which we discuss in turn: the first concerns the interpretation of negative, as opposed to positive hysteresis. Another concerns the sensitivity of order effects to the task.

This is a joint work with Vincent de Gardelle and David Ripley.

Iris van Rooij

Rationality, intractability and the prospects of “as if” explanations

Proponents of a probabilistic (Bayesian) turn in the study of human cognition have used the intractability of (non-monotonic) logics to argue against the feasibility of logicist characterizations of human rationality. It is known, however, that probabilistic computations are generally intractable as well. Bayesians have argued that, in their own case, this is merely as pseudoproblem. Their argument is that humans do not really perform the probabilistic calculations prescribed by probability theory, but only act as if they do—much like the planets do not calculate their own orbits, and birds fly without any knowledge of the theory of aerodynamics.

The prospects of such an “as if” explanation dissolving the intractability problem depends inter alia on what is meant by “as if”. I analyze some of the most plausible meanings that are compatible with various statements in the literature, and argue that none of them circumvents the problem of intractability.

The analysis will show that, even though the constraints imposed by tractability may prove pivotal for determining adequate characterizations of human rationality, these constraints do not directly favor one type of formalism over another. Cognitive science would be better off realizing this and putting efforts into dealing with the problem of intractability head-on, rather than playing a shell game.

This is joint work with:
Cory Wright (University of California, Long Beach, USA),
Johan Kwisthout (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands),
Todd Wareham (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada).

Call for Papers
Extended Deadline: March 14, 2012

Workshop Description:

The roots of logic go back to antiquity, where it was mostly used as a tool for analyzing human argumentation. In the 19th century Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of modern logic and analytic philosophy, introduced anti-psychologism in the philosophy of mathematics. In the following years anti-psychologism, the view that the nature of mathematical truth is independent of human ideas, was one of the philosophical driving forces behind the success of mathematical logic. During the same period in the 19th century, also modern psychology (Helmholtz, Wundt) was born. However, the notion of anti-psychologism often stood in the way of a potential merge of the disciplines and led to a significant separation between logic and psychology research agendas and methods. Only since the 1960s, together with the growth of cognitive science inspired by the ‘mind as computer’ metaphor, the two disciplines have started to interact more and more. Today, we finally observe an increase in the collaborative effort between logicians, computer scientists, linguists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and psychologists.

We plan to discuss the empirical research motivated by logical theories as well as logics inspired by experimental studies. As a result, we hope to contribute towards an increase in collaboration between logicians and cognitive scientists.

The meeting is partially sponsored by a Vici grant NWO-277-80-001

Invited speakers:
Paul Egré
Iris van Rooij

The workshop will take place as part of the 24th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2012): http://www.esslli2012.pl/

Submissions Details:

Please send your submission in PDF format, at most 10 pages in LNCS style, 10 pts, bibliography included (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 ). If needed due to space reasons, technical material such as proofs may be added in an appendix of at most 5 pages. The PDF files have to be uploaded online via the workshop’s submission website:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=logiccognition2012

The author notification date is May 7, 2012. Prior to the workshop, speakers will have the opportunity to submit an extended abstract for inclusion in the ESSLLI or/and CEUR Workshop Proceedings proceedings (deadline July 15, 2012). All participants must register for ESSLLI. However, we will be able to partially refund ESSLLI fees for selected speakers.

After the workshop, selected authors will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their paper for a special issue of the Journal of Logic, Language and Information (JoLLI), devoted to Logic and Cognition.

Program Committee:
Jakub Szymanik (co-chair)
Rineke Verbrugge (co-chair)
Leon de Bruin
Eve Clark
Robin Clark
Paul Egré
Fritz Hamm
Alice ter Meulen
Marcin Mostowski
Maartje Raijmakers
Iris van Rooij
Keith Stenning
Marcin Zajenkowski

Important Dates:
Extended submission deadline:   March 14, 2012
Notifications:   May 7, 2012
Camera-ready copy:  July 15, 2012
Workshop:  August 13-17, 2012

Program chairs: Jakub Szymanik, Rineke Verbrugge
Contact: logic.cognition@gmail.com

The applet above shows an implementation of simulated agents playing the game of limited bidding. These agents are constrained in their ability to model the mental content of others.

Game outline

Limited bidding is a simplified version of a game described in “Edward de Bono’s super mind pack”. At the beginning of the game, both players receive five numbered tokens. The number corresponds to the value of the token. Over the course of five rounds, players simultaneously choose one of their own tokens to play. Whoever picks the highest value token wins the round. If both players pick the same value token, there is no winner. Since each token can only be used once per game, players are forced to play strategically.

Game-theoretically, the optimal way to play limited bidding is by randomizing every choice. That is, under the assumption of common knowledge of rationality, a players should randomly pick one of the tokens still available to them. However, the agents in this applet suspect that their opponent may not be fully rational. Moreover, they are limited in their ability to make decisions themselves. By playing the game repeatedly against the same opponent, agents try to learn to predict what their opponent will do, and change their strategy accordingly.

Theory of mind

Theory of mind refers to the individual’s ability to model mental content of others, such as beliefs, desires or intentions. The agents modeled in the applet are constrained in their theory of mind. At the most basic level, a zeroth-order theory of mind agent tries to model his opponent through patterns of behaviour. For example, a zeroth-order theory of mind agent might find out that his opponent always plays token 5 at the start of the game, or tends to save token 3 for last. However, he is unable to realize that his opponent might be doing the same. In fact, a zeroth-order theory of mind agent does not realize that his opponent has goals that are opposite to the ones he has himself. The agent’s zeroth-order beliefs are represented by red bars in the applet, which indicate how likely the agent believes it to be that his opponent is going to play a certain token.

A first-order theory of mind agent realizes that his opponent might be a zeroth-order theory of mind agent, and tries to predict what she is going to do by putting himself in her position. He looks at the game from the point of view of his opponent to determine what he would believe if the situation were reversed, and uses this as a prediction for his opponent’s actions. For example, a first-order theory of mind agent might realize that he has started the game by using token 3 a few times in a row, and suspect that his opponent is going to try and take advantage of that. First-order beliefs show how likely the agent thinks his opponent to believe that he is going to play a certain token. In the applet, this is indicated by the height of the green bars.

A second-order theory of mind agent takes this reasoning one step further. He puts himself into the position of his opponent, but also believes that she might be putting herself into his position. In the applet, the height of the blue bars indicate the agent’s second-order beliefs.

Based on zeroth-, first- and second-order beliefs, an agent makes different predictions about what his opponent is going to do. The agent must therefore also form beliefs about which of these predictions will yield the best results. An agent’s combined beliefs represent how the different order of theory of mind are combined into a single prediction of his opponent’s actions.

Although the agents in the applet make use of theory of mind, they do not remember the choices of their opponent. Instead, when they see the outcome of a game, they form beliefs about what the opponent is going to do next time and forget what they saw. As an alternative type of agent, a high memory agent is a zeroth-order theory of mind agent that remembers what his last choice was. That is, the high memory agent forms beliefs about what his opponent is going to do in reaction to him playing each of the possible tokens.
In terms of memory, a high memory agent uses about the same amount of space as a second-order theory of mind agent, although this space is used differently.

Controls

The applet has a number of controls to allow users to judge the effect of using a higher order of theory of mind on the performance of agents in the limited bidding game.

• Player one, player two: Determines the type of player. Both players can be either zeroth-, first- or second-order theory of mind agents. Additionally, player one may also be a high memory agent, while player two can be controlled by a human user.
• Learning speed: Determines how strongly an agent changes his beliefs based on new information. A learning speed of 0.0 means that an agent doesn’t learn at all, while an agent with learning speed 1.0 learns so quickly that he cannot remember anything more than the last game.
• Reset: Resets the game to the start situation.
• Play round: Plays one round of the game, and pauses afterwards. This action is not possible if player two is a human player.
• Play game: Repeatedly plays rounds of the game until no tokens are left. This action is not possible if player two is a human player.
• Tokens: When player two is a human player, the game only continues once player two has revealed his choice by clicking on one of the tokens that are still available to player two. In other cases, selecting the tokens has no effect.

The applet can also be downloaded to be used as an offline version.