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18 February 2014, Logic Tea, Karoly Varasdi

Speaker: Karoly Varasdi
Title: Classifying incomplete entities
Date: Tuesday 18 February 2014
Time: 17:00-18:00
Location: Room F1.15, Science Park 107, Amsterdam

Abstract

In the talk I propose an answer to the question, how are we able to categorize/classify an incomplete entity x as an incomplete F when in actual fact there is no F which x is a part of? My arguments are based on how natural language deals with incompleteness, in particular, with incomplete events, as exemplified by progressive sentences. After a brief survey of the possible strategies to cope with the problem (including a simple extensional attempt and some modal approaches), I propose a solution that draws upon the basic mereological ("part of") relation, but, still, can account for the existence of parts that do not have a corresponding whole. The key idea will be to define a way of classifying incomplete entities on the basis of no more than the classification of complete ones, the mereological relation on the domain, and a set of contextually-given alternative predicates.

For more information, please visit the website http://www.illc.uva.nl/logic_tea/. or contact Guus Eelink (), Johannes Marti () or Masa Mocnik ().

Please note that this newsitem has been archived, and may contain outdated information or links.