I argue that the thesis that time travel is logically possible, is inconsistent with the necessary truth of any of the usual ‘open future-objective present’ models of the universe. It has been relatively uncontroversial until recently to hold that presentism is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel. I argue that recent arguments to the contrary do not show that presentism is consiste...

In a series of studies children show increasing mastery of irregular plural forms (such as mice) simply by producing erroneous over-regularized versions of them (such as mouses). We explain this phenomenon in terms of successive approximation in imitation: Children over-regularize early in acquisition because the representations of frequent, regular plural forms develop more quickly, such that ...

— In this paper we study the optimal saving problem in the framework of possibility theory. The notion of possibilistic precautionary saving is introduced as a measure of the way the presence of possibilistic risk (represented by a fuzzy number) influences a consumer in establishing the level of optimal saving. The notion of prudence of an agent in the face of possibilistic risk is defined and ...

This paper discusses belief revision under uncertain inputs in the framework of possibility theory. Revision can be based on two possible definitions of the conditioning operation, one based on min operator which requires a purely ordinal scale only , and another based on product, for which a richer structure is needed, and which is a particular case of Dempster's rule of conditioning . Besides...

In this paper formal properties of CI in diierent frameworks are studied. The rst part is devoted to the comparison of three diierent frameworks for study CI: probability theory, theory of relational databases and Spohn's theory of ordinal conditional functions. Although CI{models arising in these frameworks are very similar (they satisfy semigraphoid axioms) we give examples showing that their...

Materialism is the idea that human beings are material objects—brains, perhaps, or some part of the brain—without immaterial selves or souls. I give two arguments against materialism. The first is an argument from possibility: it is possible that I should exist when no part of my body exists, in which case I am not identical with my body or any part of my body. The second is an argument from im...

This paper presents the extension of results on reasoning with totally ordered belief bases to the partially ordered case. The idea is to reason from logical bases equipped with a partial order expressing relative certainty and to construct a partially ordered deductive closure. The difficult point lies in the fact that equivalent definitions in the totally ordered case are no longer equivalent...

In spite of an evolving contemporary debate over the concept of “epistemic possibility,” nearly every philosopher assumes that the concept is equivalent to a mere absence of epistemic impossibility, that a proposition is epistemically possible as long as it is not inconsistent with some relevant body of knowledge. I suggest that we challenge this deeply entrenched assumption. I assemble an arra...

The charter of SRC is to advance both the state of knowledge and the state of the art in computer systems. From our establishment in 1984, we have performed basic and applied research to support Digital's business objectives. Our current work includes exploring distributed personal computing on multiple platforms, networking, programming technology, system modelling and management techniques, a...

It often happens that different references (i.e. data descriptions), possibly coming from different heterogeneous data sources, concern the same real world entity. In such cases, it is necessary: (i) to detect, through reconciliation methods, whether different data descriptions refer to the same real world entity and (ii) to fuse them into a unique representation. Here we assume the reference r...