Beyond any doubt the pragmatical-based improvements introduced in the rules of inference during the process of refinement of a legal expert system may be efficient but they hardly will be capable to provide a point of reference for a more general correctness measure. During the refinement of KBSLEX the debate of the Theory of Legal Argument has contributed to illuminate the point suggesting that the modeling of legal reasoning and legal decision making should be grounded on a logical approach but without limiting itself to the tools of the classical logic.

Una forma clásica de explicar el significado de una oración es establecer sus condiciones deverdad. Sin embargo, dado que sólo las oraciones declarativas encajan con este tipo de análisis, las oraciones (e.g. imperativas) que carecen de valor de verdad quedan fuera de este análisis. Con el objeto de evitar esta dificultad, algunas veces se ha sugerido que el cumplimiento de un imperativo les el valor semántico de I, y que este valor depende del concepto de verdad. En este artículo, explicamos esta sugerencia mediante un lenguaje artificial: el lenguaje LN. Nuestra propuesta consiste en suministrar una reconstrucción del concepto de eficacia a partir de la relación de cumplimiento, analógamente a la reconstrucción del concepto de verdad a partir de la relación de satisfacción. Nuestras conclusiones principales son las siguientes: 1) el significado de una oración imperativa es establecido por sus condiciones de eficacia y 2) esta teoría del significado de los imperativos suministra una base semántica, adeucada para la lógica deóntica.A classical way of explaining the meaning of certain sentences is to establish their truth-conditions. However, since only declarative sentences fit this kind of analysis, sentences (e.g. imperatives) which lack truth-value remain outside the theory of meaning. In order to avoid this difficulty, it is sometimes suggested both that compliance with an imperative I is the semantic value of I, and that this value is dependent on the concept of truth. In this article, we explain this suggestion with the help of a constructed language: the artificial language NL. Our proposal Is to provide a reconstruction of the concept of effectiveness from the relation of compliance, on the analogy of the reconstruction of the concept of truth from the relation of satisfaction. Our main conclusions are: 1) the meaning of a imperative sentence would be established by its effectiveness-conditions and 2) this theory of meaning of imperatives would provide a semantic basis, suitable to the deontic logic.

Nuestro objetivo es mostrar que una caracterización adecuada de las locuciones modales del lenguaje natural depende fundamentalmente de una correcta descripción de sus propiedades lógicas. Mostramos cómo los análisis escalares en pragmática fracasan porque siguen la lógica modal estándar al tratarlos como operadores preposicionales. Esto produce contradicciones, ya que, en sentido estricto, el estatus lógico de la locución modal es el mismo que el de la proposición simple. Estas expresiones invocan la presencia del hablante y la evidencia que respalda a su afirmación, y tienen por lo tanto un carácter eminentemente deíctico/pragmático.It is our aim in this article to show that an adequate characterization of the interpretation of modally qualified utterances in natural language depends crucially on a correct description of their logical properties. We show that pragmatic analyses in terms of scales fail because they rely on the standard treatment of these expressions in modal logic as operators, and this makes the wrong predictions since, in a strict sense, the logical status of the modally- qualified utterance is the same as that of the bare proposition. We argue that these expressions directly invoke the presence of the speaker and act as indexes to sets of assumptions s/he is relying on as evidence for his/her assertion.

Classical approaches such as frames, scripts,... have been unable to deal with the kind of inferences necessary in natural language processing situations such as text comprehension. Shastri & Ajjanagadde (1993), proposed a local connectionist model for the sort of reasoning requiring such a fast inference. The problem with this system is that it controls only the adequacy of argument- fillers, leaving untouched the activation control issue, namely, why we perform certain inferences, and not others, in a given situation. The aim of this paper is to examine how a focus, in the sense of Grosz (1981). could operate as a theoretic constraint with the above reasoner system to handle two aspects: inference control and anaphora resolution (i.e., antecedent activation), during text understanding.

En mi artículo esbozo una teoría de base psicológica de la identidad personal. En oposición a ciertas otras conocidas teorías que, análogamente, subrayan la relevancia de alguna "continuidad psicológica" para la configuración de una tal identidad, mi teoría se funda en una firme ontología de la primera persona, articulada en un reflexivo marco unificador que deja espacio, no obstante, a puntuales omisiones y discontinuidades de la memoria y a inopinados cambios estructurales de conciencia. Intento justificar que esta ontología no presupone en cualquier caso un Yo sustancial, semántico, sino un mero Yo sintáctico y ejecutivo.In this paper I outline a theory about personal identity on a psychological basis. In contrast to well-known theories that stress in an analogous way the significance of a psychological continuity for the configuration of such an identity, my theory is founded on an ontology of the first person within a reflexive framework that allows incidental omissions and discontinuities of memory, as well as unexpected structural changes of consciousness. I try, further, to justify that this ontology does not presuppose a substantial, semantical Self, but just a sintactical and performative one.