Giuliano Rosella | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)

Papers by Giuliano Rosella

The Australasian Journal of Logic, Dec 20, 2022

We present a new version of truthmaker semantics, where the relation of incompatibility between s... more We present a new version of truthmaker semantics, where the relation of incompatibility between states is taken as a primitive. We discuss the advantages of the new framework over traditional truthmaker semantics, its relations with other accounts, and conclude by showing some interesting applications.

Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 2023

Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a power... more Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a powerful framework for evaluating counterfactuals whose antecedent is a conjunction of atomic formulas. We extend CMS to an evaluation of the probability of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents, and more generally, to counterfactuals whose antecedent is an arbitrary Boolean combination of atomic formulas. Our main idea is to assign a probability to a counterfactual (A ∨ B) C at a causal model M as a weighted average of the probability of C in those submodels that truthmake A ∨ B (Briggs 2012; Fine 2016, 2017). The weights of the submodels are given by the inverse distance to the original model M, based on a distance metric proposed by Eva, Stern, and Hartmann (2019). Apart from solving a major problem in the epistemology of counterfactuals, our paper shows how work in semantics, causal inference and formal epistemology can be fruitfully combined.

Artificiale Intelligence, 2023

In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of Lewis' counterfactuals. By exploiting the structu... more In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of Lewis' counterfactuals. By exploiting the structural properties of the recently introduced boolean algebras of conditionals, we show that counterfactuals can be expressed as formal combinations of a conditional object and a normal necessity modal operator. Specifically, we introduce a class of algebras that serve as modal expansions of boolean algebras of conditionals, together with their dual relational structures. Moreover, we show that Lewis' semantics based on sphere models can be reconstructed in this framework. As a consequence, we establish the soundness and completeness of a slightly stronger variant of Lewis' logic for counterfactuals with respect to our algebraic models. In the second part of the paper, we present a novel approach to the probability of counterfactuals showing that it aligns with the uncertainty degree assigned by a belief function, as per Dempster-Shafer theory, to its associated conditional formula. Furthermore, we characterize the probability of a counterfactual in terms of Gärdenfors' imaging rule for the probabilistic update.

The Australasian Journal of Logic, Dec 20, 2022

We present a new version of truthmaker semantics, where the relation of incompatibility between s... more We present a new version of truthmaker semantics, where the relation of incompatibility between states is taken as a primitive. We discuss the advantages of the new framework over traditional truthmaker semantics, its relations with other accounts, and conclude by showing some interesting applications.

Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 2023

Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a power... more Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a powerful framework for evaluating counterfactuals whose antecedent is a conjunction of atomic formulas. We extend CMS to an evaluation of the probability of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents, and more generally, to counterfactuals whose antecedent is an arbitrary Boolean combination of atomic formulas. Our main idea is to assign a probability to a counterfactual (A ∨ B) C at a causal model M as a weighted average of the probability of C in those submodels that truthmake A ∨ B (Briggs 2012; Fine 2016, 2017). The weights of the submodels are given by the inverse distance to the original model M, based on a distance metric proposed by Eva, Stern, and Hartmann (2019). Apart from solving a major problem in the epistemology of counterfactuals, our paper shows how work in semantics, causal inference and formal epistemology can be fruitfully combined.

Artificiale Intelligence, 2023

In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of Lewis' counterfactuals. By exploiting the structu... more In this paper we propose a semantic analysis of Lewis' counterfactuals. By exploiting the structural properties of the recently introduced boolean algebras of conditionals, we show that counterfactuals can be expressed as formal combinations of a conditional object and a normal necessity modal operator. Specifically, we introduce a class of algebras that serve as modal expansions of boolean algebras of conditionals, together with their dual relational structures. Moreover, we show that Lewis' semantics based on sphere models can be reconstructed in this framework. As a consequence, we establish the soundness and completeness of a slightly stronger variant of Lewis' logic for counterfactuals with respect to our algebraic models. In the second part of the paper, we present a novel approach to the probability of counterfactuals showing that it aligns with the uncertainty degree assigned by a belief function, as per Dempster-Shafer theory, to its associated conditional formula. Furthermore, we characterize the probability of a counterfactual in terms of Gärdenfors' imaging rule for the probabilistic update.