Multimedia Content's Brokerage

Metadata-based similarity measurement is far from obsolete nowadays, despite research's focus on content and context-based information. It allows for aggregating information from textual references, measuring similarity when content is not available, traditional keyword searches in search engines, merging results in meta-search engines, etc. Existing similarity measures do not take into consideration neither the unique nature of multimedia metadata nor the requirements of metadata-based information retrieval of multimedia. This work presents a commonly available author-title multimedia metadata hybrid similarity measure customised that has been shown to be experimentally significantly more effective than baseline measures. In addition, the work presents an architecture and a web-based implementation of an information system for data collection and validation by expert users that allows distributed, binary and scalar result ground-truth definition for a similarity measurement that can be used in digital content's identification and sales.

Tarski on the Concept of Truth

Alfred Tarski’s work on truth has been so central to the discourse on truth that most coming to it for the first time have probably already heard a great deal about what is said there. Unfortunately, since the work is largely technical and Tarski was only tangentially philosophical, a certain incautious assimilation dominates many philosophical discussions of Tarski’s ideas, and so, examining Tarski on the concept of truth is in many ways an act of unlearning. This chapter will focus on key ideas in Tarski’s work that have had a lasting impact: T-sentence, Convention T, Tarskian truth definition, and Tarski’s general limiting theses on the expressibility and definability of truth. Though these ideas are familiar in name, the chapter seeks to uncover and remove certain widespread misunderstandings. Tarski’s name also features prominently in discussions of the liar paradox, so we will discuss Tarski’s misunderstood connection to this ancient puzzle.

FROM STENIUS’ CONSISTENCY PROOF TO SCHÜTTE’S CUT ELIMINATION FOR ω-ARITHMETIC

The book Das Interpretationsproblem der Formalisierten Zahlentheorie und ihre Formale Widerspruchsfreiheit by Erik Stenius published in 1952 contains a consistency proof for infinite ω-arithmetic based on a semantical interpretation. Despite the proof’s reference to semantics the truth definition is in fact equivalent to a syntactical derivability or reduction condition. Based on this reduction condition Stenius proves that the complexity of formulas in a derivation can be limited by the complexity of the conclusion. This independent result can also be proved by cut elimination for ω-arithmetic which was done by Schütte in 1951.In this paper we interpret the syntactic reduction in Stenius’ work as a method for cut elimination based on invertibility of the logical rules. Through this interpretation the constructivity of Stenius’ proof becomes apparent. This improvement was explicitly requested from Stenius by Paul Bernays in private correspondence (In a letter from Bernays begun on the 19th of September 1952 (Stenius & Bernays, 1951–75)). Bernays, who took a deep interest in Stenius’ manuscript, applied the described method in a proof Herbrand’s theorem. In this paper we prove Herbrand’s theorem, as an application of Stenius’ work, based on lecture notes of Bernays (Bernays, 1961). The main result completely resolves Bernays’ suggestions for improvement by eliminating references to Stenius’ semantics and by showing the constructive nature of the proof. A comparison with Schütte’s cut elimination proof shows how Stenius’ simplification of the reduction of universal cut formulas, which in Schütte’s proof requires duplication and repositioning of the cuts, shifts the problematic case of reduction to implications.

How Tarski Defined the Undefinable

This paper describes Tarski’s project of rehabilitating the notion of truth, previously considered dubious by many philosophers. The project was realized by providing a formal truth definition, which does not employ any problematic concept.

Truth definitions without exponentiation and the Σ1 collection scheme

We prove that: • if there is a model of IΔ0 + ¬exp with cofinal Σ1-definable elements and a Σ1 truth definition for Σ1 sentences, then IΔ0 + ¬exp + ¬BΣ1 is consistent,• there is a model of IΔ0 + Ω1 + ¬exp with cofinal Σ1-definable elements, both a Σ2 and a Π2 truth definition for Σ1 sentences, and for each n ≥ 2, a Σn truth definition for Σn sentences.The latter result is obtained by constructing a model with a recursive truth-preserving translation of Σ1 sentences into boolean combinations of sentences.We also present an old but previously unpublished proof of the consistency of IΔ0 + ¬exp + ¬BΣ1 under the assumption that the size parameter in Lessan's Δ0 universal formula is optimal. We then discuss a possible reason why proving the consistency of IΔ0 + ¬exp + ¬BΣ1 unconditionally has turned out to be so difficult.

Naturalist Structuralism's Aporia? Essentialism, Indeterminacy, and Nostalgia – a response to Paul Livingston

This essay argues that what Livingston calls the “structuralist” project, combined with a naturalistic, external approach to language, does not in fact lead to a paradoxical failure to match lived language. Quine’s indeterminacy argument is not a consequence of naturalism and structuralism, but is rather a consequence of thorough anti-essentialism, a thesis he shares with Derrida and Davidson. Contemporary naturalism is in fact not committed to Quine’s thesis. Davidson’s views are a purification of the views of Quine, removing Quine’s empiricist appeal to stimulus meaning and Quine’s scientism. Davidson abandons the conventionalist conception of language but retains the “structuralist” conception of language, as captured by a truth-definition. The indeterminacy thesis is a consequence of anti-essentialism applied to semantics, that is, the denial of transcendental signifieds. The essay concludes by arguing that Quine’s aporia (which is also Davidson’s and Derrida’s aporia) is a discovery rather than a paradox.