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<Paper uid="P84-1016">
  <Title>QUASI-INDEXICAL REFERENCE IN PROPOSITIONAL SEMANTIC NETWORKS</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="68" end_page="69" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
i. FUTURE WORK
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> There are several directions for future modifications. First, the node-merging mechanism of the EQUIV case-frame with its associated rule needs to be generalized: Its current interpretation is co-referentiality; but if the sequence (12)-(14) were embedded in someone else's beliefspace, then co-referentiality might be incorrect. What is needed is a notion of &amp;quot;co-refere~tialitywithin-a-belief-space'. The relation of consoctation&amp;quot; (Casta~eda 1972) seems to be more appropriate. null Second, the system needs to be much more flexible. Currently, it treats all sentences of the form (15) x believes that F(y) as canonically de dicto and all sentences of the form (16) y is believed by x to be F Fig. I0. Lucy believes that Lucy is sweet, Lucy is sweet, and the system's Lucy is Lucy's Lucy. as canonically de re. In ordinary conversation, however, both sentences can be understood in either way, depending on context, including prior beliefs as well as idiosyncracies of particular predicates. For instance, given (I), above, and the fact that John is the editor of Byte, most people would infer (3). But given  (17) John believes that all identical twins are conceited.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> (18) Unknown to John, he is an identical twin most people would not infer (19) John believes that he* is conceited.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  Thus, we want to allow the system to make the most &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot; interpretations (de re vs. de dPScto) of users' belief-reports, based on prior beliefs and on subject matter, and to modify its initial representation as more information is received. SUNIqARY A deductive knowledge-representation system that is to be able to reason about the beliefs of cognitive agents must have a scheme for representing beliefs. This scheme must be able to distinguish among the &amp;quot;belief spaces&amp;quot; of different agents, as yell as be able to handle &amp;quot;nested belief spaces&amp;quot;, i.e., second-order beliefs such as the beliefs of one agent about the beliefs of another. We have shown how a scheme for representing beliefs as either de re or de dPScto can distinguish the items in different belief spa~es (including nested belief spaces), yet merge the items on the basis of new information. This general scheme also enables the system to adequately represent sentences containing quasi-indicators, while not allowing invalid inferences to be drawn from them.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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