Towards a cognitive semantics of types

Abstract

Types are a crucial concept in conceptual modelling, logic, and knowledge representation as they are an ubiquitous device to understand and formalise the classification of objects. We propose a logical treatment of types based on a cognitively inspired modelling that accounts for the amount of information that is actually available to a certain agent in the task of classification. We develop a predicative modal logic whose semantics is based on conceptual spaces that model the actual information that a cognitive agent has about objects, types, and the classification of an object under a certain type. In particular, we account for possible failures in the classification, for the lack of sufficient information, and for some aspects related to vagueness.