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Laws, Facts, and Contexts: Foundations for Multimodal Reasoning

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 JOHN F. SOWA
LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS: FOUNDATIONS FOR
MULTIMODAL REASONING

ABSTRACT
Leibniz’s intuition that necessity corresponds to truth in all pos-
sible worlds enabled Kripke to define a rigorous model theory for
several axiomatizations of modal logic. Unfortunately, Kripke’s
model structures lead to a combinatorial explosion when they
are extended to all the varieties of modality and intentionality
that people routinely use in ordinary language. As an alterna-
tive, any semantics based on possible worlds can be replaced by a
simpler and more easily generalizable approach based on Dunn’s
semantics of laws and facts and a theory of contexts based on the
ideas of Peirce and McCarthy. To demonstrate consistency, this
article defines a family of nested graph models, which can be spe-
cialized to a wide variety of model structures, including Kripke’s
models, situation semantics, temporal models, and many varia-
tions of them. An important advantage of nested graph models
is the option of partitioning the reasoning tasks into separate
metalevel stages, each of which can be axiomatized in classical
first-order logic. At each stage, all inferences can be carried out
with well-understood theorem provers for FOL or some subset of
FOL. To prove that nothing more than FOL is required, Section
6 shows how any nested graph model with a finite nesting depth
can be flattened to a conventional Tarski-style model. For most
purposes, however, the nested models are computationally more
tractable and intuitively more understandable.

1. REPLACING POSSIBLE WORLDS WITH CONTEXTS

Possible worlds have been the most popular semantic foundation for modal
logic since Kripke (1963) adopted them for his version of model struc-
tures. Lewis (1986), for example, argued that “We ought to believe in
other possible worlds and individuals because systematic philosophy goes
more smoothly in many ways if we do.” Yet computer implementations of
modal reasoning replace possible worlds with “ersatz worlds” consisting
of collections of propositions that more closely resemble Hintikka’s (1963)
model sets. By dividing the model sets into necessary laws and contingent
facts, Dunn (1973) defined a conservative refinement of Kripke’s semantics
that eliminated the need for a “realist” view of possible worlds. Instead of
assuming Kripke’s accessibility relation as an unexplained primitive, Dunn
derived it from the selection of laws and facts.
Since Dunn’s semantics is logically equivalent to Kripke’s for con-
ventional modalities, most logicians ignored it in favor of Kripke’s. For
multimodal reasoning, however, Dunn’s approach simplifies the reasoning
process by separating the metalevel reasoning about laws and facts from
151
152 JOHN F. SOWA

the object-level reasoning in ordinary first-order logic. For each modality,

Kripke semantics supports two operators such as
for necessity and ♦ for
possibility. For temporal logic, the same two operators are interpreted as
always and sometimes. For deontic logic, they are reinterpreted as obli-
gation and permission. That approach cannot represent, much less reason
about a sentence that mixes all three modalities, such as You are never
obligated to do anything impossible. The limitation to just one modality is
what Scott (1970) considered “one of the biggest mistakes of all in modal
logic”:
The only way to have any philosophically significant results in de-
ontic or epistemic logic is to combine these operators with: Tense
operators (otherwise how can you formulate principles of change?);
the logical operators (otherwise how can you compare the rela-
tive with the absolute?); the operators like historical or physical
necessity (otherwise how can you relate the agent to his environ-
ment?); and so on and so on. (p. 143)

These philosophical considerations are even more pressing for linguis-

tics, which must relate different modalities in the same sentence. Dunn’s
semantics facilitates multimodal interactions by allowing each modal oper-
ator or each verb that implies a modal operator to have its own associated
laws. At the metalevel, laws can be distinguished from facts and from the
laws associated with different verbs or operators. At the object level, how-
ever, the reasoning process can use first-order logic without distinguishing
laws from facts or the laws of one modality from the laws of another.
To take advantage of Dunn’s semantics, the metalevel reasoning should
be performed in a separate context from the object-level reasoning. This
separation requires a formal theory of contexts that can distinguish differ-
ent metalevels. But as Rich Thomason (2001) observed, “The theory of
context is important and problematic – problematic because the intuitions
are confused, because disparate disciplines are involved, and because the
chronic problem in cognitive science of how to arrive at a productive rela-
tion between formalizations and applications applies with particular force
to this area.” The version of contexts adopted for this article is based
on a representation that Peirce introduced for existential graphs (EGs)
and Sowa (1984) adopted as a foundation for conceptual graphs (CGs).
That approach is further elaborated along the lines suggested by McCarthy
(1993) and developed by Sowa (1995, 2000).
Sections 2, 3, and 4 of this article summarize Dunn’s semantics of laws
and facts, a theory of contexts based on the work of Peirce and McCarthy,
and Tarski’s hierarchy of metalevels. Then Section 5 introduces nested
graph models (NGMs) as a general formalism for a family of models that
can be specialized for various theories of modality and intentionality. Sec-
tion 6 shows how any NGM with a finite depth of nesting can be flattened
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 153

to a Tarski-style model consisting of nothing but a set D of individuals

and a set R of relations over D. Although the process of flattening shows
that modalities can be represented in first-order logic, the flattening comes
at the expense of adding extra arguments to each relation to indicate ev-
ery context in which it is nested. Finally, Section 7 shows how Peirce’s
semeiotic, Dunn’s semantics, Tarski’s metalevels, and nested graph mod-
els provide a powerful combination of tools for analyzing and formalizing
semantic relationships.

2. DUNN’S LAWS AND FACTS

Philosophers since Aristotle have recognized that modality is related to
laws; Dunn’s innovation made the relationships explicit. Instead of Kripke’s
primitive accessibility relation between worlds, Dunn (1973) replaced each
possible world with two sets of propositions called laws and facts. For
every Kripke world w, Dunn assumed an ordered pair (M ,L), where M
is a Hintikka-style model set called the facts of w and L is a subset of
M called the laws of w. For this article, the following conventions are
assumed:
• Axioms. Any subset A of L whose deductive closure is the laws
(A  L) is called an axiom set for (M ,L).
• Facts. The set of all facts M is maximally consistent: for any
proposition p, either p ∈M or ∼ p ∈M , but not both.
• Contingent facts. The set M -L of all facts that are not laws is
called the contingent facts.
• Closure. The facts are the deductive closure of any axiom set A
and the contingent facts: A ∪ (M - L)  M .
With this formulation, Kripke’s accessibility relation is no longer prim-
itive, and the modal semantics does not depend on imaginary worlds. In-
stead, modality depends on the choice of laws, which could be laws of
nature or merely human rules and regulations.
To show how the accessibility relation from one world to another can
be derived from the choice of laws, let (M 1 ,L1 ) be a pair of facts and laws
that describe a possible world w1 , and let the pair (M 2 ,L2 ) describe a
world w2 . Dunn defined accessibility from the world w1 to the world w2
to mean that the laws L1 are a subset of the facts in M 2 :
R(w1 ,w2 ) ≡ L1 ⊂M 2 .
According to this definition, the laws of the first world w1 remain true
in the second world w2 , but they may be demoted from the status of laws
to merely contingent facts. In Kripke’s semantics, possibility ♦p means
that p is true of some world w accessible from the real world w0 :
♦p ≡ (∃w:World)(R(w0 ,w) ∧ w |= p).
154 JOHN F. SOWA

By substituting the laws and facts for the possible worlds, Dunn restated
the definitions of possibility and necessity:
♦p ≡ (∃M :ModelSet) (L0 ⊂M ∧ p ∈M ).
Now possibility ♦p means that there exists a model set M that contains
the laws of the real world L0 and p is a fact in M . Since M is consistent
and it contains the laws L0 , possibility implies that p must be consistent
with the laws of the real world. By the same substitutions, the definition
of necessity becomes

p ≡ (∀M :ModelSet)(L0 ⊂ M ⊃ p ∈M ).
Necessity
p means that every model set M that contains the laws of the
real world also contains p.
Dunn performed the same substitutions in Kripke’s constraints on the
accessibility relation. The result is a restatement of the constraints in
terms of the laws and facts:
• System T. The two axioms
p ⊃ p and p ⊃ ♦p require ev-
ery world to be accessible from itself. That property follows from
Dunn’s definition because the laws L of any world are a subset of
the facts: L⊂M .
• System S4. System T with axiom S4,
p ⊃

p, requires that R
must also be transitive. It imposes the tighter constraint that the
laws of the first world must be a subset of the laws of the second
world: L1 ⊂L2 .
• System S5. System S4 with axiom S5, ♦p ⊃ ♦
p, requires that R
must also be symmetric. It constrains both worlds to have exactly
the same laws: L1 =L2 .
In Dunn’s theory, the term possible world is an informal metaphor that
does not appear in the formalism: the semantics of
p and ♦p depends
only on the choice of laws and facts. All formulas in M and L are purely
first order, and the symbols
and ♦ never appear in any of them.
Dunn’s theory is a conservative refinement of Kripke’s theory, since
any Kripke model structure (K,R,Φ) can be converted to one of Dunn’s
model structures in two steps:
1. Replace every world w in K with the set M of propositions that
are true in w and the set L of propositions that are necessary in w.
M = {p | Φ(p, w) = true}.
L = {p | (∀u:World)(R(w, u) ⊃ Φ(p, u) = true)}.
2. Define Kripke’s primitive accessibility relation R(u, v) by the con-
straint that the laws of u are true in v:
R(u, v) ≡ (∀p:Proposition)(p ∈Lu ⊃ p ∈M v ).
Every axiom and theorem of Kripke’s theory remains true in Dunn’s ver-
sion, but Dunn’s theory makes the reasons for modality available for fur-
ther inferences. For theories of intentionality, Dunn’s approach can relate
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 155

Figure 1. One of Peirce’s graphs for talking about a proposition

the laws to the goals and purposes of some agent, who in effect legislates
which propositions are to be considered laws. This approach formalizes
an informal suggestion by Hughes and Cresswell (1968): “a world, w2 , is
accessible to a world, w1 , if w2 is conceivable by someone living in w1 .”
In Dunn’s terms, the laws that determine what is necessary in the world
w1 are the propositions that are not conceivably false for someone living
in w1 .

3. CONTEXTS BY PEIRCE AND MCCARTHY

In first-order logic, laws and facts are propositions, and there is no special
mark that distinguishes a law from a fact. To distinguish them, a context
mechanism is necessary to separate first-order reasoning with the propo-
sitions from metalevel reasoning about the propositions and about the
distinctions between laws and facts. Peirce (1880, 1885) invented the alge-
braic notation for predicate calculus, which with a change of symbols by
Peano became today’s most widely used notation for logic. A dozen years
later, Peirce developed a graphical notation for logic that more clearly
distinguishes contexts. Figure 1 shows his graph notation for delimiting
the context of a proposition. In explaining that graph, Peirce (1898) said
“When we wish to assert something about a proposition without asserting
the proposition itself, we will enclose it in a lightly drawn oval.” The line
attached to the oval links it to a relation that makes a metalevel assertion
about the nested proposition.
The oval serves the syntactic function of grouping related information
in a package. Besides notation, Peirce developed a theory of the seman-
tics and pragmatics of contexts and the rules of inference for importing
and exporting information into and out of contexts. To support first-order
logic, the only metalevel relation required is negation. By combining nega-
tion with the existential-conjunctive subset of logic, Peirce developed his
existential graphs (EGs), which are based on three logical operators and
an open-ended number of relations:
1. Existential quantifier: A bar or linked structure of bars, called a
line of identity, represents ∃.
2. Conjunction: The juxtaposition of two graphs in the same context
represents ∧.
156 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 2. EG and CG for “If a farmer owns a donkey,

then he beats it.”

3. Negation: An oval enclosure with no lines attached to it represents

∼ or the denial of the enclosed proposition.
4. Relation: Character strings represent the names of propositions,
predicates, or relations, which may be attached to zero or more
lines of identities.
In Figure 1, the character string “You are a good girl” is the name
of a medad, which represents a proposition or 0-adic relation; the string
“is much to be wished” is the name of a monad or monadic predicate or
relation. In the EG on the left of Figure 2, “farmer” and “donkey” are
monads; “owns” and “beats” are dyads, which represent dyadic relations.
When combined with relations in all possible ways, the three logical oper-
ators can represent full first-order logic. When used to state propositions
about nested contexts, they form a metalanguage that can be used to de-
fine the version of modal logic used in some nested context. For Peirce’s
own tutorial on existential graphs and their rules of inference, see his MS
514 (1909).
To illustrate the use of negative contexts for representing FOL, Figure
2 shows an existential graph and a conceptual graph for the sentence If a
farmer owns a donkey, then he beats it. This sentence is one of a series
of examples used by medieval logicians to illustrate issues in mapping
language to logic. The EG on the left has two ovals with no attached
lines; by default, they represent negations. It also has two lines of identity,
represented as linked bars: one line, which connects farmer to the left
side of owns and beats, represents an existentially quantified variable (∃x);
the other line, which connects donkey to the right side of owns and beats
represents another variable (∃y).
When the EG of Figure 2 is translated to predicate calculus, farmer
and donkey map to monadic predicates; owns and beats map to dyadic
predicates. If a relation is attached to more than one line of identity, the
lines are ordered from left to right by their point of attachment to the
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 157

Figure 3. A conceptual graph with coreference links

name of the relation. With the implicit conjunctions represented by the ∧

symbol, the result is an untyped formula:
∼ (∃x)(∃y)(farmer(x) ∧ donkey(y) ∧ owns(x, y) ∧ ∼beats(x, y)).
A nest of two ovals, as in Figure 2, is what Peirce called a scroll. It
represents implication, since ∼ (p ∧ ∼ q) is equivalent to p ⊃ q. Using the
⊃ symbol, the formula may be rewritten
(∀x)(∀y)((farmer(x) ∧ donkey(y) ∧ owns(x, y)) ⊃ beats(x, y)).
The CG on the right of Figure 2 may be considered a typed or sorted
version of the EG. The boxes [Farmer] and [Donkey] represent a notation
for sorted quantification (∃x:Farmer) and (∃y:Donkey). The ovals (Owns)
and (Beats) represent relations, whose attached arcs link to the boxes
that represent the arguments. The large boxes with the symbol ¬ in front
correspond to Peirce’s ovals that represent negation. As a result, the
CG corresponds to the following formula, which uses sorted or restricted
quantifiers:
(∀x:Farmer)(∀y:Donkey)(owns(x, y) ⊃ beats(x, y)).
The algebraic formulas with the ⊃ symbol illustrate a peculiar feature
of predicate calculus: in order to keep the variables x and y within the
scope of the quantifiers, the existential quantifiers for the phrases a farmer
and a donkey must be moved to the front of the formula and be translated
to universal quantifiers. This puzzling feature of logic has been a matter
of debate among linguists and logicians since the middle ages.
The nested graph models defined in Section 5 are based on the CG
formalism, but with one restriction: every graph must be wholly con-
tained within a single context. The relation (Beats) in Figure 2 could
not be linked to concept boxes outside its own context. To support that
restriction, Figure 3 shows an equivalent CG in which concept boxes in
different contexts are connected by dotted lines called coreference links,
which indicate that the two concepts refer to exactly the same individual.
A set of boxes connected by coreference links corresponds to what Peirce
called a line of identity.
158 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 4. EG for ”You can lead a horse to water, but you

can’t make him drink.”

The symbol , which is a synonym for the type Entity, represents

the most general type, which is true of everything. Therefore, concepts
of the form [ ] correspond an unrestricted quantifier, such as (∃z). The
dotted lines correspond to equations of the form x = z. Therefore, Figure
3 is equivalent to the following formula:
(∀x:Farmer)(∀y:Donkey)(owns(x, y) ⊃
(∃z)(∃w)(beats(z, w) ∧ x = z ∧ y = w))).
By the rules of inference for predicate calculus, this formula is provably
equivalent to the previous one.
Besides attaching a relation to an oval, Peirce also used colors or tinc-
tures to distinguish contexts other than negation. Figure 4 shows one of his
examples with red (or shading) to indicate possibility. The graph contains
four ovals: the outer two form a scroll for if-then; the inner two represent
possibility (shading) and impossibility (shading inside a negation). The
outer oval may be read If there exist a person, a horse, and water ; the
next oval may be read then it is possible for the person to lead the horse
to the water and not possible for the person to make the horse drink the
water.
The notation “—leads—to—” represents a triad or triadic relation
leadsTo(x, y, z),
and “—makes—drink—” represents makesDrink(x, y, z). In the algebraic
notation with the symbol ♦ for possibility, Figure 4 maps to the following
formula:
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 159

Figure 5. EG and DRS for “If a farmer owns a donkey,

then he beats it”.

∼ (∃x)(∃y)(∃z)(person(x) ∧ horse(y) ∧ water(z) ∧

∼ (♦leadsTo(x, y, z) ∧ ∼ ♦makesDrink(x, y, z))).
With the symbol ⊃ for implication, this formula becomes
(∀x)(∀y)(∀z)((person(x) ∧ horse(y) ∧ water(z)) ⊃
(♦leadsTo(x, y, z) ∧ ∼ ♦makesDrink(x, y, z))).
This version may be read For all x, y, and z, if x is a person, y is a horse,
and z is water, then it is possible for x to lead y to z, and not possible for
x to make y drink z. These readings, although logically explicit, are not as
succinct as the proverb You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make
him drink.

Discourse representation theory. The logician Hans Kamp once spent

a summer translating English sentences from a scientific article to predicate
calculus. During the course of his work, he was troubled by the same kinds
of irregularities that puzzled the medieval logicians. In order to simplify
the mapping from language to logic, Kamp (1981) developed discourse
representation structures (DRSs) with an explicit notation for contexts.
In terms of those structures, Kamp defined the rules of discourse repre-
sentation theory for mapping quantifiers, determiners, and pronouns from
language to logic (Kamp & Reyle 1993).
Although Kamp had not been aware of Peirce’s existential graphs, his
DRSs are structurally equivalent to Peirce’s EGs. The diagram on the
right of Figure 5 is a DRS for the donkey sentence, If there exist a farmer
x and a donkey y and x owns y, then x beats y. The two boxes connected
by an arrow represent an implication where the antecedent includes the
consequent within its scope.
The DRS and EG notations look quite different, but they are exactly
isomorphic: they have the same primitives, the same scoping rules for
variables or lines of identity, and the same translation to predicate calculus.
Therefore, the EG and DRS notations map to the same formula:
160 JOHN F. SOWA

∼ (∃x)(∃y)(farmer(x) ∧ donkey(y) ∧ owns(x, y) ∧ ∼beats(x, y)).

Peirce’s motivation for the EG contexts was to simplify the logical struc-
tures and rules of inference. Kamp’s motivation for the DRS contexts
was to simplify the mapping from language to logic. Remarkably, they
converged on isomorphic representations. Therefore, Peirce’s rules of in-
ference and Kamp’s discourse rules apply equally well to contexts in the
EG, CG, or DRS notations. For notations with a different structure, such
as predicate calculus, those rules cannot be applied without major modi-
fications.

McCarthy’s contexts. In his “Notes on Formalizing Context,” Mc-

Carthy (1993) introduced the predicate ist(C ,p), which may be read ”the
proposition p is true in context C .” For clarity, it will be spelled out in
the form isTrueIn(C , p). As illustrations, McCarthy gave the following
examples:
• isTrueIn(contextOf(“Sherlock Holmes stories”), “Holmes is a detec-
tive”).
• isTrueIn(contextOf(“U.S. legal history”), “Holmes is a Supreme
Court Justice”).
In these examples, the context disambiguates the referent of the name
Holmes either to the fictional character Sherlock Holmes or to Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes, Jr., the first appointee to the Supreme Court by President
Theodore Roosevelt. In effect, names behave like indexicals whose refer-
ents are determined by the context.
One of McCarthy’s reasons for developing a theory of context was
his uneasiness with the proliferation of new logics for every kind of modal,
temporal, epistemic, and nonmonotonic reasoning. The ever-growing num-
ber of modes presented in AI journals and conferences is a throwback to
the scholastic logicians who went beyond Aristotle’s two modes necessary
and possible to permissible, obligatory, doubtful, clear, generally known,
heretical, said by the ancients, or written in Holy Scriptures. The me-
dieval logicians spent so much time talking about modes that they were
nicknamed the modistae. The modern logicians have axiomatized their
modes and developed semantic models to support them, but each theory
includes only one or two of the many modes. McCarthy (1977) observed,
‘For AI purposes, we would need all the above modal operators in the same
system. This would make the semantic discussion of the resulting modal
logic extremely complex.’
Instead of an open-ended number of modes, McCarthy hoped to de-
velop a simple, but universal mechanism that would replace modal logic
with first-order logic supplemented with metalanguage about contexts.
That approach can be adapted to Dunn’s semantics by adding another
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 161

predicate isLawOf(C ,p), which states that proposition p is a law of con-

text C . Then Dunn’s laws and facts can be defined in terms of McCarthy’s
contexts:
• The facts of a context are determined by metalevel reasoning with
the isTrueIn predicate:
M = {p | isTrueIn(C ,p)}.
• The laws of a context are determined by metalevel reasoning with
the isLawOf predicate:
L = {p | isLawOf(C ,p)}.
Metalevel reasoning about the laws and facts of a context determines the
kind of modality it is capable of expressing. Multimodal reasoning involves
metalevel reasoning about the sources that have legislated the various laws.
But within a context, there is no difference between laws and contingent
facts, and an ordinary first-order theorem prover can be used to reason
about them.

4. TARSKI’S METALEVELS
The semantics for multiple levels of nested contexts is based on the method
of stratified metalevels by Tarski (1933). Each context in a nest is treated
as a metalevel with respect to every context nested within it. The propo-
sitions in some context that has no nested levels beneath it may be consid-
ered as an object language L0 , which refers to entities in some universe of
discourse D. The metalanguage L1 refers to the symbols of L0 and their
relationships to D. Tarski showed that the metalanguage is still first order,
but its universe of discourse is enlarged from D to L0 ∪D. The metameta-
language L2 is also first order, but its universe of discourse is L1 ∪L0 ∪D.
To avoid paradoxes, Tarski insisted that no metalanguage Ln could refer
to its own symbols, but it could refer to the symbols or individuals in the
domain of any language Li where 0 ≤ i < n.
In short, metalevel reasoning is first-order reasoning about the way
statements may be sorted into contexts. After the sorting has been done,
reasoning with the propositions in a context can be handled by the usual
FOL rules. At every level of the Tarski hierarchy of metalanguages, the
reasoning process is governed by first-order rules. But first-order reasoning
in language Ln has the effect of higher-order or modal reasoning for every
language below n. At every level n, the model theory that justifies the
reasoning in Ln is a conventional first-order Tarskian semantics, since the
nature of the objects in the domain D n is irrelevant to the rules that apply
to Ln .

Example. To illustrate the interplay of the metalevel and object-level in-

ferences, consider the following statement, which includes direct quotation,
indirect quotation, indexical pronouns, and metalanguage about belief:
162 JOHN F. SOWA

Joe said “I don’t believe in astrology, but everybody knows that it

works even if you don’t believe in it.”
This statement could be translated word-for-word to a conceptual
graph in which the indexicals are represented by the symbols #I, #they,
#it, and #you. Then the resolution of the indexicals could be performed
by metalevel transformations of the graph. Those transformations could
also be written in stylized English:

1. First mark the indexicals with the # symbol, and use square brack-
ets to mark the multiple levels of nested contexts:
Joe said
[#I don’t believe [in astrology]
but everybody knows
[[#it works]
even if #you don’t believe [in #it]]].
2. The indexical #I can be resolved to the speaker Joe, but the other
indexicals depend on implicit background knowledge. The pronoun
everybody is a universal quantifier that could be translated to “every
person.” The two occurrences of #it refer to astrology, but the three
nested contexts about astrology have different forms; for simplicity,
they could all be rewritten “astrology works.” When no explicit
person is being addressed, the indexical #you can be interpreted
as a reference to any or every person who may be listening. For this
example, it could be assumed to be coreferent with “every person”
in the community. With these substitutions, the statement becomes
Joe said
[Joe doesn’t believe [astrology works]
but every person x knows
[[astrology works]
even if x doesn’t believe
[astrology works] ]].
3. If Joe’s statement was sincere, Joe believes what he said. The
word but could be replaced with the word and, which preserves
the propositional content, but omits the contrastive emphasis. A
statement of the form “p even if q” means that p is true independent
of the truth value of q. It is equivalent to ((q ⊃ p) ∧ ((∼ q) ⊃ p)),
which implies p by itself. The statement can therefore be rewritten
Joe believes
[Joe doesn’t believe [astrology works]
and every person x knows [astrology works] ].

4. Since Joe is a person in Joe’s community, the constant “Joe” may

be substituted for the quantifier “every person x”:
Joe believes
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 163

[Joe doesn’t believe [astrology works]

and Joe knows [astrology works] ].
5. By the axioms of epistemic logic, everything known is believed.
Therefore, the verb knows in the third line can be replaced by the
implicit believes:
Joe believes
[Joe doesn’t believe [astrology works]
and Joe believes [astrology works] ].
This statement shows that Joe believes a contradiction of the form
(∼ p ∧ p).
For computer analysis of language, the most difficult task is to de-
termine the conversational implicatures and the background knowledge
needed for resolving indexicals. After the implicit assumptions have been
made explicit, the translation to logic and further deductions in logic are
straightforward.
In the process of reasoning about Joe’s beliefs, the context [astrology
works] is treated as an encapsulated object, whose internal structure is
ignored. When the levels interact, however, further axioms are necessary
to relate them. Like the iterated modalities ♦♦p and ♦
p, iterated beliefs
occur in statements like Joe believes that Joe doesn’t believe that astrology
works. One reasonable axiom is that if an agent a believes that a believes
p, then a believes p:
(∀a:Agent)(∀p:Proposition)(believe(a,believe(a, p)) ⊃ believe(a, p)).
This axiom enables two levels of nested contexts to be collapsed into
one. The converse, however, is less likely: many people act as if they
believe propositions that they are not willing to admit. Joe, for exam-
ple, might read the astrology column in the daily newspaper and follow
its advice. His actions could be considered evidence that he believes in
astrology. Yet when asked, Joe might continue to insist that he doesn’t
believe in astrology.

5. NESTED GRAPH MODELS

To prove that a syntactic notation for contexts is consistent, it is necessary
to define a model-theoretic semantics for it. But to show that the model
captures the intended interpretation, it is necessary to show how it rep-
resents the entities of interest in the application domain. For consistency,
this section defines model structures called nested graph models (NGMs),
which can serve as the denotation of logical expressions that contain nested
contexts. Nested graph models are general enough to represent a variety of
other model structures, including Tarski-style “flat” models, the possible
worlds of Kripke and Montague, and other approaches discussed in this
article. The mapping from those model structures to NGMs shows that
NGMs are at least as suitable for capturing the intented interpretation.
164 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 6. A nested graph model (NGM)

Dunn’s semantics allows NGMs to do more: the option of representing

metalevel information in any context enables statements in one context to
talk about the laws and facts of nested contexts and about the intentions
of agents who may have legislated the laws.
To illustrate the formal definitions, Figure 6 shows an informal exam-
ple of an NGM. Every box or rectangle in Figure 6 represents an individual
entity in the domain of discourse, and every circle represents a property
(monadic predicate) or a relation (predicate or relation with two or more
arguments) that is true of the individual(s) to which it is linked. The ar-
rows on the arcs are synonyms for the integers used to label the arcs: for
dyadic relations, an arrow pointing toward the circle represents the inte-
ger 1, and an arrow pointing away from the circle represents 2; relations
with more than two arcs must supplement the arrows with integers. Some
boxes contain nested graphs: they represent individuals that have parts
or aspects, which are individual entities represented by the boxes in the
nested graphs.
The four dotted lines in Figure 6 are coreference links, which represent
three lines lines of identity. Two lines of identity contain only two boxes,
which are the endpoints of a single coreference link. The third line of
identity contains three boxes, which are connected by two coreference links.
In general, a line of identity with n boxes may be shown by n−1 coreference
links, each of which corresponds to an equation that asserts the equality
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 165

of the referents of the boxes it connects. A coreference link may connect

two boxes of the same NGM, or it may connect a box of an NGM G
to a box of another NGM that is nested directly or indirectly in G. But
a coreference link may never connect a box of an NGM G to a box of
another NGM H, where neither G nor H is nested in the other. As Figure
6 illustrates, coreference links may go from an outer NGM to a more deeply
nested NGM, but they may not connect boxes in two independently nested
NGMs.
For convenience in relating the formalism to diagrams such as Figure
6, the components of a nested graph model (NGM) are called arcs, boxes,
circles, labels, and lines of identity. Formally, however, an NGM is de-
fined as a 5-tuple G = (A,B,C,L,I), consisting of five abstract sets whose
implications are completely determined by the following definitions:

1. Arcs. Every arc in A is an ordered pair (c, b), where c is a circle

in C and b is a box in B.
2. Boxes. If b is any box in B, there may be a nested graph model H
that is said to be contained in b and directly nested in G. An NGM
is said to be nested in G if it is directly nested either in G itself or
in some other NGM that is nested in G. The NGM G may not be
nested in itself, and any NGM nested in G must be contained in
exactly one box of G or of some NGM nested in G. No NGM may
be contained in more than one box.
3. Circles. If c is any circle in C, any arc (c, b) in A is said to belong
to c. For any circle c, the number n of arcs that belong to c is
finite; and for each i from 1 to n, there is one and only one arc ai ,
which belongs to c and for which label (ai ) = i. (If no arcs belong
to c, then c represents a proposition constant, which Peirce called
a medad.)
4. Labels. L is a set of entities called labels, for which there exists
a function label : A∪B∪C−→L. If a is any arc in A, label (a) = i is
a positive integer. If b is any box in B, label (b) is said to be an
individual identifier ; no two boxes in B may have identical labels.
If c is any circle in C, label (c) is said to be a relation identifier ; any
number of circles in C may have identical labels.
5. Lines of Identity. Every line of identity is a set of two or more
boxes. For each i in I, there must exist exactly one NGM H, where
either H=G or H is nested in G; one or more boxes of i must be
boxes of H, and all other boxes of i must be boxes of some NGM
nested in H. (Note: coreference links, which appear in informal
diagrams such as Figures 3 and 6, are not mentioned in the formal
definition of lines of identity. Alternative notations, such as variable
names, could be used to indicate the boxes that belong to each line
of identity.)
166 JOHN F. SOWA

6. Outermost context. The NGM G is said to be the outermost

context of G. Any box that contains an NGM H nested in G is said
to be a nested context of G.

The five sets A, B, C, L, and I must be disjoint. Any NGM that is drawn
on paper or stored in a computer must be finite, but for generality, there is
no theoretical limit on the cardinality of any of the sets A, B, C, L, or I. In
computer implementations, character strings are usually chosen as names
to label the boxes and circles, but in theory, any sets, including images or
even uncountably infinite sets, could be used as labels.
An NGM may contain any number of levels of nested NGMs, but no
NGM may be nested within itself, either directly or indirectly. If an NGM
has an infinite nesting depth, it could be isomorphic to another NGM
nested in itself; but the nested copy is considered to be distinct from the
outer NGM.
Mapping other models to NGMs. Nested graph models are set-
theoretical structures that can serve as models for a wide variety of logical
theories. They can be specialized in various ways to represent other model
structures. Tarski-style models require no nesting, Kripke-style models
require one level of nesting, and models for multiple modalities, which will
be discussed in Sections 6 and 7, require deeper nesting.

• Tarski’s flat models. A Tarski-style model M = (D,R,Φ) con-

sists of a nonempty set D called a domain of individuals, a set
R of relations defined over D, and an evaluation function Φ. For
any first-order proposition p stated in terms of D and R, Φ(p) is
a truth value T or F. By the usual methods for representing rela-
tions as graphs, the model M can be represented as a flat NGM
G = (A,B,C,L,I), for which no box in B contains a nested NGM.
Informally, the individuals in D are represented by boxes, and the
relations are represented by circles. The labels of the boxes are the
names or identifiers of the individuals in D, and the labels of the
circles are the names of the relations in R. Formally, the following
construction defines an isomorphism from M to G:
1. Each individual x in the domain D is represented by exactly
one box b in B whose label is x: label (b) = x. For any x in
D, the inverse label −1 (x) is the box in B that represents x.
2. Each tuple t=(x1 ,...,xn ) of any n-adic relation r in R is rep-
resented by a circle c in C, and label (c) = r. The inverse
label −1 (r) is a subset of C, which contains exactly one circle
for every tuple of r.
3. For each i from 1 to n, the i-th arc of the circle c for the
tuple t is the pair (c, label −1 (xi )). That arc is labeled with
the integer i, and it is said to link c to the box labeled xi .
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 167

Figure 7. An NGM that represents a Kripke model structure

4. The sets A, B, C, and L contain no elements other than those

specified in steps 1, 2, and 3.
5. There are no lines of identity: the set I is empty.
6. Since this construction defines a unique NGM G that is iso-
morphic to M, the definition of Φ(p) in terms of D and R
can be mapped to an equivalent evaluation function Ψ(p) in
terms of G.
For finite models, these steps can be translated to a computer
program that constructs G from M and Ψ from Φ. For infinite mod-
els, they should be considered a specification rather than a construc-
tion. By this specification, D and R are subsets of L. Therefore,
there would always be enough labels for the boxes and circles, even
if D and R happen to be uncoutably infinite.
• Kripke’s possible worlds. Any Kripke model structure M =
(K,R,Φ) can be represented by a nested graph model with one level
of nesting. The outermost context of G contains one box for every
world w in K and one circle for every pair (wi ,wj ) in the accessibility
relation R. Figure 7 shows such an NGM in which each of the five
outer boxes contains a nested NGM that represents a Tarski-style
model of some possible world.
The box labeled w0 represents the real world, and the boxes
labeled w1 to w4 represent worlds that are accessible from the real
world. The circles labeled R represent instances of the accessibility
relation, and the arrows show which worlds are accessible from any
other. Formally, the following construction defines an isomorphism
from any Kripke model structure M to an NGM G = (A,B,C,L,I):
168 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 8. An NGM with counterparts in multiple worlds

1. For each possible world wi in K, let the set B have a box bi ,

which contains a flat NGM W that represents a Tarski-style
model for wi . Let the label of the box bi be the world wi .
2. For each pair (wi , wj ) in the accessibility relation R, let the
set C have a circle c with the label “R”, and let the set A
have two arcs: an arc (c, bi ) with the label “1” and an arc
(c, bj ) with the label “2”. (In Figure 7, an arrow pointing
toward the circle marks arc 1, and an arrow pointing away
marks arc 2.)
3. The sets A, B, and C have no elements other than those
specified in steps 1 and 2. Let the set L be the union of
all the labels specified in those steps: L=K∪{“R”,“1”,“2”}.
The arcs, boxes, circles, and labels in any NGM W nested in
a box bi in B are derived from the Tarski-style model for the
world wi .
4. There are no lines of identity: the set I is empty.
5. Since this construction defines a unique NGM G that is iso-
morphic to M, the definition of Φ for M can be mapped to
an equivalent evaluation function Ψ for G.
• Models for quantified modal logic. Kripke’s original model
theory was designed for propositional modal logic, which does not
support quantified variables that range over individuals. When
quantification is added to modal logic, variables may refer to in-
dividuals that “exist” in more than one world. Figure 8 shows an
extension to the Kripke models that allows individuals in one world
to have counterparts in other worlds.
At the top of Figure 8, two individuals, represented by boxes
labeled a and b, are connected by coreference links to some of the
boxes of the nested graphs. The box labeled w0 represents a Tarski-
style model for the real world, in which two individuals are marked
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 169

as identical to a and b by coreference links. The box labeled w1 rep-

resents some possible world in which two individuals are marked as
counterparts for a and b by coreference links, and w2 represents
another possible world in which only one individual has a counter-
part for b. The two coreference links attached to box a represent a
line of identity that contains three boxes, and the three coreference
links attached to box b represent a line of identity that contains
four boxes.
An NGM for quantified modal logic, G = (A,B,C,L,I), can be
constructed by starting with the first three steps for an NGM for a
Kripke-style model and continuing with the following:
1. For every individual x that has counterparts in two or more
worlds, add x to the set of labels L.
2. Add a box b to B with label(b) = x.
3. For every world w that has a counterpart of x, there must be
a nested NGM that has some box bw that represents x.
4. Add a line of identity i to I consisting of the box b from step
#2 and every bw from step #3:
i = {b} ∪ {bw | w is a world that has a counterpart of x}.
If all the boxes in the line of identity i have the same label, then that
label could be considered a rigid identifier of the individual across
multiple worlds. This construction, however, does not require rigid
identifiers: the boxes that represent the same individual in different
worlds may have different labels.
• Models for temporal logic. Prior (1968) showed that the op-
erators
and ♦ could be interpreted as the temporal operators
sometimes and always. That interpretation creates a modal-like
version of temporal logic whose semantics can be formalized with
Kripke-style models. For such logics, an NGM such as Figure 8
could be interpreted as a model of a sequence of events, in which
each wi represents a snapshot of one event in the sequence, and
the relation R represents the next relation of each snapshot to its
successor.
As an example, Figure 8 might represent an encounter between
a mouse a and a cat b. At time t = 0, the snapshot w0 represents
a model of an event in which the cat b catches the mouse a. In
w1 , b eats a. In w2 , b is licking his lips, but a no longer exists.
The cat b has a counterpart in all three snapshots, but the mouse
a exists in just the first 2. The boxes in the snapshots that have
no links to boxes outside their snapshot represent entities such as
actions or aspects of actions, which exist only for the duration of
one snapshot.
170 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 8 illustrates a version of temporal logic in which the

snapshots are linearly ordered. An NGM could also represent branch-
ing time, in which the snapshots for the future lie on multiple
branches, each of which represents a different option that the cat
or the mouse might choose. Branching models are especially useful
for game-playing programs that analyze options many steps into
the future.
• Barcan models. With quantified modal logic, the quantifiers
may interact with the modal operators in various ways. The Barcan
formula imposes the strong constraint that the necessity operator
commutes with universal quantifiers over individuals:
(∀x)
P (x) ≡
(∀x)P(x).
In terms of Kripke-style models or NGMs, the Barcan con-
straint implies that all worlds accessible from a given world must
have exactly the same individuals. To enforce that constraint, a
Barcan NGM can be defined as a G = (A,B,C,L,I) for quantified
modal logic whose boxes B are partitioned in an equivalence class
E with the following properties:
1. Every e in equivalence class E is the union of two disjoint
sets of boxes, e = B1 ∪ B2 , where the boxes in B1 represent
individuals and the boxes in B2 represent worlds.
2. For every box b in B1 , b contains no nested NGM, and the
label(b) = x for some individual x.
3. For every box b in B2 , b contains a nested NGM H that
represents some world w, label(b) = w, and there is an iso-
morphism f that maps the boxes of H to the boxes in B1 .
4. For every box b in B1 , there exists a line of identity i in I
that consists of the box b and the boxes of each nested NGM
that are isomorphic to b:
i = {b} ∪ {d | d is a box of some NGM nested in a box of
B2 for which f (d) = b}.
5. There are no lines of identity in I other than those determined
in step #4.
In short, each equivalence class contains a set of individual boxes
B1 and a set of world boxes B2 . Each world box contains a nested
NGM whose boxes are in a one-to-one correspondence with the
individual boxes of B1 . Each individual box has a coreference link
to the corresponding box of each NGM nested in a world box of B2 .

This discussion shows how various Kripke-style models can be converted

to isomorphic NGMs. That conversion enables different kinds of model
structures to be compared within a common framework. The next two
sections of this paper show that NGMs combined with Dunn’s semantics
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 171

can represent a wider range of semantic structures and methods of reason-

ing.

6. BEYOND KRIPKE SEMANTICS

As the examples in Section 5 show, nested graph models can represent
the equivalent of Kripke models for a wide range of logics. But Kripke
models, which use only a single level of nesting, do not take full advan-
tage of the representational options of NGMs. The possibility of multiple
levels of nesting makes NGMs significantly more expressive than Kripke’s
model structures, but questions arise about what they actually express. In
criticizing Kripke’s models, Quine (1972) noted that models can be used
to prove that certain axioms are consistent, but they don’t explain the
intended meaning of those axioms:
The notion of possible world did indeed contribute to the seman-
tics of modal logic, and it behooves us to recognize the nature of
its contribution: it led to Kripke’s precocious and significant the-
ory of models of modal logic. Models afford consistency proofs;
also they have heuristic value; but they do not constitute expli-
cation. Models, however clear they be in themselves, may leave
us at a loss for the primary, intended interpretation.
Quine’s criticisms apply with equal or greater force to NGMs. Al-
though the metaphor of possible worlds raises serious ontological ques-
tions, it lends some aura of meaningfulness to the entities that make up
the models. As purely set theoretical constructions, NGMs dispense with
the dubious ontology of possible worlds, but their networks of boxes and
circles have even less intuitive meaning.
To illustrate the issues, Figure 9 shows a conceptual graph with two
levels of nesting to represent the sentence Tom believes that Mary wants
to marry a sailor. The type labels of the contexts indicate how the nested
CGs are interpreted: what Tom believes is a proposition stated by the
CG nested in the context of type Proposition; what Mary wants is a
situation described by the proposition stated by the CG nested in the
context of type Situation. Relations of type (Expr) show that Tom and
Mary are the experiencers of states of believing or wanting, and relations
of type (Thme) show that the themes of those states are propositions or
situations.
When a CG is in the outermost context or when it is nested in a
concept of type Proposition, it states a proposition. When a CG is nested
inside a concept of type Situation, the stated proposition describes the
situation. When a context is translated to predicate calculus, the result
depends on the type label of the context. In the following translation, the
first line represents the subgraph outside the nested contexts, the second
172 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 9. A conceptual graph with two nested contexts

and third lines represent the subgraph for Tom’s belief, and the fourth line
represents the subgraph for Mary’s desire:
(∃a:Person)(∃b:Believe)(name(a,‘Tom’) ∧ expr(a,b) ∧ thme(b,
(∃c:Person)(∃d:Want)(∃e:Situation)
(name(c,‘Mary’)∧ expr(d,c)∧ (thme(d,e) ∧ dscr(e,
(∃f :Marry)(∃g:Sailor)(agnt(f ,c) ∧ thme(f ,g))))))
If a CG is outside any context, the default translation treats it as a
statement of a proposition. Therefore, the part of Figure 9 inside the con-
text of type Proposition is translated in the same way as the part outside
that context. For the part nested inside the context of type Situation,
the description predicate dscr relates the situation e to the statement of
the proposition.
As the translation to predicate calculus illustrates, the nested CG
contexts map to formulas that are nested as arguments of predicates, such
as thme or dscr. Such graphs or formulas can be treated as examples of
Tarski’s stratified metalevels, in which a proposition expressed in the outer
context can make a statement about a proposition in the nested context,
which may in turn make a statement about another proposition nested
even more deeply. A nested graph model for such propositions would have
the same kind of nested structure.
To show how the denotation of the CG in Figure 9 (or its translation
to predicate calculus) is evaluated, consider the NGM in Figure 10, which
represents some aspect of the world, including some of Tom’s beliefs. The
outermost context of Figure 10 represents some information known to an
outside observer who uttered the original sentence Tom believes that Mary
wants to marry a sailor. The context labeled #4 contains some of Tom’s
beliefs, including his mistaken belief that person #5 is named Jane, even
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 173

Figure 10. An NGM for which Figure 9 has denotation true.

though #5 is coreferent with person #3, who is known to the outside

observer as Mary. The evaluation of Figure 9 in terms of Figure 10 is
based on the method of outside-in evaluation, which Peirce (1909) called
endoporeutic.
Syntactically, Figure 10 is a well formed CG, but it is limited to a
more primitive subset of features than Figure 9. Before the denotation
of Figure 9 can be evaluated in terms of Figure 10, each concept node of
the CG must be replaced by a subgraph that uses the same features. The
concept [Person: Tom], for example, may be considered an abbreviation
for a CG that uses only the primitive features:
(Person)—[∃]→(Name)→[“Tom”]—(Word)
This graph says that there exists something [∃] for which the monadic
predicate (Person) is true, and it has as name the character string “Tom”,
for which the monadic predicate (Word) is true. This graph has denota-
tion true in terms of Figure 10 because every part of it is either identical
to or implied by a matching part of Figure 10; the only part that is not
identical is the existential quantifier ∃, which is implied by the constant
#1. In general, a conceptual graph g with no nested contexts is true in
terms of a flat model m if and only if there exists a projection of g into
m (Sowa 1984), where a projection is defined as a mapping from g into
some subgraph of m for which every node of g is either identical to or a
generalization of the corresponding node of m.
For nested CGs, projections are used to evaluate the denotations of
subgraphs in each context, but more information must be considered: the
174 JOHN F. SOWA

nesting structure, the types of contexts, and the relations attached to the
contexts. Figures 9 and 10 illustrate an important special case in which
there are no negations, the nesting struture is the same, and the corre-
sponding contexts have the same types and attached relations. For that
case, the denotation is true if the subgraph of Figure 9 in each context has
a projection into the corresponding subgraph of Figure 10. The evaluation
starts from the outside and moves inward:

1. The first step begins by matching the outermost context of Figure 9

to the outermost context of Figure 10. When Figure 9 is converted
to the same primitives as Figure 10, the projection succeeds. If the
projection had failed, the denotation would be false, and further
evaluation of the nested contexts would be irrelevant.
2. The evaluation continues by determining whether the part of Figure
9 nested one level deep has a projection into the corresponding
part of Figure 10. In this case, the projection is blocked because
Tom falsely believes that Mary has the name Jane. Nevertheless,
the node [#5], which represents Jane in Tom’s belief, is coreferent
with the outer node [#3], which represents the person whose actual
name is Mary. The projection can succeed if the subgraph with the
name Mary may be imported (copied) from the outer context to the
inner context. Since the original sentence was uttered by somebody
who knew Mary’s name, the speaker used the name Mary in that
context, even though Tom believed she was named Jane. Therefore,
the correct name may be used to evaluate the denotation. When
the subgraph →(Name)→[“Mary”]—(Word) is imported into
the context and attached to node [#5], the projection succeeds.
3. Finally, the part of Figure 9 nested two levels deep must have a
projection into the corresponding part of Figure 10. In this case,
the projection is blocked because concept [#11] is not marked as
a sailor. Nevertheless, that node is coreferent with concept [#7],
which is marked as a sailor. Since the scope of Tom’s belief in-
cludes both contexts #4 and #8, the subgraph —(Sailor) may
be imported from context #4 and attached to concept [#11]. As
a result, the modified version Figure 9 can be projected into the
modified version of Figure 10, and the denotation is true.

As this example illustrates, additional information may have to be im-

ported into a context when the evaluation process reaches it. The import
conditions may depend on the knowledge, belief, or intention of some agent
who knows, believes, or intends the context to be true. For this example,
the mental attitudes of two agents are significant: Tom’s belief and some
outside observer’s knowledge; although Tom’s belief about Mary’s desire
is relevant, Mary’s actual desire is not. The type of context, the attached
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 175

relations, and the attitudes of the agents determines what information can
be imported.
By supporting multiple levels of nesting, NGMs can represent struc-
tures that are significantly richer than Kripke models. But the intended
meaning of those structures and the methods for evaluating denotations
raise seven key questions:
1. How does Peirce’s method of endoporeutic relate to Tarski’s method
for evaluating the denotation of a formula in first-order logic?
2. To what extent does the nesting increase the expressive power of
an NGM in comparison to a Tarski-style relational structure or a
Kripke-style model structure?
3. Import rules add a feature that is not present in any version of
Tarski’s or Kripke’s evaluation function. What is their model-
theoretic justification?
4. How are NGMs related to Dunn’s semantics, Tarski’s stratified met-
alevels, and other semantic theories? How is the NGM formalism
related to other graph formalisms, such as SNePS (Shapiro 1979;
Shapiro & Rappaport 1992)?
5. The nested contexts are governed by concepts such as Believe and
Want, which represent two kinds of propositional attitudes. But
natural languages have hundreds or thousands of verbs that express
some kind of mental attitude about a proposition stated in a subor-
dinate clause. How could the evaluation function take into account
all the conditions implied by each of those verbs or the events they
represent?
6. The evaluation of Figure 9 depends on the mental attitudes of
several agents, such as Tom, Mary, and an outside observer who
presumably uttered the original sentence. Is it always necessary
to consider multiple agents and the structure of the linguistic dis-
course? How can the effects of such interactions be analyzed and
formalized in the evaluation function?
7. Finally, what is the ontological status of entities that are supposed
to “exist” within a context? What is their “intended interpretation”
in Quine’s sense? If they don’t represent things in possible worlds,
what do they represent or correspond to in the real world?
These questions lead to open research issues in logic, linguistics, and phi-
losophy. A definitive answer to all of them is far beyond the scope of this
article, but a brief discussion of each of them is sufficient to show that the
formalism of NGMs combined with Dunn’s semantics and Peirce’s endo-
poreutic provides a powerful method for addressing them.
Since Peirce developed endoporeutic about thirty years before Tarski,
he never related it to Tarski’s approach. But he did relate it to the detailed
model-theoretic analyses of medieval logicians such as Ockham (1323).
176 JOHN F. SOWA

Peirce (1885) used model-theoretic arguments to justify the rules of in-

ference for his algebraic notation for predicate calculus. For existential
graphs, Peirce (1909) defined endoporeutic as an evaluation method that
is logically equivalent to Tarski’s. That equivalence was not recognized
until Hilpinen (1982) showed that Peirce’s endoporeutic could be viewed
as a version of game-theoretical semantics by Hintikka (1973). Sowa (1984)
used a game-theoretical method to define the model theory for the first-
order subset of conceptual graphs. For an introductory textbook on model
theory, Barwise and Etchemendy (1993) adopted game-theoretical seman-
tics because it is easier to explain than Tarski’s original method. For
evaluating NGMs, it is especially convenient because it can accommodate
various extensions, such as import conditions and discourse constraints,
while the evaluation progresses from one level of nesting to the next (Hin-
tikka & Kulas 1985).
The flexibility of game-theoretical semantics allows it to accommodate
the insights and mechanisms of dynamic semantics, which uses discourse
information while determining the semantics of NL sentences (Karttunen
1976; Heim 1982; Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991). Veltman (1996) char-
acterized dynamic semantics by the slogan “You know the meaning of a
sentence if you know the change it brings about in the information state
of anyone who accepts the news conveyed by it.” Dynamic semantics is
complementary to Hintikka’s game-theoretical semantics and Peirce’s en-
doporeutic.

• Peirce developed the endoporeutic as a formalization of Ockham’s

method of evaluating the truth conditions of sentences in Latin,
and Hintikka developed game-theoretical semantics as a simpler but
more general method for evaluating truth conditions than Tarski’s.
• Karttunen and Heim were addressing the problem of incorporat-
ing new information into a semantic representation during natu-
ral language discourse. They considered truth conditions to be an
important, but solvable problem compared to the many unsolved
problems of anaphoric references.
• The method of outside-in evaluation that characterizes both en-
doporeutic and game-theoretical semantics makes the evaluation
procedure more amenable to the introduction of new information.
As an example, the evaluation of Figure 9 in terms of Figure 10
allows information to be imported as the evaluation proceeds from
one context to the next. The discourse constraints of dynamic se-
mantics can also be enforced as each new context is entered.

More work is needed to reconcile and synthesize the various theories, but
this brief summary sketches the outlines of how such a reconcilation could
be formalized.
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 177

Figure 11. A flattened version of Figure 10.

Although NGMs can accommodate many kinds of relationships that

Tarski and Kripke never considered, they remain within the framework
of first-order semantics. In principle, any NGM can be translated to a
flat NGM, which can be used to evaluate denotations by Tarski’s original
approach. As an example, Figure 11 shows a flattened version of Figure 10.
In order to preserve information about the nesting structure, the method
of flattening attaches an extra argument to show the context of each circle
and links each box to its containing context by a relation of type IsIn.
Coreference links in the NGM are replaced by a three-argument equality
relation (EQ), in which the third argument shows the context in which
two individuals are considered to be equal.
The conversion from Figure 10 to Figure 11 is similar to the trans-
lation from the CG notation with nested contexts to Shapiro’s SNePS
notation, in which nested contexts are replaced by propositional nodes to
which the relations are attached. Both notations are capable of express-
ing logically equivalent information. Formally, any NGM G = (A,B,C,L,I)
can be converted to a flat NGM F = (FA,FB,FC,FL,FI) by the following
construction:
1. For every box b of G or of any NGM nested in G, let FB have a
unique box fb, let label(b) be in FL, and let label(fb) = label(b).
2. For every circle c in G or in any NGM nested in G, let FC have a
unique circle fc, let label(c) be in FL, and let label(fc) = label(c).
3. For every arc a=(c, b) in G or in any NGM nested in G, let FA have
an arc fa = (fc,fb) where fc is the circle that corresponds to c, fb
is the box that corresponds to b, and label(fa) = label(a).
178 JOHN F. SOWA

4. Add the strings “IsIn” and “EQ” to the labels in FL. (If step #3
had already introduced either of those labels in FL, then append
some string to the previous labels that is sufficient to distinguish
them from all other labels in FL.)
5. For every box fb in FB whose corresponding box b contains a nested
NGM H, the box fb shall not contain any nested NGM. In addition,
• For every box d of H whose corresponding box is fd in FB,
add a circle e in FC with label(e) = ”IsIn” and with two
additional arcs in FA: (e,fd ) with label 1 and (e,fb) with
label 2.
• For every circle c of H whose corresponding circle is fc in FC,
add an arc (fc,fb) to FA. If c has n arcs, let label((fc,fb)) =
n + 1.
6. Let the set FI be empty, and for every line of identity i in I, let H
be the NGM whose boxes have a nonempty overlap with i and all
other boxes of i are boxes of some NGM nested in H. Select some
box b of H which is also in i and whose corresponding box in FB is
fb. For every box d in i other than b whose corresponding box in
FB is fd, add a circle c to FC for which label(c)=“EQ”, add an arc
(c,fb) with label 1 to FA, add an arc (c,fd ) with label 2 to FA, and
if the box fd is linked to a box fx by a circle with the label “IsIn”,
add an arc (c,fx ) with label 3 to FA.

The verbosity of this specification is typical of translations from graphs

to text: graphs are easier to see or draw than to describe in words or in
algebra.
The method used to map a nested graph model to a flat model can be
generalized to a method for translating a formalism with nested contexts,
such as conceptual graphs, to a formalism with propositional nodes but no
nesting, such as SNePS. In effect, the nesting is an explicit representation
of Tarski’s stratified metalevels, in which higher levels are able to state
propositions about both the syntax and semantics of propositions stated
at any lower level. When two or more levels are flattened to a single level,
additional arguments must be added to the relations in order to indicate
which level they came from. The process of flattening demonstrates how a
purely first-order model theory is supported: propositions are represented
by nodes that represent individual entities of type Proposition. The
flattened models correspond to a Tarski-style model, and the flattened
languages are first-order logics, whose denotations can be evaluated by a
Tarski-style method.
Although nested contexts do not increase the theoretical complexity
beyond first-order logic, they simplify the language by eliminating the
extra arguments needed to distinguish contexts in a flat model. The con-
texts also separate the metalevel propositions about a context from the
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 179

object-level propositions within a context. That separation facilitates the

introduction of Dunn’s semantics into the langauge:
1. The modal operators
and ♦ or the equivalent CG relations Necs
and Psbl make metalevel assertions that the nested propositions
they govern are provable from the laws or consistent with the laws.
2. The laws themselves, which are asserted in a metalevel outside the
context governed by the modal operators, are all stated in FOL, and
conventional theorem provers can be used to check the provability
or consistency. (For undecidable logics, only some of the check-
ing may be computable, but that is better than Kripke’s primitive
accessibility relation, which eliminates any possibility of checking.)
3. Formally, the laws, facts, and propositions governed by the modal
operators are all stated in FOL, and conventional theorem provers
can be used to check their provability or consistency.
4. Computationally, the separation between the metalevel and the ob-
ject level allows the two kinds of reasoning to be performed inde-
pendently, as illustrated by the example in Section 4 about Joe’s
belief in astrology.
5. Any kind of reasoning that is performed with modal operators de-
fined by Kripke semantics can also be performed when the operators
are defined in terms of laws and facts. But Dunn’s semantics also
makes it possible to perform metametalevel reasoning about the
propositions considered as laws or facts. In particular, probabili-
ties and heuristics can be used to select laws at the metametalevel,
while logical deduction with those laws is used at the lower levels.
The import rules for copying information compensate for the possibly in-
complete information in a context. To use the terms of Reiter (1978), a
context represents an open world, in contrast to Hintikka’s maximally con-
sistent model sets, which represent closed worlds. Computationally, the
infinite model sets contain far too much information to be comprehended
or manipulated in any useful way. A context is a finite excerpt from a
model set in the same sense that a situation is a finite excerpt from a
possible world. Figure 12 shows mappings from a Kripke possible world w
to a description of w as a Hintikka model set M or a finite excerpt from
w as a Barwise and Perry situation s. Then M and s may be mapped to
a McCarthy context C .
From a possible world w, the mapping to the right extracts an excerpt
as a situation s, which may be described by the propositions in a context
C . From the same world w, the downward mapping leads to a description
of w as a model set M , from which an equivalent excerpt would produce the
same context C . The symbol |= represents semantic entailment: w entails
M, and s entails C. The ultimate justification for the import rules is the
preservation of the truth conditions that make Figure 12 a commutative
180 JOHN F. SOWA

Figure 12. Ways of mapping possible worlds to contexts.

diagram: the alternate routes through the diagram must lead to logically
equivalent results.
The combined mappings in Figure 12 replace the mysterious possible
worlds with finite, computable contexts. Hintikka’s model sets support
operations on well-defined symbols instead of imaginary worlds, but they
may still be infinite. Situations are finite, but like worlds they consist of
physical or fictitious objects that are not computable. The contexts in the
lower right of Figure 12 are the only things that can be represented and
manipulated in a digital computer. Any theory of semantics that is stated
in terms of possible worlds, model sets, or situations must ultimately be
mapped to a theory of contexts in order to be computable.
The discussion so far has addressed the first four of the seven key
questions on page 175. The next section addresses the last three ques-
tions, which involve the kinds of verbs that express mental attitudes, the
ontological status of the entities they represent, the roles of the agents who
have those attitudes, and the methods of reasoning about those attitudes.

7. THE INTENDED INTERPRETATION

Models and worlds have been interpreted in many different ways by people
who have formulated theories about them. Some have used models as
surrogates for worlds, but Lewis, among others, criticized such “ersatz
worlds” as inadequate. In a paper that acknowledged conversations with
Lewis, Montague (1967) explained why he objected to “the identification
of possible worlds with models”:
...two possible worlds may differ even though they may be indis-
tinguishable in all respects expressible in a given language (even
by open formulas). For instance, if the language refers only to
physical predicates, then we may consider two possible worlds,
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 181

consisting of exactly the same persons and physical objects, all

of which have exactly the same physical properties and stand in
exactly the same physical relations; then the two corresponding
models for our physical language will be identical. But the two
possible worlds may still differ, for example, in that in one every-
one believes the proposition that snow is white, while in the other
someone does not believe it.... This point might seem unimpor-
tant, but it looms large in any attempt to treat belief as a relation
between persons and propositions.
Montague’s objection does not hold for the NGM illustrated in Figure
10, Which includes entity #2 of type Believe and entity #6 of type
Want. Such a model can explicitly represent a situation in which one
person believes a proposition and another doesn’t. But the last sentence
by Montague indicates the crux of the problem: his models did not include
entities of type Believe. Instead, he hoped to “treat belief as a [dyadic]
relation between persons and propositions.”
In that same paper, Montague outlined his method for reducing “four
types of entities – experiences, events, tasks, obligations – to [dyadic] pred-
icates.” But he used those predicates in statements governed by modal
operators such as obligatory:
Obligations can probably best be regarded as the same sort of
things as tasks and experiences, that is, as relations-in-intension
between persons and moments; for instance, the obligation to
give Smith a horse can be identified with the predicate expressed
by ‘x gives Smith a horse at t’. We should scrutinize, in this
context also, the notion of partaking of a predicate. Notice that
if R is an obligation, to say that x bears the relation-in-intension
R to t is not to say that x has the obligation R at t, but rather
that x discharges or fulfills the obligation R at t. But how could
we say that x has at t the obligation R? This would amount to
the assertion that it is obligatory at t that x bear the relation-in-
intension R to some moment equal to or subsequent to t.
All of Montague’s paraphrases are attempts to avoid saying or implying
that there exist entities of type Obligation. To avoid that implication,
he required any sentence with the noun obligation to be paraphrased by a
sentence with the modal operator obligatory:
1. Jones has an obligation to give Smith a horse.
2. Obligatory(there exists a time t when Jones gives Smith a horse).
Only people who had been steeped in the mindset that underlies Mon-
tague’s semantics could imagine how this syntactic transformation might
have a semantic effect. As a mathematician, he hoped to transform his
new problem to a previously solved problem without introducing any new
assumptions. Therefore, he took the following ingenious, but circuitous
182 JOHN F. SOWA

route through a forest of notation decorated with subscripts, superscripts,

and Greek letters:
1. The noun obligation had to be eliminated because it implied the
existence of an unobservable entity of type Obligation.
2. Since Kripke had previously “solved” the problem of defining modal
operators, Montague transformed the noun to an adverb that rep-
resents a modal operator.
3. Then Kripke’s semantics could define the operator Obligatory
in terms of possible worlds and the accessibility relation between
worlds.
4. To evaluate the denotation of sentences for his model theory, Mon-
tague adopted Carnap’s idea that the intension of a sentence could
be defined as a function from possible worlds to truth values.
5. To construct those functions from simpler functions, Montague
(1970) assigned a lambda expression to every grammar rule for
his fragment of English. The parse tree for a sentence would then
determine a combination of lambda expressions that would define
the intension of a sentence in terms of simpler functions for each
part of speech.
6. With this construction, Montague restricted the variables of his
logic to refer only to physical objects, never to “experiences, events,
tasks, obligations.”
Montague’s tour de force eliminated references to unobservable entities
such as beliefs and obligations. Yet he pushed all the semantics associated
with beliefs and obligations into the dubious possible worlds, the mysteri-
ous accessibility relation between worlds, and the magical functions that
map possible worlds to truth values. Any of them is far more questionable
than the existence of beliefs and obligations; the combination is a reductio
ad absurdum.
Peirce had a much simpler and more realistic theory. For him, thoughts,
beliefs, and obligations are signs. The types of signs are independent of
any mind or brain, but the particular instances – or tokens as he called
them – exist in the brains of individual people, not in an undefined acces-
sibility relation between imaginary worlds. Those people can give evidence
of their internal signs by using external signs, such as sentences, contracts,
and handshakes. In his definition of sign, Peirce (1902) emphasized its
independence of any implementation in proteins or silicon:
I define a sign as something, A, which brings something, B, its in-
terpretant, into the same sort of correspondence with something,
C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. In this definition
I make no more reference to anything like the human mind than
I do when I define a line as the place within which a particle lies
during a lapse of time. (p. 235)
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 183

In terms of Dunn’s semantics, an obligation is a proposition used as a law

that determines a certain kind of behavior. If Jones has an obligation
to give Smith a horse, there exists some sign of that proposition — a
contract on paper, sound waves in air, or some neural excitation in a brain.
The semantics of the sign is independent of the medium, but critically
dependent on the triadic relation, which adds an interpretant B to the
dyad of sign A and object C. The interpretant is another sign, which is
essential for determining the modality of how A relates to B.
In 1906, Peirce introduced colors into his existential graphs to distin-
guish various kinds of modality and intentionality. Figure 4, for example,
used red to represent possibility in the EG for the sentence You can lead
a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. To distinguish the ac-
tual, modal, and intentional contexts illustrated in Figure 8, three kinds of
colors would be needed. Conveniently, the heraldic tinctures, which were
used to paint coats of arms in the middle ages, were grouped in three
classes: metal, color, and fur. Peirce adopted them for his three kinds
of contexts, each of which corresponded to one of his three categories:
Firstness (independent conception), Secondness (relative conception), and
Thirdness (mediating conception).
1. Actuality is Firstness, because it is what it is, independent of any-
thing else. Peirce used the metallic tincture argent (white back-
ground) for “the actual or true in a general or ordinary sense,” and
three other metals (or, fer, and plomb) for “the actual or true in
some special sense.”
2. Modality is Secondness, because it distinguishes the mode of a situ-
ation relative to what is actual: whenever the actual world changes,
the possibilities must also change. Peirce used four heraldic colors
to distinguish modalities: azure for logical possibility (dark blue)
and subjective possibility (light blue); gules (red) for objective pos-
sibility; vert (green) for “what is in the interrogative mood”; and
purpure (purple) for “freedom or ability.”
3. Intentionality is Thirdness, because it depends on the mediation of
some agent who distinguishes the intended situation from what is
actual. Peirce used four heraldic furs for intentionality: sable (gray)
for ”the metaphysically, or rationally, or secondarily necessitated”;
ermine (yellow) for “purpose or intention”; vair (brown) for “the
commanded”; and potent (orange) for “the compelled.”
Throughout his analyses, Peirce distinguished the logical operators, such
as ∧, ∼, and ∃, from the tinctures, which, he said, do not represent
...differences of the predicates, or significations of the graphs, but
of the predetermined objects to which the graphs are intended to
refer. Consequently, the Iconic idea of the System requires that
they should be represented, not by differentiations of the Graphs
184 JOHN F. SOWA

themselves but by appropriate visible characters of the surfaces

upon which the Graphs are marked.
In effect, Peirce did not consider the tinctures to be part of logic itself,
but of the metalanguage for describing how logic applies to the universe
of discourse:
The nature of the universe or universes of discourse (for several
may be referred to in a single assertion) in the rather unusual
cases in which such precision is required, is denoted either by us-
ing modifications of the heraldic tinctures, marked in something
like the usual manner in pale ink upon the surface, or by scribing
the graphs in colored inks.
Peirce’s later writings are fragmentary, incomplete, and mostly un-
published, but they are no more fragmentary and incomplete than most
modern publications about contexts. In fact, Peirce was more consistent in
distinguishing the syntax (oval enclosures), the semantics (“the universe or
universes of discourse”), and the pragmatics (the tinctures that “denote”
the “nature” of those universes).

Classifying contexts. Reasoning about modality requires a classifica-

tion of the types of contexts, their relationships to one another, and the
identification of certain propositions in a context as laws or facts. Any
of the tinctured contexts may be nested inside or outside the ovals repre-
senting negation. When combined with negation in all possible ways, each
tincture can represent a family of related modalities:
1. The first metallic tincture, argent, corresponds to the white back-
ground that Peirce used for his original existential graphs. When
combined with existence and conjunction, negations on a white
background support classical first-order logic about what is actu-
ally true or false “in an ordinary sense.” Negations on the other
metallic backgrounds support FOL for what is “actual in some spe-
cial sense.” A statement about the physical world, for example,
would be actual in an ordinary sense. But Peirce also considered
mathematical abstractions, such as Cantor’s hierarchy of infinite
sets, to be actual, but not in the same sense as ordinary physical
entities.
2. In the algebraic notation, ♦p means that p is possible. Then neces-
sity
p is defined as ∼ ♦ ∼ p. Impossibility is represented as ∼ ♦p
or equivalently
∼ p. Instead of the single symbol ♦, Peirce’s five
colors represent different versions of possibility; for each of them,
there is a corresponding interpretation of necessity, impossibility,
and contingency:
• Logical possibility. A dark blue context, Peirce’s equiva-
lent of ♦p, would mean that p is consistent or not provably
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 185

false. His version of
p, represented as dark blue between

two negations, would therefore mean that p is provable. Im-
possible ∼ ♦p would mean inconsistent or provably false.
• Subjective possibility. In light blue, ♦p would mean that
p is believable or not known to be false.
p would mean that
p is known or not believably false. This interpretation of ♦
and
is called epistemic logic.
• Objective possibility. In red, ♦p would mean that p is
physically possible. As an example, Peirce noted that it was
physically possible for him to raise his arm, even when he
was not at the moment doing so.
p would mean physical
necessity according to the laws of nature.
• Interrogative mood. In green, ♦p would mean that p is
questioned, and
p would mean that p is not questionably
false. This interpretation of ♦p corresponds to a proposition
p in a Prolog goal or the where-clause of an SQL query.
• Freedom. In purple, ♦p would mean that p is free or per-
missible;
p would mean that p is obligatory or not permis-
sibly false; ∼ ♦p would mean that p is not permissible or
illegal; and ♦ ∼ p would mean that p is permissibly false or
optional. This interpretation of ♦ and
is called deontic
logic.
3. The heraldic furs represent various kinds of intentions, but Peirce
did not explore the detailed interactions of the furs with negations
or with each other. Don Roberts (1973) suggested some combi-
nations, such as negation with the tinctures gules and potent to
represent The quality of mercy is not strained.
Although Peirce’s three-way classification of contexts is useful, he did not
work out their implications in detail. He wrote that the complete classi-
fication of “all the conceptions of logic” was “a labor for generations of
analysts, not for one.”

Multimodal reasoning. As the multiple axioms for modal logic indi-

cate, there is no single version that is adequate for all applications. The
complexities increase when different interpretations of modality are mixed,
as in Peirce’s five versions of possibility, which could be represented by col-
ors or by subscripts, such as ♦1 , ♦2 , ..., ♦5 . Each of those modalities is
derived from a different set of laws, which interact in various ways with
the other laws:
• The combination
3 ♦1 p, for example, would mean that it is subjec-
tively necessary that p is logically possible. In other words, someone
must know that ♦1 p.
186 JOHN F. SOWA

• Since what is known must be true, the following theorem would

hold for that combination of modalities:
3 ♦1 p ⊃ ♦1 p.
Similar analysis would be required to derive the axioms and theorems
for all possible combinations of the five kinds of possibility with the five
kinds of necessity. Since subjective possibility depends on the subject, the
number of combinations increases further when multiple agents interact.
By introducing contexts, McCarthy hoped to reduce the prolifera-
tion of modalities to a single mechanism of metalevel reasoning about
the propositions that are true in a context. By supporting a more detailed
representation than the operators ♦ and
, the dyadic entailment rela-
tion and the triadic legislation relation support metalevel reasoning about
the laws, facts, and their implications. Following are some implications of
Peirce’s five kinds of possibility:
• Logical possibility. The only statements that are logically nec-
essary are tautologies: those statements that are entailed by the
empty set. No special lawgiver is needed for the empty set; alter-
natively, every agent may be assumed to legislate the empty set:
{} = {p:Proposition | (∀a:Agent)(∀x:Entity)legislate(a, p, x)}.
The empty set is the set of all propositions p that every agent a
legislates as a law for every entity x.
• Subjective possibility. A proposition p is subjectively possible
for an agent a if a does not know p to be false. The subjective laws
for any agent a are all the propositions that a knows:
SubjectiveLaws(a) = {p:Proposition | know(a, p)}.
That principle of subjective possibility can be stated in the follow-
ing axiom:
(∀a:Agent)(∀p:Proposition)(∀x:Entity) (legislate(a, p, x) ≡
know(a, x |= p)).
For any agent a, proposition p, and entity x, the agent a legislates
p as a law for x if and only if a knows that x entails p.
• Objective possibility. The laws of nature define what is physi-
cally possible. The symbol God may be used as a place holder for
the lawgiver:
LawsOfNature = {p:Proposition | (∀x:Entity)legislate(God,p, x)}.
If God is assumed to be omniscient, this set is the same as every-
thing God knows or SubjectiveLaws(God). What is subjective for
God is objective for everyone else.
• Interrogative mood. A proposition is not questioned if it is
part of the common knowledge of the parties to a conversation.
For two agents a and b, common knowledge can be defined as the
intersection of their subjective knowledge or laws:
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 187

CommonKnowledge(a, b) = SubjectiveLaws(a) ∩
SubjectiveLaws(b).

• Freedom. Whatever is free or permissible is consistent with the

laws, rules, regulations, ordnances, or policies of some lawgiver who
has the authority to legislate what is obligatory for x:
Obligatory(x) = {p:Proposition | (∃a:Agent)(authority(a, x) ∧
legislate(a, p, x)}.
This interpretation, which defines deontic logic, makes it a weak
version of modal logic since consistency is weaker than truth. The
usual modal axioms
p ⊃ p and p ⊃ ♦p do not hold for deontic
logic, since people can and do violate laws.
Reasoning at the metalevel of laws and facts is common practice in courts.
In the United States, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; any
law or regulation of the U.S. government or any state, county, or city in the
U.S. must be consistent with the U.S. Constitution. But the tautologies
and laws of nature are established by an even higher authority. No one
can be forced to obey a law that is logically or physically impossible.
To relate events to the agents who form plans and execute them, Brat-
man (1987) distinguished three determining factors: beliefs, desires, and
intentions (BDI). He insisted that all three are essential and that none of
them can be reduced to the other two. Peirce would have agreed: the
appetitive aspect of desire is a kind of Firstness; belief is a kind of Sec-
ondness that relates a proposition to a situation; and intention is a kind of
Thirdness that relates an agent, a situation, and the agent’s plan for ac-
tion in the situation. To formalize Bratman’s theory in Kripke-style model
structures, Cohen and Levesque (1990) extended Kripke’s triples to BDI
octuples of the form (Θ,P,E,Agnt,T,B,G,Φ):
1. Θ is a set of entities called things;
2. P is a set of entities called people;
3. E is a set of event types;
4. Agnt is a function defined over events, which specifies some entity
in P as the agent of the event;
5. T is a set of possible worlds or courses of events, each of which is a
function from a sequence Z of time points to event types in E;
6. B(w1 ,p,t,w2 ) is a belief accessibility relation, which relates a course
of events w1 , a person p, and a time point t to some course of events
w2 that is accessible from w1 according to p’s beliefs;
7. G(w1 ,p,t,w2 ) is a goal accessibility relation, which relates a course
of events w1 , a person p, and a time point t to some course of events
w2 that is accessible from w1 according to p’s goals;
8. Φ is an evaluation function similar to Kripke’s Φ.
188 JOHN F. SOWA

The list of features in the BDI octuples is a good summary of the kinds of
information that any formalization of intentionality must accommodate.
But it also demonstrates the limitations of Kripke-style models in compar-
ison to the more general nested graph models:
• The multiplicity of Greek letters and subscripts tends to frighten
nonmathemticians, but it is not a serious defect of the formalism.
NGMs would represent logically equivalent information in a more
readable form, but with no reduction in the total amount.
• A more serious limitation is the information that BDI octuples leave
as undefined primitives: the belief accessibility relation B and
the goal accessibility relation G. With Dunn’s semantics, B and
G would be replaced by selections of laws and facts, which explain
why some courses of events are accessible from others.
• The sets Θ, P, and E constitute an ontology with only three con-
cept types: Thing, Person, and Event (which is actually the
supertype of an open-ended number of event types). A more re-
alistic ontology would require a much richer collection of concept
types, their interrelationships, and their associated axioms. Some
such ontology is a prerequisite for constructing models, but the def-
inition of the function Φ for evaluating denotations is independent
of any particular ontology.
• The set of event types E would correspond to the set of verb senses
in natural languages, which has a cardinality between 104 and 105 .
The function Agnt, which specifies the agent of an event type, is
just one of several thematic roles that must be specified for each
event type. In addition to the types and roles, an ontology must
also specify the definitions and axioms for each type.
• The definitions and axioms of an ontology are the laws that enable
Dunn’s semantics to derive accessibility relations such as B and G
instead of assuming them as undefined primitives.
• The axioms of the ontology and the discourse constraints of dy-
namic semantics determine the conditions for importing informa-
tion from one context to another when denotations are evaluated.
• The formal definition of NGMs in Section 5 is general enough to
accommodate any ontology for any domain of discourse, and the
evaluation methods of Peirce and Hintikka provide a flexible model
theory that can support dynamic semantics.
This comparison of BDI models with nested graph models summarizes the
arguments presented in this paper: Kripke-style models even with the BDI
extensions relegate some of the most significant semantics to undefined and
undefinable accessibility relations; Dunn’s semantics can use the axioms
of an ontology as the laws that define the accessibility relations; Peirce-
Kamp-McCarthy contexts combined with Tarski’s metalevels can support
 LAWS, FACTS, AND CONTEXTS 189

metalevel reasoning about the selection of laws and facts; the outside-in
evaluation method of Peirce’s endoporeutic or Hintikka’s game-theoretical
semantics can accommodate the discourse constraints of dynamic seman-
tics; and nested graph models are flexible enough to represent all of the
above. NGMs, by themselves, cannot solve all the problems of seman-
tics, but they can incorporate ongoing research from logic, linguistics, and
philosophy into a computable framework.

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