Causes require time to propagate their effects. We can see stars at night because of the light they emitted hundreds of years ago. We can smell the fragrant aroma of baking bread because heat gradually changed the structure of the food, emitting particles that traveled on the breeze. In this thesis, I investigate how people use temporal information to make causal inferences. I propose a rational framework for causal induction based on continuous-time evidence, examine human performance in passive and active (...) continuous-time causal learning tasks, and develop bounded rational accounts that can offer explanations for human causal judgments and intervention strategies. Chapters 2 and 3 review previous theoretical frameworks on causal induction, and empirical work on the role of time in causal induction, respectively. Chapter 4 develops a rational framework for processing temporal evidence. It provides an explanation for how delays shape human causal induction and accounts for human causal judgments across seven different temporal causal learning tasks. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 test how people passively or actively learn causal structures based on events unfolding in real time. I found people are capable temporal causal learners who successfully identify structures that involve generative and preventative relationships, as well as acyclic and cyclic connections. Nevertheless, the computational demands of normative learning could easily exceed human capacity. People’s causal judgments align better with an algorithm that approximates the normative solution via a simulation and local summary statistics scheme, suggesting the reliance on structurally local computation and temporally local evidence. People’s intervention decisions align better with a resource-rational model that emphasizes a balance between expected information and expected inferential complexity when choosing interventions. Chapter 7 shows that when given a limited period of observation, people not only focus on existing data, but also consider future possibilities, relying on extrapolated data to make inferences. This demonstrates the unique “continuing” feature of time, and how generalization plays a role in the utilization of temporal information. Chapter 8 synthesizes the findings of this thesis and proposes future research directions of causal learning in temporal contexts. (shrink)

Formal semantics constitutes the framework of this thesis, and the aim is to characterise the semantics of the progressive, as it appears in sentence. Max was running towards the station Among the problems is one known as the "imperfective paradox". According to intuitions, sentence entails, but no entailment holds between and. Max was running towards the station Max ran towards the station Max was running to the station Max ran to the station Since and would seem to have the same (...) logical form, they ought to have similar entailments. Why is this not so? This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part, containing chapters 2 to 5, evaluates the current formal theories that tackle the imperfective paradox. Solving the imperfective paradox consists of two tasks: the first is to characterise a semantic distinction between and, and the second is to supply a semantic analysis of the progressive that is sensitive to this distinction and so results in a solution to the imperfective paradox. According to how the current theories tackle these two tasks, they can be classified into three camps which I will name as follows: the Heterogeneous Strategy provides one approach for fulfilling the first task, the Eventual Outcome Strategy provides an approach for defining the semantics of the progressive, and the Event-based Strategy provides a further alternative for achieving the two tasks at hand. All these strategies are intuitively motivated, but we will argue that they are ultimately untenable. The Heterogeneous Strategy and the Event-based Strategy fail to mesh with the treatment of point adverbials such as "At 3pm", and the Eventual Outcome Strategy produces a definition of the progressive that is viciously circular. Thus although the current theories that tackle the imperfective paradox are highly intuitively motivated, we will ultimately show that the formulations of these intuitions give rise to conflicts and tensions when it comes to explaining the natural language data. The second part of the thesis, containing chapters 6 and 7, offers a new approach for tackling the imperfective paradox. This new approach invokes two tools; the interval-based temporal logic IQ, and Moens' event-based AI model of temporal reference. IQ is an interval-based temporal logic with several innovations. First, unlike the previous interval-based theories, IQ maintains a high level of homogeneity: an atomic sentence is true at an interval I only if it is true at all subintervals of I. Second, IQ offers a technique whereby temporal expressions can have representations that receive their semantic interpretation with respect to context. We use the roles of homogeneity and context in IQ to characterise the semantics of aspect, where the characterisation is based on Moens' model. This provides an arena in which to tackle the imperfective paradox anew. We explain the entailment between and, and at the same time explain why no entailment holds between and. Furthermore, we overcome the problems concerning the treatment of adverbials such as "At 3pm" that are encountered in the Heterogeneous Strategy and the Event-based Strategy, and, since we do not adopt the Eventual Outcome Strategy in defining the progressive, we overcome that strategy's problem of circularity. Hence our solution to the imperfective paradox will provide answers to the puzzles posed in the earlier chapters of the thesis. (shrink)

Humans are a species endowed with considerable cognitive plasticity, existing in a malleable social environment. As a result, behavioural constraints emerge, which ensure the smooth functioning of the whole. In order to enable the negotiation of social contracts, individuals are under pressure to adopt consistent behavioural track-records that instil trust in potential interaction partners. This leads to the emergence of stable selves. The pressure towards consistency facilitates the proliferation of normative relations. The arrival of language intensifies this consistency-enhancing pressure on (...) the individual, as it opens up the cognitive domain as an additional target of pressurization. (shrink)