<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Archiving and Interchange DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-archivearticle1.dtd">
<article xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Linguistic and Cultural Competencies in Dynamic Possible Worlds</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Lorenza Saettone</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Riccardo Fedriga</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Emanuele Micheli</string-name>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Scuola di Robotica</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Genoa</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="IT">Italy</country>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff1">
          <label>1</label>
          <institution>University of Bologna</institution>
          ,
          <country country="IT">Italy</country>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff2">
          <label>2</label>
          <institution>University of Genoa - DIBRIS</institution>
          ,
          <country country="IT">Italy</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <abstract>
        <p>Linguistic and Cultural Competences are closely linked, as they involve the ability to infer and trace truths within knowledge stored in memory. Humans respond to three interrelated questions: Logic, Epistemology, and Ontology. This paper defines a place for Cultural Competence within these philosophies through Epistemic Modal Logic and Dynamic Possible Worlds. Cultural Competence is crucial in social robots: pleasantness goes with it, but it also has practical functions, managing incomplete pieces of knowledge and shortening the customisation. The artificial agent simulates empathy and meta-cognition, enacting justified action plans that conform with ontology and its awareness thanks to the Euclidean S5 accessibility relation between possible worlds.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <kwd>eol&gt;Ontology</kwd>
        <kwd>Cultural Competence</kwd>
        <kwd>Epistemic Logic</kwd>
        <kwd>Robotics</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>1. Introduction</title>
      <p>
        Culture is a pivotal element in the world of acting and thinking: thus in the way of being humans.
Following Pico della Mirandola in his Oration on the Dignity of Man[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">1</xref>
        ], the human being was
born with an original lack. Nature did not provide us with any abilities that could make us survive
in environments: claws, strength, speed or mainly developed senses. However, the philosopher
continued, thanks to that structural void, we filled it with culture; hence humanity could adapt to
every biosphere, colonising the entire planet. Not having furs, they made garments; not having
claws, they forged weapons; not having the speed to escape, they equipped themselves with
shelters. In short, what represented a defect, an original mistake, became a space where creativity
and strategies could express themselves in diverse and profitable ways. Culture, or rather cultures,
represents the characteristic of our species with which we could inhabit every world (including
possible ones).
      </p>
      <p>
        Moreover, culture does not add meaning. It helps humans select information from a shared
world. It is an automatic reduction to manage redundancy and overcome flawed thinking. Culture
can be considered a sort of heuristic (one of the others). There is no strong relativism. In fact, it
is a simplification that intervenes in specific contexts and is always open to change by human
beings in the course of their action. Any influence of culture on cognition is eliminable in favour
of other strategies learned in the phylogenetic or ontogenetic processes. Elisabetta Lalumera[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ]
showed that the conditioning of language on the decision depends on how the task was set. It
is called "conceptual flexibility". It means that a concept is a set of strategies or procedures,
some provided by culture, that the individual use flexibly, depending on the type of task. In
line with this assumption, Lawrence Barsalou[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ] stated that a concept is a ’simulator’, which
generates different packets of information relevant to the category depending on the context.
Being linguistically competent cannot be divorced from the situation, the speakers, or the society
that equipped them with strategies.
      </p>
      <p>
        In short, Cultural Competence is one with Linguistic Competence, which, according to Diego
Marconi in The Lexical Competence[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
        ], is divided into inferential and referential competence.
Ontology is also inextricably linked to linguistic competence. It represents knowledge, its
relations and properties and is connected to the competence to infer within that knowledge stored
in the memory, referring to a world. Indeed, when knowing and solving problems, the human
being answers three interconnected questions that are the subject of three different philosophical
disciplines. "What is truth? How is a truth known? How is the world based on that truth?". The
ifrst is Logic, the second is Epistemology, and the third is Ontology. This article aims to define a
place for cultural competence within these specialisations (section 2), between epistemic modal
logic and dynamic possible worlds, proposing preliminary implementation solutions (section 3).
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>2. Cultural Competence</title>
      <p>Being culturally competent means understanding and behaving according to a specific culture.
A social object is a particular point of view, so cultural competence is strictly linked with
empathy and the ability to put oneself in others’ shoes and reason from their perspective. In
the introduction, we anticipated how linguistic competence is one with ontological competence,
i.e. the ability to refer to an external world (Epistemology) and infer within one’s knowledge
(Logic). Reference and reasoning are always flexible strategic choices, the heuristics of which
depend on multiple factors, such as those offered by culture, which, in essence, allows individuals
to simplify action, especially when explicit social goals are involved and the agent needs more
information to personalise their choices in a moment.</p>
      <sec id="sec-2-1">
        <title>2.1. Cultural Ontology</title>
        <p>
          Ontology is traditionally the discourse on Being. It is the explicit conceptualisation of the world,
or, somewhat, of a point of view on that domain. The totality is always an abstraction, an
approximate choice of what to focus on. It is impossible to grasp the whole at a single glance.
On the contrary, when we observe, we are always guided by previous patterns and theories,
which lead us to select only certain elements. The senses lead us to observe qualities and not
others; culture and language do likewise, defining meanings in which to catalogue elements in
the world based on their purposes. Weak relativism means that no antecedent theory by which
we observe is rigid - senses aside, however, which can be circumvented by employing téchne (if
electromagnetism is not visible, it becomes so through experimentation). We cannot deal with
complete ontologies, but always and only with implicit or explicit choices, with reductions of
meanings based on their usefulness. Even in Computer Science, the artificial agent will make
inferences on an abstraction, on a purpose-defined selection of classes, attributes and relations.
An omniscient robot has no efcfiiency. Gilbert Harman[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">5</xref>
          ] points out that, from a logical point
of view, every belief implies infinitely many completely trivial consequences, which are of no
interest to the purposes of an agent. It would be counterproductive for a nfiite rational subject to
’clutter’ his mind with such useless beliefs, and it is equally disadvantageous to devote too many
resources to making the robot reason without taking action[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
          ]. How to choose what is trivial and
what is not? The risk is to reason about systems with an explosion of ad hoc restrictions. It is as
if there is a starting background, and, depending on the circumstance, we cut out different figures
to focus on each time. One of the possible cutouts is that offered by culture.
        </p>
        <p>Cultural ontology (we can call it that) offers subjects a cross-section of reality to execute their
plans in agreement with other subjects. In this way, other individuals, sharing that common ground
of representational primitives, attributes and relations, in short of presuppositions, will be able to
anticipate each other’s knowledge, making abductive, defectible reasoning and acting even in the
presence of vague and ambiguous information, with limited computational resources. Why can
we understand a lapsus linguae, knowing what the speaker would have meant beyond the string
of sounds actually uttered? Because meaning does not depend simply on syntax and semantics,
on what is said, but on inferential skills about the implicit, which are possible precisely because
we share an external, factual world and the ontology co-created in communities. Thanks to this
common ground, we can anticipate and carry out what in language pragmatics are called logical
implicatures: inferences that human beings make from the unspoken based on the commonality
of relevant domains, of conversational clues (implicit, such as body language or explicit) and
accessibility to the minds of other speakers. That is why it is helpful to include a cultural ontology
in an artificial social agent: it makes understanding and generalisation transparent without an
explosion of trivial inferences.</p>
        <p>
          According to Stalnaker, presuppositions constitute the domain of common knowledge and
allow speakers to infer from the unspoken[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
          ]. When we say that Aristotle was a philosopher,
we assume, we take it for granted, that there was an individual called Aristotle. To be culturally
competent means understanding each other’s beliefs and presuppositions. We can access the
ontologies of others since we are not totally dissimilar, and we can understand their point of view.
In fact, there have never been any untranslatable cultures and languages, as Quine[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref8">8</xref>
          ] had claimed
in theoretical instances. That is because the meaning ascribed to the world is never simply a
subjective projection, dependent on and constructed by the minds of individuals. The content of
thoughts is causally linked to a world in common, founded on rules of correctness on which there
is general agreement. The objective and substantive relatum contributes to linguistic normativity,
i.e. the correct use of meaning in a given circumstance[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
          ]. Intentional objects (the content of
thought) is always actual (or possible) object about which speakers publicly reason. In ontology
engineering, the standard agreement is also indispensable: it averts the construction of private
languages in favour of actual co-agreement about meanings. In Wittgenstein’s perspective[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref9">9</xref>
          ],
language is a form of life that adapts to a situation and evolves in an environment of human habits,
symbols and beliefs. To realize conceptual flexibility[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
          ], the ontology must be about an open, not
closed world (OWL), with non-monotonic logics: probabilistic logics in dynamic domains where
knowledge can be reasoned about and revised.
        </p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-2">
        <title>2.2. Meaning of Cultural Meanings and Epistemology</title>
        <p>
          Gottlob Frege[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">10</xref>
          ] distinguished, for each term, property and utterance, a sense and a
reference. For proper names (Aristotle) and definite descriptions (Alexander the Great’s master), the
reference is the individual the term denotes; the sense is how it refers to. Saying “Alexander
the Great’s master” and “Plato’s disciple” is analogous since the reference does not change: it
remains Aristotle; what changes are the senses, that is, the criterion by which the philosopher is
identified from those names: in one case I will observe Alexander the Great’s relationships, in
the other Plato’s[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
          ]. The same twofold way of understanding meaning is applied to utterances
and predicates. For the latter, the reference is concepts. Frege defines them as functions, having
for arguments the objects that fall under them and for values either true or false. The concept
of “philosopher”, for example, applies to Aristotle, Plato, Riccardo and Lorenza and returns
the value True because the arguments are indeed those of the class: thus, Philosopher(x) = V
if x is a philosopher[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
          ]. Sense is how we apply this category: we can look for graduates in
philosophical sciences or those who profess a rational doctrine. Concepts are not rigid but open
to change and to the freedom of each individual to use them according to their different senses,
thinking of them strategically on the basis of the function of truth that, from time to time, they
may exercise in contexts. In short, asking about meaning cannot disregard the frame (context) in
which it is placed for a set of speakers. Culture is one of the facilitators, one of the heuristics, one
of the ’suppliers of meaning’. Of course, it can always be eliminated when tasks change their
social purpose or in the face of changes within the culture itself. Before the Sophists, philosophy
was not a job; with them, there was a cultural shift to be taken into account in interpreting the
meaning of philosophy during the time. Culture becomes fundamental to social robots, in which
conversational tasks and the implicit rules of kinaesthetic and proxemics, derive from culture,
condition acceptance, pleasantness, and comfort.
        </p>
        <p>Finally, the reference of the propositions is the truth value: two statements like ’2+2 = 4’ and
’The capital of Spain is Madrid’ have the same reference (they are both true). What changes is
the sense, that is, the thought they communicate. Wittgenstein expressed it as the criterion of
truth, the knowledge of how the world should be for that statement to be either true or false. For
Frege, anti- psychologist, the sense is not a mental entity; otherwise, it would be too aleatory,
dependent on the different mental configurations of subjects (connections, hormones) and private.
On the contrary, senses (as has been said for ontologies) must be guarantors of the situated use of
language as a social phenomenon. They must be intersubjectively shareable.</p>
        <p>The semantics expressed by Frege is complicated when epistemic, deontic verbs and alethic
expressions appear in the utterances. In these cases, where the contexts are opaque or indirect,
the principle of compositionality and substitutivity fail.</p>
        <p>Principle of Compositionality: In a language, the meaning of a complex expression is a function
of its parts’ meaning and syntax. It means that if one replaces parts in an utterance with others
having the same reference (synonyms with synonyms), the truth value does not change. For
so-called propositional attitude utterances, this does not apply. Let us take α: In Genoa pesto is
made with garlic, and α2: In Paolo Villaggio’s hometown pesto is made with garlic. α has the
same truth value as α2. Now we add a doxastic operator (Kα): substitutivity no longer holds. In
these cases, the reference is not the object but the belief. e: "Anna knows that α2" may not be
true because she may not know where Paolo Villaggio was born. In these cases, the reference is
the sense, the cognitive path, the method for defining the truth conditions.</p>
      </sec>
      <sec id="sec-2-3">
        <title>2.3. Epistemology</title>
        <p>
          Only on the basis of meta-reasoning around what one knows is it possible to plan queries in
memory and action plans with which to retrieve missing knowledge from the world. This is
why it becomes crucial that epistemic logic is also dynamic: a family of modal logics obtained
from a given logical language with the addition of one or more modal operators describing
model-transforming actions[
          <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
          ]. To formalise culture and thus common knowledge and
multiagent logic, extensional and first-order logic are not sufficient, as they cannot evaluate on mode
verbs and do not capture vagueness and uncertainty. The agent often has to deal with uncertain
evaluations, which depend on ignorance. In such cases, reference is made to probability applied
to belief. If the concept is vague, on the other hand, it means that no clear line can be established
between entities that fall within the class extension and those excluded: all canids divided from the
other individuals of the animal kingdom is not the same as carving out the set of all Italians who
share Italianness. However, if one does not know the preference of a single individual, it becomes
rational and justified to use visual and conversational cues and presuppositions, including those
of a dominant culture.
        </p>
      </sec>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>3. Logic of Cultural Belief and Ignorance</title>
      <p>
        The meaning of an utterance specifies the connection between a proposition and the world, actual
or possible. The term Possible World belongs to Leibniz’s philosophical system, through which
he resolved the meaning of ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’, respectively ’true in all possible worlds’
or ’true only in some’. Based on this reasoning, Saul Kripke[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">14</xref>
        ] proposed a semantics for modal
contexts. True or false, for utterances with attitude verbs, are to be evaluated on possible worlds,
on alternative situations to the actual, complete and non-contradictory world.
      </p>
      <p>
        Carnap[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref15">15</xref>
        ] defined reference as extension and sense as intension. To understand the intension
of α is to be able to distinguish the situations that make α true[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
        ]. Thus if α means ‘the cat
is on the table’, to understand its meaning is to observe in the world whether a table exists and
whether a cat is actually on it. Enunciations such as ’Lorenza knows that α’ or ’Lorenza believes
that α’ behave in a non-truth-functional way, i.e. their truth and falsity are not determined by
the truth value of the constituent utterances alone; it cannot be characterised by the truth table
of logic. Lorenza can believe a falsehood: Bα is true even if α is F. Lorenza is not at home and
can believe that the cat is on the table because it usually is, except that time because the cat ran
away. The same applies to the situation in which Joe Bloggs is at Lucca Comics and Games, I
can believe he is at the fair because he is a nerd, but I can imagine situations in which he is only
among the stands as a chaperone and therefore does not belong to the dominant culture at all. In
these cases, the robot should know that it does not know whether Joe Bloggs is Nerd or not, but
it knows that in all possible worlds, Joe Bloggs knows that he is either Nerd or not Nerd. The
robot can choose if it is more probable he is a nerd, but it knows it remains a belief that should be
confirmed.
      </p>
      <p>The concept of "Being nerdy" can also be expressed as a widespread belief through epistemic
logic. It is formalised as [B∗ ]F, i.e. it is common knowledge in group B that F is true. Conventions
and social norms are when everyone knows that everyone knows.</p>
      <p>
        It is necessary to introduce more formalism. Saul Kripke[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref14">14</xref>
        ], building on the pioneering work
of Hintikka[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref16">16</xref>
        ], developed a semantics for epistemic logic. Here, truth is assessed on possible
situations compatible with the subject’s beliefs and the facts of the current world. One cannot
know that Lucca Comics is a sausage festival because it is false; one can, however, believe that
it is the sausage festival, the belief being less strong. For the logic of knowing, too, we have to
introduce a language L, consisting of propositional letters (p, q, r...), true-functional connectives
(∧, →, ¬), quantifiers (∀, ∃), with the addition of the operators K (knowing) and B (believing).
So if α is a formula, Kα and Bα are also formulas - in a natural language, they stand for "It is
known that α" and "It is believed that α". In these contexts, K and B are evaluated as true or
false on an epistemic model that formally is triplet M = (W, φ , R). W are the possible worlds, φ
is the interpretation function that, for each possible world, assigns a truth value to each primitive
formula of the language. In short, for each possible world w ∈ W and for each primitive formula
p, φ [w, p] ∈ {v, f } : φ [w, p] = v if p is true in the world w, and φ [w, p] = f if p is false in the
world w. φ assigns one and only one value to each primitive formula; every possible world w
is therefore consistent (it cannot happen that a formula is simultaneously true and false in w)
and complete (every primitive formula has a truth value in w). On the other hand, R is a binary
accessibility relation between the worlds of w that allows us to draw inferences and associate
truth values for each belief[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>
        If Cultural Competence is knowing how to put oneself in others’ shoes and in one’s own,
accessing the body of knowledge to act accordingly is that relation of accessibility between
worlds R(w, w1). Based on the type of relationship, we have different systems. The simplest is
defined as T, whereby, in addition to the propositional axioms, the distributive axiom K(α →
β ) → (Kα → Kβ ) and the axiom of truth: Kα → α. Modus ponens and necessity also apply. In
T, to know that Joe Bloggs is Nerd, Joe Bloggs must be Nerd in all possible worlds, and therefore
it is important that the relation is reflexive: that is, that in w (current world), w itself is accessed.
In the S4 system, R is reflexive and transitive. So if w accesses w1 and w1 accesses w2, then w
accesses w2. It means that if I know that Joe Bloggs is Nerd, I know that I know. This is the
principle of positive introspection. S5, in addition to the previous axioms, includes negative
introspection ¬Kα → K¬Kα: if I do not know about Joe Bloggs, I know that I do not know.
The accessibility relation is Euclidean: hence reflexive, symmetrical and transitive. In this case,
all worlds are interconnected and see each other. In order to act in a planned manner, based
on the need to gain more knowledge or to change one’s own and others’ beliefs, it is important
that the accessibility relation is like this one in S5. Such a system can be called Socratic: as the
philosopher reminds us, only when one knows not to know, they put themselves in a position to fill
the lack by seeking. Here, then, are the actions by which epistemic logic becomes dynamic. We
will have actions (including linguistic acts, orders, for example) with which to modify the world:
world-altering actions; actions that modify the knowledge of others, announcement actions;
actions to refine one’s own knowledge (questions, at the level of linguistic acts), and we call them
sensing actions[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>Clearly, if I am at Lucca Comics and Games and Joe Bloggs approaches with a Monkey Island
shirt, the probability that he is there by chance is very low. We can think of Possible Worlds as
worlds in which a formula is more or less likely, based on knowledge and initial state. So the
frequency of α is not random.</p>
      <p>
        Finally, regarding epistemic logic, it is important to overcome the problem of logical
omniscience. Intensional logic tends to idealise agents. As specified above, human beings deal with
vague concepts and uncertain knowledge: they are anything but omniscient. Several syntactic and
semantic attempts have been proposed with incomplete and inconsistent worlds or with implicit
formulas (omniscience being the p’s that one could only know) and explicit formulas (the p’s
that one knows)[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ]. Instead, Fagin and Halpern[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref18">18</xref>
        ]propose introducing an awareness function,
which specifies that an epistemic subject may not be aware of the meaning of certain primitive
formulae. Intuitively, the purpose of such functions (Ai) is to ’carve out’ partial situations within
possible worlds that correspond to different actors’ points of view. It is clear that this assumption
is very similar to the one proposed in this paper.
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>4. Guidelines for Incorporating Cultural Competence in</title>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-5">
      <title>Artificial Agents</title>
      <p>
        Based on what has been defined in the previous paragraphs, to programme a robot through
an epistemic and dynamic logic, we propose a planning such as PDDL, in versions such as
PPDDL1.0, which menages probabilistic effects and rewards. In this way, the artificial agent can
modify the plan initially chosen on the basis of the feedback received and thus customise the
choice in the light of new information obtained through world-altering, sensing and announcement
actions[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
        ]. Customisation and dynamic change prevent cultural biases from being perpetuated:
culture remains a more likely adaptation shortcut, a principle of economy, to which, however, not
all cases will necessarily fall since, also thanks to the S5 accessibility relation, the agent is aware
of those worlds in which the plan is not true (with what likelihood) and is aware of not knowing
certain data so that it can ask for them. Moreover, to avoid the combinatorial explosion of trivial
plans and inferences defined by very low probabilities, it is important to add a threshold below
which the planner does not evaluate sequences of actions. The threshold allows us to handle
the logical omniscience, obviating engineering limitations of computational power. PDDL has
already been used to model the Theory of Mind and epistemic logic[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref17">17</xref>
        ]. For example, Chang
and Soo[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref19">19</xref>
        ] show how the narrative of Shakespeare’s Othello emerges in the interaction between
social agents endowed with personal, social and objective motives and the ability to perceive
the environment, read the minds, and modify their beliefs, so the preferred plan. As suggested
in this paper, the proposed social planning involves the automatic reading and translation of an
OWL world into PDDL. Other proposals come from Bolander et al.[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref20">20</xref>
        ]. They have defined a
formalisation for evaluating knowledge, facts, and false beliefs on possible worlds, which change
dynamically.
      </p>
      <p>
        Another way to implement these assumptions is to use hybrid architectures such as ACT-R.
Here, each “if... then. . . rule” in the procedural buffer is associated with a certain utility value
according to the goal, so plans and concepts selection from the declarative module change
strategically as the motivation change (see conceptual flexibility). In our case, the heuristics and
meanings provided by a certain culture will be activated in circumstances of social utility. In
addition, being a hybrid cognitive architecture (both symbolic and connectionist), ACT-R can
modify weights based on external rewards or punishments, integrating new information into the
chunk in memory and creating new ones; this again avoids biases. Leslie and Polizzi[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref21">21</xref>
        ]
developed a model for selecting plausible beliefs within a set of other beliefs. This selector has been
implemented in ACT-R[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref22">22</xref>
        ]. We think that it can be declined on the basis of cultural ontologies
and the probability and salience of the agents’ possible worlds, with negative introspection S5.
So if the robot does not know α , it knows that it does not know, but it also knows that it believes
α with a higher probability than other possible worlds. It is an epistemological justification to try
the more likely plan, with the possibility of dynamically modifying it if new facts emerge.
      </p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-6">
      <title>5. Conclusion</title>
      <p>Culture conditions what is known and the value order: what comes before and after by taxonomy
and moral importance. In short, it is relevant to consider modal contexts for an ontology of a
social robot. The situation becomes more complicated if one considers that culture, precisely in
the light of its mutability in time and space, is one of humans’ many possible dynamic choices.
To formalise such a system, first-order and monotonic logic is not sufficient. We should include
notions of probability and queries that select subsets (also cultural) of knowledge from the
semantic network based on contextual clues. On the basis of a Euclidean S5 accessibility relation,
the artificial agent simulates empathy and meta-cognition, with which it enacts justified action
plans that conform with the ontology and its awareness. The world in which the culturally
competent robot operates is open and dynamic. Cultural ontology is one of the many possible
strategies to manage the complexity of meanings placed in the world. The selection is not
arbitrary: it is based on the consensus over time given by entire communities. It is a strategy to
shorten the time it takes for the mind to adapt to a world and vice versa, thus enabling inferences
despite indecision.</p>
    </sec>
  </body>
  <back>
    <ref-list>
      <ref id="ref1">
        <mixed-citation>
          [1]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>G. P. D.</given-names>
            <surname>Mirandola</surname>
          </string-name>
          , E. Garin, De Hominis Dignitate Heptaplus, de Ente Et Uno, e
          <article-title>Scritti Vari a Cura di Eugenio Garin</article-title>
          , Vallecchi,
          <year>1942</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref2">
        <mixed-citation>
          [2]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>E.</given-names>
            <surname>Lalumera</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Concetti, relativismo e strategie flessibili,
          <source>Rivista italiana di filosofia del linguaggio 7</source>
          (
          <year>2013</year>
          ).
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref3">
        <mixed-citation>
          [3]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>L. W.</given-names>
            <surname>Barsalou</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Simulation, situated conceptualization, and prediction,
          <source>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences</source>
          <volume>364</volume>
          (
          <year>2009</year>
          )
          <fpage>1281</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>1289</lpage>
          . URL: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1521/1281.abstract. doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1098/rstb.
          <year>2008</year>
          .
          <volume>0319</volume>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref4">
        <mixed-citation>
          [4]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>D.</given-names>
            <surname>Marconi</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Lexical Competence, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA,
          <year>1997</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref5">
        <mixed-citation>
          [5]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>G.</given-names>
            <surname>Harman</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Change in View:
          <source>Principles of Reasoning</source>
          , MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA,
          <year>1986</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref6">
        <mixed-citation>
          [6]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>C.</given-names>
            <surname>Cherniak</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Minimal Rationality, MIT Press,
          <year>1986</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref7">
        <mixed-citation>
          [7]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>R.</given-names>
            <surname>Stalnaker</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Presuppositions,
          <source>Journal of Philosophical Logic</source>
          <volume>2</volume>
          (
          <year>1973</year>
          )
          <fpage>447</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>457</lpage>
          . doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          . 1007/bf00262951.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref8">
        <mixed-citation>
          [8]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>W. V. O.</given-names>
            <surname>Quine</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Parola e oggetto, Il Saggiatore, Milano,
          <year>2008</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref9">
        <mixed-citation>
          [9]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
            <surname>Wittgenstein</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Philosophical Investigations,
          <year>1953</year>
          .
          <article-title>Italian translation by Mario Trinchero, published by Eunaudi Torino in</article-title>
          <year>2014</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref10">
        <mixed-citation>
          [10]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>G.</given-names>
            <surname>Frege</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Funktion - begriff - bedeutung, G"ottingen,
          <year>1892</year>
          .
          <article-title>Partial Italian translation in Frege (1965) and complete Italian translation in Bonomi (</article-title>
          <year>1973</year>
          ).
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref11">
        <mixed-citation>
          [11]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
            <surname>Frixione</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>S.</given-names>
            <surname>Iaquinto</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
            <surname>Vignolo</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Introduzione Alle Logiche Modali, Laterza, RomaBari,
          <year>2016</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref12">
        <mixed-citation>
          [12]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>M.</given-names>
            <surname>Frixione</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Logica, significato e intelligenza artificiale,
          <year>1994</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref13">
        <mixed-citation>
          [13]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>A.</given-names>
            <surname>Baltag</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>B.</given-names>
            <surname>Renne</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Dynamic Epistemic Logic, in: E. N.
          <string-name>
            <surname>Zalta</surname>
          </string-name>
          (Ed.),
          <source>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</source>
          , Winter 2016 ed., Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University,
          <year>2016</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref14">
        <mixed-citation>
          [14]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>S.</given-names>
            <surname>Kripke</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <article-title>Semantical considerations on modal logic</article-title>
          ,
          <source>Acta Philosophica Fennica</source>
          <volume>16</volume>
          (
          <year>1963</year>
          )
          <fpage>83</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>94</lpage>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref15">
        <mixed-citation>
          [15]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>R.</given-names>
            <surname>Carnap</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <article-title>Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics</article-title>
          and Modal Logic, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
          <year>1947</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref16">
        <mixed-citation>
          [16]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>J.</given-names>
            <surname>Hintikka</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Knowledge and Belief, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.„
          <year>1962</year>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref17">
        <mixed-citation>
          [17]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>F.</given-names>
            <surname>Fabiano</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>B.</given-names>
            <surname>Srivastava</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>J.</given-names>
            <surname>Lenchner</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
            <surname>Horesh</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>F.</given-names>
            <surname>Rossi</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>M. B.</given-names>
            <surname>Ganapini</surname>
          </string-name>
          , E-PDDL:
          <article-title>A standardized way of defining epistemic planning problems</article-title>
          ,
          <source>CoRR abs/2107</source>
          .08739 (
          <year>2021</year>
          ). URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.08739. arXiv:
          <volume>2107</volume>
          .
          <fpage>08739</fpage>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref18">
        <mixed-citation>
          [18]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>R.</given-names>
            <surname>Fagin</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>J. Y.</given-names>
            <surname>Halpern</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Belief, awareness, and
          <article-title>limited reasoning</article-title>
          ,
          <source>Artificial Intelligence</source>
          <volume>34</volume>
          (
          <year>1987</year>
          )
          <fpage>39</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>76</lpage>
          . URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0004370287900038. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/
          <fpage>0004</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>3702</lpage>
          (
          <issue>87</issue>
          )
          <fpage>90003</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>8</lpage>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref19">
        <mixed-citation>
          [19]
          <string-name>
            <surname>H.-M. Chang</surname>
          </string-name>
          , V.-W. Soo,
          <article-title>Simulation-based story generation with a theory of mind</article-title>
          ,
          <source>Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment</source>
          <volume>4</volume>
          (
          <year>2021</year>
          )
          <fpage>16</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>21</lpage>
          . URL: https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AIIDE/article/view/18666. doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .1609/aiide.v4i1.
          <fpage>18666</fpage>
          .
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref20">
        <mixed-citation>
          [20]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>L.</given-names>
            <surname>Dissing</surname>
          </string-name>
          , T. Bolander,
          <article-title>Implementing theory of mind on a robot using dynamic epistemic logic</article-title>
          , in: C.
          <string-name>
            <surname>Bessiere</surname>
          </string-name>
          (Ed.),
          <source>Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-20, International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization</source>
          ,
          <year>2020</year>
          , pp.
          <fpage>1615</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>1621</lpage>
          . URL: https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.
          <year>2020</year>
          /224. doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          . 24963/ijcai.
          <year>2020</year>
          /224, main track.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref21">
        <mixed-citation>
          [21]
          <string-name>
            <surname>A. M. Leslie</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>T. P.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          <string-name>
            <surname>German</surname>
            ,
            <given-names>P.</given-names>
          </string-name>
          <string-name>
            <surname>Polizzi</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <article-title>Belief-desire reasoning as a process of selection</article-title>
          ,
          <source>Cognitive Psychology 50</source>
          (
          <year>2005</year>
          )
          <fpage>45</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>85</lpage>
          . URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0010028504000386. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.
          <year>2004</year>
          .
          <volume>06</volume>
          .002.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
      <ref id="ref22">
        <mixed-citation>
          [22]
          <string-name>
            <given-names>J. G.</given-names>
            <surname>Trafton</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>L. M.</given-names>
            <surname>Hiatt</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>A. M.</given-names>
            <surname>Harrison</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>F. P.</given-names>
            <surname>Tamborello</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>S. S.</given-names>
            <surname>Khemlani</surname>
          </string-name>
          ,
          <string-name>
            <given-names>A. C.</given-names>
            <surname>Schultz</surname>
          </string-name>
          , Act-r/e:
          <article-title>An embodied cognitive architecture for human-robot interaction</article-title>
          ,
          <source>J. Hum.-Robot Interact</source>
          .
          <volume>2</volume>
          (
          <year>2013</year>
          )
          <fpage>30</fpage>
          -
          <lpage>55</lpage>
          . URL: https://doi.org/10.5898/JHRI.2.1.Trafton. doi:
          <volume>10</volume>
          .5898/ JHRI.2.1.Trafton.
        </mixed-citation>
      </ref>
    </ref-list>
  </back>
</article>