Formal Philosophy

The fourth international workshop on logic, rationality and interaction will take place in a beautiful city–Hangzhou, China on October 9 – 12, 2013.

The LORI workshop series aims at bringing together researchers working on a wide variety of logic-related fields concerned with the understanding of rationality and interaction. These include Game Theory and Decision Theory, Philosophy and Epistemology, Linguistics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. The series aims at fostering a view of Logic as an interdisciplinary endeavor, and supports the creation of a Chinese community of interdisciplinary researchers.

Submissions of contributed papers bearing on any of the broad themes of the LORI workshop series are invited.

Submissions: papers can be submitted via Easychair (https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=lori4)

*Important dates*:
• Paper submission: June 1, 2013
• Notification of acceptance: July 1, 2013
• Camera ready version: August 1, 2013
• Conference dates: October 9 – 12, 2013

More specific topics of interest for this edition include but are not limited to:
• argumentation and its role in interaction
• norms, normative multiagent systems and social software
• semantic models for knowledge, for belief, and for uncertainty
• dynamic logics of knowledge, information flow, and action
• logical analysis of the structure of games
• belief revision, belief merging
• logics of preference and preference representation
• logics of intentions, plans, and goals
• logics of probability and uncertainty
• logical approaches to decision making and planning
• logic and social choice theory

Publication: The proceedings of LORI-4 will be published in the Springer LNCS/Folli series.

Invited speakers:
• Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci (University of Amsterdam)
• Valentin Goranko (Technical University of Denmark)
• Beishui Liao (Zhejiang University)
• Hannes Leitgeb ((Ludwig Maximilians University)
• Iyad Rahwan, to be confirmed (Masdar Institute)
• Sonja Smets (University of Amsterdam)
• Dongmo Zhang (University of Western Sydney)

Chairs:
• Program chairs: Davide Grossi (University of Liverpool) and Olivier Roy (Ludwig Maximilians University)
• Organizing chair: Huaxin Huang (Zhejiang University)

Program committee:
• Thomas Ågotnes (University of Bergen)
• Natasha Alechina (University of Nottingham)
• Albert Anglberger (Ludwig Maximilians University)
• Alexandru Baltag (University of Amsterdam)
• Hans van Ditmarsch (LOIRA)
• Jan Van Eijck (University of Amsterdam and CWI)
• Ulle Endriss (University of Amsterdam)
• Nina Gierasimczuk (University of Amsterdam)
• Jiahong Guo (Beijing Normal University)
• Wesley Holliday (UC Berkley)
• Tomohiro Hoshi (Stanford University)
• Fangzhen Lin (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
• Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University)
• Yongmei Liu (Sun Yat-Sen University)
• Guo Meiyun (Southwest University)
• Eric Pacuit (University of Maryland)
• Henry Prakken (Utrecht University)
• Ramaswamy Ramanujam (Institute of Mathematical Sciences)
• Antonino Rotolo (University of Bologna)
• Jeremy Seligman (University of Auckland)
• Kaile Su (Griffith University)
• Wenfang Wang (National Yang Ming University)
• Yanjing Wang (Peking University)
• Minghui Xiong (Sun Yat-Sen University)
• Tomoyuki Yamada (Hokkaido University)

Organizing committee (Zhejiang University):
• Longbiao Hu
• Li Jin
• Beishui Liao
• Cihua Xu

We are very pleased to announce that FEW 2013 will be co-located with The Rutgers Epistemology Conference(REC), which is also celebrating its 10th meeting.

Both meetings will take place at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick.

FEW will take place on May 8 and 9 and REC will take place on May 10 and 11. There will be a “bridge” session on the morning of the 10th. The “bridge speaker” will be Brian Weatherson.

The FEW schedule will be much shorter (and more relaxed) than usual. We will have the following nine (9) invited speakers, including our “bridge” speaker (there will be no contributed papers this year).
• Rachael Briggs
• Jim Joyce 
• Matt Kotzen
• Hannes Leitgeb
• Christian List
• Sherri Roush
• Robert Stalnaker
• Katya Tentori
• Brian Weatherson
If you’d like to serve as a “chair” or a “discussant” for one of the FEW talks (so that your name can go on the online schedule, which would probably allow you to use research money to cover your trip), please email me and we’ll work something out.

We hope that FEW participants will stick around for REC. The invited speakers at REC (aside from the “bridge” speaker) will be:
• Tamar Szabo Gendler
• Sanford Goldberg
• Matthew McGrath
• Susanna Siegel
• David Sosa
And, the discussants for REC will be:
• Adam Elga
• Pascal Engel
• Imogen Dickie 
• Baron Reed
We hope you’ll be able to join us this year — at the intersection of formal and traditional philosophy.

Reposted from here.

COLUMBIA PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM
Logic in Games
Johan van Benthem (Amsterdam/Stanford)
Thursday, November 15, 2012, 4:10 – 6:00 PM
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University

Abstract. In recent decades, logic has been applied in the foundations of game theory, and this makes sense as a capping stone for the philosophical logic tradition of studying various dimensions of information-driven agency. But at the same time, the core notions of logic themselves can be cast as games, and a thriving theory has sprung up around this perspective, especially at interfaces with computer science. I will compare these two perspectives of logic of games versus logic as games, discuss some results about their connections, and raise the question what this contrast tells us about logic.

Reception to follow

Lambda Calculus: Then and Now
Dana Scott (CMU and Berkeley)
November 9th (Friday), 5PM, 716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University

Abstract. A very fast development in the early 1930′s following Hilbert’s codification of Mathematical Logic led to the Incompleteness Theorems, Computable Functions, Undecidability Theorems, and the general formulation of Recursive Function Theory. The so called Lambda Calculus played a key role. The history of these developments will be traced, and the much later place of Lambda Calculus in Mathematics and Programming Language Theory will be outlined.

A map of the Columbia campus and directions to the room can be found here.

Turing 100
Sunday, November 11 and Monday, November 12
Photonics Center, 9th floor Colloquium Room
8 St. Mary’s Street, Room 906

Sunday, 10:00am-12:00pm
I. Turing’s Philosophical and Logical Foundations

“On Formalism Freeness: A Meditation on Gödel’s 1946 Princeton Bicentennial Lecture”
Juliette Kennedy Mathematics and Statistics, University of Helsinki

“Turing, Church, Gödel, a personal perspective”
Michael Rabin Computer Science, Harvard University

“Turing and Wittgenstein”
Juliet Floyd Philosophy, Boston University

Sunday, 1:45pm-3:45pm
II. Turing and Mathematics: Computability and Definability

“Universality is Ubiquitous”
Martin Davis Courant Institute, NYU; Mathematics, UC Berkeley

“Collapsing Sentences”
Gerald Sacks Mathematics, Harvard University and MIT

“The Hierarchy of Definability: An Extended Thesis”
Theodore Slaman Mathematics, UC Berkeley

Sunday, 4:00pm-6:00pm
III. Turing and Cryptography

“Rational Proofs”
Silvio Micali Computer Science, MIT

“Turing and the Growth of Cryptography”
Ronald Rivest Computer Science, MIT

“Alan Turing and Voice Encryption”
Craig Bauer Mathematics, York College of Pennsylvania

Monday, 9:30am-12:15pm
IV. Turing and AI

Title TBA
Marvin Minsky Media Arts and Sciences, MIT

“Why Neanderthals Couldn’t Pass Turing’s Test and When Computers Will”
Patrick Henry Winston Computer Science, MIT

“What’s Wrong with the Moral Turing Test?”
Matthias Scheutz Computer Science, Tufts University

“Embodying Computation at Higher Types”
S. Barry Cooper Mathematics, University of Leeds

Monday, 2:00pm-4:00pm
V. The Church-Turing Thesis

“Normal Forms for Puzzles: an Enigmatic Variant of Turing’s Thesis”
Wilfrid Sieg Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University

Title TBA
Stephen Wolfram Wolfram Research

“Is there a Church-Turing Thesis for Social Algorithms?”
Rohit Parikh Computer Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, CUNY

Monday, 4:15pm-6:30pm
VI. Turing, Physics, and Probability

“Algorithmic Randomness and Turing’s Work on Normality”
Rod Downey Mathematics, Victoria University of Wellington

“Spacetime Physics and Non-Turing Computers”
Mark Hogarth Philosophy, Cambridge University

“The Mysterious Thesis”
Leonid Levin Computer Science, Boston University

Several members of our group will be meeting with Levi at 2pm at his apartment. We will be discussing Elga’s paper “Subjective Probabilities Should be Sharp.” If you’re interested in attending, please email me for the address.

CUNY Seminar in Logic and Games
Friday, October 12, 2012 4:15 PM, GC Room 6496
Communication and Common Interest
Peter Godfrey-Smith (CUNY Graduate Center)

Abstract. The stability of informative and cost-free signaling requires common interest between sender and receiver. But what kind and how much?