A modal provability logic of explicit and implicit proofs
by Evan Goris
in Annals of Pure and Applied Logic
(see http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography.html#Gor09APAL)

So far this paper is only available online.

Abstract: We establish the bi-modal forgetful projection of the Logic of Proofs and Formal Provability GLA. That is to say, we present a normal bi-modal provability logic with modalities [] and [×] whose theorems are precisely those formulas for which the implicit provability assertions represented by the [×] modality can be realized by explicit proof terms.

Realizations and LP
by Melvin Fitting
also in Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 2009
(see http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography_abstracts.html#Fit09APAL)

Abstract: LP can be seen as a logic of knowledge with justifications. Artemov’s Realization Theorem says justifications can be extracted from validities in the more conventional Hintikka-style logic of knowledge S4, in which they are not explicitly present. Justifications, however, are far from unique. There are many ways of realizing each theorem of S4 in the logic LP. If the machinery of justifications is to be applied to artificial intelligence, or better yet, to everyday reasoning, we will need to work with whatever justifications we may have at hand—one version may not be interchangeable with another, even though they realize the same S4 formula. In this paper we begin the process of providing tools for reasoning about justifications directly. The tools are somewhat complex, but in retrospect this should not be surprising. Among other things, we provide machinery for combining two realizations of the same formula, and for replacing subformulas by equivalent subformulas. (The second of these is actually weaker than just stated, but this is not the place for a detailed formulation.) The results are algorithmic in nature—semantics for LP plays no role. We apply our results to provide a new algorithmic proof of Artemov’s Realization Theorem itself.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

6:15 pm

.

AWARD CEREMONY

Lauener Prize for Up-and-Coming Philosophers 2009

Thursday 03 September 2009, 18.15h, Université de Genève, Uni Mail, Salle MR060, bd du Pont-d’Arve 40, Genève, Switzerland

Prizewinner 2009: Dr. Stephan Leuenberger (University of Glasgow)

Laudatio: Prof. Dr. Alan Weir (University of Glasgow)

For the full programme of the Award Ceremony as well as for further information, please go to www.lauener-foundation.ch, or write to Dr. Michael Frauchiger, Managing member of the foundation council,
Lauener-Stiftung – Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy, info@lauener-foundation.ch.

The Lauener Foundation annually awards a prize for analytical philosophy. The Lauener Prize is awarded alternately in recognition of an outstanding oeuvre in analytical philosophy and of the promising achievement of an up-and-coming analytical philosopher.

The previous winners of the Lauener Prize for Up-and-Coming Philosophers have been:

2005 – Dr. Philipp Keller (Université de Genève)

2007 – Dr. Daniel Schoch (Universität des Saarlandes)

The Lauener Prize for an Outstanding Oeuvre in Analytical Philosophy has hitherto been awarded to:

2004 – Prof. Dr. Patrick Suppes (Stanford University)

2006 – Prof. Dr. Dagfinn Føllesdal (Universitetet i Oslo/Stanford University)

2008 – Prof. Dr. Ruth Barcan Marcus (Yale University).

In 2010 the Lauener Prize for an Outstanding Oeuvre will go to Prof. Sir Michael Dummett (Oxford University).

SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT
Conditionals and Conditionalization conference

Formal Epistemology Project (FEP), Centre for Logic and Analytic Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven, Leuven,

Belgium, Sept 4-6, 2009

Organizers: Richard Dietz and Igor Douven

While it strikes most as obvious that there exist close conceptual connections between conditionals and conditionalization, it is far less obvious what these connections precisely are. The aim of the workshop is to investigate these connections from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on recent work in philosophy and experimental psychology. The time is ripe for such an approach, given that both linguists and psychologists working on conditionals are increasingly turning to the probabilistic theories of conditionals that philosophers have been developing over the past forty years or so. On the other hand, various philosophical claims have been made about conditionals – in particular concerning their semantics and pragmatics – apparently on no other basis than the linguistic intuitions of the philosophers making these claims. It would be interesting, and from a methodological perspective desirable, to subject these claims to more rigorous testing, which is where experimental psychologists could help (and, to some extent, have already helped).

Program:
Horacio Arlo-Costa (Carnegie Mellon): Iterated Conditionals: Normative and Descriptive Models
Jean-François Bonnefon (Toulouse): A Comprehensive Theory of Reasoning from Utility Conditionals
Richard Bradley (LSE): Conditionals as Random Variables
John Cantwell (Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm): TBA
Richard Dietz (Leuven): Ramsey’s Test, Adams’ Thesis, and Left-nested Conditionals
Igor Douven (Leuven): A New Resolution of the Judy Benjamin Problem
Shira Elqayam (De Monfort University, Leicester): Knights, Knaves, and the Ramsey Test: The Effect of Embedded, Indeterminate, and Paradoxical Antecedents
David Etlin (Leuven): TBA
Alan Hájek (ANU): Most Counterfactuals are False
James Hawthorne (Oklahoma): On Nonmonotonic Conditionals that Correspond to Conditional Probabilities Above Thresholds
Janneke Huitink (Frankfurt/M.): Iterated Conditionals and Modus Ponens: Experimental Evidence
Peter Milne (Stirling): Inferring, Updating, and a Plausible Principle of Hypothetical Reasoning
David Over (Durham): The Psychology of Conditionals and Non-Constructive Inference
Niki Pfeifer (Salzburg): Modeling Human Conditional Reasoning by Probability Logic
Gerhard Schurz (Duesseldorf): Complete Axiomatization of Probabilistic Threshold Semantics for Inferences Among Conditionals: the System T
Sara Verbrugge (Leuven): The Use of Epistemic Lexical Markers in Abductive, Inductive and Deductive Conditionals
Jonathan Weisberg (Toronto): TBA

There is no registration fee. However, if you would like to attend talks, lunches and/or dinners, please send an email to richard.dietz@hiw.kuleuven.be.

For further information and abstracts of mentioned talks, please see: http://formalphilosophy.org/cc

Logics with Counting

Ian Pratt-Hartmann

In the course “Logics with Counting”, I presented some recent results on fragments of first-order logic featuring counting quantifiers. (Counting quantifiers are those with readings such as “there are at least 47 y such that …” or “there are at most 118 z such that …”) The aim of the course was to explain the techniques needed to analyse the computational complexity of the satisfiability  and finite satisfiability problems for these logics. The material was presented entirely at the blackboard, and included detailed proofs of a number of difficult theorems. Approximately twenty students attended the course.

The first day was devoted to a general introduction, including an outline of the logics to be considered, and concluded with a demonstration that the satisfiability problem for the `numerical syllogistic’ is NP-hard. On the second day, I showed that the satisfiability problem for the entire 1-variable fragment is in NP, using combinatorial techniques originally due to Eisenbrand and Shmonina. On the third day, I gave a detailed proof of the result by Graedel, Kolaitis and Vardi that the satisfiability problem for the two-variable fragment (without counting quantifiers) is in NEXPTIME. The fourth and fifth day were devoted to a proof that the satisfiability and finite satisfiability problems for the two-variable fragment with counting quantifiers are also in NEXPTIME, extending earlier results of Pacholski, Tendera and Szwast, and also of Graedel, Otto and Rosen.

It was obvious from conversations with the students that (at least) many of the participants were well-prepared for this material, and came to the course with a strong background in logic and complexity theory.

Thursday, September 10, 2009
3:15 pm	to	5:00 pm

.

Carsten Lutz (Universität Brehmen)
at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Philosophy, Room Beta, Oude Boteringestraat 52.

Abstract: Description Logics (DLs) are a popular family of ontology languages that underly the W3C web ontology language OWL. Traditionally, description logic research has concentrated on reasoning about the conceptual modeling of a domain, as provided by an ontology. This kind of reasoning is not sufficient when DLs are used in applications that emphasize instance data, such as information integration and ontology-mediated data access. In the last couple of years, this shortcoming has stimulated lively research on (instance) query answering in DLs. The talk gives an overview of the area and presents and summarizes recent results for query answering in expressive and lightweight DLs.

Distance-based non-deterministic semantics for reasoning with uncertainty
Ofer Arieli and Anna Zamansky
Logic Journal of IGPL 2009 17(4):325-350, see http://jigpal.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/17/4/325

Abstract:
Non-deterministic matrices, a natural generalization of many-valued matrices, are semantic structures in which the value assigned to a complex formula may be chosen non-deterministically from a given set of options. We show that by combining non-deterministic matrices and distance-based considerations, one obtains a family of logics that are useful for reasoning with uncertainty. These logics are a conservative extension of those that are obtained by standard (i.e., deterministic) distance-based semantics, and so usual distance-based methods (in the context of, e.g., belief revision, information integration, and social choice theory) are easily simulated within our framework.

We investigate the basic properties of the distance-preferential non-deterministic logics, consider their application for reasoning with incomplete and inconsistent information, and show the correspondence between some particular entailments in our framework and well-known problems like max-SAT.

Friday, January 22, 2010

to

Sunday, January 24, 2010

.

Valencia, Spain

ICAART brings together top researchers and practitioners in several areas of Artificial Intelligence, from multiple areas of knowledge, such as Agents, Multi-Agent Systems and Software Platforms, Distributed Problem Solving and Distributed AI in general, including web applications, on one hand, and within the area of non-distributed AI, including the more traditional areas such as Knowledge Representation, Planning, Learning, Scheduling, Perception and also not so traditional areas such as Reactive AI Systems, Evolutionary Computing and other aspects of Computational Intelligence and many other areas related to intelligent systems, on the other hand.

Submission deadline was July 28, 2009.
For more information, see http://www.icaart.org

ILLC Prepublication (PP) Series PP-2009-30
Title: Games for Learning – A Sabotage Approach
Nina Gierasimczuk, Lena Kurzen, Fernando R. Velazquez-Quesada
Abstract: In formal approaches to inductive learning, the ability to learn is understood as the ability to single out a correct hypothesis from a range of possibilities. Although most of the existing research focuses on the characteristics of the learner, in many paradigms the significance of the teacher’s abilities and strategies is in fact undeniable. Motivated by this observation, in this paper we highlight the interactive nature of learning by proposing a game-theoretical and logical approach. We consider learning as a sabotagetype game between Teacher and Learner, and present different variants based on the level of cooperativeness and the actions available to the players. We characterize the existence of a winning strategy in such games by formulas of Sabotage Modal Logic, analyzing also their complexity. Our work constitutes the first step towards a unified game-theoretical and logical approach to formal learning theory.
Keywords: Learning; Games; Sabotage

ILLC Prepublication (PP) Series PP-2009-32
Title: Toward a Dynamic Logic of Questions
Johan van Benthem, Stefan Minica
Abstract: Questions can be viewed as triggers for explicit events of ‘issue management’. We give a complete calculus in the dynamic-epistemic logic style for events of raising, refining, and resolving an issue, all in the presence of information flow through observation or communication. We explore a few extensions of the framework, including longer-term temporal protocols and multi-agent scenarios. Our approach differs from the two main existing accounts: Hintikka’s interrogative logic and Groenendijk’s inquisitive semantics, but we only sketch a comparison in this first paper.
Keywords: question, issue management, logical dynamics, dynamic epistemic logic

ILLC Prepublication (PP) Series PP-2009-33
Title: Identifying the structure of a narrative via an agent-based logic of preferences and beliefs: Formalizations of episodes from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Benedikt Loewe, Eric Pacuit, Sanchit Saraf
Abstract: Finding out what makes two stories equivalent is a daunting task for a formalization of narratives. Using a high-level language of beliefs and preferences for describing stories and a simple algorithm for analyzing them, we determine the doxastic game fragment of actual narratives from the TV crime series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (TM), and identify a small number of basic building blocks sufficient to construct the doxastic game structure of these narratives.
Keywords: doxastic logic; belief; narrative; story understanding

For more information and full texts, see the ILLC electronic archives at
http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/reportlist.php?Series=PP#PP-2009-33

The website for the

22ND EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL OF LOGIC, LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION

ESSLLI 2010 / UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN / DENMARK / AUGUST 9-20, 2010

is now available at:

http://esslli2010cph.info/

Post-course summary of the introductory course ”Individual and collective intentionality”

Andreas Herzig and Emiliano Lorini

The aim of the introductory course ”Individual and collective intentionality” (http://www.irit.fr/ACTIVITES/LILaC/Pers/Herzig/Esslli09course) was to present logical analysis relevant for the study of intentionality, alias the study of mental states that are about a proposition.

Following the standard distinction between informational and motivational mental attitudes, the course started by introducing logics of informational mental attitudes that are well-studied in philosophy, logic and computer science, viz. logics of individual and collective knowledge and belief (in particular distributed, shared and common belief). Dynamic epistemic logics and belief revision were briefly introduced, too. The course also introduced the less established informational mental attitude of (individual and collective) acceptance, that can be viewed as a ‘rival’ of common belief. As to the motivational mental attitudes, the course focused on those approaches that are closest to a standard modal logic analysis, and presented Cohen and Levesque’s logic of future-directed individual intention and on Belnap and Horty’s logic of ’seeing-to-it-that’ (STIT), the latter both in the individual and in the collective version.

The course attracted a quite big audience (around 70 students), which seemed to have the required background (basic knowledge in modal logics) and was representative of the ESSLLI audience (computer scientists, philosophers and linguists). Discussions during the lectures occurred about both the philosophical issues such as ‘can knowledge be defined from belief?’, ‘can public announcement logic be viewed as a logic of communication?’ … and about the more technical aspects such as the proof of some theorems cited in the course. The audience appeared to be least familiar with the concept of ’seeing-to-it-that’.

Sunday, November 1, 2009
Saturday, March 27, 2010	to	Sunday, March 28, 2010

.

The First Call for Papers

SOCREAL 2010
Second International Workshop on
Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality

27 – 28 March 2010
Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

Under the Auspices of the
Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy (CAEP)
Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University
————————-

In the past two decades, a number of logics and game theoretical analyses have been proposed and combined to model various aspects of social interaction among agents including individual agents, organizations, and individuals representing organizations.
The aim of SOCREAL Workshop is to bring together researchers working on diverse aspects of such interaction in logic, philosophy, ethics, computer science, cognitive science and related fields in order to share issues, ideas, techniques, and results.
The first SOCREAL Workshop was held in 9 – 10 March 2007 under the auspices of GPAE (Graduate Program in Applied Ethics, Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University) sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
Building upon the success of SOCREAL 2007, its second edition, SOCREAL 2010, will be held under the auspices of CAEP.
SOCREAL 2010 will consist of lectures by invited speakers andpresentations of submitted papers. Researchers from various fields, including logic, philosophy, ethics, computer science, cognitive science are hereby invited to submit an extended abstract (up to two thousand words) by 1 November 2009 to CAEP (caep@let.hokudai.ac.jp). The abstract should be written in English and sent as an attachment in pdf format. Each abstract should include a title, names and contact details of all the authors. It is requisite for at least one of the author(s) of each accepted paper to attend the workshop and present the paper. The time for presentation will be 55 minutes including discussion. The working language of SOCREAL Workshop is English.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to
* language (or communication) as part of social reality,
* speech acts (or communicative acts) as what shape social reality,
* moral commitments (and conflicts) in social interaction,
* logic and game theory as tools for studying social reality,
* (organized) collective agency,
* Norms and normative systems,
* social institutional facts and their dynamics.

INVITED SPEAKERS INCLUDE
Johan van Benthem (University of Amsterdam and Stanford University)
Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University, China)

PUBLICATION
A printed booklet containing the abstracts of all the accepted papers will be available at the workshop. On-line proceedings containing the papers and the presentation slides presented at the workshop will be made available after the workshop. Selected papers from the workshop will also be published later in an issue of The Journal of Applied Ethics and Philosophy after an appropriate period for revision and another round of peer-review.

GRANTS
A limited number of grants of 20,000 to 50,000 yen will be available for postgraduate students and non-tenured scholars on a competitive basis. Priority is given to overseas students and scholars who present papers at the workshop. Anyone who wishes to apply for the grant should submit the completed Grant Application Form available at CAEP web-site at:
http://ethics.let.hokudai.ac.jp/ja/files/grantapplicationformSR10.doc .

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: 1 November 2009
Notification of Acceptance: 15 December 2009
Workshop: 27-28 March 2010

WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS
Johan van Benthem (University of Amsterdam and Stanford University)
Tomoyuki Yamada (Hokkaido University)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Johan van Benthem (University of Amsterdam and Stanford University)
Jose Carmo (Universidade da Madeira, Portugal)
Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University, China)
Jun Miyoshi (Kanto Gakuin University, Japan)
Yuko Murakami (Tohoku University, Japan)
Yasuo Nakayama (Osaka University, Japan)
Manuel Rebuschi (Nancy University, France)
Allard Tamminga (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands)
Tomoyuki Yamada (Hokkaido University, Japan)
Berislav Zarnic (University of Split, Croatia)

LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Nobuo Kurata (Hokkaido University)
Shunzo Majima (Hokkaido University)
Koji Nakatogawa (Hokkaido University)
Yoshihiko Ono (Hokkaido University)
Tomoyuki Yamada (Hokkaido University)

CONTACT
Shunzo Majima (caep@let.hokudai.ac.jp)
Further information will be available at CAEP website:
http://ethics.let.hokudai.ac.jp

Non-deterministic Multi-valued Logics

Arnon Avron, Beata Konikowska

Resume of a course at ESSLLI’09

Non-deterministic multi-valued logics are a recent natural generalization of ordinary multi-valued logics, which was originally inspired by the idea of non-deterministic computation considered in Computer Science. The key semantic concept underlying that generalization are non-deterministic logical matrices, which extend the concept of ordinary logical matrices by allowing set-valued interpretations of connectives and quantifiers. In the course we introduced the basic concepts and results related to both ordinary multi-valued logics and their non-deterministic generalizations. We then demonstrated the usefulness of the non-deterministic approach by providing semantics for thousands of non-classical logics, in particular paraconsistent logics, fuzzy logics and other logics for reasoning under uncertainty. Another application described was the construction and characterization of analytic proof systems for a variety of logics, including classical and intuitionistic logics (the relevant proof theoretical concepts were presented in the course). We also used non-deterministic logics to develop a complete mathematical solution to the famous philosophical “Tonk” problem. The majority of the course was devoted to propositional logic, but in last lecture we discussed non-deterministic first order logic, presenting the non-trivial problems involved in non-deterministic interpretation of quantifiers and the way of solving them.

Judging by the attendance and reaction, the course met with quite large interest among the students. They were asking questions about various subjects, and seemed to be most interested in practical applications. One of them was development of theorem provers based on non-deterministic matrices (a PhD student from Tolouse declared the intention to establish cooperation on that subject on the part of his research group). Another was possible application of non-deterministic logic to biological phenomena, which are inherently non-deterministic. Finally, the students were interested in the complexity issues, which are still an open problem.

Monday, March 15, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010	to	Friday, July 23, 2010

.

Ninth Conference on Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory
University of Toulouse , France, 21-23 July 2010
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/bonanno/loft9.html

AIMS OF THE CONFERENCE
This is the ninth in a series of conferences on the applications of logical methods to foundational issues in the theory of individual and interactive decision-making. Preference is given to papers which bring together the work and problems of several fields, such as game and decision theory, logic, computer science and artificial intelligence, philosophy, cognitive psychology, mathematics and mind sciences.

The previous eight conferences took place at CIRM (Marseille, France) in January 1994, at ICER (Torino, Italy) in December 1996, December 1998, July 2000 and July 2002, in Leipzig in July 2004, in Liverpool in July 2006 and in Amsterdam in 2008 (see: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/bonanno/loft.html)

Among the topics of particular relevance are:

(*) Modal logics for games and protocols: epistemic and deontic logic, multi-agent logic, temporal logic, dynamic logic, probabilistic and multivalued logic, logic of belief revision.

(*) Foundations of game and decision theory: epistemic foundations of solution concepts, information processing and communication in games, belief formation and revision in games.

(*) Learning and information-processing models: economic aspects of information processing, learning in game-theoretic contexts, inductive learning and inductive decision making.

(*) Bounded rationality approaches to game and decision theory.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION:
The three-day conference will give opportunity for paper presentations and discussions. Potential contributors should submit an extended abstract of approximately 5 – 10 pages in PDF format through http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=loft2010 The deadline for submission is March 15, 2010, and authors will be notified of acceptance decisions by April 18, 2010.

PUBLICATION OF CONTRIBUTED PAPERS:
For a list of publications based on previous LOFT conferences see
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/bonanno/loft.html
We anticipate that a selection of the papers presented at LOFT9 will be published in a special issue of a journal.

Program Chairs:
Giacomo Bonanno, University of California Davis, U.S.A.
Andreas Herzig, University of Toulouse, France
Wiebe van der Hoek, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
Jérôme Lang, University of Toulouse, France

Program Committee:
Geir Asheim, University of Oslo, Norway
Oliver Board, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Vincent Conitzer, Duke University, USA
Ulle Endriss, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Sebastian Enqvist, Lund University, Sweden
Joe Halpern, Cornell University, USA
Christian List, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Benedikt Loewe, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Larry Moss, Indiana University, USA
Herve Moulin, Rice University, USA
Eric Pacuit, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Andres Perea, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Wlodek Rabinowicz, Lund University, Sweden
R Ramanujam, Chennai Institute of Mathematical Sciences, India
Olivier Roy, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Hannu Salonen, University of Turku, Finland
Wolfgang Spohn, University of Konstanz, Germany
Moshe Tennenholtz, Technion Institute of Technology, Israel

Important Dates:
Deadline for submission: 15 March, 2010
Notification to authors: 18 April, 2010
Conference: 21-23 July 2010

Monday, July 6, 2009	to	Thursday, July 9, 2009
Sunday, February 28, 2010

.

17th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation

Universidade de Brasilia,
Brasilia, Brazil

Scientific Sponsorship Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics (IGPL)
The Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI)
Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL)
European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS)
Sociedade Brasileira de Computacao (SBC) Sociedade Brasileira de Logica (SBL)

Funding (tbc)

Special:
A screening of I want to be a mathematician: A conversation with Paul Halmos

Organisation Department of Mathematics, Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil Centro de Informatica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil

____________________________________________________________________________
Call for Papers

WoLLIC is an annual international forum on inter-disciplinary research involving formal logic, computing and programming theory, and natural language and reasoning. Each meeting includes invited talks and tutorials as well as contributed papers. The Seventeenth WoLLIC will be held in Brasilia, Brazil, from July 6th to 9th, 2010. It is sponsored by the Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL), The Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics (IGPL), the The Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI), the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), the Sociedade Brasileira de Computacao (SBC), and the Sociedade Brasileira de Logica (SBL).

Special Event
2010 will mark the 50-th anniversary of the first publication of Paul Halmos’ classic book Naive Set Theory by Springer Verlag. WoLLIC will celebrate this by screening the documentary about Paul Halmos which was directed by George Csicsery: “I want to be a mathematician. A conversation with Paul Halmos”
http://zalafilms.com/films/halmos.html

Paper submission
Contributions are invited on all pertinent subjects, with particular interest in cross-disciplinary topics. Typical but not exclusive areas of interest are: foundations of computing and programming; novel computation models and paradigms; broad notions of proof and belief; formal methods in software and hardware development; logical approach to natural language and reasoning; logics of programs, actions and resources; foundational aspects of information organization, search, flow, sharing, and protection. Proposed contributions should be in English, and consist of a scholarly exposition accessible to the non-specialist, including motivation, background, and comparison with related works. They must not exceed 10 pages (in font 10 or higher), with up to 5 additional pages for references and technical appendices. The paper’s main results must not be published or submitted for publication in refereed venues, including journals and other scientific meetings. It is expected that each accepted paper be presented at the meeting by one of its authors. Papers must be submitted electronically at the WoLLIC 2010 EasyChair website (soon to be announced). A title and single-paragraph abstract should be submitted by February 28, and the full paper by March 7 (firm date). Notifications are expected by April 12, and final papers for the proceedings will be due by May 3 (firm date).

Proceedings
The proceedings of WoLLIC 2010, including both invited and contributed papers, will be published in advance of the meeting as a volume in Springer’s LNCS series (TBC). In addition, abstracts will be published in the Conference Report section of the Logic Journal of the IGPL, and selected contributions will be published as a special post-conference WoLLIC 2010 issue of a scientific journal (soon to be announced).

Invited Speakers
(tba)

Student Grants
ASL sponsorship of WoLLIC 2010 will permit ASL student members to apply for a modest travel grant (deadline: April 1, 2010).
See http://www.aslonline.org/studenttravelawards.html for details.

Important Dates
February 28, 2010: Paper title and abstract deadline March 7, 2010:
Full paper deadline (firm) April 12, 2010: Author notification May 3, 2010: Final version deadline (firm)

Programme Committee
Veronica Becher (Buenos Aires) Rafaella Bernardi (Bolzano) Ricardo Bianconi (Sao Paulo) Vasco Brattka (Cape Town) Balder ten Cate (ENS, Cachan) Bob Coecke (Oxford) Adriana Compagnoni (Stevens) Marcelo Coniglio (Campinas) Anuj Dawar (Cambridge), chair Valentin Goranko (Copenhagen) Masahito Hasegawa (Kyoto U, Japan) Rosalie Iemhoff (Utrecht) Makoto Kanazawa (National Institute of Informatics, Japan) Giuseppe Longo (CNRS & ENS, Paris) Mike Mislove (Tulane)
Michael Norrish (NICTA, Canberra) Bart Selman (Cornell) Scott Weinstein (Penn)

Organising Committee
Mauricio Ayala-Rincon (U Brasilia, Brazil) (co-chair) Flavio L. C. Moura (U Brasilia, Brazil) Claudia Nalon (U Brasilia, Brazil) Anjolina G. de Oliveira (U Fed Pernambuco, Brazil) Ruy de Queiroz (U Fed Pernambuco, Brazil) (co-chair)

Further information
Contact one of the Co-Chairs of the Organising Committee.

Web page
http://wollic.org/wollic2010/

Steering committee
Samson Abramsky, Johan van Benthem, Joe Halpern, Wilfrid Hodges, Daniel Leivant, Angus Macintyre, Grigori Mints, Hiroakira Ono, Ruy de Queiroz

Friday, September 18, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009	to	Saturday, November 7, 2009

.

International Symposium organized by the Canadian Society for Epistemology to be held at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada).

The symposium will be devoted to examining different characterizations of the concept of knowledge. We invite submissions dealing with conceptions of knowledge based on knowledge as representation, knowledge as ability, knowledge as propositional attitude, and so on. Cross-disciplinary submissions are particularly welcome. The languages of the symposium are English and French.

Authors are invited to submit a 250 word abstract (in English or in French) for a paper of 20-30 minutes reading time. The deadline for submitting an abstract is Friday September 18. The abstract can be submitted online by web form (recommended) or by email (attachment in DOC or RTF format):

For more information, visit the Symposium’s website at
http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/sce-cse/symposium/en/

or write to
david_matheson@carleton.ca
yves.bouchard@usherbrooke.ca

.

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop Site : Campus Innovation Center Tokyo, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Dates : November 19-20, 2009
Workshop URL : http://www.is.ocha.ac.jp/~bekki/lenls/

Chair: Daisuke Bekki (Ochanomizu University)

Invited Speakers:
Reinhard Muskens (Tilburg University) (confirmed)
Takashi Iida (Keio University)

LENLS is an annual international workshop focusing on formal semantics and pragmatics. In the past it has been a satellite of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence conference; this year it will be part of a special workshop session to be held in November, distinct from the conference though still sponsored by JSAI.

We invite submissions to this year’s workshop on topics in formal semantics and pragmatics, and related fields, including but in no way limited to the following:

- Dynamic syntax/semantics/pragmatics of natural language
- Categorical/topological/coalgebraic approaches for natural language syntax/semantics/pragmatics
- Logic and its relation to natural language and linguistic reasoning (especially dynamic logics)
- Type-theoretic approaches to natural language
- Philosophy of language
- Formal pragmatics (especially game- and utility-theoretic approaches)
- Substructural expansion of Lambek Lambda Calculi
- Many-valued/Fuzzy and other non-classical logics and natural language

This year we especially welcome submissions related to the interplay between logic, philosophy of language, and formal semantics and pragmatics.

Submissions:
Abstracts should be between 2 and 4 pages in length and in pdf format. Submissions should be sent to:
lenls6submission@gmail.com

The proceedings of the workshop will be available at the conference site for registered persons. We also plan to publish a selection of the accepted papers as a portion of a volume in the `Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence’ series (Springer Verlag).

Important dates:
Abstract submission deadline : August 15, 2009
Notification of acceptance : September 15, 2009
Deadline for camera-ready copy : October 15, 2009
LENLS 6 : November 19-20, 2009

On the 21st, there will also be a special tutorial lecture by Professor Muskens on the topic of `True Intensionality in Higher Order Logic,’ at a location to be announced (near the conference site).

Organizing Committee:
Daisuke Bekki (Chair)
Eric McCready
Yoshiki Mori
Yasuo Nakayama
Katsuhiko Yabushita
Tomoyuki Yamada
Kei Yoshimoto

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

to

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

.

To be held in Nancy, July 2011
http://www.clmps2011.org/

Starting from 1960 the International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science has been held every four years in capital cities and/or by famous university centers.

Previous congresses

* 1960 Stanford, California, USA
* 1964 Jerusalem, Israel
* 1967 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
* 1971 Bucharest, Romania
* 1975 London, Ontario, Canada
* 1979 Hanover, Federal Republic of Germany
* 1983 Salzburg, Austria
* 1987 Moscow, USSR
* 1991 Uppsala, Sweden
* 1995 Florence, Italy
* 1999 Krakow, Poland
* 2003 Oviedo, Spain
* 2007 Beijing, China

Although the material organization is provided by Nancy, France has delegated Nancy to this task. Formally, the congress is organized on a national level. The candidature of Nancy was approved by the CNFHPS (French National Committee of History and Philosophy of Science), which exists within COFUSI (French Committee of International Scientific Unions), the national institution responsible for the relations with the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (where DLMPS is one out of two divisions).

division of logic, methodology and philosophy of science (dlmps)

The Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (DLMPS) is one out of two divisions, the second one being the Division of History of Science and Technology (DHST), of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS), which are members of the prestigious International Council for Science (ICSU).

The DLMPS was established in 1955. Its objectives are : to promote contacts among logicians, philosophers of science and scientists interested in the foundational problems of their disciplines, and among institutions dedicated to logic, methodology, and philosophy of science; to encourage and sustain research and study of important problems in logic, methodology, and philosophy of science; to collect documents useful for the development of logic, methodology and philosophy of science; to organize, sponsor, and support international meetings of logic, methodology and philosophy of science (International Congresses and Symposia), and to publish reports, Conference Proceedings, and other works related to such meetings.

For more information: http://phil.gu.se/dlmps/

Reasoning with Probabilities Post-course Summary

Joshua Sack

At the beginning of the course, we presented an example from a paper by Aumann called “agreeing to disagree”. This example states that given a common prior, agents cannot have common knowledge of having different posterior probabilities. This example is an exposure to the general issues of the class, which involve knowledge, probability, and dynamics. The second half of the first day provided a background in basic measure theory, which is behind the concepts in probability logic. The second day focused on probability logics and probabilistic epistemic logics of Fagin, Halpern, and Megiddo, in particular on issues regarding interaction between qualitative and qualitative uncertainty and technical results including completeness. The third day introduced dynamics, first focusing on three sources of probability: prior probabilities representing initial beliefs, occurrence probabilities representing likelihoods that certain events occur, and observation probabilities representing uncertainty that agents have about what events they are observing. Then issues involving unmeasurable sets was discussed and possible dynamic frameworks presented that involve probabilities over infinite sample spaces. On the fourth day, we connected probability with game theory by introducing Harsanyi types. We then discussed a logic for Harsanyi types that does not include addition in the language, but can nonetheless capture the the additivity condition using a collection of axioms and rules. On the last day, we showed how the Archimedean property and countable additivity are two sources of non-compactness in probability logics. We then covered Dutch Book arguments, and finally probability puzzles, such as Sleeping Beauty.

The class was well attended, and a number of students contributed to discussion. One issue students were interested in was the interaction between probability and epistemic components of the logic. The completeness proof presented was with respect to models with minimal constraints. This helped reduce the complexity of the proof, though it also allowed for models that do not have a clear meaning. Many further constraints have been suggested in the paper by Fagin and Halpern. Some other topics that generated interest were the importance of using a measure rather than an outer measure, and how in a probabilistic update framework it is possible to guarantee that the updated function is still a probability measure.

As the class contained a number of formal concepts and technical proofs, many have appreciated the opportunity to review slides posted on the course website: http://ai.stanford.edu/~epacuit/classes/esslli/epprob.html.

Roman Kuznets has updated his bibliography of resources on justification logic after this summers conferences. The Jusitification Logic Bibliography can be found here: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography.html

There are several papers in the Proceedings of TARK XII:

Logical Omniscience as a Computational Complexity Problem
by Sergei Artemov and Roman Kuznets
(see http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography.html#ArtKuz09TARK)
Abstract:
The logical omniscience feature assumes that an epistemic agent knows all logical consequences of her assumptions. This paper offers a general theoretical framework that views logical omniscience as a computational complexity problem. We suggest the following approach: we assume that the knowledge of an agent is represented by an epistemic logical system E; we call such an agent not logically omniscient if for any valid knowledge assertion A of type F is known, a proof of F in E can be found in polynomial time in the size of A. We show that agents represented by major modal logics of knowledge and belief are logically omniscient, whereas agents represented by justification logic systems are not logically omniscient with respect to t is a justification for F.

Knowledge, proof and the Knower
by Walter Dean and Hidenori Kurokawa
(see http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography.html#DeaKur09TARK)
Abstract:
The Knower Paradox demonstrates that any theory T which 1) extends Robinson arithmetic Q, 2) includes a predicate K(x) intended to formalize “the formula with godel number x is known by agent i,” and 3) contains certain elementary epistemic principles involving K(x) is inconsistent. The purpose of this paper is to show how this paradox may be redeveloped within a system of quantified explicit modal logic in the tradition of Artemov [Art01BSL] and Fitting [Fit04TRb], [Fit05APAL] which we argue allows for a more faithful formulation of some of the epistemic principles on which it is based. Along the way, we isolate a principle – the so-called Uniform Barcan Formula [UBF] – which we show is required to derive an explicit counterpart of the axiom U (i.e. K(⌈K(⌈φ⌉) → φ⌉)) which was used in the original formulation of the Paradox. We argue that since there are independent epistemic reasons to be suspicious of UBF, the paradox may be resolved by abandoning this principle (and thereby U as well).

Evidence Elimination in Multi-Agent Justification Logic
by Bryan Renne
(see http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography.html#Ren09TARK)
Abstract:
This paper presents a logic combining Dynamic Epistemic Logic, a framework for reasoning about multi-agent communication, with a new multi-agent version of Justification Logic, a framework for reasoning about evidence and justification. This novel combination incorporates a new kind of multi-agent evidence elimination that cleanly meshes with the multi-agent communications from Dynamic Epistemic Logic, resulting in a system for reasoning about multi-agent communication and evidence elimination for groups of interacting rational agents.

There is another paper in the Proceedings of the 7th Panhellenic Logic Symposium

A note on the use of sum in the Logic of Proofs
by Roman Kuznets
(see http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~kuznets/JLBibliography.html#Kuz09PLS)
Abstract:
The Logic of Proofs LP, introduced by Artemov, encodes the same reasoning as the modal logic S4 using proofs explicitly present in the language. In particular, Artemov showed that three operations on proofs (application ⋅, positive introspection !, and sum +) are sufficient to mimic provability concealed in S4 modality. While the first two operations go back to Gödel, the exact role of + remained somewhat unclear. In particular, it was not known whether the other two operations are sufficient by themselves. We provide a positive answer to this question under a very weak restriction on the axiomatization of LP.

Report of the European Conference on Computing and Philosophy
Barcelona, 2–4 July 2009

The E-CAP conferences have traditionally covered a wide range of topics and issues at the interface of philosophy and computing. This was not different at the 2009 edition that was organised from the 2nd to the 4th of July at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), with tracks devoted to (amongst others) the philosophy of information and computer science, information ethics, robotics and AI, and e-learning. Due to this breath of topics, and because there’s a limit to the number of simultaneous presentations two people can attend, the present report only covers two tracks; philosophy of information, and philosophy of computer science. Apart from being two of the largest tracks of this conference, we consider them also to be the most relevant ones to the LORI-readership.

1. The Nature and Scope of Information (PI)
A classic and often recurring theme within the philosophy of information centers around the concept of information, its different guises and the possibility of integration and unification. The latter issue was taken up by G. Ishmaev’s (Chelabinsk State University) who reviewed and evaluated the dilemmas that arises from, on the one hand, the diversity of information, and, on the other, the demand for a unified concept. Starting from a more restricted perspective, Graziana Conte (University of Milan) considered the nature of information from the standpoint of quantum information theory, and focussed on issues like the physical nature of information, the central role of quantum information theory in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the contrast between information as knowledge and information as an objective feature of a system.
When it comes to philosophical theories of information, Dretske’s analysis of knowledge in terms of information is undoubtedly one of the most famous ones. A distinctive trait of his proposal is his defense of the so-called Xerox-principle or the transitivity of information carrying relations. In his presentation, Hilmi Demir (Bilkent University) chose to challenge this principle by arguing that while only Markov chains could warrant this principle, requiring all information chains to satisfy that condition would be exceedingly restrictive.

2. The Nature of Computation and the Exploration of New Models (CS)
The interpretation of the Church-Turing thesis and the debate on models of super-computation and other nonclassical approaches to computability and computing machinery is a widely debated topic in the philosophy of computer science. Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic (Mälardalen) presented an investigation into the connection between models and implementations to suggest that interaction arises as the characterizing element of computability beyond Turing limits. She argued for the development of computers as interactive devices that adapt to the world, and therefore can be qualified as forms of natural computation. Lindsay Smith, Wernick and Veneziano (Hertfordshire) investigated the representation of stakeholders context in computerized solutions, aiming at the evaluation of processes. Focusing on the very same interaction between programs and social science to enlarge the spectrum of computable processes, Miguel Quesada and Antonio Rodriquez (UABarcelona) presented their work on computer aided agent-based social simulation to explore problems in the social sciences, generating complex dynamics of social change processes and analyzing emerging computational properties of the system. Vincent Müller (Anatolia College/ACT) took the CT thesis as a starting point to present three challenges to mechanical computation: hypercomputing, (computation exceeds the Turing limits), wide-mechanism computing (computation is completed by elements outside of the system) and pancomputationalism (non-mechanical but physical computational processes exist). He gave an analysis of the gaps between syntax, semantics and physical properties of computing systems to suggest that (probably) not all computational systems are mechanical, that not every mechanical system can be characterized computationally but that (probably) what is computable is mechanically computable. In this debate Liesbeth de Mol (Ghent) presented an historically based and philosophically oriented outlook on Post’s work on the limitations of systems of symbolic logic, leading to a rejection of computationalism. She suggested all in one that power and limitations of calculability are the way to unfold the man/machine interaction (rather than forcing to any side of the computationalism/hypercomputation diatribe) and used this to locate the very issue on which the various interpreters of the Church-Turing thesis disagree.

3. Logic and Methodology (PI)
The relation between logic and information has a long and well-known history, and their mutual relevance is not restricted to such traditional topics as the problem of measuring informational content. Matteo Casu’s and Luca Albergante’s (Universities of Milan and Genova) “Identity in the Real World” is a prime example of how the philosophy of information benefits from advanced logical tools such as description logics. Starting from Leibniz’s Law, they propose to model the latter relative to all and only those properties recognized by the relevant agent or group of agents, and suggest that this is the most natural way to consider identity from an engineering point of view. A second presentation that surely belongs to this area is Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson’s discussion of negative information; an issue he tackles from the standpoint of a specific substructural logics, but which can easily be generalized to all such systems that contain a negation. Basically, the conclusion he argues for is that a dynamic interpretation of negation as procedural prohibition leads to an asymmetry between positive and negative information, and presents that asymmetry as something entirely natural.

4. The Logic of Programs and their use for Knowledge Representation (CS)
The logical description of computer programs as a means to study and evaluate them has traditionally been strongly debated. The main aspect of the disagreement is the question of whether programs can be justified in virtue of the properties they exhibit at the logical level, namely correctness, completeness and decidability. For this reason the problem of program verification development (starting with Fetzer 1988) lies at the core of many discussions in this area. In his talk, Selmer Bringsjord (New York) proposed an argument based on the scheme of the Liar to defend program verification and to state that it works (at least theoretically). Giuseppe Primiero (Ghent) presented a non-standard modal extension of the syntax of a language with dependent types to formalize program checking as type inhabitation and to explore correctness on results via accessibility methods on calculation processes and subroutines. Raymond Turner (Essex), in his keynote speech, presented a semantics of states with conditionals, able to represent compiler correctness via reasoning and to translate recursive conditions in a theory of operations. The latter, he argued, provided a philosophical justification of an operational semantics as a mathematical theory. The mentioned problem of program verification or specification validation was also considered by Angius and Tamburrini (Cagliari, Napoli) from the more standard viewpoint of model theory. They looked at program verification from a methodological and epistemological standpoint, and presented model checking as an instance of the usual scientific practice of making hypotheses and testing empirical regularities.

5. Dynamics, Interaction, and Argumentation (PI)
The connection between meaning and the dynamics of language use is a popular topic to which several presentations contributed. Two of them focused explicitly on different forms of online communication. Duilio D’Alfonso (Calabria) argued in favor of the merge of Discourse Representation Theory and Dynamic Syntax; in particular the extension of the latter with aspects of the former intended as a framework for automatic dialogue systems. Marco Schorlemmer and Manuel Attencia (CSIC) started with a critique of the use of “ontologies” as the basis of the semantic web, and suggested that, at least for most domains of discourse, meaning should be regarded as the result of interaction (what a certain expression means within a particular interaction is also specific to that interaction), and modeled by means of a semantic alignment protocol.
In his presentation, Allan Third (Oxford) looks at a more specific form of interaction, namely argumentation. What he aims at, is an approach to vagueness that is based on reasons to believe rather than the more usual treatments in terms of truth conditions. As such, it presents the problem of the meaning of a vague term as the problem of aggregating defeasible arguments for or against the claim that, say, something is or is not a heap.
Starting from Lakatos-style reasoning, due to Imre Lakatos’s seminal work in the philosophy of mathematic, Pease, Colton, Guhe and Smaill (Edinburgh and London) identify six forms of reasoning, and show how these might be applied in different AI-domains. The relevant forms of reasoning (actually, heuristic strategies) are: surrender, piecemeal exclusion, strategic withdrawal, monster-barring, monster-adjusting, and lemma-incorporation. The domains for which they consider and evaluate their applicability are: software specification, constraint satisfaction, and planning.

6. The Use of Mechanized Systems in Philosophical and Empirical analyses (CS)
The relation between the study of philosophical problems from a computer science perspective, and the use of mechanized systems to investigate issues in specific scientific domains can be considered as the overarching theme of the philosophy of computer science track. Timothy Colburn and Gary Schute (Minnesota-Duluth), two of the founders of the field of the philosophy of computer science, presented a new chapter in their fascinating analysis of abstraction and information from the point of view of programs. They primarily focussed on knowledge processes in Computer Science, which they defined as an epistemology of values (rather than of objective truth) that is characterized by the attention to interaction patterns, and where truth itself is a concept defined on the basis of the discovery of such values (e.g. of an engineering kind). Switching from the purely conceptual aspects to the applications of mechanized systems, language recognition is one of the main aims of computer aided technology. This aspect was illustrated by Shah and Warwick (Reading), who compared results on the Turing test for the best current artificial conversational entities (ACE), to the question of whether poor results (30% of deception rate) should not be interpreted as the over-rating of the presupposed human-like understanding by machines.

Giuseppe Primiero
Universiteit Gent
IEG — Oxford
GPI — Hertfordshire

Patrick Allo
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
IEG — Oxford
GPI — Hertfordshire

Monday, August 31, 2009 1:00 pm

to

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 1:00 pm

.

PRACTICE-BASED PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS
Amsterdam, August 31st — September 2nd 2009
http://www.illc.uva.nl/pplm/

PROGRAM

This is to announce that the (tentative) program of the workshop as well as the abstracts for the planned talks are now available online.
Notice that, due to a technical problem, at the moment the abstracts are split in two different links:

Program
http://www.illc.uva.nl/pplm/#URI=Program

and

More Abstracts
http://www.illc.uva.nl/pplm/#URI=Call_for_Papers

We hope to fix the problem soon, but for the time being all abstracts can in any case be consulted.

Speakers:

Juliet Floyd (Philosophy – Boston University)
Rohit Parikh (Philosophy and Computer Science – City University of New York)
Stephen Read (Philosophy – St. Andrews)
Benedikt Löwe (ILLC – University of Amsterdam)
Martin Stokhof (Philosophy and ILLC – University of Amsterdam)
Wilfrid Hodges (Mathematics – University of London)
Samson Abramsky (Computer Science – Oxford University)
Jean Paul van Bendegem (Philosophy – Free University Brussels)
Thomas Müller (Philosophy – Utrecht University)
Göran Sundholm (Philosophy – Leiden University)
Mathieu Marion (Philosophy – University of Quebec – Montreal)
Johan van Benthem (ILLC – University of Amsterdam)
Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Philosophy and ILLC – University of Amsterdam)
Danielle Macbeth (Philosophy – Haverford College)
John Baldwin (Mathematics and Computer Science –University of Illinois at Chicago)

Sébastien Gandon (Philosophy – Université Clermont II)
Andrew Aberdein (Philosophy –Florida Institute of Technology)
Amirouche Moktefi and Fabien Schang (IRIST, Strasbourg and Archives Poincare, Nancy)

(Only three female speakers out of nineteen: not ideal, better next time!)

REGISTRATION

http://www.illc.uva.nl/pplm/#URI=Registration

Deadline for registration is August 20 2009. Moreover, if you intend to come, we urge you to arrange for accommodation as soon as possible, as accommodation in Amsterdam tends to be a complicated matter.

Friday, September 18, 2009

to

Sunday, September 20, 2009

.

Registration is now open for the Evolution, Co-operation and Rationality conference, University of Bristol.

Keynote Speakers:
Cristina Bicchieri
Ken Binmore
Gerd Gigerenzer
Werner Güth
Peter Hammerstein
Alasdair Houston
John McNamara
Samir Okasha
Brian Skyrms
Stuart West

For further details, including the full programme, see:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/evolution-cooperation/events/conference2009

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

.

Synthese KRA volume on Logic and Social Interaction

Final Call for Submissions for Special Issue

http://www.imsc.res.in/tcsweb/kra-lasi.html

There is now a growing body of research on formal algorithmic models of social procedures and interactions between rational agents. These models attempt to identify logical elements within our day-to-day social activities.

Largely using the language of logic and game theory, these studies have led to new insights into the dynamics of observation, updating of knowledge and belief, preference change, dialogues and processes of strategic interaction. Central to many of these studies is a multi-agent perspective on rational agency that situates inference in an interactive context.

In this context, a workshop on Logic and Social Interaction (http://ali.cmi.ac.in/icla2009/social.html) was held in the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (http://www.imsc.res.in), Chennai during 7-8 January, 2009, focussing on current advances made towards modelling complex multi-agent interactive situations, attempting to identify logical elements in our daily social activities.

As a follow-up of the Workshop, a special issue of the “Knowledge, Rationality and Action” section of the journal “Synthese” (http://www.springer.com/philosophy/philosophy+of+sciences/journal/11229?detailsPage=aimsAndScopes) is planned on the theme of Logic and Social Interaction.
hPlease see the Special Issue page http://www.imsc.res.in/tcsweb/kra-lasi.html for details.

Impotant dates:
Submission Deadline: September 1, 2009
Acceptance Decision: January 1, 2010
Final Manuscript: March 1, 2010
Publication Date (tentative): September 2010

Guest-Editors:
R. Ramanujam
Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Chennai 600113
India
jam@imsc.res.in

&

Sujata Ghosh
Artificial Intelligence Group
University of Groningen
The Netherlands
sujata@ai.rug.nl

http://www.imsc.res.in/tcsweb/kra-lasi.html

http://springerlink.com/content/121361/?p=4c19cbcb62aa4426b802acabdf998826&pi=1

Cognitive Computation specifically aims to publish cutting-edge articles describing original basic and applied work involving biologically inspired theoretical, computational, experimental and integrative accounts of all aspects of natural and artificial cognitive systems. By establishing a forum to bring together different scientific communities, Cognitive Computation will promote a more comprehensive and unified understanding of diverse topics, including those related to perception, action, attention, learning and memory, decision making, language processing, communication, reasoning, problem solving and consciousness aspects of cognition.

by Franz Dietrich and Christian List

The fulltext paper can be found at: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/list/PDF-files/PreferenceChange20July09.pdf

“The paper challenges the classical rational-choice-theoretic assumption that agents have fixed fundamental preferences and that any surface-level preference changes must be information-driven, and develops instead a more general model of rational choice that allows the possibility of non-informational preference change. While criticisms of “exogenously fixed preferences” are common in the literature, our paper offers an attempt to provide a simple generalized model of rational choice that actually accommodates those criticisms, while retaining the parsimony of the rational-choice-theoretic approach as far as possible. This paper is the first part of a larger project on the theme of “preference change”, which we are currently engaged in.

Any comments are of course most welcome.”

Christian List

For contact information, please visit http://personal.lse.ac.uk/LIST/

Saturday, August 15, 2009

.

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

Workshop Site : Campus Innovation Center Tokyo, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Dates : November 19-20, 2009
Workshop URL : http://www.is.ocha.ac.jp/~bekki/lenls/

Chair: Daisuke Bekki (Ochanomizu University)

Invited Speakers:
Reinhard Muskens (Tilburg University) (confirmed)
Takashi Iida (Keio University)

LENLS is an annual international workshop focusing on formal semantics and pragmatics. In the past it has been a satellite of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence conference; this year it will be part of a special workshop session to be held in November, distinct from the conference though still sponsored by JSAI.

We invite submissions to this year’s workshop on topics in formal semantics and pragmatics, and related fields, including but in no way limited to the following:

- Dynamic syntax/semantics/pragmatics of natural language
- Categorical/topological/coalgebraic approaches for natural language syntax/semantics/pragmatics
- Logic and its relation to natural language and linguistic reasoning (especially dynamic logics)
- Type-theoretic approaches to natural language
- Philosophy of language
- Formal pragmatics (especially game- and utility-theoretic approaches)
- Substructural expansion of Lambek Lambda Calculi
- Many-valued/Fuzzy and other non-classical logics and natural language

This year we especially welcome submissions related to the interplay between logic, philosophy of language, and formal semantics and pragmatics.

Submissions:
Abstracts should be between 2 and 4 pages in length and in pdf format. Submissions should be sent to:
lenls6submission@gmail.com

The proceedings of the workshop will be available at the conference site for registered persons. We also plan to publish a selection of the accepted papers as a portion of a volume in the `Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence’ series (Springer Verlag).

Important dates:
Abstract submission deadline : August 15, 2009
Notification of acceptance : September 15, 2009
Deadline for camera-ready copy : October 15, 2009
LENLS 6 : November 19-20, 2009

On the 21st, there will also be a special tutorial lecture by Professor Muskens on the topic of `True Intensionality in Higher Order Logic,’ at a location to be announced (near the conference site).

Organizing Committee:
Daisuke Bekki (Chair)
Eric McCready
Yoshiki Mori
Yasuo Nakayama
Katsuhiko Yabushita
Tomoyuki Yamada
Kei Yoshimoto

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Last day for application: August 27th.

This is to inform you that the Swedish Research Council now accepts applications for Postdoc positions for work in Sweden. In the spring call, we were lucky and we now have Carlo Proietti (PhD from IHPST in Paris) with us in Lund for two years.

Main points:
* Open to anyone wishing to work for 6-24 months in a Swedish research institution. Equal opportunity for applicants of any nationality. The applicant selects host institution in Sweden
* It is a reasonably salaried POSITION, not a stipend, with all sorts of social security schemes included.
* In Lund, we currently have an extraordinarily brilliant group of younger people who have recently received their PhD or will do so soon, including Carlo Proietti. They all have a solid formal training, but apply it to real philosophival problems. Therefore, anyone with similar interests would create interesting synergies for us and for him/herself. The senior people in the department are, besides myself, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Peter Gärdenfors and Erik J Olsson.
* I, and anyone in the department, will be happy to provide further information and assistance in the application process.

For the application forms:
Go to www.vr.se (the homepage of the Swedish Research Council). Click “In English” in one of the green bars, then click “Apply for grants”. You will then see a long list. If you click “Humanities and social sciences” in the dropdown menu, it will reduce the list considerably. Then click “Grant for postdoctoral position …”, and you are there. (Do NOT click “Postdoctoral fellowship” – these are only for Swedes going abroad.)

Bengt Hansson
Professor em. of theoretical philosophy
Lund University

Saturday, August 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009	to	Friday, November 6, 2009

.

Bogota, Colombia

The conference is designed to provide a biennial, international forum for new work in logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The format of the conference will provide an opportunity for speakers to receive constructive feedback from interested colleagues from Colombia and abroad, and for other participants to become acquainted with new work in the field. Invited speakers are Susan Haack (University of Miami), Arnold Koslow (CUNY Graduate Center) and Michael Bishop (Florida State University).

The Programme Committee cordially invites all researchers to submit their papers for presentation. Submission deadline is August 15, 2009.

For further details, please visit
http://filosofia.uniandes.edu.co/filociencia/eng.htm or contact apaez@uniandes.edu.co

Monday, August 31, 2009

to

Friday, September 4, 2009

.

Torino, Italy

EASSS is the annual European summer school for PhD and Master’s students working in multiagent systems and related fields. Courses include “Game Theory and Mechanism Design”, “Coalitional Games”, “Negotiation and Auctions”, “Fair Division”, “Multiagent Planning”, “Agents and Arguments”, and “Normative Multiagent Systems”. This year’s edition is colocated with several international workshops (MALLOW-2009).

Dates for registration and application for grants!
– 20/6/2009 Grant application deadline. Grant should cover registration fee and partially accommodation, depending on the number of requests. Information about how to apply will be published soon.
– 30/6/2009 Registration deadline and notification for the grant requests;
– 15/7/2009 Late registration deadline.

For more information, see http://agents009.di.unito.it/EASSS.html.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

to

Friday, August 7, 2009

.

22nd International Conference on Automated Deduction
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
http://complogic.cs.mcgill.ca/cade22/

CADE is the major forum for the presentation of research in all aspects of automated deduction.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES:
- Student awards: 16 June 2009
- Early Registration: 25 June 2009

PROGRAMME: The conference features
- 3 invited talks
- 32 contributed papers of which 5 are system papers
- the presentation of the Herbrand Award to Deepak Kapur
- a two-day programme of workshops, tutorials and meetings
- 2 system competitions

INVITED TALKS:
- Konstantin Korovin (The University of Manchester)
Instantiation-Based Automated Reasoning: From Theory to Practice
- Martin Rinard (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Integrated Reasoning and Proof Choice Point Selection in the Jahob System – Mechanisms for Program Survival
- Mark Stickel (SRI International)
Building Theorem Provers

WORKSHOPS:
- Automated Deduction: Decidability, Complexity, Tractability (ADDCT) and The International Workshop on Unification (UNIF)
- Logical Frameworks and Meta-Languages: Theory and Practice (LFMTP)
- Modules and Libraries for Proof Assistants (MLPA)
- Proof Search in Type Theories (PSTT)
- Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT)

TUTORIALS:
- Hierarchical and Modular Reasoning in Complex Theories
with Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans
- Probabilistic Analysis Using a Theorem Prover
with Osman Hasan and Sofiene Tahar
- Precise, Automated and Scalable Verification of Systems
Software Using SMT Solvers
with Shuvendu K. Lahiri and Shaz Qadeer
- Logics with Undefinedness
with William M. Farmer

SYSTEM COMPETITIONS:
- The CADE ATP System Competition (CASC)
- Satisfiability Modulo Theories Competition (SMT-COMP)

MEETINGS:
- The 6th TPTP Tea Party

SOCIAL EVENTS:
- Welcome reception at the McCord Museum of Canadian History
- Squash tournament at McGill Sports Centre
- Walking or biking tour excursion through Old Montreal
- Conference banquet at the elegant Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal’s Museum of Archeology and History at the Old Port

MONTREAL: Montreal is an bustling, cosmopolitan and affordable city with a charming Francophone culture. It is easily accessible from the US, Europe and world-wide with direct flights to Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport (YUL) from all major cities.

REGISTRATION: On-line registration is now open at:

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/registration/2009/cade/

The early registration deadline is June 25. Please refer to the conference website for registration, accommodation, travel and visa information.

STUDENT AWARDS: Travel awards are available to enable selected students to attend the conference. Please refer to the conference website for details. The application deadline is June 16.

SPONSORS: CADE-22 is supported by
o The McGill School of Computer Science
o McGill University Faculty of Science
o Microsoft Research

ORGANIZERS:
o PC Chair:
Renate Schmidt (The University of Manchester)
o Conference Chair:
Brigitte Pientka (McGill University)
o Workshop & Tutorial Chair:
Aaron Stump (The University of Iowa)
o Publicity Chair:
Carsten Schürmann (IT-Universitetet i København)
o Local Organizers:
Maja Frydrychowicz (McGill University)
Brigitte Pientka (McGill University)

We look forward to seeing you in Montreal!