Two logic research jobs in Warsaw

Joanna Golińska-Pilarek's project "Logics for Qualitative Reasoning" requires some staff. One postdoc and one predoc position available. More details:

http://www.logicsforqr.uw.edu.pl/positions.html

Cfp: phil of information and intensionality in mathematics

New: Deadline Extended to Monday, March 11th

The Department of Philosophy at Lund University, Sweden, hosts two back-to-back workshops on:
The Philosophy of Information and Information Quality
Friday, May 10, 2013
http://www.fil.lu.se/index.php?id=18880
and
Intensionality in Mathematics
Saturday and Sunday, May 11-12, 2013
http://www.fil.lu.se/index.php?id=18879

INVITED SPEAKERS

Friday
Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire, UK, www.philosophyofinformation.net)
Phyllis Illari (University College London, UK, www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/staff/illari)
Kevin Korb (Monash University, Australia, www.csse.monash.edu.au/~korb/)

Saturday and Sunday
Francesca Boccuni (University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy, http://francescaboccuni.wordpress.com/)
Walter Dean (University of Warwick, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/faculty/dean/)
Fredrik Engström (University of Gothenburg, http://engstrom.morot.org/)
Janet Folina (Macalester College, USA, http://www.macalester.edu/academics/philosophy/facultystaff/janetfolina/)
Leon Horsten (Bristol University, UK, http://www.bristol.ac.uk/school-of-arts/people/leon-f-horsten/index.html)
Martin Kåsa (University of Gothenburg, http://www.flov.gu.se/english/contact/staff/martin-kasa/)
Øystein Linnebo (University of Oslo, Norway, http://oysteinlinnebo.org/)
Sara Negri (Helsinki, http://www.helsinki.fi/~negri/)
Barbara Sarnecka (University of California, Irvine, USA, http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/cogdev/Sarnecka/index.html)
Gila Sher (UC Saint Diego, USA, http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/gsher/)

CALL FOR PAPERS

For each workshop, there are at least two slots for contributed papers. Please submit your abstract of max. 2000 words, prepared for blind review, to frank.zenker@fil.lu.se (Philosophy of Information) or to paula.quinon@fil.lu.se (Intensionality in Mathematics) no later than Monday MARCH 11 (Lund time). Please add separate author information, and see the above websites for background on these workshops. Travel cost, hotel, and board covered/subsidized. Budgetary approval pending, speakers may participate in (parts of) both workshops.

ORGANIZERS
Marianna Antonutti (Bristol University)
Carlo Proietti (Lund University)
Paula Quinon (Lund University)
Frank Zenker (Lund University)

This sentence is refutable (dualizing Goedel)

While the standard informal interpretation of Goedel's sentence:

[G]   I am (/This sentence is) not provable.

is quite well-known, it's dual sentence:

[DG] I am (/This sentence is) refutable.

studied, for instance, by Smullyan, isn't. Yet, pretty much like you can run an argument for incompleteness using the former, you can also run a parallel argument using the latter. Just because it's fun to see how this works (if you're geeky enough), here's how it goes (it's quite easy). 

For simplicity let's assume the background theory is sound (it proves only truths) and sufficiently expressive.

One of the easiest arguments for incompleteness using [G] goes like this.

1. Suppose [G] is false. Then (because of what it says) it is provable, which contradicts soundness. So [G] is true.
2. If [G] is true, it is not provable, so we have the first half of incompleteness.
3. Given that [G] is true, its negation is false.
4. If ~[G] is false, it cannot be provable, given soundness. This is the second half of incompleteness.

An analogous argument for [DG] is:

1. Suppose [DG] is true. Then, by what it says, its negation is provable.
2. If ~[DG] is provable, it is true (by soundness), so [DG] is false. 
3. Assuming [DG] is true we inferred that it is false. So, unconditionally, [DG] is false.
4. If [DG] is false, then (by soundness) it is not provable.
5. If [DG] is false, ~[DG] is true, which means [DG] is not refutable. That is, ~[DG] is not provable either. 

CFP: Entia et Nomina III

The third conference within a series of logico-philosophical workshops I've been organizing is coming up. It will take place in Gdańsk, Poland (July 15-17, 2013). Accordingly, a call for papers is due. (The fourth one will take place in 2014 undercover as a Trends in Logic conference.) So here it is. Please distribute this information among your potentially interested colleagues.

(PDF version here.) 

Gdańsk University (Poland) and Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at Ghent University (Belgium) invite submissions of papers related to the application of formal methods in philosophy, especially outside the narrow field of philosophy of logic and language. 

DETAILS

• We plan around 12 presentation slots.
• Each speaker will be given 30-60 minutes to present, depending on the length of the paper.
• Each paper will be sent ahead of time to a participant who isn't its author with a request for a commentary.
• Each presentation will be followed by 10-15 minutes of a commentary by another participant.
• Each commentary will be followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
• Each paper will be blind-reviewed by two referees, comments will be sent ahead of time to the author with (possible) request to revise the paper before forwarding it to the commentator.
• Depending on the number of submissions, we might be unable to provide comments on rejected papers.
• The language used is English.

As we think it is better to submit a paper  to a good journal than to a proceedings volume, there will be no proceedings volume.

SUBMISSION

Full papers, prepared for blind-review (accompanied by an email providing author details) should be sent in PDF format to entiaetnomina2013@gmail.com by April 1, 2013.


Rafal Urbaniak
Agnieszka Rostalska
Aleksandra Szulc

"Polish" student evening in Ghent

This is quite off-topic, but please bear with me.

After some moving around I am back in Belgium (Ghent). I discovered that while I was away, the local "student association which promotes active European citizenship and European integration" (this is from their description) organized a Polish evening. [Click on any of the images to enlarge.]

ITEM 1: The organization description from their Facebook profile. "Minos Ghent is a student association which promotes active European citizenship and European integration. With us you can attend debates and lectures, cultural evenings and exchange with our partner organizations."

They organized a Polish evening and to introduce people to Polish culture, they decided that people who dress up in typical Polish clothes will get free shots of vodka. Of course, traditional Polish clothes are those of plumbers and cleaning ladies.

ITEM 2: The event posting from their fb profile. The description reads: 
"The moment for all those interested to get to know us better!
We begin at 8 pm with an open meeting about what exactly we are planning this year. Starting at 9 pm we keep the good tradition of having an evening under the flag of the country holding the presidency of the European council. This semester it is Poland!
We fly firmly [we play hard?]! PLUMBERS AND CLEANING LADIES, there are free shots of vodka for those who come dressed up!
[irrelevant stuff]
Everyone is welcome!"

The organization was also kind enough to set up the room properly, so that everyone can see what Polish culture is all about. Apparently, it's sucking dicks:

ITEM 3. A picture from the party. On the wall: "Suck my dick" (misspelled, it should be "zrób mi loda". Next to the logo of Solidarity, the trade union among whose members was Lech Walesa, largely responsible for the fall of communism in Poland. (Google either of those if you don't know what they are.) 

By the way, two years ago, when I was trying to register with the City Hall, I had serious difficulties. One of them was that the City Hall decided that my contract with university is fake because "A Pole couldn't work for a university". Instead of a few days, my registration took around 6 months and required intervention from the Rector, the Polish Ambassador in Belgium and the Complaints section of the City Hall.

Having said this, most of the Belgians I interact with are very friendly and helpful and I wouldn't want to suggest that this is typical behavior.

HT to Celina Gazda for informing me about this. The FB links (I don't know how long they will be up) are here:

https://www.facebook.com/MinosGent/info

https://www.facebook.com/events/271776372844540/

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=233240926734712&set=a.233240856734719.56484.224529020939236&type=3&theater

CFP (A CLPS13 symposium) - Nominalism and its foes: formal methods

Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science of Ghent University was founded in 1993. On the occasion of its 20th anniversary the Centre organizes an international Conference on Logic and Philosophy of Science (CLPS13). We will schedule parallel sessions with contributed papers and special symposia with a limited number of papers.

I am the organizer of a symposium titled:

NOMINALISM AND ITS FOES: FORMAL METHODS

If you're interested in presenting a paper at this symposium, please upload an abstract in PDF format (between 500 and 1000 words) to:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=clps13 

by April 1, 2013

(You will be asked to choose between one of the following submission categories:

- Logical analysis of scientific reasoning processes

- Methodological and epistemological analysis of scientific reasoning processes

- Symposium submission

Select the last option and mention the symposium number - 7 - in the title of your abstract.)

--------------------

SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION

Nominalism denies the existence of abstract (aspatial, atemporal and acausal) entities. To develop a respectable version of nominalism, one has to (a) give arguments for nominalism, (b) develop arguments agains platonism and (c) show that a nominalist can make sense of valuable kinds of discourse which seem to be committed to abstract objects. Since around 1980s various mathematically elaborate nominalistic projects have been undertaken (and criticized) and the discussion concerning their viability is far from over.

In the symposium we will focus on the bearing that formal methods have on tasks (a-c). Formal methods can be used to:

 ▪ develop precise and (perhaps) cogent arguments for (or against) nominalism (or platonism),

 ▪ construct nominalistic accounts of various parts of discourse (in particular: nominalistic versions of certain mathematical or physical theories), and

 ▪ assess attempts to construct such accounts.

We welcome submissions pertaining to these and other applications of formal methods to philosophical questions related to nominalism.

--------------------

Important dates: 

Abstract submission deadline: April 1, 2013

Acceptance notification: May 15, 2013

Programme online: July 1, 2013

Conference: September 16-18, 2013

Conference website with more details:

http://www.clps13.ugent.be

Upcoming conference: God, Truth and other enigmas

The Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at Polish Academy of Sciences and the Chair of Logic, Computer Science and Philosophy of Science at University of Bialystok are putting together a conference on, I take it, a mixture of philosophy of religion and formal methods. It will take place in Warsaw, September 17-19, 2013. 

The list of expected participants includes (just to pick a few names)  M. Szatkowski, J. Kvanvig, J. Lowe, R. Murawski, G. Sandu, J. Wolenski, J. Hawthorne, P. Simons and P. van Inwagen.

Once the website is up, I'll link to it.

Yellow Cards for Salmon and Soames open access in Erkenntnis

A paper in which I criticize what I take to be somewhat hasty arguments for platonism about numbers is now available open access in Erkenntnis. Here (then follow the link to Springer).

Abstract: Salmon and Soames argue against nominalism about numbers and sentence types. They employ (respectively) higher-order and first-order logic to model certain natural language inferences and claim that the natural language conclusions carry commitment to abstract objects, partially because their renderings in those formal systems seem to do that. I argue that this strategy fails because the nominalist can accept those natural language consequences, provide them with plausible and non-committing truth conditions and account for the inferences made without committing themselves to abstract objects. I sketch a modal account of higher-order quantification, on which instead of ranging over sets, higher order quantifiers are used to make (logical) possibility claims about which predicate tokens can be introduced. This approach provides an alternative account of truth conditions for natural language sentences which seem to employ higher-order quantification, thus allowing the nominalist to evade Salmon’s argument. I also show how the nominalist can account for the occurrence of apparently singular abstract terms in certain true statements. I argue that the nominalist can achieve this by, first, dividing singular terms into real singular terms (referring to concrete objects) and only apparent singular terms (called onomatoids), introduced for the sake of brevity and simplicity, and then providing an account of nominalistically acceptable truth conditions of sentences containing onomatoids. I develop such an account in terms of modally interpreted abstraction principles and argue that applying this strategy to Soames’s argument allows the nominalists to defend themselves.

Avoiding Ceasar by BLV? Unlikely!

If you look at Bob Hale and Crispin Wright's Logicism in the twenty-first century, in this book (esp. pp. 168-169) (also: at Frege's works themselves and at other explications of Frege), the way things are supposed to have gone is this:

• Frege used Hume's Principle (see my previous post) to derive second-order Peano Arithmetic.
• Yet, he was unhappy with the explanatory role of Hume's Principle: "we can never—to take a crude example—decide by means of our definitions whether any concept has the number JULIUS CAESAR belonging to it, or whether that same familiar conqueror of Gaul is a number or not."
• So, he introduced extensions by means of Basic Law V (the extension of F is the same as the extension of G iff exactly the same objects are Fs and Gs), and defined numbers in terms of extensions.

While people usually think that Frege moved to BLV to avoid the Ceasar problem, I haven't found anywhere, neither in Frege, nor in secondary literature, a clear explanation of how BLV is supposed to help. Sure, once you have a theory of extensions in place, you have an explicit definition of what a number is. BUT, if you're Frege, you've introduced your extensions by means of an abstraction principle (okay, let's pretend for a while it's consistent with the rest of your theory), and this only moves your problem one level up:

We can never decide by means of our definitions whether any concept has the extension JULIUS CAESAR belonging to it, or whether that same familiar conqueror of Gaul is an extension or not.

Am I missing something?

Hume's Principle in Hume

Hume's Principle (HP), as used nowadays, states that the number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs iff there is a 1-1 correspondence between Fs and Gs. While this sounds pretty obvious, with second-order logic in the background you can use this to derive second-order Peano Arithmetic (PA). (all this is well known, just like the role of HP in a fairly fashionable stream in phil of math called neologicism - check out this or this if you haven't heard of this stuff). Anyway, the person who really used HP to obtain PA was Frege, so just in case you wondered why the principle is called Hume's Principle, I dug up the passage where Hume formulates it (Treatise 1.3.1). It's only moderately interesting, but if you're geeky enough to be still reading this, you might be just geeky enough to be interested in the quote:

We might proceed, after the same manner, in fixing the proportions of quantity or number, and might at one view observe a superiority or inferiority betwixt any numbers, or figures; especially where the difference is very great and remarkable. As to equality or any exact proportion, we can only guess at it from a single consideration; except in very short numbers, or very limited portions of extension; which are comprehended in an instant, and where we perceive an impossibility of falling into any considerable error. In all other cases we must settle the proportions with some liberty, or proceed in a more artificial manner.
...
There remain, therefore, algebra and arithmetic as the only sciences, in which we can carry on a chain of reasoning to any degree of intricacy, and yet preserve a perfect exactness and certainty. We are possest of a precise standard, by which we can judge of the equality and proportion of numbers; and according as they correspond or not to that standard, we determine their relations, without any possibility of error. When two numbers are so combined, as that the one has always an unite answering to every unite of the other, we pronounce them equal; and it is for want of such a standard of equality in extension, that geometry can scarce be esteemed a perfect and infallible science.