Uncertainty: Reasoning about probability and vagueness, Prague, Sept 5-8, 2006

Call for Papers:

Uncertainty: Reasoning about probability and vagueness

September 5 to 8, Prague

Uncertainty is a ubiquitous phenomenon in everyday life, but it is also a topic of fundamental significance to many scientific disciplines. Uncertainty taken here in a broad sense, has many facets – among them probability and vagueness, including possibility, confidence, fuzziness etc. These are captured by different theories which often seem to be conceptually and technically incompatible. Therefore there is no universally accepted theory covering all this area and there are many reasons why we shall neither expect nor want to have one. On the other hand there have been attempts to cross the borders – there are theories trying to bridge gaps between rival approaches and looking for their common background.

The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for an open discussion between proponents of the main theories of uncertainty and vagueness on the market. Special attention shall be paid to the comparison of theories, analyzing differences and similarities of the respective concepts of uncertainty. Of particular interest are logical aspects and formal models of reasoning about vague information.

The scope of interest contains, but is not limited to the following topics:

  • reasoning under uncertainity
  • theories of vagueness
  • supervaluationism
  • foundations of fuzzy logic
  • concepts of probability
  • possibility and trust
  • epistemic and pragmatic aspects of uncertainty

The invited speakers of the colloquium: Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews), Rosanna Keefe (Sheffield), Peter Milne (Edinburgh), Richard Zach (Calgary).

The colloquium uses an abstract processing service kindly provided by Atlas Conferences Inc. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit an abstract at http://atlas-conferences.com/cgi-bin/abstract/submit/casu-01. Your submission will be confirmed automatically on the e-mail address you provide. The accepted abstracts will be available on-line after the final decision of the program committee. If you have any problems to submit an abstract, please contact us at colloquium@ flu.cas.cz.

The deadline for contributions is 6 June 2006, the notification of acceptance/rejection will be sent until 30 June 2006.

Programme committee: Didier Dubois, Christian Fermüller, Ondrej Majer, Peter Milne, Richard Zach.

The conference fee is EUR 150, it covers conference materials, coffee breaks and the banquet at Villa Lanna. Participants unable to pay the conference fee are encouraged to apply for a reduction. Those who wish to apply for the reduction should explicitly state this when submitting their abstract, which should be extended to 2-4 pages. The official language of the symposium is English.

The authors will be offered to submit the papers presented at the colloquium to a special issue of Studia Logica on vagueness and uncertainty (their publication will be subject to the journal’s regular refereeing process). Details on the special issue will be distributed at a later point by its editors.

The workshop starts one day after the Studia Logica International Conference Towards Mathematical Philosophy in Torun; the participants can consider taking part in both conferences (the journey to Prague from Torun takes less than one day).

The Prague International Colloquium continues the series of annual international meetings on topics in logic, epistemology and analytic philosophy organized in Prague by the Department of Logic of the Institute
of Philosophy (see previous colloquia).

The official web page of the colloquium is http://www.flu.cas.cz/Logica/konf/col2006.html. All correspondence should be directed to colloquium@flu.cas.cz .

Ondrej Majer*, Libor Běhounek°, Petr Cintula°

Organising Committee

*Institute of Philosophy, °Institute of Computer Science,
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

One thought on “Uncertainty: Reasoning about probability and vagueness, Prague, Sept 5-8, 2006

  1. I remember Torkel Franzen on Usenet. He and I had a slight amount of interaction there, back around 1998. Mainly I remember seeing his name as a Usenet poster, countless times. Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.  Posted by Mentifex

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