Thanks to Greg for (almost) liveblogging the Banff workshop on Mathematical Methods in Philosophy. So go to Greg's blog to find out what happened!

In his talk this morning, Grisha Mints referred to a paper by Paul Cohen. He didn't have the reference handy, so I tracked it down:Paul J. Cohen, Skolem and pessimism about proof in mathematics. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A (2005) 363, 2407–2418.The entire issue, on meeting on "The nature of mathmatical proof" organized by Alan … Continue reading The Nature of Mathematical Proof

Just in case you ever need it: \ddots going the other direction: \makeatletter\def\Ddots{\mathinner{\mkern1mu\raise\p@ \vbox{\kern7\p@\hbox{.}}\mkern2mu \raise4\p@\hbox{.}\mkern2mu\raise7\p@\hbox{.}\mkern1mu}}\makeatother Then you can say: \varepsilon_0= \omega^{\omega^{\Ddots}}

For some reason I missed the memo that said that Kenny Easwaran's blog moved from antimeta.org to his Berkeley webspace.

This morning has two talks on modal logic: first up was Marcus Kracht with a survey on the development of modal logic; now Steve Awodey is reporting on joint work with Kishida on topological semantics of first-order modal logic. Marcus talked about some interesting results in the mathematics of modal logic, especially general semantics for … Continue reading Modality Morning

Ok. Brit posted about it. Apparently some people claim that the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (FSP) shows something about the rankings produced by the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) (e.g., that they're off). But it doesn't. That is not because the PGR is actually the best possible way to measure program or even faculty quality. It … Continue reading Why the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index doesn’t mean anything in philosophy

I just had occasion to have to typeset Lewis's strict conditional symbol <img src="http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2004/symbols/fishhook.gif" alt="- in LaTeX. It turns out it isn't in the standard AMS fonts. Peter Smith's LaTeX for Logicians to the rescue! There I found: that the strict conditional symbol is in the fonts that are part of the txfonts and pxfonts … Continue reading Strict Conditional in LaTeX

Juliette Kennedy's entry on Kurt Gödel has just been published in in the Stanford Encyclopedia.(It took a long time to get this done because of all the formulas that needed to be converted into HTML. If you find a mistake, please let Juliette or me know.)

I just noticed that Josh Dever's Philosophy Family Tree now comes with a little Java applet that gives you a list of your philosophical ancestors (easier to use than the PDF list).Josh, any plans to make the tree capable of dealing with more than one advisor?

Source

Theoretical Computer Science 160 (1996) 241-270
(with Matthias Baaz and Alexander Leitsch)

Abstract

The first-order temporal logics with □ and ○ of time structures isomorphic to omega (discrete linear time) and trees of omega-segments (linear time with branching gaps) and some of its fragments are compared: The first is not recursively axiomatizable. For the second, a cut-free complete sequent calculus is given, and from this, a resolution system is derived by the method of Maslov.

I'm giving a talk on Friday for a general audience, and I thought it would be cute to claim in the little blurb about me that I am "probably the only person in the world who holds both undergraduate and doctoral degrees in logic." Several people have asked me if that's really true, and now … Continue reading Logic Degree Programs?

Studia Logica is a very good journal, and it should be indexed in ISI. Help us by recommending it! Go hereComplete the form using the following data:Journal title: Studia LogicaJournal URL: www.StudiaLogica.orgPublisher name: SpringerJournal Scope: LogicUnique features distinguishing this journal: please write here your opinion in this matter or write just "Applying Formal Methods to … Continue reading Help Studia Logica get into ISI

Over dinner yesterday, Jason and I got to talking about Erdős numbers of various people. He didn't know his, so I looked it up--the Mathematical Reviews database MathSciNet has a "compute collaboration distance" function in the author search. It produces output like this: Jason Stanley coauthored with Richard G. Heck, Jr. MR1234144 (94k:03006) Richard G. … Continue reading Stanley’s Erdős Number is 5

Agustín Rayo wins over Adam Elga, uses "googol" and a variant of Berry's paradox in knock-out punch: see here. Dr. Evil clutched his heart as though it had been pierced by an arrow. Trembling, he fell to his knees on the floor of the crowded stuffy room, all eyes watching him. The Mexican Multiplier threw … Continue reading The Mexican Multiplier Trounces Dr. Evil in Large Number Duel

Varol Akman kindly sent a link to this picture of the poster advertising the Gödel exhibition in Vienna, with the nice quote: "Today philosophy has arrived, at best, at the point mathematics was at in Babylonian times."