There are a number of foundational schemes out there. ZFC set theory is perhaps the most widely known, but of course you can also develop math in type theory. And you can also do it in category theory. So what's the difference? Steve Awodey has an answer in a preprint of a paper, now posted … Continue reading Awodey on Sets, Types, Categories and the Foundations of Mathematics

This call for applications for Elsevier Foundation Travel Grants for junior female researchers for the CiE 2009 conference just came over the wire: We are offering up to five travel grants for junior female researchers to come to CiE 2009. These grants cover the registration fee (at the early rate) plus a travel reimbursement of … Continue reading Travel grants for Women in Computability at CiE 2009

My colleague Marc Ereshefsky brought me back a book of sticky notes from LA: Logical Positivi-its. There are three: a defintional double arrow, one with a picture of Otto Neurath, and one with a picture of Wittgenstein with three check boxes: tautology, meaningless, or Schweigen (be silent).

If you'd rather go to France than Pittsburgh or LA, or you're not an undergrad student: 21st EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL IN LOGIC, LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION ESSLLI 2009 Bordeaux, July 20-31 2009 The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is organized every year by the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI) in … Continue reading ESSLLI 2009 in Bordeaux

We're having a little logic conference this weekend in Calgary. If you're in the area, please come! All talks in 1253 Social Sciences, University of Calgary. Relevant papers may be found by following the links below Nuel Belnap (Pittsburgh)Friday, March 27, 4 pmTruth Values, Neither-True-Nor-False, and SupervaluationsMy oral remarks are based on an essay to … Continue reading Antonelli, Belnap, Segerberg in Calgary this Weekend

On Leiter's blog there was a poll on the question "who's the most important philosopher of the 20th century", prompted by the unqualified assertion by Jim Holt in a NYT book review that that would be Wittgenstein. The results were widely debated, e.g., on Crooked Timber. The reason the results were contentious, I think, is … Continue reading Who’s The Most Famous Philosopher of the 20th Century?

FOLLI is soliciting nominations for the 2009 Beth Dissertation Prize in Logic, Language, and Information. Since 2002, FoLLI (the European Association for Logic, Language, and Information, www.folli.org) awards the E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize to outstanding dissertations in the fields of Logic, Language, and Information. We invite submissions for the best dissertation which resulted in … Continue reading Beth Dissertation Prize Call for Nominations

On March 27, 2009, the people behind Language Proof and Logic will have a little meeting on the various courseware packages they have now and are currently developing: Openproof day will be a day of events discussing a variety of topics related to the work of the project, including: * Presentation of existing courseware packages … Continue reading Openproof Day 2009

Not one but two logic summer schools for undergrads this year:Carnegie Mellon Summer School in Logic and Formal EpistemologyJune 8 to 26, with courses by Steve Awodey (Categories and Structures), Teddy Seidenfeld (Decisions and Games), and Jeremy Avigad (Logic and Formal Verification)Apply by March 15UCLA Logic Center 2009 Summer School for UndergraduatesJuly 13 to 31, … Continue reading Undergrad Logic Summer Schools

With the kind permission of Brian Leiter, here's a breakout of the Canadian philosophy departments by specialty according to the 2009 Philosophical Gourmet Report. Major changes over the last (2008-10) edition: The Guelph-Laurier-McMaster program is no longer ranked, and neither is Waterloo. The "local means", i.e., mean scores from Canadian evaluators, are no longer reported. … Continue reading Canadian PhD Programs in the 2009 Philosophical Gourmet Report

The Conservative government's budget includes additional funding for Canada's granting councils to expand their graduate scholarship programs. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada stands to gain an additional $17.5 million, or 500 additional PhD scholarships and 1,000 additional MA scholarships. The catch: SSHRC's money is earmarked for "business-related degrees".If you're Canadian, please … Continue reading Save Canadian Grad Student Funding in Humanties and Social Sciences!

In Krister Segerberg's modal logic seminar here in Calgary, we were talking about propositional dynamic logic last week. PDL was originally introduced (by Vaughn Pratt in the early 70's) to reason about programs. In the language, you have propositional variables but then also variables for (indeterministic) programs. Moreover, you have complex terms for programs, e.g., … Continue reading Interpretations of Propositional Dynamic Logic

I'm a bit late with this, but if you haven't heard, here are a couple of interesting new blogs: It's Only a Theory, a group blog on philosophy of science, including logicians/philosophers of math/historians of analytic philosophy Otávio Bueno, Elaine Landry, and Chris Pincock of (Honest Toil fame)B-log, a "logic-leaning philosophy blog" by JC Beall … Continue reading New Blogs

Luciano Floridi has been awarded the Barwise Prize in philosophy of computing, given out annually by the APA.

Logic I exercise: Formalize "Every day each of us says the dumbest thing we are going to say that day." Is it logically true?

The submission deadline for the July conference Computability in Europe is drawing near (Jan 20). I hope there will be at least a few papers on history and philosophy of computability--the PC chair tells me that so far there are none!

Arne Næss has died at the age of 96. He was the last surviving member of the "periphery" of the Vienna Circle.Notice here.

Here's a more detailed summary of the paper I just mentioned, (Ciabattoni, Galatos, and Terui, From axioms to analytic rules in nonclassical logics, LICS 2008) courtesy of Agata: The paper contains a first step towards the definition of a general procedure to turn Hilbert axioms into analytic structural rules in various formalisms. The result is … Continue reading More on Ciabattoni, Galatos, and Terui

Over lunch the other day, my friend and colleague Agata Ciabattoni told me about her paper at this year's LICS, "From axioms to analytic rules in nonclassical logics". In it, she and her co-authors Nikolaos Galatos and Kazushige Terui present an intriguing and very general result: Suppose you have a logic which can be axiomatized … Continue reading Bleg: Systematic Approaches to Generation of Logical Calculi

In addition to the new special issue celebrating the 50th anniversary of Gödel's Dialectica interpretation, Wiley-Blackwell has made the original Dialectica issue in which it appeared freely available. That issue itself was a Festschrift in honour of Paul Bernays's 70th birthday. (I'm sorry I'm late to herewith commemorate the 120th birthday of Bernays, who was … Continue reading Paul Bernays at 120