Dates: June 10-12, 2015Location: Montpellier, FranceSubmission deadline: April 1, 2015 This workshop aims at promoting work on Hilbert’s epsilon calculus in a number of relevant fields ranging from Philosophy and Mathematics to Linguistics and Informatics. The Epsilon and Tau operators were introduced by David Hilbert, inspired by Russell's Iota operator for definite descriptions, as binding … Continue reading CfP: Hilbert’s Epsilon and Tau in Logic, Informatics and Linguistics

Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language actually deals with semantic notions such as "analytic."  Why, then, didn't he call it "semantics"?  When the project was still in its early stages, Carnap sent a manuscript entitled "Metalogik" to Heinrich Behmann.  Behmann objected to the title and suggested as alternatives first "Logic of Language" and then "Semantics." Carnap … Continue reading Carnap on “Syntax” vs “Semantics”

Tools for Teaching Logic (June 9-­12, 2015, Rennes, France) is seeking original papers with a clear significance in the following topics (but are not limited to): teaching logic in sciences and humanities; teaching logic at different levels of instruction (secondary education, university level, and postgraduate); didactic software; facing some difficulties concerning what to teach; international … Continue reading CfP: Tools For Teaching Logic TTL2015

In case you need the original 1920 or 1923 papers by Skolem, and you don't have Selected Works in Logic handy, here are PDFs extracted from the digital version of Skrifter utgit av Videnskapsselskapet i Kristiania. I, Matematisk-naturvidenskabelig klasse made available by the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Internet Archive. Thoralf Skolem, "Logisch-kombinatorische Untersuchungen über … Continue reading Skolem’s 1920, 1923 Papers

We have some new editors at the Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy.

First Announcement & Call for Abstracts Logic Colloquium 2015European Summer Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic Helsinki, Finland, 3-8 August 2015 http://www.helsinki.fi/lc2015 The annual European Summer Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, the Logic Colloquium 2015 (LC 2015), will be organized in Helsinki, Finland, 3-8 August 2015. Logic Colloquium 2015 is co-located with … Continue reading CfP: 2015 Logic Colloquium in Helsinki

Sad news from Philip Welch at Bristol:  John Shepherdson has died. I deeply regret having to impart the very sad news that John Shepherdson died in Bristol on Thursday of an inoperable sarcoma. John was a founder of the BLC (together with Robin Gandy if I remember rightly). His own work was in many areas, … Continue reading John Shepherdson, 1926-2015

Every mathematician and philosopher should watch this video by Sarah-Jane Leslie (Philosophy, Princeton) on her study with Andrei Cimpian (Psych, Illinois). Takes just 11 minutes. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM6mbSiD3eA] Then you can go and read the original study in Science or any of the writeups in, e.g., the Science news blog, Chronicle, Daily Nous, etc.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy now has entries on: Negation (Laurence R. Horn and Heinrich Wansing) Disjunction (Ray Jennings and Andrew Hartline) Indicative Conditionals (Dorothy Edgington) Quantifiers and Quantificiation (Gabriel Uzquiano) Identity (Harold Noonan and Ben Curtis)

I learned today that Ivor Grattan-Guinness, the historian of mathematics and logic, died last month. Obituaries: Guardian BibNum

If you're using BibTeX and LaTeX and are doing any kind of scholarly/humanistic work, I'm sure you've run into this annoying problem: BibTeX always complains when a book has both an author and an editor. That's a problem when, say, you want to include Gödel, K., 1986. Collected Works, vol. I. S. Feferman et al., … Continue reading Nerlim: a Master Bibliography Style that Allows Books to have both Authors and Editors

New in the Review of Symbolic Logic (part 1, part 2) A Gödel sentence is often described as a sentence saying about itself that it is not provable, and a Henkin sentence as a sentence stating its own provability. We discuss what it could mean for a sentence of arithmetic to ascribe to itself a … Continue reading Halbach & Visser: Self-reference in arithmetic

[View the story "Michael Beaney's Vienna Circle Lecture on Susan Stebbing" on Storify]

In response to my post about "lesser known Russian/Soviet logicians", Lev Beklemishev commented: Dirk van Dalen was interested in Shatunovsky's work and at his request I procured a copy of his book on the development of algebra on the basis of what can be called rudimentary constructivist ideas. This was, of course, pre-Brouwerian, and the … Continue reading More on Shatunovsky, Kagan, and Yanovskaya

I'm working on a paper that features Moses Schönfinkel, so I was reading through a manuscript of his where he rattles off a long list of important logicians.  In addition to the usual suspects, it features the names "Schatunowski, Sleschinski, Kahan, Poretski."  I spent the better part of a day trying to figure out to … Continue reading Some Lesser Known (to me) Russian/Soviet Logicians

Shawn Standefer has done us all a great service by starting and populating a Wiki of PhD programs in Philosophical Logic! This wiki provides an unranked list of PhD (and (eventually) terminal M.A.) programs that have strengths in philosophical logic. Links are provided to the websites, CVs, and PhilPapers profiles of the relevant faculty at … Continue reading Graduate Programs in Philosophical Logic

...is another's modus tollens. [W]hen I was nine years old, I came down with scarlet fever. [...] During that year there was nothing in the world which I wanted so much as a bicycle. My father assured me that when I got well I would get one but, childlike, I interpreted this as meaning that … Continue reading One person’s modus ponens…