PhD Student Position in Logic and Cognitive Science, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol (UK):A newly established research group headed by Hannes Leitgeb at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, has an open position for a PhD student. The group, which will be part of an international EUROCORES Collaborative Research Project on Metacognition, will … Continue reading PhD Student Position in Logic at Bristol

Peter Smith's book on incompleteness is now online in a new version.

Ever tried reading logical texts from the 20s or before (e.g., C. I. Lewis's Symbolic Logic)? Confused by the absence of parentheses and all the dots and colons? Here's Carnap's explanation of the notation (from Abriss der Logistik): 4 c. The Dot RulesThe dot symbols (. : :. :: etc.) replace the bracketing of propositions. … Continue reading Dots as Brackets in Formulas

50 years ago this summer, McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, and Shannon organized a summer conference at Dartmouth which turned out to be a milestone in Artificial Intelligence research. For the logically minded, this item in the funding proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation is perhaps most interesting: 4. Theory of the Size of a Calculation If we … Continue reading Dartmouth AI Conference 50 Years Ago

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Computability in Europe conference in the lovely seaside town of Swansea, Wales. Lots of interesting talks on all kinds of aspects of computation, including a number of talks on the (limits of) hypercomputation, a tutorial on proof complexity by Sam Buss, and special sessions on Gödel's … Continue reading Computability in Swansea

Reading over my previous post, I was wondering if a group of scholars can be referred to as a "gaggle". So I did some research (i.e., I asked google) and happened upon this wiki page, which lists the appropriate collective noun for logicians as "sequitur", and attributes this to Bertrand Russell. Anyone got a reference … Continue reading A Sequitur of Logicians?

I mentioned it in comments on the other post already, but I thought of a few solutions to my question: how do you keep a gaggle of scholars jointly working on a publication project organized? They are outlined in a wiki page. Comments welcome (you can edit the wiki, of course, or write something on … Continue reading Online Collaboration for Scholars Follow-up

Greg is reporting from the Realism/Anti-Realism Workshop in Nancy, and Yarden from the CMU Summer School in Logic. Stay tuned for reports from Computability in Europe next week from yours truly.

Friendster reminded me that today is Alan Turing's birthday.

If you've ever coauthored a paper, you know what a hassle it is to send versions back and forth, keep track of changes, avoid conflicts when you're simultaneously changing things, and so on. Now software engineers have the same problems when working on large development projects and have developed very sophisticated Revision Control Systems. I've … Continue reading Online Multi-Author Collaboration?

On June 22, 1936, Moritz Schlick, influential philosopher and center of the Vienna Circle of logical empiricists, was gunned down on the steps of the University of Vienna. The Institute Vienna Circle is holding a small memorial event at the University of Vienna today, which will include the presentation of the first two volumes of … Continue reading Schlick Killed 70 Years Ago Today

There will be two interesting workshops following GAP 6 in Berlin (September 14 & 15): one on Carnap, and one with the promising title "Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics".

I'm at HOPOS, which is loads of fun. All my history of analytic/history of logic buddies are here. But more to the point:Paolo Mancosu just gave the most amazing talk about the debate within the Vienna Circle about Tarski's theory of truth, in particular, the opposition that Neurath had voiced against it from the mid … Continue reading History of Logic at HOPOS

SciBlog, a blog project of a bunch of science writers in Vienna, goes live tomorrow with an event at Depot. If you're in Vienna, come on by.

Peter has posted a new version of the first 22 chapters of his Gödel Book.

The new issue of Philosophia Mathematica is devoted to Gödel. There are essays by Sol Feferman, Peter Koellner, Wilfried Sieg, Bill Tait, Rick Tieszen, and Mark van Atten, as well as a review of Torkel Franzén's Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse.

After a week in Singapore and a week in Melbourne, I'm back in cold and rainy Vienna, nursing a cold and trying to finish two papers. Thanks to John and Belle, who I got to hang out with in Singapore, and to Allen, Conrad, Graham, Greg, Kate, Maren, Tama, and Zach for making it a … Continue reading I’m Back

I'm in Singapore this week, giving a talk at ISMVL, and then visiting Greg in Melbourne next week. Regularly scheduled programming--such as it's been--will resume June 1.

A few more upcoming conferences marking Gödel's 100th birthday: The Annual Meeting of the ASL in Montreal next week will include a Special Gödel Symposium featuring Jeremy Avigad, Steve Awodey, Bill Tait, John Burgess, Akihiro Kanamori, and Sy Friedman.The Dutch Graduate School in Logic is putting on a Gödel Centenary Celebration in Utrecht, on May … Continue reading More Gödel Celebrations

I was talking to a friend of mine who works at the Technisches Museum Vienna the other day about Enigma and Colossus, since I had just heard Jack Copeland's talk at the Gödel Centennial about the history of Colossus. So I did some Googling and found some interesting books which I should get: Action This … Continue reading Enigma and Colossus