Continuing my earlier posts about logic and philosophy, here's a little survey of the top 36 US philosophy departments, what logic courses they offer, and what the logic requirements for PhD and BA are there. The next time I feel like procrastinating, I'll do this for the rest of the US programs, and UK, Australasian, … Continue reading Formal Logic and Philosophy III

One nice thing about spending a sabbatical at LPS in Irvine is that I get to sit in on some really cool classes. One, I'm attending Jeff Barrett's course on Quantum Mechanics. I never actually had a chance to study QM, and I've always been interested. Maybe it'll help me understand what quantum logic is … Continue reading Ah, to be a grad student again…

Yesterday, I arrived in Irvine, Calif., where I'll be spending the Fall quarter at the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California. I'm very excited: it's a very good department, there are lots of people here to talk to, and I get to take some seminars! The downside: it's in … Continue reading The OC

It's been up for a while now, but better late than never: Peter Smith (Cambridge) has set up a very handy page of links to LaTeX class files, style files, and instructions, especially for logicians. It includes, for instance, links to Josh Parson's style file for setting formulas in Frege's Begriffsschrift notation. Also, Peter's own … Continue reading LaTeX for Logicians

If you're into history of logic (or mathematics generally), or are just looking for old articles, and you're stuck at a university whose libraries holdings go back to only about 1965, what can you do? Say you're looking for a paper from Mathematische Annalen 1924, where do you go to find it online? Well, JSTOR … Continue reading History of mathematics soon won’t need libraries

I just finished reading the new Tarski biography, Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic, by Anita Burdman Feferman and Sol Feferman. It is a well-researched, interesting, beautiful, and sometimes moving account of the life of one of the leading figures in the field. It was especially interesting reading for me, since a great chunk of his … Continue reading Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic

While everyone else is blogging from the NDC, I'm in Turin at the European Summer Meeting of the Association of Symbolic Logic, aka LC'04.  Highlights so far: Grisha Mints' opening talk on Monday, in which he presented a result showing that all intuitionistic Frege systems polynomially simulate each other.  It uses some interesting recent work … Continue reading Live from the Logic Colloquium

Two exciting conferences coming up next academic year: In November, the 5th Midwest Philosophy of Mathematics Workshop will be held at Notre Dame. I went last year, and it was a fabulous experience. There will be a special presentation by Dana Scott. And at the end of March 2005, the 1st World Congress and School … Continue reading Two Interesting Conferences Next Year

As a follow-up to my previous post, I took it upon myself to survey graduate program logic requirements. Of the top 50 US PhD programs (according to the Gourmet Report), every one has a logic requirement of some form or another. 15 require only an introductory course in formal logic (propositional and predicate logic, formalization, … Continue reading The Status of Logic in Philosophy II

Brian Weatherson has started a discussion about rules as to what it is ok to write about in philosophy blogs. This was taken up by Lindsay Beyerstein and Gustavo Llarull. In the comments at TAR, I suggested that it's doubtful that new rules are needed. Blogging is a relatively new phenomenon, but academic discussion (in … Continue reading Blog Rules

Wolfgang Schwartz asks here if there is a "canonical" way to build free-variable tableaux which are guaranteed to close if the original formula is valid. It seems to me that this must be the case, since free-variable tableaux are a complete proof method. But maybe I don't understand the question.The point of free-variable tableaux is … Continue reading Free-variable Tableaux

It is a commonly accepted view (among logicians working in philosophy [departments]) that while logic was considered central to philosophy in the mid-20th century, it has since moved closer and closer to the margins. It is said, e.g., that while in the 1950s and 60s it was common to find "pure" logicians working in philosophy … Continue reading The Status of Logic in Philosophy

I got the official letter today: I'll be Associate Professor as of July 1. Yay!

Greg Restall has a nice page of short descriptions of some important logicians' work. Kinda like my Who are Boole, Fitch, and Tarski page, only more in-depth.

The long (178 pages!) paper I wrote with Paolo Mancosu and Calixto Badesa is now done and available for download here.