The American Academy of Arts & of Sciences has announced its 2015 class of members. The recipients of this prestigious honor include eight logicians: Sanjeev Arora (Computer Science, Princeton University) works in complexity theory, and is especially known for his work on probabilistically checkable proofs. He previously won the Gödel Prize for his work on … Continue reading Eight Logicians Elected to the American Academy
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Anita Burdman Feferman, 1927-2015
Anita Burdman Feferman, the noted biographer of Jean van Heijenoort and Alfred Tarski, died on April 9. She was the author of Politics, Logic, and Love: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort (Jones and Bartlett, 1993, reprinted as From Trotsky to Gödel, CRC Press, 200) and the co-author of Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic (CUP, 2004). … Continue reading Anita Burdman Feferman, 1927-2015
Finding Cheryl’s Birthday with DEMO
Following up on the Dynamic Epistemic Logic treatment of Cheryl's Birthday Puzzle, Malvin Gattinger (ILLC Amsterdam) has formalized the problem in DEMO_S5, a Dynamic Epistemic Logic model checker written in Haskell by Jan van Eijck (CWI Amsterdam and ILLC). The original DEMO system was described in: Jan van Eijck: "DEMO—a demo of epistemic modelling" In: Johan … Continue reading Finding Cheryl’s Birthday with DEMO
Mancosu on Frege and Direction
Remember the part in Frege's Grundlagen where he starts to talk about abstraction by talking about the direction of lines? Two lines have the same direction if and only if they are parallel; this gives an identity criterion for directions of lines. Ever wondered why Frege starts bringing in geometry? What the historical context and … Continue reading Mancosu on Frege and Direction
Ask Your Librarian to Subscribe to PhilPapers!
PhilPapers now has almost 1.75 million entries. Like the Stanford Encyclopedia, the project is non-profit and largely run by volunteers. In order to be sustainable, they do need funding. And like the Stanford Encyclopedia, they are asking for our help: so ask your library to subscribe! The merger of Philosophy Research Index into PhilPapers has … Continue reading Ask Your Librarian to Subscribe to PhilPapers!
Logicians Yap, Kooi Explain Viral Birthday Logic Puzzle
You've probably seen the "birthday logic puzzle" that's gone viral in the past few days. If you haven't, you might want to try to solve it yourself. Here it is: Two dynamic epistemic logicians, Audrey Yap (UVic) and Barteld Kooi (Groningen) explained the solution (and how to get it) on facebook. "Dynamic" here modifies "epistemic", … Continue reading Logicians Yap, Kooi Explain Viral Birthday Logic Puzzle
Logic without Borders: Essays in Honor of Jouko Väänänen
A Festschrift for Jouko Väänänen's 60th birthday is now out with de Gruyter, edited by Åsa Hirvonen, Juha Kontinen, Roman Kossak, and Andrés Villaveces: In recent years, mathematical logic has developed in many directions, the initial unity of its subject matter giving way to a myriad of seemingly unrelated areas. The articles collected here, which … Continue reading Logic without Borders: Essays in Honor of Jouko Väänänen
Moshe Vardi Elected Fellow of SIAM
SIAM just announced its list of Fellows for 2015, and it includes Moshe Vardi. The citation reads: Moshe Y. Vardi is Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering and Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University. He is being recognized for contributions to the development of logic as … Continue reading Moshe Vardi Elected Fellow of SIAM
Quine’s Paradox and Gödel’s Theorem
It's a commonplace to compare Gödel's theorem to the liar paradox: The sentence This sentence is not true. is neither true nor false. Switch out "provable" for "true" and you get This sentence is not provable. and, modulo some technical stuff, this sentence is then neither provable nor refutable. But of course the "modulo some … Continue reading Quine’s Paradox and Gödel’s Theorem
My Sessions at the Pacific
I'm organizing two sessions at the Pacific APA; please join me there! Thursday, April 2, morning, 9-noon: 4A Book Symposium: Greg Frost-Arnold, Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard: Conversations on Logic, Mathematics, and Science Speakers: Richard Creath (Arizona State University) Gary Ebbs (Indiana University Bloomington) Greg Lavers (Concordia University) Greg Frost-Arnold (Hobart and William Smith … Continue reading My Sessions at the Pacific
Falso
A computer-verified proof of ⊥: https://github.com/clarus/falso (h/t Byron Cook)
Petr Vopěnka, 1935-2015
The Czech logician and set theorist Petr Vopěnka has died. He has made significant contributions to classical set theory and founded alternative set theory. You may find this 2006 documentary by Andrea Slováková interesting (Czech with English subtitles). Obituaries: Prague Monitor
Academic Genealogy Graphed
The Mathematics Genealogy project is a huge database of mathematicians, where and when they got their degrees, and who their advisors were. (There's also a wiki-based Philosophy Genealogy.) Nice pastime when the polar vortex keeps you from leaving the house: find famous people in your academic family tree. If you're in the Mathematics Genealogy, you … Continue reading Academic Genealogy Graphed
CfP: Hilbert’s Epsilon and Tau in Logic, Informatics and Linguistics
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
In Memoriam: Grigori Mints
A memorial site has been set up to honor Grisha's memory. A memorial conference in honor of Grisha Mints will be held at the Third St.Petersburg Days of Logic and Computability, August 24-26, 2015, at the Euler International Mathematical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia. The following obituary was included in the January 2015 Newsletter of the … Continue reading In Memoriam: Grigori Mints
Previously Unknown Turing Manuscript Going to Auction
You may have heard that a notebook by Alan Turing, which he left to Robin Gandy, is going to auction in April. Bonham's, the auction house, has kindly permitted me to share the auction catalog. The notebook apparently dates from around 1944. The mathematical content is divided into two parts, one on Peano's axioms (judging … Continue reading Previously Unknown Turing Manuscript Going to Auction
Carnap (and Goodman and Quine) and Linguistics (Guest post by Darin Flynn)
(This is a guest post by my linguistics colleague Darin Flynn) I was intrigued by your last post—that Carnap (apparently) gave serious consideration to suggestions by Gödel and Behmann that he use “semantics” rather than “syntax” in the title of his 1934 book. The story we’re told in linguistics is that Carnap learned to love … Continue reading Carnap (and Goodman and Quine) and Linguistics (Guest post by Darin Flynn)
Carnap on “Syntax” vs “Semantics”
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”
CfP: Tools For Teaching Logic TTL2015
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
Skolem’s 1920, 1923 Papers
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