Future Directions for Logic: Proceedings of PhDs in Logic III

I’m excited to report that the proceedings of PhDs in Logic III are now available for order. Here’s what the fuzz is all about:

On 17–18 February 2011 the third installment of PhDs in Logic took place at the Academy Palace in Brussels, Belgium. Some forty European logicians gathered to discuss a diverse range of topics in mathematical and philosophical logic. PhDs in Logic is an annual series of graduate conferences/winter schools, run for and by PhD students. The winter school consists of tutorials taught by well established researchers; the graduate conference provides young logicians with an excellent opportunity to share their results with a large audience of peers and established logicians. This volume bundles thirteen of the papers presented at the graduate conference of PhDs in Logic III. These papers deal with a wide variety of topics, coming from subfields such as algebraic logic, set theory, and philosophical logic. All papers share the common goal of advancing the boundaries of research in logic and its applications, thus turning this volume into a unique overview of what's hot and upcoming in the field of logic.

The thirteen papers are as follows:

1. Decomposing Baire Class One Functions — Raphaël Carroy
2. Relational Semantics for a Fragment of Linear Logic — Dion Coumans
3. Bivalent Logics — Vincent Degauquier
4. Reducibility by Continuous Functions and Wadge Degrees — Kevin Fournier
5. Abduction of Multiple Explanatory Hypotheses — Tjerk Gauderis
6. Constructing the Lindenbaum Algebra for a Logic Step-by-Step Using Duality — Sam van Gool
7. A Logic-Based Approach to Pluralistic Ignorance — Jens Ulrik Hansen
8. Groups with Unbounded Potential Automorphism Tower Heights — Philipp Lücke
9. The Surprise Examination Paradox in Dynamic Epistemic Logic — Alexandru Marcoci
10. Duality and the Equational Theory of Regular Languages — Yann Pequignot
11. Ambiguities for NF — Damien Servais
12. Axioms for Non-Archimedean Probability (NAP) — Sylvia Wenmackers, Vieri Benci, and Leon Horsten
13. Modifying Kremer’s Modified Gupta-Belnap Desideratum — Stefan Wintein

You can buy the book from Amazon or from any other bookshop using the following bibliographic information:

Jonas De Vuyst and Lorenz Demey (eds.). 2012. Future Directions for Logic: Proceedings of PhDs in Logic III. IfColog Proceedings Volume 2. College Publications: London. ISBN 978-1848900790.

PhDs in Logic III

February 17-18th, 2011BRUSSELS
www.vub.ac.be/phdsinlogic2011/
FIRST CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND PARTICIPATION
PhDs in Logic is an annual two-day graduate conference and winter school in logic. Each year we invite four established professors to do a tutorial on their work in two one-hour sessions. We also give about ten PhD students the opportunity to do a thirty-minute presentation on (a) their own work or (b) an overview of some topic in their field. 

Come February 17-18th, 2011 the following tutorials will take place in Brussels. 

Eric Pacuit: Epistemic Logic
Sonja Smets: Quantum Logic
Mai Gehrke: Algebraic Logic
Peter Koepke: Set Theory 

PhD students in logic with a background in philosophy, computer science, or mathematics are the intended audience for these tutorials. They are also the type of students we have in mind for our thirty-minute student sessions. Students interested in doing a talk should send a 500-1000 word abstract to phdsinlogic+abstracts@gmail.com by November 15th, 2010. If your abstract is accepted, you will be expected to give us a six to ten page paper by January 15th, 2011. We welcome students to participate in PhDs in Logic III regardless of whether they want to do a presentation. We also invite master students in logic, first year postdocs, and logicians from disciplines other than philosophy, computer science, and mathematics to apply. There is a 30 euros registration fee. 

For more information, visit our website at www.vub.ac.be/phdsinlogic2011/. 

Organizing Committee: Jonas De Vuyst, Lorenz Demey, Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Marc Denecker.  Scientific Committee: Benedikt Loewe, Leon Horsten, Marc Denecker, Jean Paul Van Bendegem.  Sponsors: Formal Epistemology Project (FEP), Centrum voor Logica en Wetenschapsfilosofie (CLWF), VUB Doctoral School of Human Sciences (DSh).

Philosophical Perspectives on Mathematical Practice

I’m very happy to report that Philosophical Perspectives on Mathematical Practice—a book edited by Bart Van Kerkhove, Jean Paul Van Bendegem, and me—is now available to order.

Here’s the description from the backcover:

It has been observed many times before that, as yet, there are no encompassing, integrated theories of mathematical practice available. To witness, as we currently do, a variety of schools in this field elaborating their philosophical frameworks, and trying to sort out their differences in the course of doing so, is also to be constantly reminded of the fact that a lot of epistemic aspects, extremely relevant to this task, remain dramatically underexamined. This volume wants to contribute to the stock of studies filling this perceived lacuna. It contains papers by established, upcoming, as well as beginning scholars, covering general, metaphilosophical themes such as naturalism, semiotics, pragmaticism, or empiricism, next to more specific topics including the unity of mathematical theories, thruth-flow in mathematics, diagrammatic reasoning, erroneous argumentation, or numerical analysis.

FWO-project: Epistemische logica met justificatie en contexten

Ik vernam zopas dat mijn projectvoorstel door het Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) werd aanvaard! Dit betekent dat ik vanaf oktober vier jaar lang als FWO-aspirant zal werken aan een proefschrift over logica en kennisleer. De details kan je hieronder lezen.

Hypergesofistikeerd maar onvrij

Het is zover: mijn eerste publicatie is een feit. Het gaat om het artikel “Hypergesofistikeerd maar onvrij” in het boek Humanismen. Filosofische beschouwingen over diversiteit en pluraliteit, dat een vervolg breidt aan de 28e Vlaams-Nederlandse Filosofiedag waaraan ik in 2006 deelnam.

In mijn essay beargumenteer ik dat sommige ethische aspecten van het mens-zijn – in het bijzonder het vrij zijn en het beleven van een zinvol bestaan – geen evidentie zijn in sommige al te futuristische visies over posthumaniteit. Ik vertrek daarbij vanuit de notie dat deze aspecten zeer concrete verschijnselen zijn die enkel bestaan bij gratie van onze menselijkheid zoals we deze nu kennen. Bijgevolg is het problematisch om deze concepten te projecteren op andere (posthumane) levensvormen. Dennett, Sellars en Wittgenstein doen dienst als mijn voornaamste bronnen van inspiratie.

Hoewel het om een tekst gaat die ik als bachelorstudent schreef – een ver verleden waarin ik amper iets afwist van analytische filosofie – blijft mijn positie over transhumanisme eigenlijk ongewijzigd. Wel neemt dit niet weg dat mijn tekst er heel anders zou hebben uitgezien mocht ik ’m enkele jaren later hebben geschreven.

Update: Je kan voortaan op Google Boeken door stukken van het boek bladeren.

Getting Rid of Legacy Text Encoding

In the process of migrating my sites to a new server, I am also making my HTML code 7-bit clean. This should finally relieve me from ever having to manually change the character set in my terminal and the $LANG variable in my shell environment.

I tried to find a program that would do the conversion for me but, alas, I did not find anything that would help me get the job done quickly. Hence, I decided to write my own script.