FEW call for papers

CMU will host FEW this year. The conference is scheduled for June rather than May. The call for papers appears below:

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We are in the process of organizing our sixth annual formal epistemology workshop (the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth workshops were all great successes). The purpose of these workshops is to bring together individuals, both faculty and graduate students, using mathematical methods in epistemology in small focused meetings. Topics treated will include but are not limited to:

* Ampliative inference (including inductive logic);
* Game theory and decision theory;
* Formal learning theory;
* Formal theories of coherence:
* Foundations of probability and statistics;
* Formal approaches to paradoxes of belief and/or action;
* Belief revision;
* Causal discovery.

Besides papers with respondents, each workshop will typically include short introductory tutorials (two or three topically related presentations) on formal methods. These tutorials will be oriented particularly to graduate students.

The sixth workshop is scheduled for June 18 – June 21, 2009 and will be held at Carnegie Mellon University. We are now accepting submissions for FEW 2009. Please send submissions by email to Branden Fitelson. Submissions are due — in the form of full papers — by Sunday, March 15, 2009; notifications of acceptance either as definite presenters or as alternates will be sent out by Thursday, April 30, 2008. Some of the papers presented at FEW 2009 will appear in a special issue of the
Journal of Philosophical Logic.

Those interested in participating, either by presenting papers, responding, or providing tutorials, or in helping with organization, should contact one of the local organizers listed below. We can contribute $500 in travel funds for every graduate student who presents or comments on a paper. We are also able to contribute $250 in travel costs for a number (to be determined) of graduate students who attend the workshop without presenting or commenting on a paper. Priority will
be given to graduate students who have not attended previous workshops, and to women and minorities. Graduate students who wish to be considered for travel funding should contact Kevin Kelly or Richard Scheines (the local organizers this year) by May 1, 2009.

Kevin Kelly
Richard Scheines
CMU

Branden Fitelson
UC-Berkeley

Sahotra Sarkar
UT-Austin

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NOTE: The FEW website is now located at:

http://fitelson.org/few/

We hope to see you all in Pittsburgh in June!

New course at CUNY

Rohit Parikh is preparing a new course focusing on epistemic logic at CUNY.  Here are excerpts of the informal description of the course and some administrative data about the course itself:

PHIL 76800 - Epistemic Logic and Applications (Tuesdays 6:30-8:30)

Epistemic logic has gone through an explosive development since the publication of two books, Knowledge and Belief: An introduction to the logic of the two notions, by Jaakko Hintikka, and Convention: A philosophical study, by David Lewis.  Developments in epistemic logic have since influenced philosophy, computer science, economics, linguistics and social science. After doing a survey of the two books mentioned above, the course will proceed to cover more recent topics like common knowledge, logical omniscience, agreeing to disagree, "no-trade" theorems, cheap talk and knowledge updating.

Students will benefit more if they are familiar with propositional logic (which is pretty much required) and have some idea of Kripke structures, although the latter will be covered in the course.

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It seems that the course will cover both issues related to philosophical foundations and more applied and technical results.  There are few courses that manage to do both things at an excellent level so this seems a nice opportunity for students in the NYC area. 

Two talks today in NYC

Greg Wheeler will give a talk on "Coherence and Confirmation" at 6:30 today in Rohit Parikh's seminar at CUNY Graduate Center. Also today, Thomas Kelly will give a talk on "Confidence and Belief Revision" at 4:10 in Philosophy Hall here at Columbia.