A Formal Epistemology Reader

A Formal Epistemology Reader
Edited by
Horacio Arló-Costa, Johan van Benthem, Vincent F. Hendricks
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012
ISBN 9781107608726 (paperback)
ISBN 9781107001794 (hardback)
Assistant Editors: Henrik Boensvang & Rasmus K. Rendsvig

Release date / Fall 2012

‘Formal epistemology’ is a term coined in the late 1990s for a new constellation of interests in philosophy,the roots of which are found in earlier works of epistemologists, philosophers of science, and logicians. It addresses a growing agenda of problems concerning knowledge, belief, certainty, rationality, deliberation, decision, strategy, action and agent interaction – and it does so using methods from logic, probability, computability, decision, and game theory. This volume presents 42 classic texts in formal epistemology, and strengthens the ties between research into this area of philosophy and its neighbouring intellectual disciplines. The editors provide introductions to five basic subsections: Bayesian Epistemology, Belief Change, Decision Theory, Interactive Epistemology and Logics of Knowledge and Belief. The volume also includes a thorough index and suggestions for further reading, and thus offers a complete teaching and research package for students as well as research scholars of formal epistemology, philosophy, logic,computer science, theoretical economics and cognitive psychology.

Read more about the collection, and view table of contents here: http://www.vince-inc.com/vincent/?p=1030

CFP -- Logic Workshop at Buenos Aires

Call for papers

Logic Workshop at Buenos Aires – A Tribute to Horacio Arló-Costa

SADAF, the Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis, is organizing a Tribute to Horacio Arló-Costa, to take place in Buenos Aires, August 2nd to 4th, 2012.

Invited speakers:

Verónica Becher (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

John Collins (Columbia University)

Paul Egré (Jean Nicod Institute)

Jeff Helzner (Columbia University)

Rohit Parikh (City University of New York)

Fernando Tohmé (Universidad Nacional del Sur)

To be confirmed:

Cristina Bicchieri (University of Pensylvannia)

Alberto Moretti (SADAF-Universidad de Buenos Aires-CONICET)

Gladys Palau (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Paul Pedersen (Carnegie Mellon University)

We call for contributions in any area of philosophical logic, including (but not limited to) epistemic and modal logic, ampliative reasoning, belief revision, conditional logic, game theory and decision theory, among other topics.

We invite submissions for 40-minute presentations. Submissions should take the form of a 1000/1500-word abstract. They should be sent by e-mail in an attached file in pdf format to info@sadaf.org.ar. Authors’ names and affiliation should be given only in the text of the e-mail message. The abstracts will be blind reviewed by an international scientific committee. English and Spanish will be the official languages of the Conference. However, we encourage contributors to provide to the audience an extended abstract, ppt presentation, handout or full paper in English during the Conference.

* Deadline for reception of submissions: March 30^th, 2012

* Communication of acceptance/rejection: May 30^th, 2012

For further particulars, please check SADAF website at www.sadaf.org.ar or contact us by sending an e-mail to info@sadaf.org.ar

Organizing Committee: Eduardo Barrio, Eleonora Cresto, Sandra Lazzer, Diana Pérez.

Scientific Committee: Verónica Becher, John Collins, Paul Egré, Jeff Helzner, Alberto Moretti, Gladys Palau, Rohit Parikh, Fernando Tohmé.

About SADAF

SADAF, the Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis, is a non-profit organization devoted to research in philosophy. It was founded in 1972, and at present it counts with more than two hundred members, many of which are either faculty members or advanced students at various universities in Argentina and abroad. SADAF offers seminars and colloquium series, and hosts different kinds of academic meetings all year round. Since 1981 it is also home of Análisis Filosófico, a biannual, peer-reviewed journal of philosophy. Horacio Arló-Costa was an active member of SADAF while he lived in Argentina, and kept close ties with our institution after leaving the country. More information in Spanish in www.sadaf.org.ar

Support for Graduate Students at New Science -- New Risks

The following message comes from Nils-Eric Sahlin:

"The Center for Philosophy of Science will hold a conference on New Science – New Risks, March 30-31, 2012. For details, visit the Center Website at www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr. We have limited support for a small number of qualified graduate students in a philosophy or philosophy of science program who are interested in attending. Qualified graduate students must be advanced in their graduate programs and working on a dissertation directly related to the topic of the conference. We are able to offer lodging for two nights at a nearby hotel or reimbursement of up to $300 against receipts for travel-related expenses.

Interested graduate students should contact Nils-Eric Sahlin, Chair of the Organizing Committee, at: Nils-Eric.Sahlin@med.lu.se"

Schedule and Abstracts for Progic 2011 ...

The Progic conference will take place at Columbia University on September 10th and 11th. A detailed schedule, abstracts, and map of Columbia campus can be found at the conference page.

Progic 2011 on September 10th and 11th at Columbia University

The Progic conference series is intended to promote interactions between probability and logic. The fifth installment of the series will be held at Columbia University in New York on September 10th and 11th of 2011. While several of the earlier Progic meetings included a special focus, Progic 2011 will honor Haim Gaifman's contributions to the intersection of probability and logic. Progic 2011 will consist of 11 talks, including invited talks by the following:

• Haim Gaifman (Columbia)
• Rohit Parikh (CUNY)
• Jeff Paris (Manchester)
• Dana Scott (Carnegie Mellon)

Progic 2011 will also include a memorial session to honor Horacio Arlo-Costa (Carnegie Mellon) who was scheduled to speak at the conference but passed away on July 14, 2011.

Here is the schedule:

Saturday, September 10^th – in 602 Hamilton Hall

Morning session

9:45-10:00 Opening remarks

10:00-11:00 Mixing modality and probability (yet again)

Dana Scott (Carnegie Mellon)

11:00-11:20 Q&A

10 min break

11:30-12:00 From Bayesian epistemology to inductive logic

Jon Williamson (Kent)

12:00-12:10 Q&A

5 min break

12:15-12:45 Ultralarge lotteries: dissolving the lottery paradox using non-standard analysis

Sylvia Wenmackers (Groningen)

12:45-12:55 Q&A

Lunch

Afternoon session

2:25-3:25 T.b.a.

Rohit Parikh (CUNY Graduate Center)

3:25-3:45 Q&A

5 min break

3:50-4:20 Coherence based probability logic: philosophical and psychological applications

Niki Pfeifer (Munich)

4:20-4:30 Q&A

20 min break

4:50-5:20 Matryoshka epistemology: the role of cores in belief and decision

Paul Pedersen (Carnegie Mellon)

5:20-5:30 Q&A

5:30 – 6:30 Memorial for Horacio Arlo Costa

Sunday, September 11^th – in 403 IAB

Morning session

10:25-10:30 Opening announcements

10:30-11:30 Pure inductive logic

Jeff Paris (Manchester)

11:30-11:50 Q&A

10 min break

12:00-12:30 Probabilities on sentences in an expressive logic

M. Hutter (ANU), J. Lloyd (ANU), K. Ng (ANU), and W. Uther (National ICT)

12:30-12:40 Q&A

Lunch

Afternoon session

2:10-2:40 Confirmation as partial entailment: a representation theorem in inductive logic

Vincenzo Crupi (Munich) and Katya Tentori (Trento)

2:40-2:50 Q&A

5 min break

2:55-3:25 On a priori and a posteriori reasoning

Anubav Vasudevan (Chicago)

3:25-3:35 Q&A

10 min break

3:45-4:45 T.b.a.

Haim Gaifman (Columbia)

4:45-5:05 Q&A

5:05-5:15 Closing remarks

LORI-III: 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

***************************************************************************

2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
WORKSHOP ON LOGIC, RATIONALITY AND INTERACTION (LORI-III)

Guangzhou, China, October 10-13, 2011

URL: http://www.golori.org/lori2011/



***************************************************************************

LORI-III

THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON LOGIC, RATIONALITY AND INTERACTION
October 10 - 13, 2011
Institute of Logic & Cognition, Sun Yat-sen University
Guangzhou, China

We invite submissions of contributed paper bearing on any of the broad themes of the LORI workshop series, including knowledge acquisition, use, and management, information exchange, rational action, and rational interaction. Specific topics of interest include but are not limited to:

* semantic models for knowledge, for belief, and for uncertainty
* dynamic logics of knowledge, information flow, and action
* logical analysis of the structure of games
* belief revision, belief merging
* logics and preferences, compact preference representation
* logics of intentions, plans, and goals
* logics of probability and uncertainty
* logical approaches to decision making and planning
* argument systems and their role in interaction
* norms, normative interaction, and normative multiagent systems
* logical and computational approaches to social choice


Papers can be submitted on the Easychair site for the conference and should be no longer than 4,000 words (approximately 12 double spaced pages). Submissions may but need not be prepared with LNCS Proceedings Style, although final versions of accepted submissions *must* be prepared with LNCS proceedings style.

PUBLICATION INFORMATION

A LNCS Proceedings Volume containing all accepted papers will be available at the workshop. Authors of selected papers will be invited after the conference to submit to a special issue of the journal Knowledge, Rationality and Action.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

See the conference website or go directly to the Easychair submission page:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lori3

***************************************************************************
Tentative dates

Submission Deadline: June 1, 2011
Notification: June 25, 2011
Final version due: July 15, 2011
Conference: October 10 - 13, 2011

Progic 2011 at Columbia

The Progic conference series is intended to promote interactions between probability and logic. The fifth installment of the series will be held at Columbia University in New York on September 10th and 11th of 2011. See this page for details (including a call for papers).

Realism, Reference, and Rationality

Call for Papers

The graduate students of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University invite submissions to

The 13th Annual Pitt-CMU Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

This year we encourage papers focused especially on the topics of

Realism, Reference, and Rationality

This is a reminder that our submission deadline for the 13th Annual Pitt/CMU Graduate Philosophy Conference has been extended to January 1, 2011. The conference will take place March 18-19, 2011, with Arthur Fine (University of Washington) as our keynote speaker.

Submissions from all areas of philosophy are welcome. Papers should be no more than 4500 words and should be prepared for blind review. The paper must contain no identifying information and must include at the top an abstract of no more than 250 words. Papers should be submitted on EasyChair.

Further information may be found at

www.pitt.edu/~philgrad

Inquiries may be sent to PittCMUConference@gmail.com.

We look forward to your submissions.

The Organizing Committee

EPISTEME@CMU Call for papers

The 2011 EPISTEME conference will focus on the intersection of formal and social epistemology. The use of formal models in social epistemology is not a new development. Many philosophers have modeled concepts and ideas in social epistemology by using formal tools of various types (e.g., game theory, Bayesian decision theory, the theory of judgment aggregation, the recently developed theory of networks, multi-agent epistemic logic, social choice theory, etc.). This conference intends to explore the many fertile relations between various branches of formal epistemology and many sub-areas of contemporary social epistemology.

The 2011 EPISTEME conference will be hosted by the Center for Formal Epistemology in the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. The topic of the conference is:

"Social Epistemology meets Formal Epistemology: Recent developments and new trends"

A selection of the conference papers, including, potentially, papers from the open sessions, will be published in a special issue of the journal Episteme. For more information about the journal, look here.

Date: 24-26 June 2011

Possible topics: The following is a non-exhaustive list of possible questions that open session papers might address.

• Epistemic foundations of game theory.

• Peer disagreement.

• Aumann’s `Agreeing to disagree’.

• The modeling of testimony in Bayesian epistemology.

• Discrete pooling, judgment aggregation and social choice.

• Consensus of probabilities: limit theorems and applications.

• Dynamic logic meets game theory.

• Evolutionary game theory, morality and the social contract.

• The program of social software.

• Sociology of science.

• Diversity and pluralism.

• Social network structure.

• Learning in networks.

• Economic models of theory choice.

There will be a number of open sessions as part of this conference, and the organizers would like to invite submissions. Papers addressing any aspect of the conference theme, broadly conceived, are welcome. Submissions from graduate students are also welcome.

Length and format: Submissions should take the form of a detailed abstract of 500-1000 words. All submissions must be made electronically. The papers should be suitable for a presentation of around 30 minutes with a 15 minute question-and-answer session.

Submission procedure and important dates: All submissions should be sent directly to Horacio Arló-Costa (hcosta@andrew.cmu.edu). The deadline for submissions is February 15th 2011 with authors notified of the results of this process by April 20th 2011. All enquiries about the call for papers should be addressed to the main organizers: Horacio Arló-Costa (hcosta@andrew.cmu.edu ) and Christian List (C.List@lse.ac.uk).

Journal special issue: Please note that there will be a special issue of the journal Episteme arising out of this conference, and this issue may include some of the papers from the open sessions. It is thus essential that the papers for the open sessions are not already published, or due to be published. To be eligible for consideration for inclusion in the special issue, complete written versions of the papers will have to be ready by the time of the conference.

Main organizers:

Horacio Arló-Costa (CMU)
Christian List (LSE)

Program committee:

Alexandru Baltag (Oxford)
David Danks (CMU)
Igor Douven (Groningen)
Philip Kitcher (Columbia)
Klaus Nehring (UC Davis)
Eric Pacuit (Maryland and Tilburg)
Rohit Parikh (CUNY)
Gerhard Schurz (Dusseldorf)
Teddy Seidenfeld (CMU)
Brian Skyrms (CI)
Kai Spiekermann (LSE)
Johan van Benthem (Stanford, Amsterdam)
Kevin Zollman (CMU)



Local organizers:

Horacio Arló-Costa
Kevin Kelly

Workshop@CMU: Experience, heuristics, and choice: Prospects for bounded rationality

On December 1st there will be a workshop at CMU focusing on bounded rationality especially as applied to choice, featuring various central issues like the role of heuristics in choice and inference. The program, and other details can be found here. No registration is needed and attendance is welcomed. For details about organization you can contact me at my CMU email address. The workshop celebrates the work of Herb Simon in this area and features Ralph Hertwig as one of the main invitees. Ralph has made decisive contributions to bounded rationality in a series of recent papers. He is a student and a frequent collaborator of Gerd Gigerenzer.

Postdoctoral position in linguistics and formal epistemology @ CMU

Carnegie Mellon University, with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is pleased to accept applications for two A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities for the 2011-2013 academic years. These fellowships are designed to foster the academic careers of scholars who have recently received their Ph.D. degrees by permitting them to pursue their research while gaining mentored experience as teachers and members of one of Carnegie Mellon’s four humanities departments (English, History, Modern Languages, and Philosophy) in which they will be housed.

The Department of Philosophy seeks candidates whose research focuses on semantics or pragmatics of natural languages from the perspective of linguistics, philosophy, logic or computer science. Candidates whose work is of relevance to the research directions of the department’s Center for Formal Epistemology are particularly encouraged to apply. Information about the Center can be found at: http://www.formalepistemology.org

Terms of appointment
Fellows will teach two courses in their home department(s) in each year of their residency. They will have the opportunity to teach in their existing areas of expertise to prepare themselves for a competitive academic job market. Fellows will be encouraged to take part in the many cross-departmental colloquia, conferences, or seminars though the university’s Humanities Center, the Center for the Arts in Society, and the undergraduate Humanities Scholars Program.

A 2011–2013 Fellow will receive an annual stipend of $50,000 plus benefits, an annual research allowance of $2,500, and, for the first year of the appointment, three summer months salary.

Application and selection process
Applicants for the 2011–2013 fellowships must have completed a Ph.D. no earlier than January 1, 2009. Candidates who do not yet hold a Ph.D. but expect to by June 30, 2011 should supply a letter from their home institution corroborating such a schedule.

Applications for the 2011–2013 fellowships must be received in the Administrator's office by November 19, 2010. Incomplete dossiers will not be reviewed. Candidates should submit a cover letter, CV, personal statement (of no longer than 2000 words) outlining their complete research (including dissertation), work in progress, professional goals and plans for publication, proposed major field(s) of teaching, and the Carnegie Mellon department in which you would want to be based, and three letters of reference. (Note: reference letters may be sent with the candidate’s application materials in sealed signed envelopes or directly by the referees.)

Fellowship applications and departmental requests to house a fellow will be evaluated by Carnegie Mellon’s Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Advisory Committee, in consultation with the Dean and Associate Dean of the College of Humanities & Social Sciences. Strong fellowship applications will be circulated to relevant departments.

Should you have questions, please direct them to hssdean@andrew.cmu.edu.

All application materials and other correspondence should be addressed to:
Administrator, A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Office of the Dean
Carnegie Mellon University
Baker Hall 154
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Charlie Rose: The Brain Series

I just noticed this series. It seems that the episode scheduled for September 28 will focus on decision making.

LORI has a nice report on the Synthese Conference ...

here.

HT to Greg Wheeler for the link to Giacomo's report at LORI.

Thanks to everyone who helped make the conference a success. We hope to see you in 2012!

The Transatlantic: FIRST ISSUE OUT NOW AND CALL FOR ARTICLES

The Transatlantic - Journal of Economics and Philosophy - has published its first issue on the topic "Economics & Science". Visit www.thetransatlantic.org and click on "Current Issue" to skim through the online edition, which includes articles by undergraduates and graduates from universities such as Cambridge University, NYU and LSE. The first issue also features two guest articles - a piece by Tony Lawson, Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, and one by Lord Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus at Warwick and biographer of John Maynard Keynes. Moreover, there is an interview with Emanuel Derman, Professor of Financial Engineering at Columbia University and former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, who discussed the relation between models in physics and finance with The Transatlantic.

The Transatlantic is an academic journal adopting an interdisciplinary approach to span the gulf between Economics and Philosophy. It is open to anyone and hopes to serve as a global forum for those with an interest in the field. It is in this spirit that students from London, New York, Shanghai, Toronto and many other places are currently working together to establish a new platform for debate. This endeavor is officially supported by the LSE Philosophy Society and the Columbia University Economics Society.

The Transatlantic is now calling for articles for its second issue on the topic "Growth", which will be published in autumn 2010. Scholars and students from all over the world are invited to approach this topic in various ways. Articles may be written both on economic and financial growth, as well as on demographic growth or the growth of knowledge - as long as they link the disciplines Philosophy and Economics. Interested? Please send us an abstract of your article by May 31, 2010 to submit@thetransatlantic.org. We hope to hear from you.

If you would like to get involved, please e-mail us at info@thetransatlantic.org
The Transatlantic Team
www.thetransatlantic.org

NASSLLI 2010 is Open for Registration

NASSLLI 2010 is Open for Registration!

Fourth North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information NASSLLI 2010

June 20-26, 2010

http://www.indiana.edu/~nasslli/

The North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (NASSLLI) is a summer school with classes in the interface between computer science, linguistics, and logic.

After previous editions at Stanford University, Indiana University, and UCLA, NASSLLI will return to Bloomington, Indiana, June 20–26, 2010. The summer school, loosely modeled on the long-running ESSLLI series in Europe, will consist of a number of courses and workshops, selected on the basis of the proposals. Courses and workshops meet for 90 or 120 minutes on each of five days, June 21–25, and there will be tutorials on June 20 and a day-long workshop on June 26. The instructors are prominent researchers who volunteer their time and energy to present basic work in their disciplines. Many are coming from Europe just to teach at NASSLLI.

NASSLLI courses are aimed at graduate students and advanced undergraduates in wide variety of fields. The instructors know that people will be attending from a wide range of disciplines, and they all are pleased to be associated with an interdisciplinary school. The courses will also appeal to post-docs and researchers in all of the relevant fields.

We hope to have 100-150 participants. In addition to classes in the daytime, the evenings will have social events and plenary lectures. Bloomington is a wonderful place to visit, known for arts, music, and ethnic restaurants. All of this is within 15 minutes walking from campus. We aim to make NASSLLI fun and exciting.

Center for Formal Epistemology@CMU

CENTER FOR FORMAL EPISTEMOLOGY
OPENING CELEBRATION CONFERENCE
June 26-27, 2010
Department of Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University

Everyone interested is welcome to attend!

Confirmed speakers include:

Johan van Benthem, Amsterdam and Stanford
Paul Egre, Jean-Nicod Institute
Branden Fitelson, Rutgers
Stephan Hartmann, Tilburg
James Joyce, Michigan
Hans Kamp, Stuttgart
Hannes Leitgeb, Bristol
Rohit Parikh, CUNY
Wilfried Sieg, Carnegie Mellon
Brian Skyrms, UC Irvine
Wolfgang Spohn, Konstanz
James Woodward, Cal Tech

For details regarding the Center for formal epistemology, the opening
celebration conference, and local arrangements, please follow the
relevant links here.

We look forward to seeing you.

Kevin T. Kelly, Director
kk3n@andrew.cmu.edu
Horacio Arlo-Costa, Associate Director
hcosta@andrew.cmu.edu
Center for Formal Epistemology
Department of Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

The March issue of The Reasoner is available

... here

Reminder -- SIPTA Workshop on Uncertainty -- call for abstracts

The Society for Imprecise Probabilities: Theories and Applications will hold a Workshop on Uncertainty at Columbia University on April 17^th of 2010, following the Synthese Conference on epistemology and economics that will take place at Columbia University on April 15^th and 16^th. We expect the workshop to feature a mixture of invited and contributed talks on the use of imprecise probabilities in models of inference and decision making under uncertainty.

Those who are interested in contributing a talk to the workshop should send a short abstract (no more than 300 words) to

synthese.conference.2010@gmail.com

with “SIPTA Workshop Contribution” in the subject of the message. Submitted abstracts must contain enough information for the committee to determine their suitability for a 20 minute talk followed by a 10 minute discussion period. Submitted abstracts must be received by February 20, 2010. Notifications of acceptance will be made by March 1, 2010. Due to the limited amount of space in Philosophy Hall, we ask those who would like to attend the meeting without giving a talk to send a copy of their CV to the same address as above but with “SIPTA Workshop Attendance” in the subject of the message.

Important Dates

Submissions: by February 20, 2010

Notifications: by March 1, 2010

Meeting: April 17, 2010

Organizing Committee

Horacio Arlo Costa

Jeff Helzner

Isaac Levi

Paul Pedersen

Erik Quaeghebeur (SIPTA Secretary)

Teddy Seidenfeld (SIPTA President)

Gregory Wheeler

The latest issue of The Reasoner is now freely available

... here.

Carnegie Mellon Summer School in Logic and Formal Epistemology

*Carnegie Mellon Summer School in Logic and Formal Epistemology*

In the summer of 2010, the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University will hold a three-week summer school in logic and formal epistemology for promising undergraduates in philosophy, mathematics, computer science, linguistics, and other sciences.

The goals are to

• introduce students to cross-disciplinary fields of research at an early stage in their career; and

• forge lasting links between the various disciplines.

The summer school will be held from Monday, June 7 to Friday, June 25, 2010. There will be morning and afternoon lectures and daily problem sessions, as well as outings and social events.

The summer school is free. That is, we will provide

• full tuition, and
• dormitory accommodations on the Carnegie Mellon campus.

So students need only pay round trip travel to Pittsburgh and living expenses while
there. There are no grades, and the courses do not provide formal course credit.

Instructions for applying can be found on the summer school web page,

http://www.phil.cmu.edu/summerschool

Materials must be received by the Philosophy Department by March 15, 2010.

This year's topics are:

Logic and Scientific Inquiry
Monday, June 7 to Friday, June 11
Instructor: Clark Glymour

Computability and Foundations
Monday, June 14 to Friday, June 18
Instructor: Wilfried Sieg

Philosophical Logic and Formal Epistemology
Monday, June 21 to Friday, June 25
Instructor: Horacio Arlo-Costa

The summer school is open to undergraduates, as well as to students who will have just completed their first year of graduate school.

Applicants need not be US citizens. There is a $20 nonrefundable application fee.

Inquiries may be directed to Jeremy Avigad (avigad@cmu.edu).