| Seminar in Philosophy, Logic and Games | |||||
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A link for each seminar is to be posted here shortly before it begins. |
| Thursday, January 14, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Brookyln College |
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Discussion.Chapter 3, "Political Power," from A.D. Taylor and A.M. Pacelli's Mathematics and Politics: Strategy, Voting, Power and Proof |
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| Thursday, January 7, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Department of Computer Science |
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Discussion.Chapter 2, "Yes-No Voting," from A.D. Taylor and A.M. Pacelli's Mathematics and Politics: Strategy, Voting, Power and Proof |
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| Wednesday, December 30, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Department of Computer Science |
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Discussion.Chapter 1, "Social Choice," from A.D. Taylor and A.M. Pacelli's Mathematics and Politics: Strategy, Voting, Power and Proof |
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| Thursday, December 17, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Department of Linguistics |
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Language and Logic: Ideas and Controversies in the History of Formal Semantics ‖Slides
Abstract. The history of formal semantics and pragmatics over the last 50 years is a story of collaboration among linguists, logicians, and
philosophers. Since this talk is for a seminar in philosophy, logic, and games, and I’m a linguist, I’ll emphasize aspects of the pre-history and history of formal semantics that concern the relation between language and logic, not presupposing knowledge of linguistics. Logicians have often been concerned with language in a “negative” way: the development of formal logical languages has often been motivated by perceived inadequacies in natural language for purposes of argumentation. Russell and Strawson, who had many disagreements about language, did express agreement on the statement that “natural language has no logic.” But logicians and philosophers of language, even those who regarded natural languages as “illogical” in various ways, made crucial advances in semantic analysis that paved the way for contemporary formal semantics. Chomsky, from a very different angle, considered the invented languages of logic to be so different from any natural language that he doubted that logicians’ work on the formal syntax and semantics of logical languages could possibly be of any interest or usefulness for linguistics, and he therefore rejected Bar-Hillel’s exhortation in the early 1950’s for greater cooperation between logicians and linguists in syntax and semantics. It was the logician and philosopher Richard Montague, a student of Tarski’s, who had the greatest direct impact on the development of contemporary formal semantics, with his theory of “universal grammar” that encompassed both formal and natural languages, constructed in part on the basis of his own typed intensional logic. From his seminal works in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, as well as work by David Lewis, Terry Parsons, Richmond Thomason, Max Cresswell, and linguists Partee, Lauri Karttunen, Ed Keenan, David Dowty, Emmon Bach and others, interdisciplinary collaboration led to a rapid expansion of the field. In this talk I’ll review some of this background and reflect on key ideas and controversies in the development of formal semantics. I’ll talk about some of the pivotal contributions by logicians as formal semantics and pragmatics developed after Montague’s untimely death in 1971, and I’ll also discuss the “naturalizing” influence that linguists have had on the field as it has become more and more a branch of linguistics. At the end I’ll discuss the apparent incompatibility of Chomsky’s view of linguistics as a branch of psychology and the anti-psychologistic Fregean tradition viewing meanings as abstract objects, a foundational tension that has not hindered progress but is still not fully resolved |
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| Thursday, December 3, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science |
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Discussion. On de Finetti's representation theorem for exchangeability, Chapter 7, "Unification," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Thursday, November 12, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Department of Computer Science |
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Discussion. Chapter 8, "Algorithmic Randomness," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Thursday, November 5, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Department of Computer Science |
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Discussion. Chapter 6, "Inverse Inference: From Bayes and Laplace to Modern Statistics," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Thursday, October 29, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Cailin O'Connor |
Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science |
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Abstract. Standard accounts of convention include notions of arbitrariness. But many have conceived of conventionality as an all or nothing affair. In this paper, I develop a framework for thinking of conventions as coming in degrees of arbitrariness. In doing so, I introduce an information theoretic measure intended to capture the degree to which a solution to a certain social problem could have been otherwise. As the paper argues, this framework can help improve explanation aimed at the cultural evolution of social traits. Good evolutionary explanations recognize that most functional traits are also conventional, at least to some degree, and vice versa. |
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| Thursday, October 22, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Paul Krasucki |
Security |
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Discussion. Chapter 5, "Mathematics," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Thursday, October 15, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Jayant Shah |
Department of Mathematics |
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Discussion. Chapter 4, "Frequency," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Thursday, October 8, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Ada Coronado |
Department of Philosophy |
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Discussion. Chapter 3, "Psychology," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Wednesday September 30, 11:00 AM EST | |||||
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Todd Stambaugh |
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science |
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Coincidence of Bargaining Solution ‖Slides Abstract. In 1950, a month before his dissertation on non-coorperative games was accepted at Princeton and 3 months after his famous solution concept was announced to the world in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, John Nash had published "The Bargaining Problem," in which he proposed the titular problem and gave the first solution. In the years after, several other solutions were developed, notably those by Kalai and Smorodinsky, Kalai, and Harsanyi. In this talk I will outline the problem itself, present four different solutions, and describe the precise conditions under which various sets of these solutions coincide. |
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| Thursday, September 17, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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Larry Moss |
Department of Mathematics |
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Discussion. Chapter 2, "Judgment," from Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms' Ten Great Ideas about Chance |
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| Thursday, August 20, 6:30 PM EST | |||||
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José Luis Bermúdez |
Department of Philosophy |
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Rational Frames? |
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