Arché Summerschool: Rain, whisky and philosophy in Scotland

All the information you need is below. I highly recommend it if you're a PhD student interested in the Arché research projects. You'll get a chance to meet the whole Arché research body (all Arché students are around during June/July), and interact with our professors (Crispin Wright, Herman Cappelen and Jessica Brown) and visiting professors (Brian Weatherson is already signed up to do some of the methodology groups).

The first Arché Summer School will take place in St Andrews, June 30 - July 4, 2008.

The Summer School will be dedicated to contemporary issues in Arché's main research areas, language, epistemology and methodology.

The Summer School is targeted for Ph.D. students and early career philosophers.

There are three registration categories:

• Courses, accommodation and dinner: £620
• Courses and dinner: £480
• Courses only: £450

We will cap attendance at 25.

Last day for registration is 19 May, 2008 .



For further information, please contact the organisers.

Off to the CMU-Pittsburgh GradConf

In two days I'm heading out again to give my paper on proof-theoretic harmony and structural assumptions at the 10th joint University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University Graduate Conference. The programme is here for anyone who's nearby and would like to come by. It's looking pretty intense so I'm pleased to find that I'm giving my paper after the lunch break. The keynote speaker is Bas van Fraassen (Princeton).

I'm particularly excited about the conference since it's the home of some distinguished contributers to my field, such as Nuel Belnap and Robert Brandom (both at Pittsburgh -- notice the wonderful department homepage). CMU also has one of the most impressive logic faculties in the US, so there should be plenty of people around to give me input on different technical aspects of proof-theory.

It's also an excellent opportunity to meet my fellow blogger, Shawn, over at Words and Other Things, who is responding to my talk on Saturday.

The Power of Mind

Some time ago I wrote about Vincent Hendricks upcoming TV-show in Denmark (see here). Some of the details are now below for those of you with a rudimentary knowledge of Danish. The forthcoming show got ample publicity after Vincent won the Danish Elite Research Prize, so let's hope it's a big success.

The Power of Mind / Philosophy TV-show / DK4 / Host: Vincent F. Hendricks

The Power of Mind is a TV-series on philosophy which attempts to show how fundamental philosophical questions and issues show themselves everywhere – in science as well as everyday life.

The show is hosted by Professor Vincent F. Hendricks who in each program will have a new guest in the studio to discuss ethics, religion, science, aestetics, politics mathematics, logic, knowledge and other themes making up the fundamental disciplines of philosophy.

The first show will air on Friday, February 29, 19:30

For more information refer http://www.dk4.dk/?p=plug-side-item;id=2619

Congratulations, Robbie!

Congratulations to Robbie Williams, Arché Associate Fellow and former Arché PhD, who was just promoted to a Readership at the University of Leeds.

HT: Arché News

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Arché Bibliographies

Andreas and me decided that we want to give the Arché Bibliographies some well deserved recognition and publicity. Following the link you can find a range of large research bibliographies for some of the ongoing and former Arché Projects. For my readers especially I guess the huge philosophy of math bibliography can prove to be quite useful. Although the project is now ended (and relegated to a biweekly nostalgia seminar) there is still significant research on the topics being done in Arché, and the bibliography is meticulously maintained. But, the page can offer something for everyone: Contextualism and relativism, Basic knowledge, and Modality.

However, the brunt of our work lately has gone into revamping the logic bibliographies (the one on second-order logic is particularly good -- thanks to Marcus), in particular adding a section on proof-theoretic semantics. This section, which I believe to be the first PTS bibliography compiled online, has 112 entries at the time of writing. The heading is construed broadly so as to contain stuff on harmony, inferentialism, some relevant proof-theory, and philosophical papers which are generally influential on the tradition. More importantly, it contains a lot of rarely read papers that I hope other people will enjoy. I also want to stress that if any of my readers have further suggestions, please let me know. Obviosuly, there is still lots of stuff to add.

I've made an external link from the Wikipedia page for proof-theoretic semantics. One of these days I'll try to update that page as well, but so far I just have too much other things to attend to.

Lastly, you might think that it would be really helpful to have all of this included in your BibTeX file ... Well, guess what: Go here, and press BibTeX. You'll then get all the BibTeX entries for the entire Arché bibliography.

Stranded on an island with one and only one logic

Reading the Objection and Replies section of JC Beall and Greg Restall's Logical Pluralism, I found the following challenge to the authors particularly intriguing.

OBJECTION: DESERTED ISLAND. Suppose you were to be stranded on a desert island and you could take only one logic with you. Which of the plurality of your logics would that be? (p. 99)

[Aside: Reminds me of Putnam's "pick your favorite set theory!"]

Of course, I invite my readers to inform us of their choice. If you're a logical monist you won't get to pick a logic for the excursion -- the logic will already be there when you arrive.

I think I'll go with dialogical logic, for the sake of conversation.