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Volume 5, Number 4 April 2011 Volume 5, Number 4 April 2011 www.thereasoner.org ISSN 1757-0522 also kindly accepted to fill in a short questionnaire to Contents introduce themselves. This, overall, gives quite a good impression of the exciting social and scientific environ- x1 Editorial 48 ment that is now being created in Munich. Looking forward to seeing you there! x2 Features 48 Olivier Roy x3 News 57 Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy x4 What’s Hot in . 61 x5 Events 61 x2 x6 Courses and Programmes 65 Features x7 Jobs and Studentships 66 Interview with the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy Thanks to Barbara Pohlmann¨ for her help. For more in- x1 formation about the MCMP, including announcements Editorial of positions currently open at the Center, please have a look at the website. There’s a new guy in town, or I should say a new player in the field of mathematical philosophy: the Munich Interview with Hannes Leitgeb Center for Mathematical Philosophy, aka MCMP. You probably heard rumors about it, saw some announce- Olivier Roy: Thanks so much for giving us this inter- ments for positions being sent around, or met some of view for The Reasoner. Let us start with basic facts: its concrete instantiations (viz. its new members). Now what is the Munich Center of Mathematical Philoso- it’s time for a proper introduction. phy? The MCMP is first and foremost under the auspices Hannes Leitgeb: It is a new Center based at LMU of Hannes Leitgeb. His Alexander von Humboldt Pro- Munich which is funded primarily by the German fessorship Grant created the Center. It was thus natural Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and which is con- to give him the first words, resulting in the short inter- cerned with applications of logical and mathematical view below. The members of the MCMP’s initial team methods in philosophy. Obviously it is not in any sense 48 about reducing philosophy to mathematics, just as it is terms of conditional probabilities. We have fellows in not the case that physics gets reduced to mathematics the Center doing formal theories of truth and semantic if mathematical methods paradoxes, obviously, but there are also people who are are applied in physics. It working, amongst others, on formal aesthetics—e.g., is just that, when you recently there has been a talk given by Norbert Gratzl try to address philosoph- on an ontological theory for aesthetic objects for which ical questions and prob- abstraction principles which are formulated in the lan- lems, sometimes it is guage of second order logic play a crucial role. So this very useful to involve pretty much shows that there is no particular philosoph- logical and mathemati- ical area which we think can’t be an area in which for- cal methods in order to mal methods are used. But that doesn’t mean that at this solve the problems, or point of time we know for each and every philosophical just to understand more problem how to use mathematical methods in order to properly what the prob- solve that problem. And of course none of us thinks that lems are all about, to logical and mathematical methods necessarily exhaust build, in the ideal case, a our philosophical methodology. philosophical theory in which philosophical questions OR: This sounds like a very broad array of topics. get answered. So in the Center we want to do research What are your main goals and/or aims for the Center? in philosophy in which we use methods that get used in HL: First of all, the Center will simply host research. sciences, namely mathematical methods. In particular, we are funding postdoctoral and doctoral OR: Could you describe the Center in terms of its fellows. The doctoral fellowships should be advertised people, orientation, field of research? very soon, and they are to be taken up by the successful HL: I sort of come from a tradition that is very much applicants by September 2011. We have already hired related to logical empiricism, to the Vienna Circle, and six postdoctoral fellows, and further postdoctoral fel- of course you find this idea of applying especially logic, lows are on their way who are supported by sources and to a lesser extent also mathematics, to philoso- other than the Center itself. All of these fellows are phy already there. What is distinctive of the Center based in the Center, they have their rooms and research in Munich—and this is a difference compared to the facilities, they join all the activities, and they do re- Vienna Circle—is that none of traditional philosophi- search. We also have a visiting fellowship scheme that’s cal questions are being dismissed. Rather, in the Cen- going to start from April, so e.g. Steve Awodey from ter, in principle we are interested in all classical ques- Carnegie Mellon, Branden Fitelson from Rutgers, Ed tions of philosophy, in whatever area of philosophy, but Zalta from Stanford, and other people will be visiting these questions are being addressed using logical and the Center, for a couple of weeks to a couple of months, mathematical methods. Accordingly, in the Center— and obviously there will be lectures held by the visi- already in the starting team that will be complete from tors, workshops about their work, and they will collab- April 2011—we cover more or less all areas of philos- orate with people in the Center. We will have a weekly ophy. So there are people here who actually do philo- colloquium in mathematical philosophy with speakers sophical logic, of course, like epistemic logic, dynamic from elsewhere, an internal work-in-progress seminar, epistemic logic, conditional logic, deontic logic, and so reading groups, tutorials given by fellows for fellows, on. We have people doing philosophy of mathematics, and the like. And then we are going to host a lot of such as structuralism or nominalism about maths. But workshops and larger conferences, including the For- over and above these areas in which formal methods mal Epistemology Workshop next year and the Formal are naturally being applied or studied, we have fellows Ethics Workshop the year after. In September of this doing epistemology, that is then formal epistemology, year there will also be the big conference of the German and philosophy of science: so there are members of the Society for Philosophy and within that big conference Center who come from the Bayesian tradition and who we will have a two-day workshop on mathematical phi- thus apply probabilistic methods within their theories losophy, which will we also use to introduce the Center of confirmation or causality, but we also have people to German philosophers. here who take up the more deductive or semantic con- OR: You mentioned the relation of the Center with ceptions of scientific theories and who try to develop the Vienna Circle, but how about more contemporary them using formal means. Some members of the Cen- research centers? In recent years quite a few new re- ter do philosophy of language with the help of logical, search groups have been created that use mathematical mathematical, and even experimental means. For exam- methods to address philosophical problems. How does ple, some are interested in logical inferentialism, where the Munich Center relate to them? the meaning of logic constants is constituted by logical HL: Generally speaking, I don’t think formal or rules, others analyze the acceptability of conditionals in mathematical philosophy is a new thing at all. A long 49 time before the Vienna Circle, Aristotle invented logic, thing that I’m claiming, and I think this is pretty uncon- Leibniz was doing formal metaphysics, and so on. The troversial, is that sometimes logical and mathematical Vienna Circle carried on with that tradition but using the methods can help to clarify theses—that’s what in the new formal methods at the time, that is, mathematical tradition is called logical analysis, and there is no doubt logic. And now what young philosophers are currently that this is sometimes of big help—and secondly some- fascinated by is doing philosophical work again by us- times there might be arguments from philosophical as- ing formal methods that are even more recent to philos- sumptions to philosophical conclusions which get so ophy. So, e.g., there are new or relatively new formal complex that you actually need mathematics to bridge methods like nonmonotonic reasoning, dynamic epis- the gap between the premises and the conclusions. As temic logic, probability theory, and game theory, and far as that part is concerned, traditionally, philosophers many young philosophers these days are attracted by have put forward arguments for which it was pretty easy them. Accordingly, there are centers dealing with as- to see that the premises logically entail, or inductively pects of this way of doing philosophy elsewhere, and support, the conclusion. The only thing we are chang- obviously we want to relate to all of them. So in the ing is that we want to build arguments with the help of U.S. there is the wonderful Formal Epistemology Work- mathematics where it is in fact the case that the conclu- shop series, and I already said that we are getting the sion is contained implicitly in the premises, but where workshop here next year, and Branden Fitelson, who is it is not so easy to see that this is so. The role of logical one of its two originators, will be one of our visiting and mathematical methods in philosophy will then very fellows. In the UK there are centers like ours, too: One much be like the role of mathematical methods in the of the hotspots of formal philosophy actually is Bris- sciences.
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