12 November 2014, Public Lecture "Logics for Social Behaviour", Alessandra Palmigiano

If humans are social animals, are they also logical animals?

Perhaps it is not by chance that the same Aristotle who recognized the social nature of human beings as their defining trait is also the father of logic.

Classical logic - the logic of Aristotle's syllogisms - is wonderfully clear but it also offers a limited perspective for the study of social behaviour. Humans speak languages which abound in vague concepts, interact with one another in open-ended forms of cooperation and coordination, can take decisions in groups on the basis of what group members consider to be half-truths, can form opinions on the basis of what they have understood of the opinions of others. Classical logic is not the right tool for all these phenomena.

To deal with them, new, nonclassical logics have been developed. This public lecture will focus on how nonclassical logics can help to describe and understand social behaviour, focusing on multi-player games, decision making in the face of uncertainty, and aggregation of information, preferences, and opinions.

For more information, see http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2014/650/info.php3?wsid=650.