Event Calculus (EC) was originally created for modeling commands in programming within the field of Artificial Intelligence. However, in their book, "The Proper Treatment of Events" the ILLC's Michiel van Lambalgen and his co-author Fritz Hamm take a cognitive scientific approach and show that EC is also an extremely effective model for the semantics of tense in natural language (as opposed to say, possible world semantics).

In the presentation we'll go over the basics of EC, dive into the wonderful world of tense, aspect, and events, and see how EC intuitively captures our understanding of temporality expressed in language. I'll also discuss what I am currently working on, specifically, how I intend to use EC to tackle some current issues with a certain type of conditional. It's gonna be inTense!

The Causal Inference Lab is hosting a reading group on Bayesian inference as part of its biweekly reading group (Mondays 13:00-15:00 at the ILLC).

We will read two papers: Sanborn and Chater (2016), The Bayesian brain without probabilities and Bonawitz, Denison, Gopnik & Griffiths (2014), Win-Stay, Lose-Sample: A simple sequential algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference.

All are welcome to discuss the above papers with us on Monday.

Do you want to know more about funding opportunities for research projects with industry? NWO is coming to visit us to present the new Science PPP Fund. The Science PPP Fund offers EUR 12 million for bottom-up research carried out within public-private partnerships between knowledge institutions and companies. Projects need to follow within scope and budget of the top sectors Chemistry (incl. BBE), Energy, High-Tech Systems & Materials, Agri & Food and ICT. The call opens at the beginning of February.

If you want to sign up for this presentation, send an email to p.wybenga at ixa.nl

Heyting Day 2019 is devoted to Frege’s momentous philosophical paper Der Gedanke (1918-1919), which addresses such fundamental questions as 'What is truth? What is meaning? How can thoughts be shared?' The talks organised on Heyting Day provide historical background and illustrate how Frege’s work is still relevant to
the lively contemporary debate.

The Causal Inference Lab is hosting a reading group on judgements of actual causation as part of its reading group (Mondays 13:00-15:00 at the ILLC). We will read the following (very brief!) papers:

Pearl (2019). On the interpretation of do(x).
Hitchcock (2017). Actual causation: What’s the use?
Hitchcock (2012). Portable causal dependence: a tale of consilience.

All are very welcome to discuss the above papers with us on Monday.

Amsterdam Data Science and the Big Data Alliance are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the second edition of the Data Science Career Fair in Amsterdam. The career fair will take place on Monday, 11 March from 15:00-19:30 at VU University Amsterdam.

We kindly invite all Master & PhD students keen to follow a Technical, Data Science or AI career with a tech background (e.g. AI, Data Science, Econometrics, Business analytics, Computer Science, Informatics, Information Systems Software Engineering etc.) to participate in this career fair.

The central theme of my lecture is the way in which scholars throughout the ages have sought to identify reasoning patterns in disciplines like philology, art theory, musicology, linguistics, literary theory and historiography. What rules can we apply if we wish to determine whether a tale about the past is trustworthy? By what criteria are we to distinguish consonant from dissonant musical intervals? What rules jointly describe all possible grammatical sentences in a language? How can modern digital methods enhance pattern-seeking in the humanities? I contend that the hallowed opposition between the sciences (mathematical, experimental, dominated by universal laws) and the humanities (allegedly concerned with unique events and hermeneutic methods) is a mistake born of a myopic failure to appreciate the way of reasoning that lies at the heart of this inquiry.

On March 14 we will bring together 5 outstanding speakers on the subject of Quantum Cryptography and Foundations.

Abstract:
What has become of mutual aid, a key concept in traditional anarchism, and profoundly analyzed by Kropotkin? Being currently left aside by both post-anarchist thinkers and post-structuralist philosophers because of its supposed naturalist and rationalist grounding, it seems to live a new life under the name of «effective altruism» (Singer, Parfitt). Effective altruism opens the prospect of a decentralized morals, in which the issues of justice and the good are not referred to overarching values, but determined horizontally, out of a form of calculation. Is effective altruism a political promise or a social scandal?

The ILLC's Causal Inference Lab will host its bi-weekly reading group, where we will discuss temporal logics and neural networks for causal inference. In particular, we will discuss the following two (short!) papers:

Kleinberg, Antoniotti, Ramakrishnan & Mishra (2007). Modal logic, temporal models and neural circuits: what connects them. http://www.skleinberg.org/papers/TR07.pdfKleinberg & Mishra (2009). The temporal logic of causal structures. http://www.skleinberg.org/papers/uai09.pdf

All who are interested in discussing causality are very welcome to attend!