Abstract: What is the nature of one’s justification to use a logical principle such as Modus Ponens in reasoning? It is widely agreed amongst epistemologists of logic that such justification cannot be internalist. One key reason offered for this view is that internalist accounts of justification are susceptible to Carroll-style regresses. In this talk, I examine this claim and argue that internalist accounts of justification are not open to such regresses. I further argue that the sorts of externalist accounts of the justification of logical principles typically put forward as alternatives are inadequate.

(joint work with Fabio Aurelio D’Asaro)

This talk will also be broadcast on Microsoft Teams. Contact the organizer for details.

Do you want to communicate about your research to non-scientists, but are you unaware of the options to reach out to a broader audience? What type of help does the UvA offer, and what can you do yourself? These are the topics we’ll explore in this workshop on the basics of science communication.

We are happy to announce the 'Cross-Alps Logic Seminars', a series of talks jointly organized by the logic groups of Genoa, Lausanne, Turin and Udine. We are going to meet every Friday at 16.00 from November 5th to December 17th. The seminars are going to be varied, with topics from all areas of logic, and will be held by international guests and members of our groups. All seminars can be followed remotely on the WebEx platform.

In his seminal 1936 paper "On the Concept of Logical Consequence", Tarski provides a notion of logical consequence which has become standard in analytic philosophy today. Tarski argues that logical consequence is independent of the meanings of non-logical terms, on the grounds that a logical inference cannot rely on any empirical knowledge of the objects referred to. Accordingly, he defines a logical consequence relation which is insensitive to the meanings of the non-logical vocabulary. In this talk, I will closely scrutinise Tarski’s original reasoning. I will then give an alternative notion of logical consequence in natural language, which is entirely sensitive to the meanings of the terms involved. I argue that the alternative notion is both interesting and fruitful, in that it captures certain inferences not reckoned as ‘logical’ by the traditional notion, thus broadening the scope of logic.

Two times a year Quantum.Amsterdam organises the Big Meetup. This time

four speakers will give special attention to Quantum Education. Each

speaker with his or her own expertise, varying from high school education,

towards MSc programs and courses for business, will give answer to the

question: "How to build the Future Quantum Workforce?"

Speakers:
- Jacob Sherson, Professor (Aarhus University / EU Quantum Flagship)
- Miriam Blaauboer, Associate Professor (Delft University of Technology)
- Koen Groenland, Quantum Innovation Officer (QuSoft / Quantum.Amsterdam)
- Henk Buisman, High school liaison Physics & Astronomy (Leiden University)

The Nordic Online Logic Seminar (NOL Seminar) is organised monthly over Zoom, with expository talks on topics of interest for the broader logic community. The seminar is open for professional or aspiring logicians and logic aficionados worldwide.

This is the announcement for the next talk. Those who wish to receive the Zoom ID and password for it, as well as further announcements, can subscribe here: https://listserv.gu.se/sympa/subscribe/nordiclogic .

This talk is on MS Teams, please contact the organizer for details.

To mark the occasion of Sirin Botan's PhD defense, we are organising a one-day workshop in the centre of Amsterdam.

In his pioneering ‘Truth and Probability’ (1931), Frank Ramsey sets out an influential account of the nature, measurement, and norms of partial belief. The centrepiece of this work is a representation theorem that allows Ramsey to construct a unique probability function representing an agent’s subjective degrees of confidence. In many ways, this marks the birth of decision theory as a field and the birth of the subjective interpretation of probability. In this expository talk we will examine the philosophical background underlying Ramsey’s goals in this work, we will re-construct the main formal moves Ramsey makes in proving his representation theorem and finally, we will criticise some of the philosophically contentious assumptions that permeate throughout ‘Truth and Probability’ (1931). Taking a broader perspective, representation theorems are the underbelly of much work in theoretical economics, the underbelly behind claims like ‘humans are rational’. This talk will give a first-hand look at (just) one such representation theorem, but the illustrative purposes this will serve will hopefully be felt by anyone who is a slave of some defunct economist. Which, if some are to believed, includes all of us.