The 25th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2013) will be held at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, August 5-16, 2013.

Patrick Blackburn
ABSTRACT:
Past, Present and Future

Arthur Prior (1914 - 1969) was a philosophical logician, best known for his invention of tense logic. He died 20 years before the first ESSLLI was held in Groningen in 1989, but his influence on contemporary modal logic and natural language semantics means that his presence can still be felt at these summer schools. 
In this talk I will be examining Prior's logical legacy from the perspective of contemporary modal and hybrid logic. But my aim is not to chart exactly what Prior did and when, rather it is to sketch a partial outline of what the `logic' in Philosophical Logic meant to Prior, and to contrast this with its meaning in Logic, Language and Information. A Quixotic task perhaps, but along the way we will have good company, most notably that of Hans Kamp and Johan van Benthem, two logicians who have contributed so much to the way we understand `logic' in these summer schools. I'll leave younger ESSLLI participants to decide what this might have  to do with the logic of tomorrow.

============ About ESSLLI:
The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is organized every year by the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI) in different sites around Europe. Under the auspices of FoLLI (the Association for Logic, Language, and Information), ESSLLI brings together logicians, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers to study language, logic, and information, and their interconnections. The school hosts approximately 50 courses at both introductory and advanced levels, and brings together around 500 participants from all over the world. Along with the courses, ESSLLI hosts workshops and invited lectures, providing opportunities for in-depth discussion of current research.

Previous ESSLLIs have been held in Opole (2012), Ljubljana (2011), Copenhagen (2010), andBordeaux (2009). We are very proud to be hosting the 25th ESSLLI in Düsseldorf and we look forward to seeing you there!

Under the auspices of FoLLI (the Association for Logic, Language, and Information) and of the Vice President for Research and Innovation of the University of Düsseldorf.
http://esslli2013.de/

Deduction in Modal and Hybrid Logic

Patrick Blackburn
Department of Philosophy and Science Studies
University of Roskilde
Thursday 13 June 2013, 16.15 until 17.45, 

Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP)
http://www.mcmp.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/index.html

I will be the first to admit that this title is unlikely to set anyone's pulse racing. Problems in modal deduction? What is hybrid logic anyway? And why should anyone care?

Fair questions, and ones I will tackle in the talk. In essence, I will be sketching an overview of why modal deduction is tricky, and why hybrid logic fixes (some of) its problems. Themes I will emphasize include the second-order nature of modal logic, how hybrid logic yields a first-order perspective on frame structure, and how ''non-standard'' hybrid inference rules turn out to be sequent rules ''missing'' from orthodox modal logic, and completeness via Henkin constructions.

And there is a cherry on the cake. If I had given this talk even five weeks ago, I would have concluded by saying that basic hybrid deduction is now well understood. Well, it turns out there is more to be said, and (time permitting) I shall close the talk by mentioning some very recent joint work with Thomas Bolander, Torben Braüner, and  Klaus Frovin Jørgensen on what we term Seligman-style tableaux, in honour of classic (but somewhat overlooked) work by Jerry Seligman dating back to the 1990s on hybrid deduction.

I intend to make the talk relatively self contained and won't presuppose any particular expertise in modal (let alone hybrid) logic. But for those of you who who would like to do some reading in advance, here are some suggestions:

Hybrid Logic, Chapter 7, Section 3 of Modal Logic, by Patrick Blackburn, Maarten de Rijke, and Yde Venema, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pages 434-445.

Pure Extensions, Proof Rules, and Hybrid Axiomatics, by Patrick Blackburn and Balder ten Cate, Studia Logica, volume 84, pages 277-322, 2006.

Internalisation: The Case of Hybrid Logics, by Jerry Seligman, Journal of Logic and Computation, volume 11, pages 671-689, 2001.

http://www.flov.gu.se/english/research/human-reasoning/




Friday, 7 June, 2013
Time: 10:15 - 12:00
Place: University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Room T116 at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, Gamla Hovrätten Olof Wijksgatan 6. Enter through the main entrance. Continue straight on for ten meters (do not take the stairway). Then turn left and continue until the corridor ends. Enter through the glass door, turn left and continue five meters.http://www.flov.gu.se/english/research/human-reasoning/

Hybrid Deduction

Patrick Blackburn
Department of Philosophy and Science Studies
University of Roskilde

In this talk I will discuss why modal deduction is tricky, and why hybrid logic fixes (some of) its problems. Themes I will emphasize include the second-order nature of modal logic, how hybrid logic yields a first-order perspective on frame structure, and how ''non-standard'' hybrid inference rules turn out to be sequent rules ''missing'' from orthodox modal logic. I shall close the talk by discussing recent joint work with Thomas Bolander, Torben Braüner, and  Klaus Frovin Jørgensen on what we term Seligman-style tableaux, in honour of classic (but overlooked) work by Jerry Seligman from the 1990s on hybrid deduction.

The talk will be relatively self contained and won't presuppose any particular expertise in modal (let alone hybrid) logic. Indeed, one of my main aims will be to make the intuitions underlying modal and hybrid logic clear to non-specialists.

Groningen, Netherlands
Thursday 18th - Saturday 20th April 2013

The Department of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Groningen is proud to organize and host the Dutch graduate conference focusing on topics within theoretical philosophy. The aim of the conference is to give graduate students working within some field of theoretical philosophy (e.g. epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science / mind / language, etc.) the opportunity to present their work in progress and to get to know each other. Students from outside of the Netherlands are most welcome. To further enhance the experience, four professional keynote speakers will also be giving a talk providing inspiration for new ideas.

Keynote Speakers
We are proud to present the following keynote speakers:

    Patrick Blackburn
    John Dupré
    Hannes Leitgeb
    Ruth Millikan 


http://www.philos.rug.nl/GCTP2013/

Brussels, Belgium
March 14-15, 2013
Honouring Paul Gochet
Program to be posted...

ABSTRACT:
On the character of temporal indexicals

Patrick Blackburn
University of Roskilde
Denmark

In this talk (which is based on joint work with Klaus Frovin Jørgensen) I re-examine early work on the semantics of temporal indexicals through the lens of modern hybrid logic. Modern hybrid logic is a natural tool for handling many varieties of temporal reference, and as I shall show, this suitability extends even to temporal indexicals such as Now, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

The key  idea is to return to the classic work of Hans Kamp and David Kaplan on this topic. However, instead of exploiting their two-dimensional semantics using additional modalities, we make use of character-encoding propositional symbols instead. One of these symbols (namely Now) turns out to work much like an ordinary nominal, and this enables us to unlock the logic of indexicality in an extremely  general way.

I won't be assuming much knowledge of logic or linguistics in this talk. Rather my aim will be to present a clear overview of the issues involved and to explain in accessible terms how hybrid logic gives us simple solutions to some rather tricky issues.

The first workshop for: Formalization in Philosophy
1-2 December 2012
Philosophy Department of Lund University, Kungshuset, Lundagård, Lund Sweden

Organizer: Sebastian Enqvist

Location: room 318, Kungshuset
Speakers
    Klaus Frovin Jorgensen, Roskilde University
    Rasmus Rendsvig, Roskilde University
    Valentin Goranko, Technical University of Denmark
    Staffan Angere, Bristol University
    Erik Palmgren, Stockholm University
    Carlo Proietti, Lund University
    Paula Quinon, Lund University
    Patrick Blackburn, Roskilde University
    Erik Olsson, Lund University
    Stig Andur Pedersen, Roskilde University
    Justine Jacot, Lund University
    Sten Lindström, Umeå University

http://www.fil.lu.se/institutionen/anknuten-verksamhet/konferenser/formalization-in-philosophy/

Computational Logic: A 70th Birthday Celebration Honoring Melvin Fitting
http://cslogic.info/ComputationalLogicFitting70/

October 4 & 5, 2012
Graduate Center, City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, New York City


Melvin Fitting received the 2012 Herbrand Award for 
Distinguished Contributions to Automated Deduction.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE
Patrick Blackburn, Michael Dunn, Melvin Fitting, Arnold Koslow, Saul Kripke, Vladimir Lifschitz, Jan Plaza, Raymond Smullyan

The Advances in Modal Logic 2012  (AiML-2012) is the ninth conference in the series. It is organized by  Thomas Bolander (Technical University of Denmark) and Torben Braüner (Roskilde University) and will be held on 22-25 August 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

8th Scandinavian Logic Symposium, 20-21 August 2012, Roskilde University, Denmark

After a gap of fifteen years, the Scandinavian Logic Symposium is back. The Symposium is the first major initiative of the newly revived Scandinavian Logic Society (SLS) and will be held at Roskilde University (RUC), Denmark, a short train ride from the centre of Copenhagen.

Also note that the Advances in Modal Logic (AiML) will be held on 22-25 August 2012,  Copenhagen, Denmark. And just a few days before the Scandinavian Logic Symposium, the PCC 2012 - Proof, Computation, Complexity workshop will take place in Copenhagen on 17-18 August 2012. So this will truly be Logic Summer in the greater Copenhagen area.

Reasoning and Interaction at NASSLLI (RAIN) is a workshop concluding the NASSLLI summer school, June 23-24. Featuring talks by NASSLLI instructors, participants and other visiting scholars whose work is related to reasoning and/or interactions among individuals and groups, RAIN is a forum for the presentation of formally-minded work of wide interest to an interdisciplinary audience.