Logics and Pragmatics Workshop 2008

Logic for pragmatics ten years later

illocutionary acts

theory of actions

The distinction between propositions and assertions has a noble pedigree; specifying it as a theory of classical propositions and intuitionistic assertions is historically and heuristically suggestive, but literally speaking clearly wrong: e.g., the lambda-mu calculus (with its modelling through control categories) clearly exhibits the pragmatic features of classical proof theory.
Insisting in the refusal of intuitionistic propositions may be essential for Dalla Pozza's viewpoint, and forces one to distingish between propositions and types of illocutionary acts. Stronger evidence may be needed to gain support to a thesis that goes against a very successful way of thinking.

commanding

promising

A crucial step in this direction has been made in Ranalter's work [2008], where the propagation of obligations through chains of causal events has been modelled (without situations) in the most abstract categorical setting, thus providing a flexible tool for the representation of commands and promises.
An interesting application is the modelling of the conditional obligations, which seems to settle a well-known paradox of deontic logic, the gentle murderer paradox.

``what proofs are good for''

But for this kind of pragmatics (i.e., dynamics), interpreted by the most creative contemporary proof-theorist as geometry of interaction, the classical notion of proposition and truth are not only illusory, but also misleading as they seem to freeze dynamical processes trough constructs that reintroduce notions of actual infinity.

Tentative Program

Wed December 3rd: Arrival.

Thu December 4th: Kurt Ranalter's thesis defence.
12:00 Sala riunioni secondo piano.
Title: Reasoning about assertions, obligations and causality: on a categorical semantics for a logic for pragmatics
Examination Committee:
Prof Enrico Gregorio, (Verona), Dr Eike Ritter, (Birmingham), Dr Maria Emilia Maietti, (Padova).
Tutors:
Dr Gianluigi Bellin, (Verona), Dr Graham White, (Queen Mary, University of London).
Departmental Seminar
16:00 Facolta` di Scienze, Ca' Vignal 2, Aula Verde.
Robin Cockett, University of Calgary
17:00 Refreshments
21:00 Dinner in downtown Verona

Fri December 5th:
10:00 Facolta` di Scienze, Ca' Vignal 2, Aula Verde.
Session 1. Opening Session.
10:00 Dr Kurt Ranalter, Queen Mary, University of London and Universita` di Verona
10:45 Dr Graham White, Queen Mary, University of London
11:30 Dr Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, University of Oxford
Short Break
12:30 Robin Cockett, University of Calgary
13:30 Lunch Break

Session 2. Categorical Logic. abstracts.
15:00 Dr Eike Ritter, University of Birmingham,
15:45 Dr Maria Emilia Maietti, University of Padova,
16:30 Dr Ruggero Pagnan, University of Genova,
Short Break
17:00 Prof Pino Rosolini, University of Genova
21:00 Dinner in downtown Verona

Sat December 6th:
10:00 Facolta` di Scienze, Ca' Vignal 2, Aula Verde or Palazzo Callas Sirmione.
Session 3.
10:00 Dr Gianluigi Bellin, Queen Mary University of London and Universita` di Verona
10:45 Chistophe Raffalli, Univerrsite' de Savoie
11:30 Lunch and Excursion to the archaelogical site or to hot springs in Sirmione.
Session 4. Symposium
Logic, Semantics and Pragmatics in linguistics, AI and philosopy: what's next?
16:00 Prof Giovanni Sambin, Universita` di Padova
17:00 Dr Graham White, Queen Mary, University of London
17:30 Discussion. Moderator: Prof Paolo Leonardi, Collegio Superiore, Universita` di Bologna
18:30 Dr Carlo Dalla Pozza, Universita` di Lecce

Sun December 7th:
10:00 It is possible to visit Rocca di Garda. Camaldolese Monastery (18th century).
14:00 Return to Verona.

Financial support for the workshop has been provided by the Department of Computer Science, University of Verona and by the ordinary research funds of the Italian Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita` e della Ricerca Scientifica (MIUR).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlo Dalla Pozza.
C. Dalla Pozza and C. Garola. A pragmatic interpretation of intuitionistic propositional logic.
in Erkenntnis 43, 1995, pp. 81-109.
G. Bellin and C. Dalla Pozza. A pragmatic interpretation of substructural logics.
in Reflections on the Foundations of Mathematics, Essays in Honor of Solomon Feferman, W.Sieg, R.Sommer and C.Talcott eds.
ASL Lecture Notes in Logic; 15, 2002.
ps file | pdf file

Gianluigi Bellin
G. Bellin and Corrado Biasi Towards a logic for pragmatics: Assertions and conjectures, In: Journal of Logic and Computation Vol. 14, 4, 2004, pp. 473-506.

Graham White
Graham White, Causality, Modality and Explanation in Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic vol. 49 , 2008
Graham White, Davidson and Reiter on Actions in Fundamenta Informatica, 2007

Kurt Ranalter
Kurt Ranalter, A semantic analysis of a logic for pragmatics with assertions, obligations, and causal implication in: Fundamenta Informaticae 84(3-4), pages 443-470, 2008
Kurt Ranalter and Gianluigi Bellin, A Kripke-style semantics for the intuitionistic logic of pragmatics ILP in: Journal of Logic and Computation 13(5), pages 755-775, 2003

Corrado Biasi, Federico Aschieri
Corrado Biasi, Federico Aschieri: A Term Assignment for Polarized Bi-intuitionistic Logic and its Strong Normalization. Fundamenta Informaticae 84, 2 pp.185-205, 2008

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