IAP 2017 Activities by Sponsor - Linguistics and Philosophy

Ginger Schultheis and David Boylan

Jan/30	Mon	11:00AM-01:00PM	32-D461
Jan/31	Tue	11:00AM-01:00PM	32-D461

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

This course is an introduction to the logic of conditionals and the logic of belief revision.  We explain how formal tools familiar from conditional logic have been used to give models of belief revision.  We will also show that the logical properties that these systems share raise interesting philosophical questions about natural language conditionals, about how we should revise our beliefs in the face of new information, and about the relationship between these two areas of study.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Ginger Schultheis, vks@mit.edu

Kevin Dorst

Jan/23	Mon	11:00AM-12:30PM	32-D461
Jan/24	Tue	11:00AM-12:30PM	32-D461

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions

A crash course in two of the most prominent formal systems used in epistemology: probability theory and epistemic logic. The first part introduces the basics of probability theory as a tool for studying rational belief, with an eye towards examples and intuitive understanding. The second part introduces models of epistemic logic as a tool for studying agents' beliefs about themselves and others, with an eye towards extensions and applications. Throughout, emphasis will be placed on the presuppositions, scope, and limitations of formalism as a tool for philosophy.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Kevin Dorst, kmdorst@mit.edu

Marion Boulicault

Jan/11

Wed

10:00AM-11:30AM

32-D831

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up

Why does interdisciplinary research matter? What are the best ways to do interdisciplinary research? And what are some the challenges? This short course will explore the nature of interdisciplinary research by examining case studies in the history and philosophy of science.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Marion Boulicault, marion88@gmail.com

Cosmo Grant

Jan/25	Wed	11:00AM-12:30PM	32-D461
Jan/26	Thu	11:00AM-12:30PM	32-D461

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

In epistemic game theory, you aim to supplement the traditional description of a game (payoff matrix etc.) with a description of the players' states of mind. What does that involve? Well, for example, you could describe the players' beliefs about the other players' strategies, or about the structure of the game, or about the other players’ rationality, or, circularly, about the other players’ beliefs about any of these things.

You then aim to connect the players' states of mind with their behavior in a game: for example, if the players' have such-and-such properties, they will play such-and-such strategies. Thus epistemic game theory sheds light on solution concepts like Nash equilibrium, a traditional analytical tool in game theory, and takes a decision-theoretic perspective on a game-theoretic situation, raising lots of philosophical issues along the way.

We'll look at some standard ways to model the players' states of mind, define some key epistemic and game-theoretic concepts, and look at a couple of landmark results.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Cosmo Grant, cosmodgrant@gmail.com

Kevin Richardson

Feb/01

Wed

11:00AM-12:30PM

32-D831

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up

Due to popular demand, a tutorial on LaTeX. I go through the basics of using LaTeX (the professional-looking typesetting thing used for most MIT handouts) for philosophy handouts/papers. Coverage includes:

* The what and why of LaTeX (its grounds and so on...)
* How to create a bare-bones paper and handout
* Margin notes!
* Using BibTeX and other bibliography packages
* Logic/math environments
* Converting LaTeX to Word Doc and other formats

In short, I save you time otherwise spent Googling how to do X in LaTeX.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Kevin Richardson, kev1n@mit.edu

Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt, Philosophy Graduate Student

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: none

This year’s MITing of the Minds is the Thirteenth Annual MIT Philosophy Alumni Conference. The conference will showcase recent work in a variety of areas of contemporary philosophy. Presentations will be accessible to a broad audience.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Christine Graham, 32-D808, 617 253-4653, CGRAHAM@MIT.EDU

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MITing of The Minds

Feb/02	Thu	10:30AM-06:00PM	32-D461
Feb/03	Fri	09:30AM-04:00PM	32-D461

Please see website for complete details: http://web.mit.edu/philosophy/mm/