-
10/4Logic Colloquim: Ellen Lehet (Notre Dame)
Logic Colloquim: Ellen Lehet (Notre Dame)
Friday, October 4th, 201901:30 PM - 03:00 PMStorrs CampusHumantities Institute, 4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library Join us for a talk by Ellen Lehet on category theory.
Ellen Lehet (University of Notre Dame)
"The Explanatory Value of Category Theory"
Abstract
Category theory has proven to be applicable across all of mathematics. In some sense this is not surprising because category theory was created for the purpose of application (specifically, application to algebraic topology). But I will argue that the significance of category theory extends past its applicability — in particular, there is a significant explanatory benefit. The question of what constitutes a mathematical explanation is of perennial interest to philosophers. Reflection on category theory’s unique role in mathematics unearths some features of mathematical explanation that are not often made explicit and that philosophers have tended not to notice.
There are many ways that category theoretic methods provide explanations. For instance, important results in different areas of mathematics are unified by the fact that they are all corollaries of the same category theoretic theorem, such as the theorem that right adjoints preserve limits. Or consider the ways of defining structures in category theory with universal properties — the whole perspective sheds light on how constructions from different domains are related to one another. The categorical product for instance, unites many seemingly unrelated mathematical constructions such as the Cartesian product, union, and conjunction. Such examples introduce both generalization and unification within mathematics. Moreover, this unification allows for meaningful and surprising mathematical analogies to arise. These gen- eralizations and analogies are explanatory and result from the structural features of category theory.
In order to highlight the explanatory value of category theory, I will first provide a characterization of the structure unique to category theory. It is this structure that makes category theory apt for producing explanations. With a clear picture of category theoretic structure, I will present a few examples that illustrate how category theory proves to be explanatory — in particular, how the structural features of category theory are explanatory.
All welcome!
https://logic.uconn.edu/calendar/
-
10/11Logic Colloquium: Ethan Brauer (OSU)
Logic Colloquium: Ethan Brauer (OSU)
Friday, October 11th, 201901:30 PM - 03:00 PMStorrs CampusHumantities Institute, 4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library Join us for a talk in the Logic Colloquium!
Ethan Brauer (OSU):
A Modal Theory of Free Choice Sequences
Free choice sequences (also called 'infinitely proceeding sequences') are a concept from intuitionistic mathematics that are central to the development of the intuitionistic theory of the continuum. Free choice sequences have, however, been largely rejected or ignored both by classical and other constructive mathematicians. In this talk I argue that the objections to free choice sequences can be overcome by grounding the concept in our temporal intuition and formalizing the theory in modal logic. I will present a theory of free choice sequences as a modal extension of classical second-order arithmetic. The resulting theory is able to prove modal versions of the intuitionist's axioms for so-called lawless sequences, suffices for the development of a theory of real number generators, and captures many results distinctive of intuitionistic analysis including the non-existence of functions on real numbers with definable discontinuities.
All welcome.
https://logic.uconn.edu/
-
10/14The Persistence of Myth: Brazil's Undead Racial Democracy
The Persistence of Myth: Brazil's Undead Racial Democracy
Monday, October 14th, 201912:20 PM - 01:50 PMStorrs Campus4th Floor Babbidge Library This talk addresses a recurrent tension in the literature on race and racism in Brazil. On the one hand, we find the so-called myth of racial democracy presented as the dominant racial ideology in Brazil, obscuring enduring racial inequality and thwarting the development of a racial justice mass-movement. On the other hand, we find periodic announcements that the myth of racial democracy has definitively died. Accordingly, I theorize the myth of racial democracy as a paradoxically undead myth and ask what it is about the form of this peculiar myth that allows it to survive its own repeated death. I show how the celebration of racial mixture, or mestiçagem, functions as a mythological signifier of racial democracy that operates beneath and beyond the level of conscious thought, activating powerful affects and desires even in those who “know” better.
Please contact Fred Lee fred.lee@uconn.edu with any questions
Sponsored by El Instituto, Philosophy, Africana Studies, Political Science, Political Theory Workshop, UConn Humanities Institute, Office for the Vice President for Research
-
10/18Logic Colloquium: Martin Pleitz (Muenster)
Logic Colloquium: Martin Pleitz (Muenster)
Friday, October 18th, 201901:30 PM - 03:00 PMStorrs Campustba Join us for a talk by Martin Pleitz (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germnay).
Details t.b.a.
All welcome!
https://logic.uconn.edu/
-
10/23Humanities Fellow Research Talk: Joseph Ulatowski
Humanities Fellow Research Talk: Joseph Ulatowski
Wednesday, October 23rd, 201904:00 PM - 05:30 PMStorrs CampusHumanities Institute Seminar Room, Babbidge Library 4th Floor Our UCHI Fellow will be presenting their research talk on “Why Facts Matter: Pluralism about Facts in
the Age of Fake News” followed by a light reception. For more information, please visit https://humanities.uconn.edu/fellowships/current-and-previous-fellows/. If you require accommodation for this event, please contact uchi@uconn.edu at least one week prior to the event.
-
10/25HistAnalytic talk: Philip Ebert (Stirling) on Frege
HistAnalytic talk: Philip Ebert (Stirling) on Frege
Friday, October 25th, 201901:30 PM - 03:00 PMStorrs CampusHumantities Institute, 4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library UConn History of Analytical Philosophy Workshop
Join us for a talk by Philip A. Ebert (Stirling) on Frege!
Details t.b.a.
https://rossberg.philosophy.uconn.edu/histanalytic/
-
10/25Logic Colloquim: Peter Pagin (Stockholm)
Logic Colloquim: Peter Pagin (Stockholm)
Friday, October 25th, 201904:00 PM - 05:30 PMStorrs CampusMCHU 106 Join us in the Logic Colloquium for a talk:
Peter Pagin (Stockholm)
Indexicals, Time, and Compositionality
Abstract:
Kaplan’s official argument in “Demonstratives” for Temporalism, the view that some English sentences express propositions that can vary in truth value across time, is the so-called Operator Argument: temporal operators, such as “sometimes”, would be vacuous without such propositions.
Equally important is the argument from compositionality. Without temporal propositions, the sentences
(1) It is raining where John is
(2) It is raining where John is now
would express the same proposition. But they embed differently:
(3) Sometimes, it is raining where John is
(4) Sometimes it is raining where John is now
(3) and (4) express distinct propositions, so if they both are of the form “Sometimes, p”, and if (1) and (2) express the same proposition, we have a violation of compositionality.
In this talk it is shown that with Switcher Semantics, which allows for a generalized form of compositionality, we can have the result that (1) and (2) agree in content when unembedded (assertoric content) but differ in content when embedded under temporal operators (ingredient sense).
We can also show that Switcher Semantics, over Kaplan’s models, preserves the validities in the Logic of Demonstratives. All in all, the arguments for Temporalism are substantially undermined.
https://logic.uconn.edu/calendar/
All welcome!