Logic List Mailing Archive

"Exploring the Frontiers of Incompleteness", Cambridge MA (U.S.A.): 12 workshops over a period of two semesters at Harvard

Dear All,

I would like to inform you of a new exiting project that it taking place 
at Harvard this academic year -- the "Exploring the Frontiers of 
Incompleteness" project, made possible by the generous support of the John 
Templeton Foundation.  The aim is to bring together some of the most 
prominent thinkers who have struggled with the following questions:

    1. Do the questions that are independent of the standard
    axioms admit of determinate answers?

    2. If so then what are those answers and how might we go
    about determining them?

These are very difficult questions and there are many prominent 
philosophers and mathematicians who have given them a great deal of 
thought. There is a broad spectrum of views. For example, at one end there 
are people like Solomon Feferman who think that there are "objective facts 
of the matter" about questions pertaining to the natural numbers but think 
that most of the questions of set theory (most notably, the Continuum 
Hypothesis (CH)) are "indeterminate" since the underlying notions of set 
theory are "inherently vague". At the other end of the spectrum there are 
people like Hugh Woodin who have provided serious arguments (based on a 
wealth of mathematical results) for thinking that questions like CH are 
determinate and who have advanced major programs (again based on a wealth 
of mathematical results) for determining those answers. There are many 
views in between and there are views which are entirely orthogonal to this 
ordering. The main purpose of the two-part series is to investigate these 
various positions, compare their strengths and weaknesses, and make steps 
forward in determining the answers to the two guiding questions.  We shall 
do this by actually engaging with the major figures in this foundational 
debate.  Through generous external support we have managed to secure the 
funding necessary to make this possible. Over the next two semesters there 
will be 12 workshops. Each workshop will involve a presentation by one of 
the major figures in the debate.  The speakers are:

Fall Semester

     * Solomon Feferman
     * Matt Foreman
     * Penelope Maddy
     * Charles Parsons
     * William Tait
     * Hugh Woodin

Spring Semester

     * James Cummings
     * Tony Martin
     * Menachem Magidor
     * John Steel
     * Stevo Todorcevic
     * Philip Welch

The speaker presentations will occur (roughly) every two weeks and during 
the intervening weeks there will be lectures by Peter Koellner on the 
background material required for the upcoming talk.  In addition, the 
paper of the presentation will be made available in advance.  Moreover, 
all 12 speakers will be involved throughout the process ?- they too will 
receive the papers in advance and will be given an opportunity to comment 
on it.  At the end of the workshop series there will be a master-workshop 
(something like a conference but more interactive) involving all 
workshop-speakers and all participants.  Finally, along the way there will 
be opportunity for world-wide discussion on an Internet portal.

For further details are available here: Go to

http://logic.harvard.edu/#

and then click on ``EFI Project'' to navigate through the Overview, 
Schedule, and Materials and Discussion section.

We hope that you can all participate.

Best,
Peter Koellner