Logic List Mailing Archive

Conference "Degrees of Belief", Konstanz (Germany), July 2004

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

            DEGREES OF BELIEF
           Konstanz, 22-24 July 2004

  http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ppm/events/dob

The Department of Philosophy and the Philosophy, Probability and Modeling
Group at the Centre for Junior Research Fellows of the University of
Konstanz invite papers for an international conference on Degrees of
Belief. We invite contributions from philosophers of language,
epistemologists, philosophers of science, logicians, as well as computer
scientists, political scientists, economists, AI researchers, or anyone
interested in the field. Our aim is to bring together academics as well as
maybe theoretically interested practitioners from disciplines in which
degrees of belief play an important role. We hope to be able to increase
dialogue between the disciplines, as well as to provide a platform for
recent research in any of these areas.

Topics that will be addressed include, but are not restricted to:

1) What are the objects of belief?

2) Does belief come in degrees, or is it a yes-or-no affair? I.e. is
belief quantitative or categorical?

3)If belief comes in degrees, what laws do/should degrees of belief obey?
     3a. Degrees of Belief as subjective probabilities
     3b. Degrees of Belief as Dempster-Shafer belief functions
     3c. Degrees of Belief as degrees of possibility (and necessity)

4) If belief is categorical, what laws do/should categorical or plain
belief obey? (AGM belief revision theory)

5) Degrees of belief, plain belief, and Ranking Theory

6) Degrees of belief in the sciences (decision theory, AI, political
theory, engineering) and in practice (risk assessment etc.)

7) Current issues and puzzles (Sleeping Beauty, Doomsday Argument, etc.)

                Confirmed speakers include:

                Henry E. Kyburg
                Isaac Levi
                Henri Prade
                Hans Rott
                Teddy Seidenfeld
                Brian Skyrms
                Philippe Smets
                Wolfgang Spohn


Please submit a 1500-word short outline version of the paper you wish
to
present.

                DEADLINE: 10. March 2004.