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CfP special issue of 'Philosophy & Technology' on Logic as Technology, Deadline: 15 Jun 2016

CFP: Special issue of Philosophy and Technology on "Logic as 
Technology"

*Deadline for submission extended to 15 June 2016*

This special issue initiates Philosophy and Technology?s new subject area 
on logic and technology by proposing to explore novel insights from the 
natural, yet in philosophical contexts still uncommon juxtaposition of 
logic and technology. Instead of considering questions regarding the 
philosophical relevance of how logic is applied in technology (as 
witnessed by the role of recursion theory, the foundation of computation, 
in logic), as a means to reason about technology (reasoning about 
programs, security, etc.), or even how technology is used to learn more 
about logic (e.g. with the help of theorem-provers), we suggest to explore 
how our thinking about logic can be shaped by our thinking about 
technology. This includes, first and foremost, the suggestion that we can 
see logic as a technology by avoiding the common restriction of technology 
to physical artefacts and the even more traditional restriction of logic 
to symbolically formulated deductive systems. Abstract or semantic 
artefacts are technologies, and logic is?like mathematics?a typical 
example of such a technology.

The proposal to see logic as a technology emphasises the mutual 
interaction between technology and philosophy, but also addresses the 
deeper issue that the traditional scope of the philosophy of logic does 
not include influential uses and applications of logic in or related to 
computer science, economics, cognitive science, or linguistics, as central 
or essential uses of logic. Indeed, the exclusive focus on logic as a 
universally applicable standard for correct deductive reasoning, and the 
common suggestion that reasoning in the vernacular is the notional domain 
of application for deductive logic, blocks the development of a common 
understanding of logics as codifications of validity and of logics as 
formal modelling tools.

A general header under which we can study logics as technologies starts 
from the insight that logical systems and theories are (pick your 
preferred term) developed, engineered or designed, and are often so with a 
particular application in mind. Even when influenced or inspired by 
existing linguistic and inferential practices, they are rarely the result 
of merely extracting the formal structure of pre-existing rational ways of 
reasoning, arguing or communicating. Many of their properties are, 
instead, best seen as the result of design or modelling decisions.

Related worries about mainstream philosophy of logic have been voiced in 
many different contexts, and can be tied to lines of inquiry in 
neighbouring disciplines. With an explicit focus on logic, we find it 
whenever the practice of conceptual analysis is explicitly approached in 
terms of conceptual and scientific modelling (Floridi 2011, Löwe & Müller 
2011), and requires us to think explicitly about practical and theoretical 
trade-offs (Shapiro 2014). The renewed interest in Carnapian explication 
(Carus 2008, Dutilh Novaes & Reck 2015) further underscores this general 
development in contemporary theoretical and formal philosophy, whereas 
insights from cognitive sciences have led to specific studies of 
mathematics (De Cruz & De Smedt 2010, Netz 1999, Widom & Schlimm 2012) and 
logic (Dutilh Novaes 2012) as cognitive technologies. Finally, a more 
critical side of this focus on how formal languages are constructed can be 
found in Stokhof and van Lambalgen?s recent analysis of the role of formal 
languages in contemporary linguistics.

TOPICS

We welcome papers that explore the potential connections between logic and 
technology, and further develop fruitful ways of technological thinking 
about logic. This includes, but is not restricted to contributions that 
fall in one of the following categories:

+ Insights drawn from the history of logic, and inquiries into the 
historical grounds for seeing logic as an abstract artefact.

+ Insights drawn from the philosophy of technology, and applications to 
logic of specific ways of looking at technology.

+ Insights from the philosophy of the formal sciences, and from science 
and technology studies, including the philosophy of modelling, and the 
practice and foundations of programming.

TIMETABLE

**June 15, 2016: Deadline for paper submissions**
August 15, 2016: Deadline reviews papers
October 15, 2016: Deadline revised papers
2017: Publication of the special issue

SUBMISSION DETAILS

To submit a paper for this special issue, authors should go to the 
journal?s Editorial Manager http://www.editorialmanager.com/phte/

The author (or a corresponding author for each submission in case of co- 
authored papers) must register into EM. The author must then select the 
special article type: "SI on Logic as Technology? from the selection 
provided in the submission process. This is needed in order to assign the 
submissions to the Guest Editors.

Submissions will then be assessed according to the following procedure:

New Submission => Journal Editorial Office => Guest Editor(s) => Reviewers 
=> Reviewers? Recommendations => Guest Editor(s)? Recommendation => 
Editor-in-Chief?s Final Decision => Author Notification of the Decision. 
The process will be reiterated in case of requests for revisions.

For any further information please contact: Patrick Allo 
patrick.allo@oii.ox.ac.uk
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