CFP: The Fourth International Workshop on Logic and Philosophy ‘Social Norms: Logical Structures and Philosophical Foundations’

IWLP-4

The Fourth International Workshop on Logic and Philosophy

‘Social Norms: Logical Structures and Philosophical Foundations’

November 1-2, 2025

Tsinghua University, Beijing

First Announcement, April 4, 2025

Theme of the workshop

The nature and function of social norms have always been a key topic in various areas in philosophy, such as social philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics. Traditionally, logicians have been working on norms in the context of deontic logic, but they are now increasingly applying other perspectives, in particular various forms of game theory.  The landscape of approaches and analyses to social norms is further enriched by interactions with empirical sciences, such as economics, social psychology and anthropology.

The workshop focuses on the connections and differences between philosophical and logical approaches. The connections are strong. Most philosophical analyses are carried out within the analytic tradition and share a lot of their conceptual sources with logical approaches. For example, Lewis’s seminal work on convention, and the associated concept of social norms as a kind of convention, has inspired both philosophical analyses as well as logical approaches.  This makes philosophical and logical results mostly compatible and/or complementary.

But there are also differences. Philosophers and logicians do not always ask the same questions, and they do not employ the same methodologies in seeking to answer their questions. For example, logical frameworks, especially those employing the conceptual frameworks of game theory and decision theory, come with rationality assumptions that can be questioned from a philosophical perspective.

Another set of issues revolves around the connections between individuals and groups. How are an individual’s normative beliefs and attitudes related to the social norms that govern the communities to which that individual belongs? This hinges heavily on how one analyses the ontological and epistemological connections between social entities and the individuals that belong to them.

The assumed conventionality of social norms raises another set of questions. Are social norms just conventional ways of regulating individual and group behavior? Or is there a natural dimension to them? And how does that affect questions of changeability of social norms and cross-community interpretability?

In view of such questions, it is of central importance to explicitly chart and compare the variety of philosophical and logical approaches to social norms. And that is the central aim of the workshop.

Invited Speakers

Xiaofei LIU (Wuhan University)

Olivier Roy (Bayreuth University)

Liping TANG (Sun Yat-Sen University)

Frank Veltman (University of Amsterdam)

Contributed Papers

The workshop is open to contributions from both senior and junior scholars on topics within the theme of the workshop ‘Social Norms’. These include, but are not restricted to:

- origin of norms

- norms and decision-making

- responsibility and norms

- norms in social networks

- agency and norms

- norms for AI agents

In addition, contributions on other topics on interactions between logic and philosophy are welcome as well.

Scholars who want to contribute should send an abstract of approximately 1200 words /4 pages A4 (not including references) to EasyChair:

https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=iwlp4

The abstract should be properly anonymised, so include a separate page with name, affiliation, and contact details.

All submissions will be subject to double blind peer review.

The possibility to publish selected papers in a special journal issue (of, e.g., Topoi or Philosophies) is actively being explored.

Program Committee

Chairs:

- Martin Stokhof, University of Amsterdam & Tsinghua University

- Chenwei SHI, Tsinghua University

- Yiyan WANG, Shanxi University

Members:

- Johan van Benthem (Stanford University)

- Ilaria Canovotto (University of Maryland)

- Bo CHEN (Wuhan University)

- Huimin DONG (Technische Universität Wien)

- Jie GAO (Zhejiang University)

- Asher JIANG (Tsinghua University

- Fengkui JU (Beijing Normal University)

- Fenrong LIU (Tsinghua University)

- Frederik van de Putte (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

- Jeremy Seligman (University of Auckland)

- Sonja Smets (University of Amsterdam)

- Alessandro Sontuoso (City University of London)

- Hao TANG (Tsinghua University)

- Yi WANG (Sun Yat-sen University)

Organising Institutions

- Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University

- School of Philosophy, Shanxi University

- Tsinghua – University of Amsterdam Joint Research Center in Logic

Schedule

Deadline submission of abstracts: July 4, 2025

Notification of acceptance: August 29, 2025

Further information & questions

http://tsinghualogic.net/JRC/4thlp/

[email protected]