Modalities, Conditionals, and Values: A Symposium on Philosophical Logic in Celebration of the Centenary of Georg Henrik von Wright

Georg Henrik von Wright was one of the early pioneers of philosophical logic, with his monograph "An Essay in Modal Logic" of 1951, and his invention of a whole new field, namely deontic logic.

Recent developments in the study of modal logic and related philosophical logics in Helsinki go hand-in-hand with a revival of philosophical logic at the international level, with new ideas, methods and fields of application stemming from the pioneering work that started in the 1950s with the modern development in the philosophical investigation of modalities.

In modal logic, syntactic and semantic methods obtain a fruitful blend through correspondence theory and their blend has in recent years created a new momentum in the development of uniform and comprehensive inferential systems, something which was considered an impossibility until recently. In the theory of conditionals, the logical concept of implication or consequence is set in a much broader light. Unlike material implication, conditionals are not truth functionals. They also escape an interpretation in terms of alethic modality, thus creating a challenge to logicians. A number of scholars have faced the problem of interpreting conditionals and creating good inferential systems for them.

In addition to modal, deontic, conditional, and tense logic, the workshop will focus on the far-reaching developments of other of von Wright's seminal contributions, such as the logic of preference, with implications in areas such as economics, game theory, social choice theory, and artificial intelligence, as well as pervasive themes of von Wright's production, such as reflection on the role of logic in philosophy.

The meeting will be held in Helsinki on May 23-25, 2016. Confirmed international participants include

• Patrick Blackburn
• Roy Dyckhoff
• Andreas Herzig
• Valentin Goranko
• Melvin Fitting
• Nicola Olivetti
• Eric Pacuit
• Gabriella Pigozzi
• Giovanni Sartor

Extended abstracts (2-3 pages) of contributed papers should be submitted using EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vonwright2016.

Contributed papers are welcome in the research area in logic stemming from von Wright's investigations, including the following:

• modal logic
• tense logic
• conditional logic
• deontic logic
• logic of preference
• logic of action
• generalized semantics (neighbourhood semantics, game semantics)

Contributed papers will be selected through a peer review process on the basis of scientific quality as well as of thematic relevance for the symposium.

Important dates:

• February 7, 2016: Deadline of submission (Extended deadline)
• March 1, 2016: Notification