Research:

Collaborators, coauthors, thesis advisors,

As you will have inevitably noticed from from the content and form of this webpage, scientific communication and collaboration is essential not only to our theoretical view of the scientific/philosophical project that we all as human kind engage in, but also, more practically, it is essential to the way I personally approach academia. In scientific research, the whole is (more often than not) bigger than the sum of the parts. I have been privileged to be able to interact with some of this small planet's greatest minds in the fields of logic and philosophy. Though I have not done any work explicitly under or with any of my grad student colleagues listed here, they have influenced me immensely through conversation, email, facebook, late night parties, and other less direct means. Both lists are partial.

Co-authors and thesis committees:

J.Y. Beziau, J.F.A.K. van Benthem, Guram Bezhanishvili, Bryson Brown, Balder ten Cate, Solomon Feferman, Andrew Irvine, R.E. Jennings, Benedikt Löwe, G.E. Mints, Paul (Dorian) Nicholson, Tamar Lando, Mike Eland,

Grad Student Colleaugues (SFU, Stanford, Amsterdam, and elsewhere):

Martin Allen, Facundo Alonso, Clare Batty, Nick Bezhanishvili, David Boutillier, Paul Egre, Mark Erickson, Patrick Forber, Nicole Friedrich, Patrick Girard, Kevin Hynna, R.C. Jones, Simon Cabulea May, Ken Reisman, Paul Thorn, Renata Wassermann, Michael Weisberg, Audrey Yap

Logic in communication:

In the broadest of terms, much of our research revolves around the role and the importance of logic in natural and formal sciences. Specifically, we are interested in understanding the epistemic scaffolding that logic provides to the notions of scientific communication and progress.  The crux of our interest  is in the role that logic plays in real time, dynamic linguistic communication in a multi-agent setting. We take approach that attempts to reconcile recent biological approaches to language with the sophisticated toolbox available in the field of modern logic, game theory, and the theory of dynamic systems. Rather than being in some sort of Platonic conflict, evolutionary and logical approaches, on our view, complement each other in explaining why it is that we can transfer information via language so successfully. Some of the questions that our research aims to answer are:

What formal and structural preconditions need to be met to enable linguistic communication among humans (and perhaps other creatures as well)?

How is it that logic, time, and the physical environment `conspire' to produce multi agent communication?

Language Understanding: What mechanisms enable us to process one another's utterances? What kind of properties of natural language carry `information'? How did this properties evolve? What are the mechanisms of their evolution?

Language competence: Conversely, what kind of mechanisms enable us to produce utterances. What is the logical relation between the mechanisms of language production and those of that unable us to understand language?


Over the past several months, we have completed the paper titled `The Logic of Dynamic Positivism: On Making Knowledge Public' that covers the topics above in a mixture of a programmatic and strict formal manner. We are at this moment extremely interested in feedback on the project. The paper can be downloaded here: The Logic of Dynamic Positivism: On Making Knowledge Public

The project extends in several more formal directions.

The first lies in the details of evolution of terms with the particular emphasis on the terms used in sciences.

We intend to use the tools of evolutionary game theory, population genetics, and evolutionary theory in general, to explain and comprehend evolution and logicalization of scientific vocabulary. Ideally, we would like to understand how it is possible to evolve logical systems that mirror physical processes, where physical here is understood in very broad sense to include any kind of physical pattern recognition.

The second formal direction involves dating. (Yes, nerds explain (away?) dating!)

We describe dating as a two player game. The goal of the game is to continue the game for some predetermined amount of time without making a game ending move. In other words, both parties want the game to continue, provided that none of the pre specified expectations are violated.

We model dating games as two premise set proofs where mutually proving a disastrous claim amounts to a game ending move.


Some of the questions that we are trying to understand:

Is there recognizable structure to dating? What are the smart strategies to play? Many scenarios, equal players, player with principles, slimy player, aggressive play.

The paper draft that I am working on with Ray Jennings from SFU is entitled `The Logic of Natural Seduction' will be available for download soon.

The third formal direction involves expectations, negotiation and compromise:

Our work on dating extends to a larger arena of expectations and compromises among agents that we hope will help  us understand topics as varied as conflict  negotiation and long term human relationships.

Are there patterns of compromise that lead to some stable state? Does Arrow theorem apply to human relations in general and dating in particular?

What are most profitable long term negotiation strategies?

Is there a logical characterization of the conflict followed by a compromise?

How to represent the costs of compromise?

We are only  beginning to work out the details. We expect a paper draft reporting our research results to be available for download by spring of 2008

Visiting Research Positions, Summer 2008, IHPST, Paris, France

I spent May 20 to August 10 2008 in Paris visiting L'INSTITUT D'HISTOIRE ET DE PHILOSOPHIE DES SCIENCES ET DES TECHNIQUES UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS I. I had the honour of working with Gabriel Sandu, Paul Egre, and Isidora Stojanovic, all experts in logical game theory, formal epistemology, and a number of related philosophical fields. My main goal was to extend my understanding of the logic of communication, and on the more practical side, to establish research  contacts in between the North American and European researchers.