Summer school: Proof, Truth, Computation (deadline approaching!)

Summer School "Proof, Truth, Computation" (PTC 2014)

20-25 July 2014, Chiemsee, Germany

Call for applications by young researchers. Deadline: 17 March 2014.

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This is to invite young researchers (PhD students and post-docs) to apply for the upcoming summer school

"Proof, Truth, Computation. Modern Foundations of Mathematics and Contemporary Philosophy".

Application by female scientists is particularly encouraged.

The event will take place from 21st to 25th July 2014 (arrival 20th July afternoon, departure 25th July after noon) in the Benedictine nunnery Frauenwoerth on the Fraueninsel in Chiemsee between Munich and Salzburg:


The Volkswagen Foundation will kindly sponsor this event:


To get an idea of this summer school, especially of its interdisciplinary character, please see the material provided at end of this message. Junior participants will be particularly expected to contribute to the questions and answers sessions and to the round table discussions.

Important dates:

Deadline for application: 17th March 2014
Notification of acceptance: 24st March 2014
Communication of precise air fare (if applicable): 31st March 2014

Applications are to be sent, in a single PDF document, by email, to


PhD students need to send a CV of at most 2 pages, a brief letter of motivation and one letter of reference. Postdocs only need to send a CV of at most 2 pages. All applicants need to tell whether they also apply for funding and, if so, to which extent. Only a limited amount of funding is available. Applicants for funding are expected to stay for the whole week, and to tell the extent to which they can be funded by other sources.

If your application for funding is successful, then you will be offered reimbursement of the travel and lodging expenses that you cannot cover from other sources. This will require that you choose the cheapest travel option, and that you book your trip by 31st March 2014 in case of flights and by the earliest possible date in case of long-distance trains. We hope to be able to contribute partially to your subsistence expenses (meals).

Meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner - the latter two excluding drinks) for four and a half days will be EUR 180. PhD students and postdocs are expected to share double rooms, for EUR 125 each person for the whole week (5 nights).

Organising committee:

Hannes Leitgeb <hannes.leitgeb@lmu.de>
Iosif Petrakis <petrakis@math.lmu.de>
Peter Schuster <pschust@maths.leeds.ac.uk>
Helmut Schwichtenberg <schwicht@math.lmu.de>

Enquiries are to be directed to:


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Main Topics

Truth Theories
Predicativity
Constructivity
Proof Theory
Formal Epistemology
Set-theoretic Truth

Further topics will include:

Homotopy, Types and Univalence
Program Extraction from Proofs
Coalgebraic and Categorical Semantics
Minimal Type Theory

Speakers and disputants (preliminary list)

Tatiana Arrigoni
Steve Awodey
Marco Benini
Ulrich Berger
Andrea Cantini
Thierry Coquand (to be confirmed)
Laura Crosilla
Branden Fitelson
Sy Friedman (to be confirmed)
Volker Halbach
Hajime Ishihara
Gerhard Jaeger
Peter Koellner
Hannes Leitgeb
Maria Emilia Maietti
David Makinson
Yiannis Moschovakis
Sara Negri
Erik Palmgren
Dirk Pattinson
Jan von Plato
Dieter Probst
Joan Rand-Moschovakis
Michael Rathjen
Giuseppe Rosolini (to be confirmed)
Giovanni Sambin
Monika Seisenberger
Philip Welch
Andreas Weiermann

Aims and Scope

Mathematical methods are about to shape some branches of contemporary philosophy just as they have formed most of the natural and many of the social sciences. The thread of the school we propose is to mirror this development, known as mathematical philosophy or formal epistemology; to highlight the challenges that arise from it; and to display its repercussions in mathematics. As for theoretical computer science, a quite comparable spin-off of mathematics, the principal counterpart within mathematics is mathematical logic.

Since many of the objects of study lie beyond the typical commitment of contemporary mathematics, it is decisive to include non-classical issues such as predicativity and constructivity. Proof theory does indeed play a pivotal role: as the area of mathematical logic that is closest to the understanding of logic as the science of formal languages and reasoning, it is predestined for interaction both with philosophical and computer science logic.

A hot topic that crosses over wide ranges of the school, and is most prominently represented within, is whether axiomatic theories of truth and of related notions, such as provability and knowledge, are possible at all in the stress field between syntax and semantics. Rational belief and rational choice, epistemic issues of principal philosophical relevance, are put under mathematical scrutiny by applying probabilism: that is, the thesis that a rational agent's degrees of belief should conform to the axioms of probability theory.

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