Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EvoLogic (The Evolution of Logic)
Reporting period: 2023-02-01 to 2025-01-31
We are the reasoning animal. Failure to reason with logic can undermine scientific research, policy making, and daily life. Like all animals, we evolved during a long natural process. Unlike other animals, we developed sophisticated minds and a complex language that contains logical structure. Noam Chomsky remarked, in 'Language and Problems of Knowledge' (1980) that "The logical notions are embedded in our deepest nature, in the very form of our language and thought" (p. 99). Yet it is remarkably unclear how we came to develop this amazing cognitive ability. How did logic become part of the natural world? Recent years have seen terrific developments in evolutionary linguistics, and in our understanding of logic. By bringing together these two areas of inquiry, the project EVOLOGIC has pioneered an underexplored research area. The first goal is to explain how the evolution of logic is even possible: a venerable tradition in philosophy holds that mathematical notions belong to the unchanging realm of forms --- how can Plato be reconciled with Darwin? The second goal is more technical: can we adopt various modeling techniques that have been developed for the study of language and cognitive evolution at large, to the specific purpose of the study of the evolution of logic? Some questions raised in this second part of the project are questions of logicality (What makes the logical expressions special?) and universality (What properties are characteristic of logical expressions?). These are questions about the limits of our ability to reason.
Research work has been conducted at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Over the course of the fellowship, the following articles have been published:
- L. Incurvati and G. Sbardolini (2023). "The Rejection Game", Mind and Language.
- G. Sbardolini (2023). "The logic of Lexical Connectives", Journal of Philosophical Logic.
- B. Assadian and G. Sbardolini (2023). "Performative Reference", Synthese.
- G. Sbardolini (2023). "Homogeneity and the illocutionary force of rejection", Proceeedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory 33.
The following articles have been submitted to top-ranking journals:
- G. Sbardolini, "Including and Excluding"
- G. Sbardolini and S. Speitel, "Logic and Evolution"
- G. Sbardolini, "Shadows of Sentences"
- G. Sbardolini, "Who's afraid of common knowledge?"
- G. Sbardolini, "Coordination for rational people"
The following conference presentations have been delivered by the grant recipient:
- 07/23: "Homogeneity, Negation, and Neglect Zero", HNM2, University of Vienna
- 07/23: "Skepticism about common knowledge", British Society for the Philosophy of Science, University of Bristol
- 06/23: "Logic and Evolution" (with S. Speitel), Logic Colloquium, University of Milan
- 06/23: "Who's afraid of common knowledge?", Work in Progress Seminar, MCMP, LMU Munich
- 05/23: "Homogeneity, Neglect Zero, Non-maximality", Meaning in Language Colloquium, HHU Dusseldorf
- 05/23: "Neglect Zero effects and negation", SILT 2, New York University
- 05/23: "Homogeneity and the illocutionary force of rejection", SALT 33, Yale University
- 04/23: "Homogeneity and Rejection", Nihil Seminar, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam
- L. Incurvati and G. Sbardolini (2023). "The Rejection Game", Mind and Language.
- G. Sbardolini (2023). "The logic of Lexical Connectives", Journal of Philosophical Logic.
- B. Assadian and G. Sbardolini (2023). "Performative Reference", Synthese.
- G. Sbardolini (2023). "Homogeneity and the illocutionary force of rejection", Proceeedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory 33.
The following articles have been submitted to top-ranking journals:
- G. Sbardolini, "Including and Excluding"
- G. Sbardolini and S. Speitel, "Logic and Evolution"
- G. Sbardolini, "Shadows of Sentences"
- G. Sbardolini, "Who's afraid of common knowledge?"
- G. Sbardolini, "Coordination for rational people"
The following conference presentations have been delivered by the grant recipient:
- 07/23: "Homogeneity, Negation, and Neglect Zero", HNM2, University of Vienna
- 07/23: "Skepticism about common knowledge", British Society for the Philosophy of Science, University of Bristol
- 06/23: "Logic and Evolution" (with S. Speitel), Logic Colloquium, University of Milan
- 06/23: "Who's afraid of common knowledge?", Work in Progress Seminar, MCMP, LMU Munich
- 05/23: "Homogeneity, Neglect Zero, Non-maximality", Meaning in Language Colloquium, HHU Dusseldorf
- 05/23: "Neglect Zero effects and negation", SILT 2, New York University
- 05/23: "Homogeneity and the illocutionary force of rejection", SALT 33, Yale University
- 04/23: "Homogeneity and Rejection", Nihil Seminar, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam
Improvements in our understanding of how logic evolved in nature directly lead to questions about how logic can develop "in the lab": if we know how we developed the ability to reason, we will be better prepared to engineer artificial agents with the ability to reason. This task is of tremendous strategic importance. Further developments on this side will require extensive collaboration between theoretical and computational/experimental aspects of research.