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Project

Bitstring semantics at the interface between computer science and philosophy

This doctoral research will be conducted within the ID-N project 'BITSHARE'. This project focuses on bitstring semantics, which was recently developed within philosophical logic. The overarching goal of the BITSHARE project is to explore new applications of bitstring semantics in other disciplines. This PhD project is situated at the interface between computer science and philosophy. Topics such as causation, knowledge and probability are of central importance in both of these disciplines. Despite their shared interests, sustained cooperation between computer science and philosophy is often hampered by differences in their theoretical focal points. While philosophers typically want to capture notions in their full complexity, computer scientists typically want to keep their mathematical models and algorithms more computationally tractable. Bitstring semantics offers a finite and compact representation of possibly infinite classes of possibly infinite models, and thus strikes a good balance between expressive power and mathematical/computational complexity. Consequently, this technique offers a framework in which computer scientists and philosophers can fruitfully combine their insights and results, without losing sight of their disciplinary characteristics.

Date:29 Jul 2020 →  18 Mar 2021
Keywords:bitstring semantics, causation, probability, knowledge, computer science, philosophy, logic
Disciplines:Computational logic and formal languages, Epistemology, Analytical philosophy
Project type:PhD project