Category: Logic

Probability, Truthlikeness and the Cenk Uygur versus Sam Harris Debate

I became aware of the Young Turks and their main man Cenk Uygur earlier this year. As the months have gone by and I have watched more of their YouTube clips, Uygur’s arrogance, ignorance and general thickheadedness has become more apparent.

One conversation that I found interesting is the one Uygur had with Sam Harris, particularly the following portion, as it involves discussion relevant to truthlikeness and probability:

In this discussion, Harris makes the point that Mormonism is slightly more improbable/absurd than other Christian faiths because it makes the more specific claim that Jesus will return to Jackson County, Missouri rather than the more general claim that he will return to somewhere on Earth.

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Upcoming Talk: Truth and integrity constraints in logical database updating/merging

I’ll be giving a talk later this month at the RMIT CSIT Seminar Series.

Date and Time: Friday 27th November, 2015. 11.30am – 12.30pm.

Venue: RMIT, Swanston St, Melbourne, Building 80 (Swanston Academic Building), Level 5, Room 12 (080.05.012)

Abstract: Methods for the updating/merging of logical databases have traditionally been mainly concerned with the relations between pieces of data and the logical coherence of operations without as much concern for whether the datasets resulting from such operations have epistemically valuable properties such as truth and relevance. Gardenfors for example, who developed the predominant AGM framework for belief revision, argues that the concepts of truth and falsity become irrelevant for the analysis of belief change as “many epistemological problems can be attacked without using the notions of truth and falsity”.

However this may be, given that agents process incoming data with the goal of using it, this lacuna between updating/merging and epistemic utilities such as truth and relevance merits attention. In this talk I address this issue by looking at some ways in which updating/merging methods can be supplemented and shaped when combined with formal measures of truthlikeness, including cases where integrity constraints are involved.