---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "ARF Newsletter" <[email protected]> Date: Mar 29, 2017 7:43 PM Subject: ARF Newsletter no. 1 To: <[email protected]> Cc:
*ARF Newsletter* no. 1 03/29/17 The Advanced Reasoning Forum was founded as a way to exchange ideas and encourage work on critical thinking, formal logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics. Since then, our interests have broadened to include linguistics and ethics. We want to open up our discussions to everyone now. We'll start off this issue mostly with announcements. But we hope that you will jump in with your ideas, what you're working on, what puzzles you, and items of interest you want to share. Typically, the newsletter will have the following sections. Critical Thinking <#m_4720673978755932825_criticalthinking> This section gives you the opportunity to share your examples, to tell us of new ways you've taught, to ask for help with problems in teaching, and to share ways that critical thinking can be or has been used. We stress in our work, and hope that you do in yours, the importance of critical thinking in life and its ethical dimension. Part of that ethical dimension we tell our students is doing rigorous, well-thought-out work, real analyses not just offhand remarks. Research <#m_4720673978755932825_research> The focus here is to share new, even provocative ideas in order to stimulate discussion and cooperation among us--the excitement of talking and working together. We all get stuck in our work, and sharing it is a great way to find new approaches. Teaching <#m_4720673978755932825_news> Teaching well is exciting--and difficult. Here you can share new methods you've used, how old methods don't work, what your students have come up with that enlightened them and you, why you do or don't like online teaching, and how your research connects with your teaching. Teaching well is part of the good life, how we can be an example to our students and others. Send your contributions to [email protected] <[email protected]?subject=re%3A%20Newsletter%20no.%201>. We'll try to put them in the next issue, which will come out about once a month. We'll edit lightly. Arf (aka Richard L. Epstein) * Critical Thinking* Last year we published the fifth edition of *The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking*. This year we've published the fifth edition of the big book *Critical Thinking <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=1d56a38d1c&e=85f18ed6dd>*. You can get exam copies here <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=ce55004180&e=85f18ed6dd>. CHECK YOUR SPAM FILTER--we've been sending messages about how to download e-copies and we suspect that a lot of them are trashed as spam. Problems incorporating critical thinking at your school? No funds for a course? Too many students and too few instructors? Here's a way to incorporate critical thinking into the curriculum easily, quickly, efficiently, and at very low cost. Have your school send a copy of *The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking* to all incoming first-year students to read over the summer before they show up. It's easy to read, with short chapters. Since students are eager to prepare for their first term at university, it's likely that many if not all incoming students will read it. It's a solid book that will give them real skills. Your faculty will be glad for it because it will improve their students' work and make their teaching better. ARF can provide a seminar or webinar to help faculty incorporate the material in their courses. Here's what one instructor said: I have used Richard Epstein's *The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking* in all of my introduction to philosophy and ethics courses. All of my students have found this book quite useful in becoming better at argumentation in both class discussions and writing assignments. Some students have even explicitly expressed that this book has helped them in other non-philosophy courses (e.g. biology, chemistry, physics, sociology, political science, and law). I highly recommend this book to any instructor who is looking for helping students understand critical thinking skills in the most accessible way possible. Arsalan Memon, Lewis University Find out more information about *The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=cf36ee7aa5&e=85f18ed6dd>* . *Critical thinking in Spanish* Juan Francisco Rizzo and Manuel Dahlquist are working in Argentina on an adaptation of *The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking* in Spanish (not translation because a lot of examples have to be changed). With luck we'll publish it through ARF this year and then look for distributors in Latin America and Spain. Let us know if you'd like to see a draft of it--we're anxious to get comments. There are already versions in Portuguese and in Arabic. Anyone interested in working on one in French or German or . . . ? *They're trying to ban critical thinking in Texas* Read here <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=c4612dcf0a&e=85f18ed6dd> . *Examples* Here's a letter I wrote to the Colgate-Palmolive company. I'm eagerly waiting a reply: *Research* *Joao Marcos* (member of ARF, [email protected]) writes: I was one of the organizers of: *4th International Conference on Tools for Teaching Logic* <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=bcfba29eed&e=85f18ed6dd> Rennes, France, 2015 <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=2f48c80f6c&e=85f18ed6dd>. I would surely be happy to receive feedback on the paper (still unpublished) <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=c0af783cd8&e=85f18ed6dd> that I presented at that occasion. And here's a video <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=15d6f63915&e=85f18ed6dd>. *Walter Carnielli* (member of ARF, [email protected]) writes: Juliana Bueno and I are very much interested in alternative theories of probability. We showed that a quite nice paraconsistent theory of probability can be framed in a natural way, with surprising applications to real situations involving Bayesian reasoning under contradictions: "Paraconsistent Probabilities: Consistency, Contradictions and Bayes' Theorem" This paper represents the first steps towards constructing a paraconsistent theory of probability based on the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs). We show that LFIs encode very naturally an extension of the notion of probability able to express sophisticated probabilistic reasoning under contradictions employing appropriate notions of conditional probability and paraconsistent updating, via a version of Bayes' theorem for conditionalization. We argue that the dissimilarity between the notions of inconsistency and contradiction, one of the pillars of LFIs, plays a central role in our extended notion of probability. Some critical historical and conceptual points about probability theory are also reviewed. It's in *Entropy*, special issue "Statistical Significance and the Logic of Hypothesis Testing <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=d47b99c342&e=85f18ed6dd> " Due to this new interest in probability theories with non-classical background, we've been invited to edit a special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287): Special Issue Logic, Inference, Probability and Paradox Editors Julio Stern, Walter Carnielli, Juliana Bueno-Soler Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 July 2017. http://www.mdpi.com/journal/philosophies/special_issues/paradox <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=756b985db9&e=85f18ed6dd> I recently published with M. E. Coniglio the book: Paraconsistent Logic: Consistency, Contradiction and Negation Series Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science Springer, 2016 http://www.springer.com/la/book/9783319332031 <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=97449c030e&e=85f18ed6dd> *Arf* ([email protected]) I'm working on a series of books, *Logic, Language, and the World*, meant to extend the scope of what we can formalize in classical predicate logic and in doing so see the real limitations of what can be done. Early last year I published the first volume (Volume 0--I was trained in mathematics), *An Introduction to Formal Logic <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=b1561c21c2&e=85f18ed6dd>* . Late last year we published Volume 1, *The Internal Structure of Predicates and Names* <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=6a6996cfa2&e=85f18ed6dd>. This work extends the scope of classical predicate logic by showing how to formalize reasoning that involves adverbs, relative adjectives, conjunctions of terms, conjunctions of modifiers, and conjunctions of predicates as part of the internal structure of atomic predicates. Descriptive names functions and nonreferring names are also analyzed. Now I'm working on* Time and Space in Formal Logic*. I've got a good draft, and Juan Francisco Rizzo, who was an ARF Student Fellow at Dogshine last year is going to return this summer to work through it with me. Anyone else interested? Contact me about an ARF Fellowship or an ARF Student Fellowship for yourself or one of your students; see the ARF Fellowships page <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=2ef0b29cce&e=85f18ed6dd>. *Manuel Dahlquist* ([email protected]) Manuel has just finished a good draft of *Una Introducción a la Teoría Lógica de la Edad Media *(An Introduction to Medieval Logical Theory). He really wants suggestions and corrections. Anyone interested in seeing a copy contact him. *Teaching* *Teaching at the local jail* Arf reports: I've been volunteer teaching at the local Socorro County Detention Center. It's different from teaching in a prison because inmates come and go all the time in a jail. Lots of folks told me that the inmates aren't bad people; they just made bad decisions. I quickly found out that's wrong. Most of them didn't make any decision at all--they just did. I teach them critical thinking from The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking so they'll have the tools to make decisions, and I read to them from The BARK of DOG (www.BARKofDOG.org <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=4082c72a89&e=85f18ed6dd>) so that they'll make good decisions. Anyone else teaching at a jail or prison? Let us hear what you're doing. Or write to us for more about what we're doing. *News* *Joao Marcos* writes: I am in Bochum, Germany at the moment being sponsored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=3636cbe6ec&e=85f18ed6dd> given to me by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=4fe7809d8c&e=85f18ed6dd> *Mircea Dumitru* (member of ARF) With the new election in Romania, the technocrats are out and Mircea is no longer Minister of National Education and Scientific Research. He's returned to his job as Rector of the University of Bucharest. He says that his work in critical thinking (he wrote a text in Romanian based on Critical Thinking) was very important and useful for his work in government. Recently, he's been in the demonstrations that have tried to make the government there accountable to the people. *Walter Carnielli *(member of ARF) I will stay 6 weeks or so in Germany in June/July 2017. I've got an award from the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=ddceeeea91&e=85f18ed6dd>. *Fred Kroon* (member of ARF) I'm currently Director of Research in the School of Humanities at the University of Auckland. My current research is focused on fiction and fictionalism. (Fictionalism holds that a claim or theory, taken at face value, needn't be true to be worth retaining; it might be best to treat it as a kind of fiction.) I am completing both a sole-authored and a co-authored book on the topic (as well as a co-edited collection for OUP). One of my main current goals is to debunk objections to fictionalism (for example, that fictionalism implies a kind of subjectivism). *Dogs* http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-39157773 <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=a9d028d0ae&e=85f18ed6dd> Peace, Arf *Copyright © 2017 Advanced Reasoning Forum, All rights reserved.* You are receiving this email because you signed up or opted-in to the Advanced Reasoning Forum newsletter. This newsletter periodically updates recipients on new content and events with respect to the Advanced Reasoning Forum. Add us to your address book <http://AdvancedReasoningForum.us15.list-manage.com/vcard?u=2399f8633690494e504e94970&id=283968aad3> *Our mailing address is:* Advanced Reasoning Forum PO Box 635 Socorro, NM 87801 USA Want to change how you receive these emails? 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