Dear all,

On Thursday, December 3rd, we will have a LIRa session with Fan Yang.

Everyone is cordially invited!

Speaker: Fan Yang (TU Delf)

Date and Time: Thursday, December 3rd 2015, 16:00-17:30

Venue: Science Park 107, Room F1.15

Title: Dependence Logic and Arrow’s Theorem.

Abstract: Dependence logic [Väänänen 2007] is a new logical formalism that characterizes the notions of “dependence" and “independence” in social and natural sciences. The logic adopts the so-called team semantics [Hodges 1997]. The basic idea of this new semantics is that properties of dependence and independence cannot be manifested in single assignments, therefore unlike the usual semantics, formulas of dependence logic are evaluated on sets of assignments (called teams). In this talk, we give a brief introduction to dependence logic and its variants (including independence logic [Grädel, Väänänen 2013]). Then, we will use a version of independence logic to formalize Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, which can be viewed as a theorem highlighting an interesting conflict between dependence and independence. (The second part of the talk is based on a joint work with Eric Pacuit.)

Hope to see you there!

The LIRa team