[talk] Logics of Knowing How (Yanjing Wang)

Time: 2019 March. 29, 13:30-16:00
Venue: Xinzhai 324, Tsinghua Univ.

Speaker: Yanjing Wang (Peking University)

Title: Logics of Knowing How

Abstract: Standard epistemic logic studies the inference patterns regarding propositional knowledge expressed by “knowing that”. However, knowledge is also expressed in natural language by “knowing how”, “knowing why”, “knowing what”, and so on. The “knowing how” expressions are in particular interesting for not only philosophers but also linguists and AI researchers. In this talk, I survey the recent developments of the logic of knowing how inspired by discussions in epistemology and automated planning in AI. We propose several types of semantics of the “knowing how” operator based on various notions of planning, and then unify them in a very general framework. For each of them, we show a complete axiomatization of the logic and its decidability. We conclude with further directions.

Key References: 

• Yanjing Wang: A logic of goal-directed knowing how, Synthese  195 (10): 4419-4439. 2018.
• Raul Fervari, Andreas Herzig, Yanjun Li, Yanjing Wang: Strategically knowing how. In Proceedings of IJCAI 2017:1031-1038, AAAI
• Yanjing Wang: Beyond knowing that: a new generation of epistemic logics, in Jaakko Hintikka on knowledge and game-theoretical semantics, 499-533, (2018) Springer

CV:

王彦晶，阿姆斯特丹大学/CWI逻辑学博士(2010)，现任北京大学哲学系长聘副教授，副系主任，北京大学哲学与人类未来中心副主任，中国逻辑学会现代逻辑专业委员会秘书长，中国数学学会数理逻辑专业委员会委员。入选国家万人计划青年拔尖人才支持计划。专长为模态逻辑（Modal Logic），特别是知识逻辑（Epistemic Logic），在Synthese、Artificial Intelligence、Review of Symbolic Logic、Advances in Modal Logic、IJCAI、TARK等国际一流哲学、逻辑学、人工智能期刊及顶级会议论文集发表英文论文40余篇。近五年来系统性的提出并推动了关于知道是否、知道如何、知道为何、知道是谁等知识表达式的新一代知识逻辑的研究，提出了量词与模态词结合的“打包算子”的思想，并由此发现了一系列新的一阶模态逻辑的可判定片段。学术研究之外，着力推动逻辑学在中国的学术共同体建设，曾担任两届全国现代逻辑学术研讨会程序委员会主席，严格学术标准，传播学术伦理知识。个人主页：www.wangyanjing.com

Organization:
Tsinghua University – University of Amsterdam Joint Research Centre for Logic
Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University