Logic & Reasoning Institute Hosts Upcoming Colloquium
News
The Logic & Reasoning Institue will host a colloquium jointly with the math department on Tuesday, April 14 at 2:30 PM in Roop 103. The speaker is JMU's Jason Rosenhouse, author of Games for Your Mind: The History and Future of Logic Puzzles, among other works. Title and abstract below.
What Do We Learn From Carroll's Regress?
Abstract: In an 1895 paper, Lewis Carroll presented a potential paradox of logical inference. Roughly, his point was that a certain natural way of viewing the nature of inference led to an unacceptable infinite regress. Carroll himself was famously vague about the precise point he wished to make, and as a result a whole industry of papers has developed subjecting the regress to ever more minute analyses. We will present Carroll’s regress, describe some of the responses to it, and present some ideas of our own regarding the proper lesson to learn from it.
What Do We Learn From Carroll's Regress?
Abstract: In an 1895 paper, Lewis Carroll presented a potential paradox of logical inference. Roughly, his point was that a certain natural way of viewing the nature of inference led to an unacceptable infinite regress. Carroll himself was famously vague about the precise point he wished to make, and as a result a whole industry of papers has developed subjecting the regress to ever more minute analyses. We will present Carroll’s regress, describe some of the responses to it, and present some ideas of our own regarding the proper lesson to learn from it.
