“Dynamic Epistemic Logic and its Applications” was held (Hokkaido Summer Institute 2018)

Japanese version of this article

The course “Dynamic Epistemic Logic and its Applications” was held as one class for Hokkaido Summer Institute 2018. The course lasted for 5 days, and was held from August 27th to August 31st.

This class was given as the advanced course for logic. It continued last year’s project by focusing on the topic of “Dynamic Epistemic Logic”, which has shown great development in recent years. This course was offered to a small numbers of graduate students who had already mastered the basics of logic. This course also featured both lecturers from universities abroad, as well as lecturers from Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Letters. Students and teachers worked together closely to get through a content-rich 5 day course.

As modern society becomes more complicated, communication becomes more complicated as well. This course used example-heavy lectures in order to teach students about Dynamic Epistemic Logic, which deals with the inferences concerning mutual changes in knowledge that are necessary for speaking in a logical manner. Students took various concrete examples to learn how to use Dynamic Epistemic Logic to express and apply complex communication and the thought process behind it.

This year’s main lecturer was Professor Jeremy Seligman of The University of Auckland. Professor Seligman used plenty of examples from our daily lives to show how our knowledge and beliefs change over the course of time, thus allowing students to gain a more profound understanding of the material.

Professor Tomoyuki Yamada, who was responsible for both HSI courses on logic this year, also lectured in this class.

Professor Jeremy Seligman (The University of Auckland)

Students listening intently

Using concrete examples to help students understand

Professor Tomoyuki Yamada (Faculty of Letters – Philosophy Department)

On the last day, students were able to receive a long-distance lecture from one of the most famous researchers in the fields of logic and formal philosophy, Johan van Benthem. This gave students a valuable opportunity to hear a class given live by one of the best logicians in the world.

Professor Johan van Benthem, giving his lecture

During Professor van Benthem’s lecture, the other instructors were listening as carefully as the students

Van Benthem letting students know that he will even accept questions via e-mail

In order to enable students to analyze and deal with complicated situations – not only in the field of logic, but also real problems that arise in society – a new set of main lecturers will be invited next year to continue this course.