Prague International Colloquium 2006

Uncertainty: Reasoning about Probability and Vagueness

September 5 to 8,

Prague, Villa Lanna

Uncertainty is a ubiquitous phenomenon in everyday life, but it is also a topic of fundamental significance to many scientific disciplines. Uncertainty taken here in a broad sense, has many facets – among them probability and vagueness, including possibility, confidence, fuzziness etc. These are captured by different theories which often seem to be conceptually and technically incompatible. Therefore there is no universally accepted theory covering all this area and there are many reasons why we shall neither expect nor want to have one. On the other hand there have been attempts to cross the borders – there are theories trying to bridge gaps between rival approaches and looking for their common background.

The aim of the conference was to provide a platform for an open discussion between proponents of the main theories of uncertainty and vagueness on the market. Special attention was paid to the comparison of theories, analyzing differences and similarities of the respective concepts of uncertainty. Of particular interest were logical aspects and formal models of reasoning about vague information.

The scope of interest contained the following topics:

• reasoning under uncertainity
• theories of vagueness
• supervaluationism
• foundations of fuzzy logic
• concepts of probability
• possibility and trust
• epistemic and pragmatic aspects of uncertainty

The invited speakers of the colloquium were:
Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews)
Rosanna Keefe (Sheffield)
Peter Milne (Edinburgh)
Stewart Shapiro (Columbus)
Richard Zach (Calgary).

Programme of the conference