Program Overview

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Program Overview

The Logic and Society program is a course offered by the University of Amsterdam, focusing on the application of modal logic to reason about social epistemic scenarios.

Course Details

• Course catalogue number: Y
• Credits: 6 EC
• Language of instruction: English
• Entry requirements: A positive binding study advice (BSA) or dispensation from the BSA
• Time period(s): Semester 1 and Semester 2
• College/graduate: College of Humanities
• Lecturer(s):
  • dr. S.J.L. Smets (co-ordinator)
• Is part of:
  • Bachelor Filosofie
  • Exchange programme Exchange Programme College of Humanities (BA)
  • Minor Logic and Computation
  • Minor Theoretische filosofie

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will:

• master the techniques of epistemic-social logic
• be able to indicate the logical features that characterize different epistemic social scenario’s
  etworks
• have learnt how to model complex epistemic-social scenarios in the framework of epistemic-social logic
• have developed their ability to derive philosophical conclusions on the basis of a logic-technical analysis

Contents

The course uses modal logic to reason about interesting but puzzling social epistemic scenarios in which agents exchange information, revise their beliefs, and update their knowledge. It focuses on social phenomena such as informational cascades, pluralistic ignorance, the bystander effect, the muddy children puzzle, and the 'majority illusion' effect.

Recommended Prior Knowledge

Students are familiar with the syntax and semantics of propositional logic.

Required Prior Knowledge

Students must have completed the course “Logica en de linguistic turn” (or some other introduction to classical propositional logic).

Teaching Method

• 1 x 2 hours lecture per week
• 1 x 2 hours seminar per week

Contact Hours

• Course week 1-7: Hoorcollege (2 hours/week) and Werkcollege (2 hours/week)
• Course week 8: Tentamen (3.5 hours)

Study Materials

All course material will be made available, including course-slides, handbook chapters, online research papers, online educational video’s, examples from newspapers, and online available software for model-checking logical statements.

Min/Max Participants

Maximum 50 students

Assessment and Testing

The grade for this course will be based on homework assignments and a final exam.