THE WORKSHOPS

There will be several workshops as part of the 3rd World Congress on Logic and Religion. They are more than mere sessions inside the congress; each workshop has its own keynote speaker(s) and Call for Papers, and its last activity will be a discussion led by the keynote speaker(s) with the participants on the topics and papers presented in the workshop. 

The following workshops will take place within the 3rd WoCoLoR:

• Consciousness and the Self

• Formal Natural Theology

• Judaism, Christianity and Logic

• Logic and Religion in Schopenhauer

• Logical Pluralism vs. Logical Revision

• Mathematics and Religion

• Logic of Paradise

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SELF

What is consciousness? How is it related to the self? And how are consciousness and the self connected with the brain? Do we need an immaterial self (soul) to account for consciousness? What are the limits of a physicalist account of reality? To what extent do the sciences need materialism? What is the self in world religions? What contributions can they give to the philosophical problem of consciousness? These are some of the questions that shall be addressed in the workshop "Consciousness and the Self".

We invite submissions of contributed papers on topics related to these questions, including but not restricted to:

• The philosophical problems of consciousness

• Substance dualism and dualistic approaches to consciousness

• Arguments for and against materialism 

• Philosophical accounts of the self

• The concept of soul in philosophical and world religious traditions

Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "Consciousness and the Self". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in a book and/or special issues of journals with publishers of international recognition. Peer-reviewed papers of previous WoCoLoR’s appeared as special issues of Logica Universalis (Springer), Sophia (Springer) and the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). For more details click here.

CHAIRS

• Alan Herbert

       Oxford Center for Hindu Studies, UK

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KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Stephen Priest

University of Oxford (UK)

The workshop "Consciousness, Post-materialism and the Soul"  is being sponsored by the Bhaktivedanta Institute for Higher Studies 

FORMAL NATURAL THEOLOGY

In this workshop, we aim to address interdependent questions at the intersection between Logic and Philosophy of Religion. We aim to cast light on the nature, the logic and the internal coherence of religious discourse.

A promising way of approaching the issues of Natural Theology is using tools of Formal Logic. Such approach configures an area of Logical Philosophy of Religion called Formal Natural Theology (FNT). On one side, it is possible to logically analyze systems that have already been established historically, on other it is possible to propose new systems with interesting results.

These problems and related ones will be addressed during the workshop “Formal Natural Theology”, which will be part of the 3rd WoCoLoR.

We dedicate this workshop to Józef Maria Bocheński, a great logician and the author of famous works The Logic of Religion and The Five Ways, in the 25th anniversary of his death in the Bocheński’s Year, officially celebrated in Poland in 2020.

We invite submissions of contributed papers on topics including but not restricted to:

• The consistency of the attributes of the God of Classical TheismThe consist

• The logic of religious discourse 

• The existence of the God Creator of Classical Theism

• The logical problem of evil

• Paraconsistent logic and philosophy of religion

Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "Formal natural Theology". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in Historia Logica (College Publications). Peer-reviewed papers of previous WoCoLoR’s appeared as special issues of Logica Universalis (Springer), Sophia (Springer) and the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). For more details click here.

CHAIRS

• Fábio Bertato

       University of Campinas, Brazil​

• Marcin Trepczyński

       University of Warsaw, Poland

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Itala D'Ottaviano

University of Campinas (Brazil)

Andrew Pinsent

Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford (UK)

JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND LOGIC

Religion exists only in specific traditions. How similar and how different are the logical concepts present in Jewish and Christian traditions? What are the specific issues in the two traditions that have logical aspects? And how similar or how divergent are they? Does rationality mean the same in Judaism and Christianity? Is it possible to detect logical elements of Christian-Jewish polemics? And of cooperation and dialogue of the two traditions? In addition, because of the location of the conference, it would be good to relate these questions to Hinduism and other Asian traditions. Do they provide new insights? 

These problems and related ones will be addressed during the workshop "Judaism, Christianity and Logic", which will be part of the 3rd WoCoLoR.

We invite submissions of contributed papers on topics including but not restricted to:​

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• Logic in Christian theological discourse

• Logic in Jewish theological discourse

• Logical Problem of Trinity 

• Talmudic logic  

• Logical aspects common to Christian and Jewish discourses 

• Logical aspects opposing Christian and Jewish discourses 

• The concept of rationality in Jewish and Christian traditions 

• Jewish-Christian polemics and logic 

• Logic and Jewish-Christian dialogue

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Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "Judaism, Christianity and Logic". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in a book and/or special issues of journals with publishers of international recognition. Peer-reviewed papers of previous WoCoLoR’s appeared as special issues of Logica Universalis (Springer), Sophia (Springer) and the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). For more details click here.

CHAIRS

• Stanislaw Krajewski

       University of Warsaw, Poland​

• Marcin Trepczyński

       University of Warsaw, Poland

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Jerome (Yehuda) Gellman

Emeritus, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel)

Ephraim Meir

Bar-Ilan University (Israel)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

LOGIC AND RELIGION IN SCHOPENHAUER

Arthur Schopenhauer and his role in logic and religion is marked by opposites: Whereas Ernst Bloch said Schopenhauer was “the most Christian philosopher”, Fritz Mauthner called him the “prince of atheists”. Whereas Dale Jacquette explained that Schopenhauer had “dubious qualifications as logician” and therefore did not really belong to this discipline, Albert Menne stated that "Schopenhauer had an excellent command of the rules of formal logic (much better than Kant, for example)". The views on Schopenhauer as a religious and logical philosopher are therefore highly controversial. Only recently, however, it has become known to research that Schopenhauer was as intensely concerned with logic and mathematics as he was with religion. However, it has long been known that many of the topics discussed by Schopenhauer are in the field of tension between logical justification and religious conviction such as suicide, theodicy, salvation, instrumental reason, enlightenment, optimism and pessimism, nihilism, mysticism, irrationalism to name but a few examples. 

Abstracts on all aspects of research on Logic and Religion in Schopenhauer are welcome. Here is a list of possible topics: 

• Logic, Mathematics and Religion in Schopenhauer’s System

• Religious Examples in Schopenhauer’s Logic and Eristics

• Schopenhauer’s Logical Analysis of Christianity/ Buddhism/ Hinduism/ Sufism etc.

• The Logic of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Religion

• Logic of Nihilism or Pessimism in Schopenhauer

• Theodicy and Logical Justifications

• Rational Arguments for or against Suicide 

• Religion and Enlightenment in Schopenhauer

• (Ir)rationality of Religion; Instrumental Reason and Religion

Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "Logic and Religion in Schopenhauer". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in Historia Logicae (College Publications). Peer-reviewed papers of previous WoCoLoR’s appeared as special issues of Logica Universalis (Springer), Sophia (Springer) and the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). For more details click here.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

CHAIR

• Jens Lemanski

       University of Hagen, Germany

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Religion and the "Metaphysical Need"

Christopher Janaway

University of Southampton (UK)

LOGICAL PLURALISM vs. LOGICAL REVISION

Main question: when does a set of evidence that conflicts with a logical theory force one to revise the logical theory as opposed to endorsing logical pluralism. Logical revisionism is typically endorsed when one wants to say that a given Logical Theory is correct, but needs to be revised to accommodate some evidence or phenomenon that it cannot easily accommodate. That is, the theory is good enough, but only needs revision in some areas. Logical pluralism is typically endorsed when one thinks that two or more logical systems are better at handling different kinds of inferences than simply accepting only one logical theory and deeming the other inferences illegitimate. For example, one can say that the consequence relation is correctly described by both classical and para-consistent logics, rather than saying that classical logic is correct, and one cannot reason from a contradiction effectively at all.

In this workshop, we invite authors to consider the following questions:

• What are the best arguments for generating logical pluralism?

• What are good grounds for choosing logical revision over logical pluralism?

• What is the relation between alethic pluralism and logical pluralism?

• What are the best arguments for maintaining logical monism?

• How can other traditions of logic, such as Arabic logic or Chinese logic, enter the debate on logical pluralism?

The keynote lecture will be given by Anand Vaidya. He will address the question of whether or not logical pluralism can be extended to include the Nyāya five-membered syllogism. Typically, the logical pluralism is about the logical consequence relation and whether or not there are multiple logics of it that are all correct. In this talk, Anand Vaidya will argue that the form-content distinction can also be brought into the discussion about logical pluralism, since (i) at least one way of generating logical pluralism comes from considering formality as opposed to necessity and normativity, and (ii) there is a link between formality and normativity. Professor Vaidya will argue that the Nyāya five-membered syllogism is one correct way to represent reasoning that can sit alongside the Aristotelian syllogism once we think of the difference between reasoning for truth as an individual as opposed to reasoning for knowledge within a group. Just as there can be pluralism about the consequence relation there can be pluralism about the form-content distinction, and just as the former kind of pluralism is useful for capturing some, but not all ways, the logical consequence relation can work, the latter kind of pluralism is useful for capturing some, but not all ways, an argument can be set up to effectively, such that there is a reasonable answer to the question: what makes an argument good?

Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "Logical Pluralism vs. Logical Revision". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in a book and/or special issues of journals with publishers of international recognition. Peer-reviewed papers of previous WoCoLoR’s appeared as special issues of Logica Universalis (Springer), Sophia (Springer) and the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). For more details click here.

CHAIRS

• Noah Friedman-Biglin

       ​San Jose State University, USA

• Ricardo Sousa Silvestre

       Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil​

Logical Pluralism and Indian Logic

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Anand Vaidya

San José State University (USA)

MATHEMATICS AND RELIGION

Joseph Dauben

City University of New York (USA)

While mathematics and theology seem to be opposite to each other and mathematical rationality seems to have nothing in common with religious faith one can search for mutual influences and inspirations. What were historical convergences? Can mathematics help theologians? Can more advanced mathematics be more helpful? Is infinity a common point? Can we detect religious origins of mathematical concepts? Is religious language present in the kitchen of mathematics? Some outstanding mathematicians were very religious: was that helpful in their research work? 

There have been attempts to argue for the answer "Yes" to each of these questions. One can also argue against. These problems and related ones, including the influence of Indian and Chinese religious traditions on the development of mathematics in the respective cultures, will be addressed during the workshop "Mathematics and Religion", which will be part of WoCoLoR 2020.

We invite submissions of contributed papers on topics including but not restricted to:
 

• Religious sources of mathematical concepts

• Theological motives in mathematics

• Mathematical models in theology

• Mathematical motives in religious discourse 

• Infinity in mathematics and infinity in theology

• Important mathematicians who were religiously involved 

Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "mathematics and Religion". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in Historia Logica (College Publications). Peer-reviewed papers of previous WoCoLoR’s appeared as special issues of Logica Universalis (Springer), Sophia (Springer) and the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). For more details click here.

CHAIRS

• Stanislaw Krajewski 

       University of Warsaw, Poland​

• Fábio Bertato

       University of Campinas, Brazil

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KEYNOTE SPEAKER

LOGIC OF PARADISE

The paradise is a famous notion in many religions. It may have different names and may come with different related notions. As a substantive, it is considered as a location, but there is also the qualitative “paradisiacal”, that applies to many situations and can be related to different states of mind. The aim of this workshop is to study the logical aspects of paradise and  paradisiacality.  

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We invite submissions of contributed papers on topics related to these questions, including but not restricted to:

• Logical relations of paradise with similar, different or opposite locations, such as hell, purgatory, limbo, earth, heaven.

• Aspects of the paradisiac mind (happiness, delightedness) and its logical relations with other psychic dispositions such as hope, fear, anger, confidence, joy.

• Ways to reach the paradise using logic to avoid illusions, misleading gurus, wrong behaviors and to develop good understanding, balancing emotions with the intellect.

• The logical structure of the paradise: kinds of things and beings which are inside paradise (stones, rivers, seas, plants, trees, animals, humans, divine beings) and the relations between them.

Abstracts must have a maximum of 600 words and be written in English according to our template; they must be submitted via Easychair (note that prior registration with EasyChair is required) by May 31, 2021. In the submission, one of the keywords must be "Logic of Paradise". At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the congress.

Accepted abstracts will be published in the congress proceedings, which will be available during the congress. After the meeting authors will be invited to submit a complete version of their works, which will be peer-reviewed and published in a special issue of Logica Universalis (Birkhäuser / Springer), a journal of international recognition, included in the Science Citation Index (SCIE) with a high impact factor. 

CHAIRS

• Jean-Yves Beziau

       Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

       Brazilian Academy of Science, Brazil

• Caroline Pires Ting

       Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

       Macao International Institute, Macao

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Miray Yazgan

Istanbul University (Turkey)