Abstract

In this talk, I will present a number of knowledge puzzles and paradoxes: the Muddy Children, the Amazon Island, Cheryl's birthday, the Two Numbers' Puzzle, the Surprise Exam paradox etc.  I will then show how one can easily answer some of these puzzles using visual means and logic: encoding the background information into a diagram ``model" consisting of all the ``possible worlds" (=all possibilities that are relevant for the story); encoding the new information into a formal logical formula and then repeatedly erasing the worlds that do not satisfy the formula until we are left with the real world. The conclusion of my analysis of the Surprise Exam will come as a... surprise! (Or so I hope!)

Speaker

Dr. Alexandru Balltag is an Associate Professor at UvA Institute for Logic, Language and Computation.

Zoom link

• https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/86378174615

Convenor

Dora Achourioti