Causes and Tenses: Formal Perspectives (2010)

The international seminar “Causes and Tenses: Formal Perspectives” was held on September 10-11, 2010. It was co-organized by the Copernicus Center and the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagillonian University. The honorary chairman of the seminar was Nuel Belnap of Pittsburgh University.

The underlying idea was to bring together researchers conducting probabilistic causation (analyzed formally) with researchers of tenses, analyzed from either a logical or metaphysical perspective. The emphasis was on small data structures for analyzing causes and indeterminism, common causation and causal completability, and new techniques for the problem of future contingents.

The following papers were presented (in English):

1. Miklós Rédei and Zalán Gyenis, “Characterizing common cause closed probability spaces”
2. Michał Marczyk and Leszek Wroński, “Remarks on the notion of causal closedness of classical probability spaces”
3. Nuel Belnap, “How case-intensional semantics prevents the slingshot from hitting its target”
4. Thomas Müller, “Small data structures for representing indeterminism”
5. Fabrice Correia, “ A „classical” tempo-modal logic for future contingents”
6. Jacek Wawer, “How to Survive on the Thin Red Line?”
7. Tomasz Placek, “On the assertion problem”