Research Projects

A New Justification for Ockham's Razor

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/kk3n/ockham/Ockham.htm
Philosophy of science, statistics, and machine learning all recommend the selection of simple theories or models on the basis of empirical data, where simplicity has something to do with minimizing independent entities, principles, causes, or equational coefficients. This intuitive preference for simplicity is called Ockham's razor, after the fourteenth century theologian and logician William of Ockham. But in spite of its intuitive appeal, how could Ockham's razor help one find the true theory when the truth might be complex? This project, involving Kevin Kelly, Conor Mayo-Wilson, and Hanti Lin, concerns the development and extension of a new answer to that question, called the Ockham efficiency theorem. The idea is that it is hopeless to provide an a priori explanation how simplicity points at the true theory immediately, since the truth may depend upon subtle empirical effects that have not yet been observed. But Ockham's razor nonetheless guarantees a priori to keep one on the straightest possible path to the truth, allowing for unavoidable twists and turns along the way as new effects are discovered. The work is currently supported by NSF grant #0740681.

AProS Theorem Prover

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/apros
AProS ("A Proof System") is an automated logic theorem prover that aims to produce normal natural deduction proofs of theorems in sentential and predicate logic.

Algebraic Set Theory Resources

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/ast
Algebraic set theory uses the methods of category theory to study elementary set theory. This website collects together current research in algebraic set theory to promote further development of the subject.

The Bernays Project

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/bernays
Paul Bernays is arguably the greatest philosopher of mathematics of the twentieth century, yet much of his work remains untranslated from the original German or French. This project aims to prepare and publish a volume of English translations of Paul Bernay's papers on the philosophy of mathematics.

Causal Judgement in Cognitive and Developmental Psychology

David Danks, Clark Glymour and Richard Scheines have helped to adapt the causal Bayes net framework to model human learning, an enterprise that is now continued by a number of psychologists across the nation. Danks, Glymour and Scheines currently take part in a collaboarative project funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation involving psychologists, philosophers and computer scientists from several institutions. This project has oppourtunities for graduate students and post doctoral fellows.

The Causality Lab

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/causality-lab
This program lets students of statistics and causal reasoning learn about creating and manipulating statistical models. Through its intuitive interface, downloadable lessons teach about interpreting data, methods of discovering causal structure, and other statistical methods. The Causality Lab is incorporated into the Online Learning Initiative's Causal and Statistical Reasoning Course.

The Collected Works of Rudolph Carnap

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/carnap
The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap will be the first complete edition of Carnap's published philosophical writings. It will be published by the Open Court Publishing Company under the General Editorship of Professor Richard Creath and an editorial board including leading philosophers, logicians and mathematicians.

Computational Systems Biology Group

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/genegroup
The Computational Systems Biology Group is an association of statisticians, computer scientists and biologists at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of West Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. It investigates statistical, algorithmic, experimental design and biological issues surrounding the interpretation of expression data, especially with SAGE and microarray techniques.

Full Circle: Publications of the Archive of Scientific Philosophy, Hillman Library, University of Pittsburgh

opencourtbooks.com/categories/asp_series.htm
Under the general editorship of Steve Awodey, Full Circle publishes original, hitherto unpublished documentary material from the Archive of Scientific Philosophy and related collections around the world, as well as monographs and collections of essays on subjects related to papers contained in these archives, spanning the entire history of philosophy, science, and scientific philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Hilbert Edition

www.math.uni-goettingen.de/skraemer/hilbert.html
Hilbert's reputation as one of the greatest mathematicians is well established, yet many of his deepest ideas are found only in lectures that were never formally published. Over the course of six volumes, this project will present the most important of Hilbert's unpublished writings on the foundations of mathematics and of physics.

Mathematics in Isabelle

andrew.cmu.edu/user/avigad/isabelle
This project involves formalizing portions of mathematics, and number theory in particular, using the Isabelle mechanized proof assistant.

iLogos Argument Mapper

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/argument_mapping
Argument maps are diagrams that display the structure of an argument. By combing pictures and words, argument maps help people create better arguments and analyses. iLogos allows for the easy construction and sharing of argument maps.

Learning Epistemology

LearningEpistemology.com
This website teaches computational epistemology intuitively using animated and interactive explanations. Developed by Seth Casana, the first lesson available presents Kevin Kelly's research on Ockham's Razor and how it applies to theory choice.

The Omega Project

www.ags.uni-sb.de/~omega
This group's research interests concentrate on the development of tools for formal mathematics. It employs artificial intelligence techniques to the field of interactive/automated theorem proving and maths education.

Online Learning Initiative

cmu.edu/oli
Through the Open Learning Initiative, Carnegie Mellon offers accessible, high quality online education. It is also an ideal environment to enrich our understanding of effective online teaching techniques. The philosophy department has developed two of the available courses. The first, Logic and Proofs, is an introduction to modern symbolic logic that incorporates the Carnegie Proof Lab. The second, Causal and Statistical Reasoning, is comparable to a full semester course on causal and statistical reasoning taught at Carnegie Mellon University.

PhilLogic@CMU: Philosophical Logic

hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/phillogic
Devoted to research in the traditional branches of Philosophical Logic, including (but not limited to) various versions of modal, temporal and epistemic logic; constructive and sub-classical logic; conditionals; relevance logic; inductive and belief change; probability logic; and formal philosophy of language; as well as applications in relevant fields of scientific and formal inquiry.

Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly)

caae.phil.cmu.edu/picola
Under the direction of Robert Cavalier, the department's Digital Media Lab for Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy is collaborating with Jim Fishkin's Center for Deliberative Democracy (Stanford) on developing online tools for Deliberative Polls. Called Project PICOLA, these tools provide the next-generation of computer mediated communication software for online structured dialogue and deliberation.

TETRAD Statistical Modeller

www.phil.cmu.edu/projects/tetrad
TETRAD is a freeware program for creating and manipulating causal/statistical models. Its intuitive interface and powerful algorithms allow for data prediction and model discovery without the need for cumbersome programming or extensive statistical sophisitcation.