Going Where the Action Is: Dynamic Semantics and Dynamic Logic.

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~johan

Actions by agents and multi-agent interactions are becoming a major theme in the study of natural language, and also in logic generally. I will explain this trend, which started in the 1980s, all the way to current contacts of logic, epistemology, computer science, and game theory. One basic issue that comes up then is *where the dynamics is to be located*. 'Dynamic logic' adds explicit accounts of actions on top of classical logics, enriching their agenda, but 'dynamic semantics' re-interprets classical logics in terms of ever richer dynamic meanings. A similar contrast occurs with epistemic logic versus intuitionistic logic as accounts of information structure. The two differ widely in their mathematical and philosophical features. I will discuss this pervasive contrast for logical dynamics, where it is not well-understood.

J. van Benthem, 1996, "Exploring Logical Dynamics", CSLI
Publications, Stanford.

J. van Benthem, 2010, "Dynamic Logic of
Information Flow", Cambridge University Press, to appear.