[Fis] Homage to Javorszky and the Halls of Logic

[OARF]

Dear Fis and colleagues,

In the homage to Javorszky last night, several themes went beyond the bounds of the halls of logic. 

Relating to Katherine’s social logic of emotions talk and Kaufmann’s explanation of Javorszky:

I grew up in the Halls of Logic, with my interest going back to the 8th grade when my interest in philosophy awoke. 

Having the good fortune to study under Kleene, Kreisler and to cooperate with Barwise, I was deeply embedded in the Halls of Logic. It was only my reading and personal acquaintance with Habermas the German sociologist, that I realized my formal theory of agent communication of information missed most of human and animal communication. Habermas was influenced by Searle’s theory of Speech Acts. But speech act theory is just a classification not a semantic-pragmatic theory. 

My work in communication theory up to that time was deeply related to von Neumann’s theory of games and his notion of information sets. It was restricted to sentences that were true or false. It missed sentences like directives, commands and questions. It missed what Morris called pragmatics when he postulated the triumvirate: Syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 

A similar realization had occurred in Wittgenstein. While on a train, a friend made an obscene gesture and challenged Wittgenstein to explain how that fits in a world that consists only everything that is the case. Wittgenstein took the example seriously. 

A second Wittgenstein was born breaking away from the rigid claims of the Tractatus.  His transformation to language games is recorded in his Blue and Brown books and later his Philosophical Investigations.  However, games it was claimed were not formalizable, but von Neumann had earlier formalized games in 1921. Wittgenstein seemed to be unaware of von Neumann. 

Being awoken from my logic slumbers by Habermas, I recalled my studies of Wittgenstein in graduate school. I began to formalize Wittgensteinian language games as examples of how the social side of language works. I was able to do this because I generalized von Neumann’s concept of information to information not just about state but information about strategies. The result was a formal definition of the concept of uncertainty about the strategic state of an agent. It gave a mathematical definition of uncertainty about the intentional state of the agent. On this view, information is not just about what is the case or not, but what is intended by an agent. Logic enters the social world!

With the explosion of artificial intelligence, the formal theory of the social mind of agents may take us a step further in socializing AI. We’ll see. 

Just a note about the beautiful examples Lou Kaufman gave last night. It reminded me of my Network theory of Cancer, where the mathematical properties of those networks and their visual appearance certainly beg for investing possible connections. 

All the best,

Eric 

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 8, 2025, at 9:43 PM, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:


Dear IAIS Fellow, 

Tomorrow we will hold the new Dialogue at the International Academy of Information Studies:

The last of the Akkadians: Celebrating the legacy of Karl Javorszky

Speakers:

Louis H. Kauffman, 
Emeritus Professor Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
University of Illinois at Chicago. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://homepages.math.uic.edu/*kauffman/__;fg!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9Z58M6yhmCAV5hpm3Z_mLswnOBmuuXiRVsQx7HtiJFcFn98SiOGcrdIIBEIO14nwbvh9O8vp3Q6iKT6rhsx4as$ 

Katherine Peil Kauffman
EFS International and Institute for Systems Biology
Affiliated of Northeastern University and the Harvard Divinity School. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.emotionalsentience.com/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9Z58M6yhmCAV5hpm3Z_mLswnOBmuuXiRVsQx7HtiJFcFn98SiOGcrdIIBEIO14nwbvh9O8vp3Q6iKT6V9EHpEY$ 

The session will take place on Tuesday, December 9th, at: 17:30 (CET) | 11:30 AM (EST) | 00:30 AM (Thurs.Beijing)      
In the MEET link:   https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://meet.google.com/gqm-frcd-apg?pli=1__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9Z58M6yhmCAV5hpm3Z_mLswnOBmuuXiRVsQx7HtiJFcFn98SiOGcrdIIBEIO14nwbvh9O8vp3Q6iKT6m6H8W48$ 

The Dialogue format: each of the speakers will have 20 min. presentation, followed by 15 min. mutual debate, and 30 min. Q&A from the audience.
It will be moderated by IAIS Board member Plamen Simeonov.

The session will be recorded and posted on the YouTube channel of the IAIS Dialogues: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/@IAISDIALOGUES__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9Z58M6yhmCAV5hpm3Z_mLswnOBmuuXiRVsQx7HtiJFcFn98SiOGcrdIIBEIO14nwbvh9O8vp3Q6iKT68zuXolo$ 
© International Academy of Information Studies: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://sites.google.com/view/iais-info/home__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9Z58M6yhmCAV5hpm3Z_mLswnOBmuuXiRVsQx7HtiJFcFn98SiOGcrdIIBEIO14nwbvh9O8vp3Q6iKT6veYZqjI$ 

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