Social Software Mini-conference 

Abstract: Various research communities have been occupied with developing formal models of social interactive situations. These different communities often focus on different aspects of social interaction. For example, game theorists study strategic aspects, while linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers have focused on the flow of information between the agents over time, terminating or infinite. Bringing these insights together requires logical frameworks of suitable power, perspicuity, and appeal. Much current logical research is directed toward designing formal models of social interactive situations and matching logical languages. Frameworks include Interpreted Systems (Fagin et al.), Epistemic-Temporal Logic (Parikh & Ramanujam ), STIT (Belnap et al.), Game Semantics (Abramsky) and the Situation Calculus (McCarthy and others). This proliferation is an asset, as different modeling tools can be fine-tuned to specific applications. But it may also be an obstacle, when barriers between paradigms and schools go up. In this talk, I will survey a number of the frameworks discussed above, focusing on shared intuitions and common goals.