Seminar Description
The Interdisciplinary Seminar PhML consists of a series of Sessions to be held regularly, at least twice a semester, at the St. Petersburg Department of Steklov Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (PDMI). The Seminar will thus continue the sporadic Interdisciplinary Conferences PhML-2009, PhML-2012, PhML-2014 that have been held there in past years. Sessions may include short lectures containing question and answer segments, panel discussions, round tables, that focus on discussion or presentation of some specific topics, trends, or issues concerning various aspects of interaction between Philosophy, Mathematics, and Linguistics. The working languages of the Seminar are Russian and English. Sessions are held in hybrid format allowing participants to attend either in-person or online via Zoom.
Attendance is free of charge, but registration is required for each participant: for a guest as well as for an invited speaker. For participation in the in-person format, this is necessary to enter the Building of PDMI; for online participation, this is necessary to receive a Zoom link by e-mail.
Aims and Topics
The aims of this Interdisciplinary Seminar are to provide reseachers and postgraduate students with an opportunity to exchange information and new ideas, and to discuss new developments in the field of interaction between Philosophy, Mathematics, and Linguistic. Gathering researchers of different communities, the Seminar will promote fruitful scientific exchanges, and will contribute to interdisciplinary approach in Humanities.
The Seminar Sessions will cover several topics related to interaction of Philosophy, Mathematics, and Linguistic. These include but are not limited to the following:
- New trends in the foundations of Mathematics;
- Interdisciplinary approaches to understanding Human Intelligence;
- Ontology of Mathematics and the nature of mathematical truth;
- The problem of abstract entities in Mathematics, Philosophy, Linguistics;
- Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Logic, and Philosophy of natural language;
- Mathematical and logical methods in Philosophy;
- Philosophical aspects of theoretical Computer Science, novel computational models and paradigms;
- Complexity in Mathematics, complexity in Logic, complexity in Linguistics;
- Philosophy of Mathematics and philosophy of natural language;
- Mathematical and logical methods in Language Sciences;
- Mathematical study of natural language structures;
- New theoretical approaches to modeling and analyzing texts in natural language.
This list of topics may be refined and expanded during the course of the Seminar.
Organizational-Program Committee
The work on preparation for the PhML Seminar Sessions and the compilation of their scientific programs is carried out by the International Organizational-Program Committee, consisting of:
- Oleg Prosorov (PDMI, St.-Petersburg), chair
- Anatol Slissenko (Université Paris-Est Créteil, Paris)
- Sergei Soloviev (IRIT, Toulouse, and LETI, St.-Petersburg)
Upcoming Session
When the text of the talk will be received from the invited speaker, the working program for the upcoming 2nd Session of the Seminar will be definitively formed and published in this section.Program of the 2nd Session of Seminar that will take place on Wednesday 26 November, 2025
Location:
Auditorium 311, Building of PDMI located at the address: St. Petersburg, Fontanka River Embankment, 27.
Schedule:
Throughout the schedule below, the time shown is the time in Moscow usually abbreviated as MSK.
| 12:00 - 12:05 | Welcome speech and introduction of the speaker to the audience Oleg Prosorov (PDMI, St.-Petersburg) |
| 12:05 - 12:50 | Title of the talk {TBA} Speaker's Name (Affiliation) {TBA}
TBA
|
| 12:50 - 13:00 | Discussion and Q&A |
| 13:00 - 13:05 | Introduction of the speaker to the audience Oleg Prosorov (PDMI, St.-Petersburg) |
| 13:05 - 13:50 | The difference between notions generalization and conceptual transfer, based on Georg Kreisel's reflections on computability Giuseppe Longo (Centre Cavaillès, CNRS, Collège de France and ENS, Paris)
We will hint to Kreisel's and other ways towards the notion generalization, with a special focus on what notions abstract, symbolic, rigorous may mean, in reference also to Kreisel's notion of informal rigor. This will allow us to discuss some issues at the interfaces of the Foundations of Mathematics and of Natural Sciences. A critique of "conceptual transfers" as abuses against knowledge will also be presented. Instead, while hinting to "unifications", we will mostly focus on dualities and "knowledge bridges" between different disciplines, such as some aspects of Physics and of Biology.
References: About the speaker: Giuseppe Longo, Emeritus Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), is a mathematician specialized in logic and computability, and an epistemologist. For the past twenty years, his work concentrated on the relationship between mathematics and the natural sciences, in particular on evolutionary and organismal biology. His current project develops an epistemology of new interfaces focusing on historical correlations and on alternatives to the new alliance between computational formalisms and the governance of man and nature by algorithms and by supposedly objective "optimality" methods. More detailed information is available on his personal web page, which
includes links to downloadable papers and, in particular, to excerpts from latest books: |
| 13:50 - 14:00 | Discussion and Q&A |
| 14:00 - 14:05 | Introduction of the speaker to the audience Oleg Prosorov (PDMI, St.-Petersburg) |
| 14:05 - 14:50 | The Semiotic Status of Language Simulated by Generative AI François Rastier (CNRS and INaLCO, Paris)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has experienced a boom and global surge in popularity since November 2022, thanks to its new ability to produce texts, images, and sounds. After a brief history, we will examine the semiotic status of simulated language. Main questions to address are:
- What are the differences between a system of symbols and a code of signals? - What are its linguistic specificities (discourse, genres, style)? - How can we interpret texts generated by AI? - What conception of culture do chatbots reflect? - How and why might errors known as hallucinations have a systematic status? - What are the documented consequences of the widespread use of generative AI, particularly in education? N.B. The talk will be given in French with consecutive translation into Russian. About the speaker: François Rastier, semanticist, Emeritus Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), is attached to the Texts, Computer Science, Multilingualism Laboratory in the National Institute of Oriental Languages (INaLCO), Paris. He worked for a decade in an Artificial Intelligence laboratory and specialized in the semantics of digital corpora. His intellectual project is situated within the framework of a semiotics of cultures. Latest book: L'IA m'a tué. Comprendre un monde post-humain. Intervalles, 2025. |
| 14:50 - 15:00 | Discussion and Q&A |
Previous Sessions
This section is currently under constraction. Programs of previous sessions, including talk titles, synopses or abstracts, and speaker lists, will be available in this section.
Registration
To register yourself as a participant in the upcoming Seminar Session, please send e-mail personally to Oleg Prosorov, chair of Organizational-Program Committee: prosorov@pdmi.ras.ru. In the body of letter, communicate the following information about yourself: first name, last name, affiliation, your e-mail address for contacts, the format of your participation (in-person or online).
Call for Applications
We invite the submission of applications of contributed papers that explore the research questions relating to the interplay between Philosophy, Mathematics and Linguistic. Papers from any tradition and from various theoretical perspectives are welcome, including but in no way limited to the themes listed above. Since we intend to promote interdisciplinary joint work, we especially wellcome research that cross disciplinary boundaries and consider different aspects of interaction between Philosophy, Mathematics and Linguistic.
Anyone wishing to give a talk at one of the upcoming sessions of the Seminar should send an application via e-mail at prosorov@pdmi.ras.ru with an extended synopsis of the talk included as an attachment (one A4 page maximum) and indicate "Synopsis of the talk at the PhML Seminar" as the subject. The text of the attachment should be written in one of the working languages of the Seminar, i.e., Russian or English, and should be formatted for blind review. In the body of your e-mail, please include the following:
- Talk title;
- Information concerning the speaker: first name, last name, scientific degree (if any), scientific status (if any), institutional affiliation;
- E-mail address for contacts.
All submitted applications are subject to peer-review selection in order to ensure compliance with the specific Seminar topics, the technical compliance with the submission guidelines for authors we formulated above, and the adherence to the generally accepted criteria with regard to content of the synopsis: the topic of the talk, the issues discussed, the results obtained, own contribution, and the conclusions.
News
The upcoming Session of the Seminar is scheduled for Wednesday 26 November, 2025. Further news concerning the Seminar will be announced later in this section. Follow the announcements.
Contact informations
Please, direct all inquiries to the Organizational-Program Committee by e-mail at phml_2012@pdmi.ras.ru.
You may also ask a question personally to:
- Oleg Prosorov (chair of the Organizational-Program Committee) by e-mail at prosorov@pdmi.ras.ru,
- Svetlana Petrakova (secretary) by e-mail at petrakova@pdmi.ras.ru.