Frode Bjørdal

A description of interests, as well as some online papers and lists of publications and talks are found below. You can also look me up in Cristin.

Education:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1993. Advisor: Anthony Brueckner. Committee: Anthony Brueckner, Nathan Salmon and William Forgie. 

Candidate in Philosophy (C.Phil) in Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1990.

I studied Philosophy and Logic as a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Stipendiat at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main, 1985/86. At the time I planned on taking a doctorate there, and I was accepted as a Doktorand (doctoral student), just as those with a German Magister Artium degree, on the basis of my Norwegian education, written work and an oral Zwischenprüfung. 

Candidatus magisterii (cand.mag) from the University of Bergen, 1985. I double majored in Philosophy and Economics, and had Logic, Mathematics and Social Science as minors. 

Examen artium (reallinjen) at Ålesund Gymnas, 1976/79.

Some of my teachers:

At the University of Bergen I had seminars by Erik Brown, Nile Gilje, Arild Haaland, Kåre Johnsen, Vigdis Songe-Møller and Hans Skjervheim. In Frankfurt I followed seminars by Jürgen Habermas, Karl Otto Apel and Wolfgang Kuhlmann. At UCSB I had seminars from all my committe members as well as by Peter Hylton, Noel Fleming and Charlotte Stough. At UCLA I followed a seminar by David Kaplan and took a gradute seminar in logic by Alonzo Church (with an oral exam) in the spring of 1989.

Former positions:

Associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Tromsø, 1994/96.

University lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Trondheim (now the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), 1992/94.

Teaching Assistant at the University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara, 1989/92.

High-School teacher in Mathematics and Economics at Ålesund Videregående Skole avd. Langhaugen (now Spjelkavik Videregående Skole), 1987/88.

My civil service was for the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, 1986/87.

Service:

Member of the advisory board for philosophy, Norwegian Research Council, 1994/97.

Referee for Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic.

Referee for The Review of Symbolic logic. 

Guest position:

During the 2001/02 academic year I was a visitor at the pontifical University of Malta. In the fall of 2001 former university rector professor Fr. Peter Serracino Inglott and I had a seminar on the Problem of Evil for graduate Philosohy and Theology students.

Scholarships awarded:

When a student in Bergen I was twice awarded a scholarship from the L. Melzers Høyskolefond. As mentioned above, I was a DAAD scholar in Frankfurt am Main, 1985/86. The first year of my studies in California, 1988/89, was supported by the Education Abroad Program of the University of California and by Norge Amerika Foreningen through the John D. Archbold scholarship of its Nansen Fund. The following three years of my Californian sojourn was, in addition to my employment as a Teaching Assistant, supported by tuition and fee waivers from the Department of Philosophy through its endowed Ralph W. Church Fund.

Scientific and philosophical interests:

My interests in philosophy and beyond are quite broad; but one must focus. Since before my promotion in 1993 I have primarily been preoccupied with foundational issues in mathematics and semantics. This has resulted in the theory librationism (until recently I used the term "liberalism"), which is inter alia geared to deal with semantical and set theoretical paradoxes. Librationism offers a way to deal with paradoxes that is related to paraconsistent ones, though without giving up on or contradicting any theorems of classical logic. The semantics of librationism has an ancestry in Hans Herzberger's semi inductive approach to deal with semantical paradoxes, and related ones. Unlike paraconsistent approaches, the mathematical strength of librationism is immense (and in an important sense full) though yet to be precisely gauged. A cornucopia of important issues are potentially shed light upon in new and distinct manners by librationism. Many fields of exploration are opened up here, and they are all related to the deeper question as to precisely what mathematics librationism supports.

I have a strong interest in many topics in the philosophy of religion. To those who know their history of philosophy, it should come as no surprise that there is often a strong affinity between mathematical meditation and theological thinking.

Downloadables

Librationist Closures of the Paradoxes is is forthcoming in Logic and Logical Philosophy.

Librationist Closures of Paradox and other Mathematical Phenomena is the preprint of the abstract for the talk I held at the Logic Colloquium 2011 held under the auspices of the Association of Symbolic Logic. The final version will be published in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.

Introducing Librationism was published on the professionally moderated Foundations of Mathematics emaillist on the 13th of June 2011. Moderator in chief, Martin Davis.

The Evaluation Semantics - A Short Introduction is forthcoming in The LOGICA Yearbook 2011, College Publications. The Evaluation Semantics for Modal Logics is the abstract for my precedent talk at LOGICA 2011.

In Aasen by! I attempt to name a new city resulting from a merger of Ørsta and Volda in honour of Ivar Aasen, whose life work was instrumental in giving the Norwegian language much deeper roots in and forms from its old Norse tradition than what prevailed in the former Danicized temporary versions.

Librationist closures is one of the announcements of a talk I held at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (02.03.2011) and at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (25.02.2011), Brasil.

The Arithmetical Program - An Addendum, posted on The Foundations of Mathematics email list on February 23, 2011.

The Arithmetical Program, posted on the The Foundations of Mathematics email list on February 22, 2011.

Considerations Contra Cantorianism was published in The LOGICA Yearbook 2010, College Publications 2011.

The Inadequacy of a Proposed Paraconsistent Set Theory was published in The Review of Symbolic Logic Vol. IV No. 1, 2011. The link to a preprint in DUO is available here. 

"2+2=4" er misvisande ("2+2=4" is misleading) came in Anita Leirfall and Tor Sandmel (red.): Enhet i mangfold - festkrift til Johan Arnt Myrstad i anledning 60-årsdagen, Unipub 2009, pp. 55-65. (In Norwegian.)

Bør naturen ødelegges? Nihilisme, partialisme, ameliorisme eller optimisme? Det apokalyptiske argument came in Anita Leirfall (red) Non Plus Ultra: Festskrift til Stein Erik Johansen i anledning 50-årsdagen, Tapir 2004, ISBN 82-303-0231-6. pp. 211- 224. (In Norwegian.)

Ateistisk Etikk - Anmeldelse av Finngeir Hiorths Etikk for Ateister (publisher: Oslo Fylkeslag av Human-Etisk Forbund, 1998), Opuscula, Examen Philosophicums småskriftserie. 1999 (1):77-79. (This is a review of a book by Finngeir Hiorth - Ethics for Atheists. In Norwegian.) 

En Metrisk Feil - med Følgesetninger om Barmhjertighetsprinsipp, Opuscula, Examen Philosophicums småskriftserie 1999 (1):44-49. (This is a criticism of Ludwig Wittgenstein's point of view concerning the standard meter rod in Paris. In Norwegian)

In Understanding Gödel's Ontological Argument, published in The Logica Yearbook 1998, I show how C. Anthony Andersion's rectified version of Kurt Gödel's ontological argument for the existence of a deity can be simplified by presupposing a second order modal logic including S4 and taking the property of being God-like as primitive; as a result we only need two plausible premises for the argument to go through whereas Gödel and Anderson presupposed five distinct premises (including versions of the two I presuppose). 

Er denne druen laget av det den er laget av?  (Is this grape made of what it is made of?) was published in Anniken Greve and Sigmund Nesset (red.): Filosofi i et nordlig landskap - Jakob Meløe 70 år, Ravnetrykk Tromsø 1997, pp. 172-175. In Norwegian.

Bør vi gjøre så godt vi kan? in Festskrift til Johan Arnt Myrstad i anledning 50-års dagen. : Tapir Forlag, Trondheim 1997 ISBN 82-519-1367-5. p. 1-2. (In Norwegian)

On Beliefs came in Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1996.

My book Kritisk Tenkning is available from The National Library of Norway. A prankster must most likely have been on the loose, as the book is archived under 136 sanger av (136 songs by) Aage Samuelsen (sic!). The National Library assures, in an email dated the 11th of October 2010, that the meta data will be rectified... :)

My dissertation A Theory of Knowledge is available from the UMI Dissertation Services Ann Arbor, Michigan, order number 9335093.

Stay tuned for more.