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Jon Williamson

@jonwilliamson.uk

1.4K followers 407 following 45 posts

Philosophy of science, medicine, AI, & law jonwilliamson.uk

Jon Williamson @jonwilliamson.uk · 03/02/2026

A new paper with Jurgen Landes and Soroush Rafiee Rad: A decidable class of inferences in first-order objective Bayesian inductive logic. Available free until March from this link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mYJscCqwz...

We show that while standard first-order inductive logic is not decidable, a large class of inferences in objective Bayesian inductive logic is decidable. Decidability is achieved by reducing the general inference problem to a quantifier-free problem. We show that for any inference, if the quantifier-free reduction of the premisses is satisfiable, then the original inference is decidable. We go on to show that Bayesian networks offer the potential to provide a computationally tractable inference procedure for objective Bayesian inductive logic. We also consider inferences with infinitely many premisses and explore some properties of the logic.

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Jon Williamson @jonwilliamson.uk · 16/12/2024

Just arriving on my first day of a new job at Manchester university. Very excited to be joining the philosophy department here.

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Jon Williamson @jonwilliamson.uk · 15/10/2024

Please circulate: we're hiring a postdoctoral research associate with expertise in philosophy of scientific method and philosophy of causality. Apply here: jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai.... A 2nd postdoc job, for someone with expertise in evidence review and research methods, coming soon.

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