social practices

Work on personal identity within Western philosophy has tended to be very individualistic.  There are theories that stress memories, theories that focus on autobiographical narratives, and others that emphasize agency.  Each of these is then typically described in ways that make little or no reference to social relationships. The same is true of animalist theories, which equate persons with organisms.  Unsurprisingly, work on identity in the social sciences is quite different.

Society relies on many algorithms for its functioning, e.g. holding regular elections, distributing vaccines etc. We often assume these algorithms to have certain logical properties. For instance, in an election, we not only want confidentiality but also verifiability (that every vote cast has been counted), and more such properties. Can we even prove that these requirements are consistent?

We present some examples of such analysis: insights from mathematical logic, computer science, game theory and dynamical systems theory seem relevant for such exploration.