Skip to main content

About us & selected publications


LoPSE is a group of people working on formal philosophy affiliated with the Chair of Logic, Philosophy of Science and Epistemology at the University of Gdansk. We organize weekly seminars and try to teach formal philosophy to unexpecting students.

Chair: Rafal Urbaniak
Assistant professors: Patryk Dziurosz-Serafinowicz, Pavel Janda
Associate members: Alicja Kowalewska, Pawel Pawlowski
Postdoctoral researchers: Michał Sikorski
PhD students: Weronika Majek, Małgorzata Stefaniak
Other students: Przemek Przepiórka 



Patryk Dziurosz-Serafinowicz works on the philosophy of probability, formal epistemology, philosophy of science, and the use of probabilistic methods in legal contexts. His current project concerns the pragmatic and epistemic value of learning. He obtained his PhD at the University of Groningen in 2016. More information here.


Pavel Janda works in (formal) epistemology specializing in the philosophy of statistics, probability and law, accuracy-first epistemology, decision theory, and economics (especially bounded rationality).  He received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Bristol in 2018. Website.



Alicja Kowalewska is an associate member of LoPSE. Her interests focus on formal epistemology and decision theory. She is curious about the applications of philosophical considerations, especially in legal and IT contexts. She studied computer science at Gdańsk University of Technology, worked in the field of machine learning (NLP), and pursues her PhD in Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.


Weronika Majek (BA in International Cultural Studies, major in Media and Cultural Management, MA in Criminology) is a professional reporter pursuing her PhD on the epistemological, ethical and legal problems that arise from the use of AI in the court of law. Connecting probabilistic issues with moral questions she examines the process of introducing algorithms into the legal world.


Pawel Pawlowski obtained his PhD in philosophy (specialization: logic) at Ghent University in Belgium in 2018, working on non-classical logics of informal provability. Currently, he is a post-doc at Ghent University. He is working on applications of non-deterministic semantics to broadly understood modal logics. He is also interested in theories of truth and non-classical logics in general. More information here.


Michał Sikorski is a postdoctoral researcher at LoPSE working on the philosophy of science and scientific evidence in legal contexts. He obtained his MA at the University of Barcelona and his PhD in 2020 at the University of Turin. He is interested in normative issues in the philosophy of science.



Rafal Urbaniak is interested in applications of formal (esp. probabilistic) methods to philosophical and social problems, such as those related to legal applications of probabilistic methods, algorithmic fairness and formal epistemology. His current research project pertains to the use of probabilistic methods in juridical fact-finding. He completed his PhD specializing in logic and philosophy of mathematics at the University of Calgary in 2008. Since then, he has been a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at Ghent University in Belgium, Long Room Hub Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Visiting Research Fellow at Banaras Hindu University, and British Academy Fellow at Bristol University. He is now an Associate Professor and LoPSE Chair at the University of Gdansk. More details and papers are available here.




Selected publications

2021

Michał Bilewicz, Patrycja Tempska, Gniewosz Leliwa, Maria Dowgiałło, Michalina Tańska, Rafał Urbaniak, and Michał Wroczyński. Artificial intelligence against hate: Intervention reducing verbal aggression in the social network environment. Aggressive Behavior, January 2021

Rafal Urbaniak and Marcello Di Bello. Legal probabilism, 2021. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[accepted for publication & forthcoming]

Rafal Urbaniak and Michał Tomasz Godziszewski. Modal quantifiers, potential infinity, and Yablo
sequences. Review of Symbolic Logic, 2021. [accepted & forthcoming]

2020

Rafal Urbaniak, Alicja Kowalewska, Pavel Janda, and Patryk Dziurosz-Serafinowicz. Decision-theoretic and risk-based approaches to naked statistical evidence: some consequences and challenges. Law, Probability and Risk, 02 2020.

2019

Rafal Urbaniak and Pavel Janda. Probabilistic models of legal corroboration. The International Journal
of Evidence & Proof, pages 1–23, 2019. [DOI 10.1177/1365712719864608]

Rafal Urbaniak. Probabilistic legal decision standards still fail. Journal of Applied Logics, 6(5), August
2019

2018

Rafal Urbaniak. Narration in judiciary fact-finding: a probabilistic explication. Artificial Intelligence and Law, pages 1–32, 2018. [DOI:10.1007/s10506-018-9219-z]

2017

Rafal Urbaniak and Gillman Payette, editors. Applications of Formal Philosophy. The Road Less Travelled. Springer, 2017

2016

Rafal Urbaniak and Bert Leuridan. Challenging Lewis’s challenge to the best system account of lawhood. Synthese, pages 1–18, 2016. [DOI:10.1007/s11229-016-1287-6]

Rafal Urbaniak. Potential infinity, abstraction principles and arithmetic (Leśniewski style). Axioms,
5(2):18, 2016

2015

Rafal Urbaniak. Stanisław Leśniewski: Re-thinking the philosophy of mathematics. European Review,
23:125–138, 2015

2014

Rafal Urbaniak and Paweł Siniło. The inapplicability of (selected) paraconsistent logics. Journal of
Applied Non-Classical Logics, 24(4):368–383, 2014

Rafal Urbaniak. Słupecki’s generalized mereology and its flaws. History and Philosophy of Logic, pages 1–12, 2014. [DOI:10.1080/01445340.2014.917837]

2013

Rafal Urbaniak. Leśniewski’s systems of logic and foundations of mathematics. Springer, 2013

Cezary Cieśliński and Rafal Urbaniak. Gödelizing the Yablo sequence. Journal of Philosophical Logic,
42(5):679–695, 2013. [DOI:10.1007/s10992-012-9244-4]

Comments