Structures of Social Proof
Vincent Fella Hendricks
University of Copenhagen
“Social proof” means that single agents assume beliefs, norms or actions of other agents in an attempt to reflect the correct view, stance, behavior for a given situation. The structure and modularity of social proof is unravelled including formal characterizations of derived socio-informational phenomena like bystander-effects and cascades. Sometimes social proof may be responsible for information spinning out of control – in very unfortunate ways. Joint work with Rasmus K. Rendsvig.
Vincent Fella Rune Møller Hendricks is a Danish philosopher and logician. He is Professor of Formal Philosophy at University of Copenhagen, Denmark and a part time visiting research scholar at Columbia University. His work deals with modern mathematical and philosophical logic and concentrates primarily on bringing mainstream and formal approaches to epistemology together. Vincent F. Hendricks is editor-in-chief of Synthese, Synthese Library and New Waves in Philosophy, he is also the first founder of ΦLOG – The Network for Philosophical Logic and Its Applications and chief editor of ΦNEWS – The Newsletter for Philosophical Logic and Its Applications. In 2008, Vincent F. Hendricks was awarded the Elite Research Prize by the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation and HRH Crown Princess Mary. In 2008 he was awarded the Roskilde Festival Elite Research Prize.