PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE SEMINAR, June

Department of History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University Budapest, Pazmany P. setany 1/A PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE SEMINAR (http://hps.elte.hu/seminar) ________________________________________________ Program - JUNE 4 June It seems, many of the usual participants of the seminar will be abroad in the first week of June (Bled, Ringberg, etc.). So, there is no lecture scheduled for this Monday! 11 June 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54 (Language: English) D o n I h d e Department of Philosophy, SUNY, Stony Brook Epistemology Engines The history of science is filled with important theories and discoveries based upon observations of technologies, for example, thermodynamics comes from the steam engine as historians claim. I shall examine several cases of lifeworld practices which relate to scientific developments, including cannon warfare and ballistics, railway schedules and clocks for special relativity, etc. But the focus will be upon technologies which become explicit models for knowledge production. In the first case, I shall examine the role of the camera obscura for early modern epistemology and then the 'return of the book of life' for contemporary epistemology. 18 June 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54 (Language: English) B a r r y L o e w e r Philosophy, Rutgers University, New York David Lewis formulated a principle (he calls it "the Principal Principle") that he claims tells how chances (and beliefs concerning chances) should guide belief. The principle is that if the chance at t of A's occurring is x then your credence at that A will occur should be x as long as you don't possess any inadmissible information. The principle is intuitive and explains a lot of statistical practice. However Lewis thinks it is incompatible with his favorite theory of the nature of chance and more generally with a metaphysical doctrine called "Humean Supervenience." I argue that Lewis is mistaken about this. Further more I show that while there can be no "justification" of the principle that shows that following it will lead to successful results one can provide a kind of "rationale" for the principle based on Lewis' account of the nature of chance. The organizer of the seminar: László E. Szabó -- Laszlo E. Szabo Department of Theoretical Physics Department of History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University, Budapest H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary Phone/Fax: (36-1)372-2924 Home: (36-1) 200-7318 Mobil/SMS: (36) 20-366-1172 http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo