| HPS 2156 | Empiricism in Science | Spring 2024 |
Back to course documents.
| Week | Date | Subject and Readings (Maximum presentation times indicated) |
Presenter |
| 1 | Jan 10 | Introduction. What is empiricism? The empiricist matrix. Review of schedule. |
Norton |
| Pre-History. Ancient / 17,18 th Century | |||
| 2 | Jan 17 |
Galen, “On the Sects for Beginners” (30 minutes) |
Harrison Payne |
| Jan 17 | Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Marked passages in Book 1; Advancement of Learning, Marked passages in Book 2. (30 minutes) | Jason Rampelt | |
| Jan 17 | Against Empiricism. (15 minutes) Anon, An Enquiry into the Growth of Modern Empiricism. 1715 Banyer, Postscript against Empiricism. 1743 |
Norton Banyer Anon Gems |
|
| The British "Empiricists" | |||
| 3 | Jan 24 | Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. Ch 1-4. (30 minutes) | Diego Cimadom |
| Jan 24 | John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book 1, Ch 2-4; Book 2, Ch 1. (40 minutes) | Ibrahim Haydar | |
| 4 | Jan 31 | David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Book 1. Parts 1-2 (40 minutes) | Jason Rampelt |
| Jan 31 |
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Book 1. Parts 3-4 (40 minutes) |
Mousa Mohammadian | |
| Nineteenth Century | |||
| 5 | Feb 7 | Auguste Comte, Course in Positive Philosophy, Ch. 1 (30 minutes) | Zach Mayne |
| Feb 7 | Ernst Mach, The Analysis of the Sensations, Ch. 1 (20 minutes) | Madeleine Potoskie | |
| Feb 7 | Ernst Mach, "The Economical Nature of Physical Enquiry." (20 Minutes) | Jason Rampelt | |
| Early Twentieth Century | |||
| 6 | Feb 14 |
Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, The Scientific
Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle (40 minutes) |
Kamyar Asasi |
| Feb 14 | Rudolf Carnap, Testability and Meaning. Part I. Introduction (pp. 419-31); Part IV, Section 17 (pp. 2-3). (40 minutes) | Ibrahim Haydar and all, each of whom will offer one item they found noteworthy |
|
| 7 | Feb 21 | Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction. 1938. I. Meaning. | Zach Mayne |
| Feb 21 | Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction. 1938. II.
Impressions and the External World. (Focus on §14. A cubical world as a model of inferences to unobservable things.) |
Diego Cimadom | |
| Later Twentieth Century | |||
| 8 | Feb 28 | Bas van Fraassen, The Scientific Image. Ch.1 Introduction, pp 1-4; "Constructive Empiricism Now," Sect I. Light is not Observable. Sect II. "So Called 'Observation by Instruments.'" (40 minutes) | Eric Anderson |
| Feb 28 | Bas van Fraassen, "Against Transcendental Empiricism." (40 minutes) | Jamie Michelson | |
| 9 | Mar 6 | David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Vol 2, Introduction
(Humean Mosaic) (40 minutes) David Lewis, "Humean Supervenience Debugged" |
Sameera Singh |
| Mar 6 | Daniel Nolan, David Lewis, Ch. 2 Humean Mosaic (40 minutes) | Zach Mayne | |
| Mar 13 | Spring break | ||
| What counts as experience? | |||
| 10 | Mar 20 | Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" ("Myth of the Given") (40 minutes) | Ibrahim Haydar |
| Mar 20 | James Bogen and James Woodward, "Saving the Phenomena" (40 minutes) | Kamyar Asasi | |
| 11 | Mar 27 | Nora Boyd, "Evidence Enriched" Nora Boyd, "Is There an Epistemology of Experimental Physics?" Section 4 in Epistemology of Experimental Physics |
Celebrity guest, Nora Boyd slides |
| Mar 27 | Identify an example of evidence in a scientific theory you know
that illustrates one of: 1. How can (or cannot) evidence accumulate across theory change? 2. How can (or cannot) evidence be combined and used jointly? 3. How can (or cannot) the same evidence be used to constrain competing theories? |
All | |
| Empiricist Critiques (Tentative, subject to seminar choice) | |||
| 12 | Realism (or seminar choice) | ||
| Apr 3 | Carl Hempel, "The
theoretician's dilemma: a study in the logic of theory
construction" (40 minutes) See also later slightly revised version published in Hempel's Aspects of Scientific Explanation. 1965 |
Diego Cimadom | |
| Apr 3 |
Bixin Guo, "Can Humeans be Scientific Realists?" |
Bixin Guo | |
| Apr 3 | Term paper proposal due in my email before class | ||
| 13 | Apr 10 | Causation (or seminar choice) | |
| John D. Norton, "The Metaphysics of Causation: An Empiricist Critique," in Yafen Shen, ed., Alternative Approaches to Causation. Oxford University Press, forthcoming. (40 minutes) | Norton slides |
||
|
Michael Baumgartner and Christoph Falk, "Boolean Difference-Making: A Modern Regularity Theory of Causation" |
Mousa Mohammadian | ||
| 14 | Apr 17 | Against Metaphysics (or seminar choice) | |
|
Amanda Bryant, "Keep the chickens cooped: the epistemic inadequacy of free range metaphysics" |
Kamyar Asasi | ||
| John D. Norton, "How to Make Possibility Safe for Empiricists." pp. 129-159 in Rethinking the Concept of Laws of Nature: Natural order in the Light of Contemporary Science. ed. Yemima Ben-Menahem. Springer, 2022. | Norton slides |
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| Friday Apr 26 |
Term papers due. |