January 2015 Lunchtime Abstracts & Details

::: Alien Science
Nicholas Rescher
University of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Philosophy
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
12:05 pm
817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: An exploration of the question of the extent to which our human natural science reflects our specific place in nature's scheme of things.



::: What Happened to Phlogiston? Reconsidering the Chemical Revolution
Wayne Myrvold
University of Western Ontario
Friday, January 16, 2015
12:05 pm
817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Major theory-shifts in science, such as the transition in the late 18th century from a phlogiston-based chemistry to something more like modern chemistry, raise a number of philosophical questions. Among these are the question of accounting for the shift, and whether it can be regarded as rational. This talk looks at the so-called Chemical Revolution with these questions in mind. The shift involved a shift in multiple theoretical presuppositions, in commitments about the basic substances that make up the world, and also a shift in methodology. Philosophical attempts to account for the shift have tended to be holistic, following Kuhn who treated the case as one of rival paradigms to be embraced or rejected as package deals. However, the components are logically independent, and it is possible to accept certain aspects of Lavoisier’s novel approach to chemistry while rejecting others. This is key to understanding the shift. I will argue that, for one key tenet of Lavoisierian chemistry, there was something like a “crucial experiment,” and that, though acceptance of this tenet was not incompatible with retaining phlogiston, it eventually led to the downfall of the phlogiston theory.



::: Two Impossibility Results for Popperian Corroboration
Jan Sprenger, Tilburg University
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
12:05 pm
817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: According to influential accounts of scientific method, e.g., critical rationalism, scientific knowledge grows by repeatedly testing our best hypotheses. But despite the popularity of hypothesis tests in scientific inference, especially in statistics, their philosophical foundations are shaky. In particular, the interpretation of results that do not refute the hypothesis under test, but are consistent with it, poses a major philosophical challenge. To what extent do they ground our confidence in the hypothesis under test?
Karl R. Popper proposed that such results *corroborate* the tested hypothesis (which is, according to Popper, something different than to raise its probability). Corroboration guides our practical preferences over hypotheses which have been subjected to severe tests.
In the 1950s, Popper developed a probabilistic measure of corroboration in a number of BJPS articles. Popper's explication has been frequently criticized, but nobody has taken the effort to draw general conclusions from the shortcomings of Popper's particular measure.
In my contribution, I set up adequacy criteria for a probabilistic measure of corroboration that are distinct from the usual adequacy criteria for measures of evidential support. Then I prove two impossibility results showing that there can be no measure satisfying a plausible set of adequacy criteria. I argue that we should explicate degree of corroboration in a different way, abandoning (or at least modifying) the positive probabilistic relevance framework.

::: Rudolf Carnap and the Dilthey School: Humanities in the Aufbau
Christian Damböck, Visiting Fellow
Institute Vienna Circle
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Rudolf Carnap's seminal book Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World, here: Aufbau) recently has been considered (1) for its innovative conception of "purely structural definite descriptions" PSDD (cf. Michael Friedman, Alan Richardson), and (2) as being part of the modernist movements of Bauhaus and Neue Sachlichkeit of the 1920 (cf. Peter Galison, Hans-Joachim Dahms). The aim of my project is to explain how these two aspects of the Aufbau may go together. My working hypothesis is that the Aufbau represents the paradigm case of a typically German variety of empiricism as can be found, in particular, in the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism and in the Dilthey school. This idiosyncratic version of empiricism is based on culture as an empirical object, rather than on empirical representations of the spatiotemporal world (i.e., sense-data). The Aufbau demonstrates (1) how to make this highly complex empirical object (i.e., culture) intersubjectively communicable (via PSDD), without any use of irreducibly subjective or ostensive elements, and (2) how this purely logical side of the picture is interconnected with an epistemological, ethical, and aesthetical side. My study is based, in particular, on Carnap's diaries and correspondence, as well as the writings of colleagues and friends of Carnap such as the art historian Franz Roh and the sociologist Hans Freyer.

::: Direct Realism and the Predictive Mind
Zoe Drayson, Visiting Fellow
University of Stirling
Friday, January 30, 2015
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Proponents of the 'predictive' approach to cognition and perception claim that this approach has profound philosophical ramifications, including the denial of direct perception. In this paper I argue that the predictive approach has no such consequences, and this is the case regardless of whether we interpret directness as a metaphysical or epistemological feature of perception.