The programme of the conference “The Value of Scientific Representation. Classic Issues and Contemporary Challenges”, is out! Take a look at it at this link.
The conference takes place at the NOVA University of Lisbon on June 21st-22nd, 2023.
Organized within the activities of the research project “Mary B. Hesse’s ‘new epistemology’. Principles and Legacy” (FCT/IFILNOVA), The conference aims to explore issues from the current debate on scientific representation that may be – directly or indirectly – connected with Mary B. Hesse’s theoretical understanding of science. On a general level, the speakers will engage with open questions related with the value of the scientific world-explanation from a variety of viewpoints that shall not be limited to a philosophical or linguistic analysis of the issues explored, but may also involve contributions devoted to classic figures of the history and philosophy of science.
The next session of our research seminar will be in charge of Andreas Hüttemann, from the University of Cologne.
On April 21st, starting at 15:00, he will deliver a paper titled “A Positive Role for Negative Analogies”, a term introduced by Mary Hesse in her work on models and analogies. “Negative analogies” stands for properties of the model that the target system lacks. In his talk, Andreas Hüttemann will explore, first, why according to Hesse we need to use models in science, second, what Hesse has to say about the role of negative analogies in particular. He will then argue that the role of negative analogies is best understood in the context of a more general account of idealization. Negative analogies, conceived of as idealizations, provide us with knowledge of invariance relations, or more generally with modal knowledge.
The session will take place at Colégio Almada Negreiros of the NOVA University of Lisbon , Room 209.
The history of the encounter between pragmatism and science is long, fruitful, yet also problematic. Each of the major founding pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) was at some time during their career directly engaged with experimental science. All three wrote about the nature of scientific inquiry and the status of scientific theories, and reflected on how the methods of the sciences can be related with other methods of fixing belief. Moreover, pragmatist attitudes can be encountered in major figures of both the history and the philosophy of science (e.g. Quine, Kuhn, Putnam, Laudan, and Kitcher), who engaged critically with the issue of the value of knowledge claims. Finally, pragmatism walks hand in hand with naturalism, given the interest of classic pragmatists such as Peirce, James, and Wright (among others) in demanding natural, as opposed to supernatural, answers to our philosophical questions.
Despite – or parallel to – this general interest in the scientific theoretical framework, pragmatist thinkers almost always rejected scientism, understood as an attitude of science-worship involving an uncritical faith in the methods of the modern sciences, an uncritical acceptance of their assumptions and conclusions, and a quasi-religious faith in the overriding value of the scientific enterprise. Contrary to this view, for example, pragmatists such as James and Dewey argued that science can neither tell us what we should value, nor fully account for the value we in fact find in certain objects, activities, and experiences. And crucially, they maintained that science cannot tell us whether or why its own goal of attaining truth is valuable. Broadly speaking, it is possible to say that pragmatism challenges scientism, protecting the original nature of lived experience from rationalism and scientific materialism; taking ideas as essentially connected with voluntary action; and regarding faith as necessary for any practical achievement of truth.
In line with this, the proposed issue of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy aims to explore to what extent the encounter of pragmatism and science can offer the opportunity to reflect upon the genesis and nature, limits and potentialities of both philosophical and scientific inquiry, with a special focus on the problem as to how science and common sense, science and philosophy, science and religion – broadly, science and culture – fit together, and to what extent science can be a reference for human praxis.
Authors are encouraged to submit papers on topics such as (but not limited to) the influence of science upon philosophy; the role of the scientific method in the fixing of beliefs; science as a form of life; the place of science in individual and/or social life; pragmatist approaches to the debate on naturalism; and historical and contemporary pragmatist attitudes in the philosophy of science.
Papers in English should be sent to Rachel Cristy (rachel.cristy[at]kcl.ac.uk) and Pietro Gori (pgori[at]fcsh.unl.pt) by December 2023. Prepared for a process of blind review, they should not exceed 8 000 words and must include an abstract of 200 words and a list of references.
The selected papers will be published in April 2024.
We invite you to submit papers for the conference “The Value of Scientific Representation. Classic Issues and Contemporary Challenges”, that will take place at the NOVA University of Lisbon on June 21st-22nd, 2023.
Organized within the activities of the research project “Mary B. Hesse’s ‘new epistemology’. Principles and Legacy” (FCT/IFILNOVA), the conference aims to explore issues from the current debate on scientific representation that may be – directly or indirectly – connected with Hesse’s theoretical understanding of science. On a general level, we would like the speakers to engage with open questions related with the value of the scientific world-explanation from a variety of viewpoints that should not be limited to a philosophical or linguistic analysis of the issues explored, but may also involve contributions devoted to classic figures of the history and philosophy of science. Possible topics may include:
– The epistemic function and value of scientific modelling; – Varieties of figurative representations in science (metaphors, analogies, fictions, perspectives, frames, etc.); – Scientific realism vs. relativism and instrumentalism; – Analytic vs. historic philosophy of science; – Coherence vs. correspondence theories of truth; – Hermeneutic understanding of the natural sciences; – Classic engagements with scientific representation; – History, development and discussion of positivist and/or empiricist epistemology; – Contribution to the philosophy of science of leading figures of the so-called “post-empiricist” turn (Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend, etc.);
Reference to Hesse’s work and preferred issues will be very much appreciated, although it is not required.
Deadline for Submission: March 14th, 2023 Notification of Acceptance: March 30th, 2023
Abstracts in English and not exceeding 300 words can be sent to Pietro Gori at the following address: scirep2023@gmail.com
On November 21, 2022, María De Paz will give a talk on one of the first works published by Mary Hesse, “Forces and Fields” (1961).
In that book, Hesse focuses on the question “How do bodies act on one another across space?”, elaborating a variety of answers that illustrates the function of fundamental analogies or models in physics, as well as the role of so-called unobservable entities. Hesse examines the use of analogies in primitive scientific explanation, particularly in the works of aristotle, and contrast them with latter-day theories such as those of gravitation and relativity. Her perspective sheds considerable light on the scientific thinking of antiquity, and it highlights the debt that the seventeenth-century natural philosophers owed to Greek ideas.
The session will take place at Colégio Almada Negreiros of the NOVA University of Lisbon , Room SE1, from 2:30 PM.
On November 4, 2022, our research project will host a workshop on “Scientific Modelling and the Classic Tradition”, with guests from the Inductive Metaphysics research group.
– Kristina Engelhard (Uni Trier), “Modeling natural kinds according to Kant” – Lorenzo Spagnesi (Uni Trier), “Regulative Idealization: A Kantian Approach to Idealized Models”
2PM-4PM – Session 2 FCSH Building B, Room 304
– David Hommen (Uni Duesseldorf), “A Wittgensteinian View of Models” – Giulia Terzian (IFILNOVA), “False models can be good models: the case of generative linguistics”
On September 8-9, 2022, the Center of Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon will host the first meeting of the newly created Iberian Network of Philosophy of Science.
This will surely be an important and exciting occasion for presenting the work of our research group and extend the network of collaboration with other important institutions in the field.
As previously announced, on September 26, 3-5 PM (London/Lisbon time), we will host a session with Michela Massimi, who will present her newly published book on Perspectival Realism.
Anyone who is based in Lisbon can join the session at Colégio Almada Negreiros / Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Room 209.
For those who are not in Lisbon and would like to attend online, free registration is required through this form. The link to the Zoom session will be sent the day before the event.
