ELFT HÍRADÓ

["Laszlo E. Szabo" <leszabo AT hps.elte.hu>]

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