It's Only A Theory

Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology Conference

Keynote Speaker:

• Sharyn Clough (Oregon State)
  • Author of Beyond Epistemology: A Pragmatist Approach to Feminist Science Studies

Science, technology, and medicine have a major impact on our lives. We live with constant technological innovation and scientific discovery, and this changes the conditions that we live in, as well as the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. Science, technology, and medicine are thus entangled with our values, our culture, and our politics, and they have an important impact on policymaking and action. Making value judgments is important to the way that we fund, conduct, evaluate, and apply scientific research.

We invite proposals for papers that engage with these issues from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches, including philosophy of science, technology, & medicine, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy, history, science and technology studies, policy studies, and natural and social sciences.

This year's conference will have three target themes:

1. Gender, sex, and sexuality in science, technology, and medicine
2. Science and values in the work of Paul K. Feyerabend, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Against Method
3. Distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate roles for values in science

We welcome any paper and panel proposals in the broad area of values in medicine, science, and technology, but we will give priority to proposals on these target themes.

Suggested topics for papers and panels include:

• The value of diversity in epistemic communities
• Sexism, heterosexism, or transphobia in technology culture
• Sex and gender in medical research or practice
• Feminist critique of gender differences research
• Feyerbend's relationship to feminist philosophy of science
• Feyerabend on science, values, and democracy
• The indirect/direct role distinction
• The ideal of well-ordered science
• The cognitive status of values and value judgments

We will consider proposals for individual papers, but also thematic panel sessions and more informal formats. Please feel free to contact us early to discuss potential panel formats at [email protected]

For contributed papers, please submit a 250-500 word abstract. For symposia and other multi-participant panels, submit an abstract up to 250 words describing the topic of the panel and descriptions of up to 100 words describing each participant's contribution.

Submit your proposals here.

Please do not submit more than once for each presentation format (so you can submit as part of a group symposium as well as an individual paper, but not two papers). Participants will generally only be able to appear on the program once in any capacity. Papers that are not accepted for presentation will be automatically considered in our open roundtables session.

Deadline is 1st of February 2015.

The Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology works to foster diversity and inclusiveness in our programming, events, and outreach efforts. Proposal authors and panel organizers will be asked to submit an optional 50-100 word diversity statement to explain their commitment and contributions to diversity in their proposal and in general. Conference proposals will be reviewed for quality, but final programming decisions will be made with diversity and inclusiveness in mind. Contributed paper proposals will be anonymously reviewed at all stages, whereas final decisions on organized panel proposals may consider identity of the panelists.

Conference facilities will be wheelchair accessible, and interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing can be provided upon request. For any questions about the conference, please contact [email protected]

The Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology is an institutional member of the Consortium for Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and/or Engineering (SRPoiSE).

Conference: Evolution, Intentionality and Information.
University of Bristol, May 29th-31st 2013.

A three-day inter-disciplinary conference at the University of Bristol.
This is the inaugural event in the ERC-funded project 'Darwinism and the
Theory of Rational Choice', directed by Professor Samir Okasha. The aim of the conference is to discuss the use of 'intentional', 'strategic' and 'informational' concepts in evolutionary biology.

Plenary speakers: Evelyn Fox-Keller, Daniel Dennett, Joan Roughgarden, Eva
Jablonka, David Haig, Denis Noble, Ken Binmore, Samir Okasha

Contributed papers are welcome.

For further information and details of how to register, please see the conference website. 

Objects, Kinds and Mechanisms in Biology: A One Day Workshop

Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Leeds,
Leeds UK

Friday April 13th 2012

Aims
The purpose of the workshop is to encourage discussion of the natures and roles of objects, structure and mechanisms in biology with a view to achieving clarity on a number of issues, including:

How can the heterogeneity of biological objects be appropriately accommodated?

Is a metaphysics of mechanisms as entities and activities sustainable in biology?

What would be an appropriate metaphysics for biological kinds?

Schedule

10.30-10.55 Coffee
10.55-11.00 Welcome
11.00-12.15 Phyllis Illari (Hertfordshire) The Indispensability of Objects in Biology
12.15-13.30 Ellen Clarke (All Souls) The Organism as a Problem in Biological Ontology

13.30-14.15 Lunch (provided)
14.15-15.30 Marcel Weber (Geneva) Individual, Cell Lineage, and Functional Integration

15.30-15.45 Tea
15.45-17.00 Emma Tobin (UCL) Biomolecular Classification
17.00-18.15 Angelo Cei (Leeds) TBA
18.15-18.30 wrap up

A limited number of student bursaries will be available.

Registration is free but please indicate your interest in attending.

For further details contact:
Steven French [email protected]<

Conference of the International Academy for Philosophy of Science in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (building Socrate, Room SOCR40) on
Tuesday 26 - Thursday 28 April 2011, organised by Michel Ghins.

The general theme will be: Representation and Explanation in the Sciences.

Confirmed speakers include: Evandro Agazzi, Alberto Cordero, Mauro Dorato, Jan Faye, Hans Lenk, Peter Mitttelstaedt, Jesus Mosterin, Roland Omnès, Stathis Psillos, Mauricio Suarez, Bas van Fraassen, Isabelle Pechard, among others.

The full programme is available at
http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/isp/documents/Programme_AIPS.pdf

METAPHYSICS & THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE CONFERENCE
13-15 May 2011, University of Toronto

For a registration information and a tentative program, see:
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mhs016/MPSC2011/

CONFERENCE THEME
The philosophy of science has an illustrious history of attraction and
antipathy towards metaphysics. The latter was famously exemplified in
the Logical Positivist contention that metaphysical questions are
meaningless, but in the wake of the demise of Positivism, metaphysics
has found its way back into the philosophy of science. Increasingly,
questions about the nature of natural laws, kinds, dispositions, and
so on have taken a metaphysical cast. The metaphysics of science
commands significant attention in contemporary philosophy.

While many philosophers embrace the increased contact between
metaphysics and the philosophy of science, others are wary. Should
science (and its philosophical study) lead us into doing metaphysics?
If so, which metaphysical issues are genuine and which are illusory,
and how might we tell? Such questions dovetail with similar soul-
searching in metaphysics proper (sometimes under the banner of "meta-
metaphysics", sometimes simply as methodology).

This conference will examine ground-level debates about metaphysics
within the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology, and
broader methodological questions about the role of metaphysics in the
philosophy of science. Participation is open and welcome from all
parties to these questions: from those who hold that metaphysics must
have a place within the philosophy of science, to those who hold it
should not.

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Craig Callender (University of California, San Diego)
Anjan Chakravartty (University of Toronto)
Katherine Hawley (University of St. Andrews)
Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona)
James Ladyman (University of Bristol)
Kyle Stanford (University of California, Irvine)
Michael Strevens (New York University)
C. Kenneth Waters (University of Minnesota)
Robert Wilson (University of Alberta)

ORGANIZERS
Chris Haufe (University of Chicago)
Matthew H. Slater (Bucknell University)
Zanja Yudell (California State University, Chico)

Please direct general conference inquiries to [email protected]

Presented by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science
and Technology, University of Toronto and the Fishbein Center for the
History of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago

An international conference at the University of Bristol, June 27th-29th, 2011

The conference forms part of the AHRC-funded project on Evolution, Cooperation and Rationality, based in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, under the direction of Samir Okasha and Ken Binmore. The aim of this inter-disciplinary project is to study the connections between evolutionary theory and rational choice theory. The first project conference, held in September 2009, explored the different theoretical approaches to decision-making and social behaviour used in biology, economics, and psychology.

This conference is a sister to our 2009 conference, but with a more philosophical focus. The aim is to explore the philosophical foundations of recent scientific work on co-operation and social behaviour, in both human and non-human animals.

Confirmed Speakers:
Elliott Sober, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Kim Sterelny, Samir Okasha, Ken Binmore, David Papineau, Cedric Paternotte, Jonathan Grose

Papers will be both contributed and invited. For further details, including information on how to submit a paper, please see our conference website:

https://www.bris.ac.uk/evolution-cooperation/events/conferences/2011conference

Organisers: Gerhard Schurz, Ludwig Fahrbach and Ioannis Votsis

Invited Speakers: Martin Carrier (Bielefeld), Deborah Mayo (Virginia
Tech), Cornelis Menke (Bielefeld), Stathis Psillos (Athens), Roger White
(MIT) and John Worrall (LSE).

The aim of the conference is to explore new and fruitful answers to
three central questions: What are novel predictions? Ought novel
predictions have more epistemic weight than mere accommodations? Can
novel predictions help us make headway in the scientific realism debate?
We expect that the talks will cover one or more of the following related
topics, simplicity, unification, curve-fitting, approximate truth,
inference to the best explanation, the no-miracles argument and
scientific theory change.

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words on any of the above or closely
related topics. Please e-mail contributions to Ioannis Votsis (
[email protected] ). Make sure to include your full
name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address.

Submission Deadline: 15 OCTOBER 2010
Acceptance Notification: 15 NOVEMBER 2010

We hope to publish the proceedings of the conference in a reputable
scientific journal. Upon completion of the conference, we will invite
participants to submit written-up versions of their talks. Submitted
papers will then be subjected to a peer-review process.

Speakers – Provisional Talk Titles:
Martin Carrier (Bielefeld) 'Prediction in Context: On the Comparative
Epistemic Merit of Predictive Success'
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech) 'Some Surprising Facts About (the problem
of) Surprising Facts'
Ludwig Fahrbach (Duesseldorf) 'Novel Predictions: In Search of the
Wow-Factor'
Cornelis Menke (Bielefeld) 'On the Vagueness of "Novelty" and Chance as
an Explanation of Predictive Success'
Stathis Psillos (Athens) 'Novelty-in-Use: On Perrin's Argument for
Molecules'
Gerhard Schurz (Duesseldorf) 'Theoretical Parameters and Use-Novelty
Criterion of Confirmation'
Ioannis Votsis (Duesseldorf) 'Novel Predictions: The Few Miracles
Argument for Scientific Realism'
Roger White (MIT) 'Testing'
John Worrall (LSE) 'Prediction and Accommodation: A Comparison of Rival
Views'

Attendance is open to all. If you plan to attend please contact Ioannis
Votsis ( [email protected] ).

Organisers: Gerhard Schurz, Michela Tacca and Ioannis Votsis
Invited Speakers: William Brewer (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Allan Franklin (Colorado), Martin Kusch (Vienna), Athanassios Raftopoulos (Cyprus), Susanna Siegel (Harvard) and Markus Werning (Bochum).

The aim of the conference is to bring together philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists whose work contributes to our understanding of the scope and limits of theory-ladenness phenomena, where these are broadly construed to include the domains of perception, scientific evidence and language. We hope that the resulting synergy will help provide novel and fruitful answers to questions like the following: Is perception cognitively penetrable and, if so, how? Does the choice of scientific theory affect how we select, interpret and assess the evidential worth of
data from experiments? Under what circumstances can we doubt the veridicality of scientific instruments? Can we draw a sharp distinction between terms that are theoretical and those that are observational? We thus expect that the talks will deal with one or more of the following topics: the modularity of mind, nonconceptual content, the epistemology of evidence and the semantics of observational terms.

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words on any of the above or closely related topics. Please e-mail contributions to Ioannis Votsis ( [email protected] ). Make sure to include your full name, institutional affiliation and e-mail address.
Submission Deadline: 01 NOVEMBER 2010
Acceptance Notification: 01 DECEMBER 2010

We hope to publish the proceedings of the conference in a reputable scientific journal. Upon completion of the conference, we will invite participants to submit written-up versions of their talks. Submitted papers will then be subjected to a peer-review process.

Speakers – Provisional Talk Titles:
William Brewer (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) 'Naturalized Approaches to Theory Ladenness: Evidence from Cognitive Psychology History, and the Ecological Validity Argument'
Allan Franklin (Colorado) 'Theory Ladenness and the Epistemology of Experiment'
Martin Kusch (Vienna) 'Modules and Microscopes'
Athanassios Raftopoulos (Cyprus) 'Cognitive Impenetrability, Nonconceptual Content, and Theory-Ladenness'
Gerhard Schurz (Duesseldorf) 'Ostensive Learnability as Criterion for Theory-Neutral “Observation” Concepts'
Susanna Siegel (Harvard) 'Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Belief'
Michela Tacca (Duesseldorf) 'Cognitive Penetrability and the Content of Perception'
Ioannis Votsis (Duesseldorf) 'The Observation-Ladenness of Theory'
Markus Werning (Bochum) 'The Role of Action in Perception'

Attendance is open to all. If you plan to attend please contact Ioannis Votsis ( [email protected] ).

September 6-7, 2010, Palais des Académies, Rue Ducale / Hertogstraat 1, Brussels.
If you happen to be in the Low Countries next week, this should be fun:
http://www.bslps.be/YRD2.html

1st Dutch-Flemish Graduate Conference on Philosophy of Science and/or Technology
The NFWT organizes its first graduate conference for advanced master students, Phd-students, and recent Phd’s, working on philosophy of science and/or technology. The goal of this conference is to help young researchers establish a research network, and try out papers in a cordial setting. All participants will be alloted ca. 30 minutes to present a paper, followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
There will be two keynote lectures on the topic of “levels of organization in the life sciences”, and contributions related to this topic are especially encouraged, without this being an exclusionary criterion.
Abstract of maximum 500 words should be submitted no later than October 1, 2010, by email to: [email protected]. Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 10.
Dates: 25 and 26 November 2010
Venue: Het Pand, Ghent University, Ghent
Keynote speakers: Jon Williamson (Kent University) and Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent University)

For more information on the NFWT (Dutch-Flemish Network for Philosophy of Science and Technology), see: http://logica.ugent.be/NFWT/index.php

For those who happen to be hanging around the old Austro-Hungarian Empire during the next few days:

Hopos 2010 in Budapest:
http://www.hopos2010.ceu.hu/node/2777

Carnap Conference (June 28-9) in Vienna:
http://www.univie.ac.at/ivc/CarnapConference2010.pdf

The third congress of the Société de philosophie des sciences, to be held in Paris Nov. 12-14. For more details, go to http://www.sps09.org/

The final EPSA program is available here.

On August 7-8, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences hosts a workshop on methodological and philosophical aspects causality. There are still a few places available.

Program Academy Colloquium
"The effect of causality: State of the art, open problems, and future directions"
Kloveniersburgwal 9, Amsterdam, on 7 and 8 August 2009

August 7
8.30 - 8.45 Opening
8.45 - 9.45 Clark Glymour, Carnegie Mellon University
9.45 - 10.45 Rolf Steyer, University of Jena
10.45 - 11.00 Coffee break
11.00 - 12.00 Mark Steyvers, University of California at Irvine
12.00 - 13.30 Lunch
13.30 - 14.30 David Cox, University of Oxford
14.30 - 15.30 Giovanni Marchetti, University of Florence
15.30 - 16.00 Coffee break
16.00 - 17.00 Julian Reiss, Erasmus University Rotterdam
17.00 - 18.00 Drinks
18:00 Dinner

August 8
9.30 - 9.45 Opening
9.45 - 10.45 Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics
10.45 - 11.00 Coffee Break
11.00 - 12.00 Michael Lee, University of California at Irvine
12.00 - 13.30 Lunch
13.30 - 14.30 Nanny Wermuth, University of Gothenborg
14.30 - 15.30 David Lagnado, University College London
15.30 - 16.00 Coffee Break
16.00 - 17.00 Michael Eichler, Maastricht University
17.00 - 18.00 Drinks

The workshop is free of charge, but registration is required, and there are only few places left. Make sure to register as soon as possible if you want to attend, by sending an email to [email protected].nl. See http://www.knaw.nl/cfdata/events/events_detail.cfm?agenda__id=1253 for further details.

Of interest to some readers of this blog:

Newton and Empiricism

Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

10-11 April 2010



Invited Speaker: Lisa Downing (Ohio State)

Program Committee: Zvi Biener (Western Michigan University), J. E. McGuire (University of Pittsburgh), and Eric Schliesser (University of Leiden)



Call for papers



Isaac Newton and John Locke are sometimes portrayed as dual fathers of the British Enlightenment, with Newton providing the exemplar of human knowledge and Locke providing the philosophical infrastructure required for understanding the merit and reach of that exemplar. Yet their union was neither simple nor unchallenged. Newton’s empiricism developed while defending and revising his Principia against philosophical critique, and Locke’s hospitability to Newtonian gravity and realization of Newton’s achievement developed through successive drafts of the Essay and other texts. Moreover, similar complexity exists in the work of Newton’s and Locke’s intellectual heirs. This conference will focus on the compatibility and incompatibility, tensions, and developing relations between Newton, Locke, and their successors in Newtonianism and Empiricism.



The conference will take place on 10-11 April 2010 at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. Possible conference participants should note that Catherine Wilson (University of Aberdeen) will deliver an Annual Lecture Series talk for the Center for Philosophy of Science on the afternoon of 9 April 2010. Conference participants are encouraged to attend.



Partial travel stipends will be available for young scholars, who are highly encouraged to submit abstracts.



The deadline for submitting abstracts (of approximately 750 words) is 1 December 2009. Email submissions are highly encouraged and can be sent to Zvi Biener at [email protected]. If you do not receive confirmation of receipt of your abstract within a week, please resubmit or contact the organizers.



For updates, visit the Center Web site: www.pitt.edu/~pittcntr