Epistemology and Philosophy of Science

19 Novembro 2024, 14:00 • Robert Michels

Exam of the second module

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

12 Novembro 2024, 14:00 • Andrea Oldofredi

In this lecture we have introduced van Fraassen's pragmatic theory of explanation. In order to understand his philosophical views concerning science, we outlined his constructive empiricism as a possible alternative to scientific realism. The latter has been briefly introduced as well (in particular Sellars' views and Putnam's No-Miracle-Argument).

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

5 Novembro 2024, 14:00 • Andrea Oldofredi

Professor Bigaj yesterday introduced the various notions of cause in physical sciences, providing a short historical evolution of this concept from Aristotle to contemporary physics, touching upon Newton and Descartes. Moreover, he showed how causality changes its form into probabilistic causality in the context of quantum mechanics, as well as he explained how causality and locality are intimately related in Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity.

In the second part of the lecture we analyzed in some detail Bertrand Russell’s criticisms against the concept of causation in science. We also pointed out some flaw in Russell’s reasoning.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

29 Outubro 2024, 14:00 • Andrea Oldofredi

We briefly discussed Carnap and Hempel’s thesis concerning the structural identity between the logical structure of explanations and predictions.

Then we introduced the main objections against Hempel’s models of explanations as well as outlined Railton’s Deductive-Nomological-Probabilistic model, its features and differences with respect to Hempel’s proposals.

Finally, we discussed the indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics, and illustrated Baker’s example of pure mathematical explanation of empirical facts.

Tuesday, October 22 2024

22 Outubro 2024, 14:00 • Andrea Oldofredi

In the first seminar of the second module we briefly introduced a working definition of philosophy of science, i.e. we tried to understand what this discipline is outlining what kind of questions it answers to.

Secondly, we analyzed in detail Rudolf Carnap's essay "The Value of Laws: Explanation and Prediction". In class we introduced the notion of scientific law given by Carnap, and the logical structure underlying scientific explanation and predictions.

In the third place, we discussed Carl G. Hempel's essays "Two Basic Types of Scientific Explanation" and "Inductive-Statistical Explanation". We studied the main models proposed by Hempel in order to provide a normative account for scientific explanations, as well as the main differences between the deductive-nomological model and the inductive-statistical model.