PL159: Philosophy of Science Schedule

Philosophy of Physics, Science, and Metaphysics at Brown University

Brown University Phil0159 Philosophy of Science Schedule, Spring 2008

Links to Papers

Note for Brown students: Some of the links to the papers require that your IP address is seen as being from Brown. You either need to be on campus or use the VPN software that Brown provides. You never need to pay any money for access to articles. For non-Brown readers, for some papers, you will need access through a library that has a subscription to the relevant journal.

Everything listed here is subject to change based on class performance and scheduling contingencies.

Some additional readings will come from Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction.

Jan 24	Humean Skepticism	Godfrey-Smith, Chap. 1 & 2; Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sections 4 and 5.
Jan 29	Goodman on Induction, Grue, Projectible Predicates, Natural Kinds	Goodman, "The New Riddle of Induction"
Jan 31	Grue	(Optional: For historical purposes, you can read Quine's "Natural Kinds" though it isn't a great paper.)
Feb 5	Confirmation	Godfrey-Smith, Chap. 3; (Optional: For historical purposes, you can look over Hempel's "Studies in the Logic of Confirmation" but it is brutally complicated for what little one gets out of it.)
Feb 7	Probability Calculus, Bayes’ Theorem	Godfrey-Smith, Chap. 14
Feb 12	Bayesian Confirmation Theory	Talbott, Bayesian Epistemology
Feb 14	Bayesian Confirmation Theory
Feb 19	Holiday
Feb 21	Null-hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST)	Cohen "The Earth is Round, p < 0.05" Assigment: Write Explanation of Cohen's Article
Feb 26	Null-hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST)	Gliner, Leech, and Morgan "Problems with NHST: What do the textbooks say?"
Feb 28	Popper on Confirmation and Demarcation	Godfrey-Smith, Chap. 4; Popper, Excerpts from various books
Mar 4	The Demarcation Problem	Sober "Creationism" Assigment: Write Explanation of Sober's Chapter
Mar 6	Fitness and the Tautology Problem	Sober, "The Tautology Problem" Fitness Optional Additional Reading: Mills and Beatty, "The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness"
Mar 11	Adaptationism: In what sense falsifiable?	Gould and Lewontin: The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm"; Sober “Adaptationism" Assigment: Write Explanation of Sober's Chapter Additional Optional Reading: Frederick Crewes review, "Saving Us from Darwin, Part I", is good to read. Also, Richard Lewontin's review of two books.
Mar 13	The Units of Selection Problem	Units and Levels of Selection
Mar 18	Scientific Explanation	Godfrey-Smith, Chap. 13; Hempel, "Laws and Their Role in Scientific Explanation"
Mar 20	Scientific Explanation	Scientific Explanation Take-home Exam Due on Friday March 21, 5PM
	Spring Break
Apr 1	Informal Mathematical Reasoning	Feynman "Cargo-cult Science", Proofs and Refutations (approx. to p. 35)
Apr 3	Informal Mathematical Reasoning	Proofs and Refutations (rest of Ch 1) Assigment: Summarize the Important Lesson's from Proofs and Refutations
Apr 8	Metaphysics of Laws: Necessitation, Humeanism	Armstrong, "Laws of Nature As Relations Between Universals"; Lewis, Excerpt on Laws; Notes on Laws; (Optional: van Fraassen, Fragment of Ch 5 from Laws and Symmetry)
Apr 10	Class Canceled
Apr 15	Metaphysics of Laws: Humeanism continued, Primitivism	Maudlin, "A Modest Proposal", "Why Be Humean?"
Apr 17	Objective Chance	Loewer, "David Lewis's Humean Theory of Objective Chance"; Lewis, "A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance"
Apr 22	Objective Chance	Lewis, "Humean Supervenience Debugged"; Hall, "Correcting the Guide to Objective Chance"; Loewer, "Determinism and Chance" Assigment: Write Explanation of Lewis's Paper
Apr 24	Naturalism, Empiricism, Realism and Anti-Realism	Godfrey-Smith, Chap. 12 & 15
May 13, 9AM	Final Exam at Sayles 105