Archives: 2007–2008

Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science
48th Annual Program

 

The Robert S. Cohen Forum: Contemporary Issues in Science Studies

Contemporary Issues in Science Studies Trends in Italian Philosophy of Science

Supported by the Consulate General of Italy in Boston
Monday, September 10 and Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Castle, Boston University
225 Bay State Road

Monday, 9:00 a.m.- noon

Moderator: Alessandro Torza Boston University

  • What is relevance? A subjectivist interpretation of relevant information

    Luciano Floridi Oxford University + University of Bari

  • Multimodal abduction. External Semiotic Anchors, Hybrid Representations, Affordances

    Lorenzo Magnani University of Pavia

  • Logical Proofs through von Neumann Algebras

    Mario Piazza University of Chieti

Monday, 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Moderator: Elisabeta Sarca Boston University

  • Connecting the Objectivity of Becoming with the Conventionality of Simultaneity

    Mauro Dorato University of Rome, 3

  • Towards an Explication of ‘Life’ and ‘Death’

    Giovanni Boniolo University of Padua

  • An Epistemological Framework for Evolution Based Medicine

    Gilberto Corbellini University of Rome, La Sapienza

Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.- noon

Moderator: Elisabeta Sarca Boston University

  • The Learning Cell: From Immune to Neural Memory, via Darwinism

    Andrea Grignolio University of Rome, La Sapienza

  • Logical Proofs through von Neumann Algebras

    Massimo Stanzione University of Cassino

  • Language Reference and Natural Science

    Marcello Frixione University of Salerno

Tuesday, 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Moderator: Alessandro Torza Boston University

  • Philosophy of Science Meets Philosophy of Mind: the Mind-Body Identity Theory

    Simone Gozzano University of L’Aquila

  • Models, Metaphors and Paradigms in Cognitive Science

    Roberto Cordeschi University of Rome, La Sapienza

  • Evaluating the Predictive Adequacy of Qualitative Theories in Social Sciences

    Roberto Festa University of Trieste

Future Horizons for Philosophy of Medicine

Monday, September 24th, 2007
BU School of Law, Room 1270 (12th Floor)
765 Commonwealth Avenue
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
BU School of Law, Barristers Hall (1st Floor)
765 Commonwealth Avenue

Moderator: Abraham Fuks McGill University

Monday, 10 a.m.-Noon

  • Health as Intra-Systemic Integrity: Rethinking the Foundations of the Biopsychosocial Model of Medicine

    George Khushf University of South Carolina

  • Theories, Disease and the Philosophy of Science

    Harold Kincaid University of Alabama at Birmingham

Monday, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.

  • Humanizing the Biomedical Model

    James Marcum Baylor University

  • Risk and Disease

    Peter Schwartz Indiana University

  • A Model-Based Approach to Diseases

    Jeremy Simon Columbia University

Moderator: Alan Schechter National Institutes of Health

Tuesday, 10 a.m. – Noon

  • Philosophy of Medicine Is What Philosophers of Medicine Do

    William Stempsey College of the Holy Cross

  • Recent Epistemological Paradigms in Clinical Medicine

    Miriam Solomon Temple University

Tuesday, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.

  • Constructing a Philosophy of Medicine

    Alfred I. Tauber Boston University

  • Mental Illness From the Perspective of Theoretical Neuroscience

    Paul Thagard University of Waterloo

  • Evidence and Ethics in Medicine

    John Worral London School of Economics

Contributions of Martin Eger to the Philosophy of Science, Education, and Human Behavior

Friday, October 12, 2007
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Terrace Lounge, George Sherman Union (GSU)
775 Commonwealth Avenue

Moderator: Dimitri Constant Boston University

Dialogue in Martin Eger’s Philosophy and Friendship

Abner Shimony Boston University, Emeritus

Physics, Ethics, and the Life of Practice

Alasdair MacIntyre University of Notre Dame

Eger on Missing Contexts and Larger Meanings

Victor Kestenbaum Boston University

Turing on Computation, Memory, and Behavior

Monday, Oct. 29, 2007
3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

Moderator: Peter Bokulich Boston University

Eli Dresner Tel Aviv University

Commentator: Judson Webb Boston University

Karbank Symposium in Environmental Philosophy

Thoreau and Environmentalism

Friday, November 16, 2007
1:00 p.m. – 5 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

Moderator: Charles Capper Boston University

Thoreau as a Climate Change Scientist

Richard Primack Boston University

Thoreau’s Anticipations of Human Agency in Ecological Context

Max Oelschlaeger Norther Arizona University

Thoreauvian Science and the Environmental Subject

William Rossi University of Oregon

Thoreau’s Pantheism and the Birth of American Environmentalism

Alfred I. Tauber Boston University

Trends in the Mathematical Representation of Space: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives

Friday, November 30, 2007
3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Terrace Lounge, George Sherman Union (GSU)
775 Commonwealth Avenue

On the Naturalness of Mathematics: Towards a Relativised Ontology for Mathematics

Pierre Cartier Institut Des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Paris

Saturday, 9 a.m. – Noon

  • Living in a Contradictory World: Categories Versus Sets

    Pierre Cartier Institut Des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Paris

  • Generality Versus Unity in Geometry

    Colin McLarty Case-Western Reserve University

Saturday, 2 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

  • Euler, Maxwell, Grothendieck, and the Nature of Space

    F. William Lawvere SUNY, Buffalo

  • From Klein to Kan: the Algebra of Space and the Space of Algebra

    Jean-Pierre Marquis University of Montreal

  • Grothendieck’s Universe

    M. Iftime Boston University and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy

Sunday, 9 a.m. – Noon

  • What Does Quantum Gravity Tell Us about the Nature of Spacetime?

    Louis Crane Kansas State University

  • An Axiomatic Approach to Einstein’s Vacuum Field Equations

    Gonzalo E. Reyes

Sunday, 2 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

  • The Twin Paradox without Acceleration

    Shawn Westmoreland Kansas State University

  • Geometrogenesis

    F. Markopoulou Perimeter Institute

  • Internal Relativity

    O. Dreyer MIT

Post Structural Readings of a logico-mathematical text: “Dangerous shifts of meaning” in Gödel’s proof of his first incompleteness theorem

Friday, Dec. 7, 2007
12 p.m. – 2 p.m.
School of Theology, Room 525
745 Commonwealth Ave.

Roy Wagner Tel Aviv University/Boston University

The Revolution in Mind/Brain Science

Monday, February 4, 2008
12:30-5:30 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

Moderator: Emi Iwatani Boston University

Commonsense Conceptions of Phenomenal Consciousness

Bryce Huebner University of North Carolina

The Moral Organ

Marc Hauser Harvard University

Plasticity

Mriganka Sur MIT

How Brains Create Minds

Stephen Grossberg Boston University

The Actual, the Possible, and the Physical

Monday, February 25, 2008
2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

Moderator: Brad Skow MIT

The Modality of Structures and the Structure of Modality

Peter Bokulich Boston University

Humean Reductionism about Laws of Physics

Ned Hall Harvard University

The Metaphysics of Fundamental Properties and Laws

Barry Loewer Rutgers

Drawing the Line between Kinematics and Dynamics in Special Relativity

Monday, March 17, 2008
3:00-5:00 p.m.
Terrace Lounge, George Sherman Union (GSU)
765 Commonwealth Avenue

Moderator: John Stachel Boston University, Emeritus

Michel Janssen University of Minnesota

The Aristotelian Foundations of Today’s Biology

Monday, March 31, 2008
3:00-5:00 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

Moderator: David Roochnik Boston University

Alfred Miller Catholic University of America/Boston University

Are there Natural Kinds?

Monday, April 14, 2008
2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

Moderator: Gal Kober Boston University

Is Pluto a Planet? Folk Concepts and Natural Kinds in Astronomy

Alisa Bokulich Boston University

The Reality of Kinds and the Reality of (Other) Things: Reductionism vs. Anti- Reductionism

Richard Boyd Cornell University

Natural Kinds in Biology

Michael Devitt City University of New York

A Function for Fictions in Science

Friday, April 25, 2008
2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Castle
225 Bay State Road

A Function for Fictions: Expanding the Scope of Science

Eric Winsberg University of South Florida

Exemplification, Idealization, and Understanding

Catherine Elgin Harvard University

Explanatory Fictions

Alisa Bokulich Boston University