DCLPS Fellowship: Theo A. F. Kuipers (April 23 to 26, 2013)

The Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science is pleased to announce that Theo A. F. Kuipers visits us in April 2013.

Date: April 23, 2013 - April 26, 2013

Tutorial I:
In "From Instrumentalism to Constructive Realism" (2000) I have shown how an instrumentalist account of empirical progress can be related to truth approximation. However, it was assumed that a strong notion of nomic theories was needed for that analysis. In this paper it is shown, in terms of truth and falsity content, that the analysis already applies when, in line with scientific common sense, nomic theories are merely assumed to exclude certain conceptual possibilities as nomic possibilities. 

Tutorial II:
Arguments for and against scientific realism usually presuppose as the main epistemic claim about theories that we may have good reasons to conclude that they are true, or at least approximately true. The antirealist charges against this claim are not easy to counter. In this paper it is argued that the defense of realism is much easier if we relativize its epistemic claim in the light of (theories of) truth approximation. From this comparative realist perspective the main epistemic claim becomes that we may have good reasons to conclude that successor theories are closer to the truth than their predecessors.

Tuesday, April 23, 18:30 - 20:00
Location: Building no. 23.21.02, room no. 22
Tutorial I: Empirical progress and nomic truth approximation revisited

Wednesday, April 24, 18:15 - 19:45
Location: Building no. 23.21.02, room no. 26
Evening lecture: Comparative realism as the best explanation of empirical and aesthetic progress

Friday April 26, 14:15 - 16:00
Location: Building no. 23.21.00, room no. 44B
Tutorial II: Nomic truth approximation by belief base revision