BSPS Parallel Sessions Abstracts

 

Autzen, Bengt
Prior Probabilities in Bayesian Phylogenetics
In this paper I discuss a recent proposal by Velasco (2008) on how to assign prior probabilities in Bayesian phylogenetics. Velasco proposes to assign prior probabilities to tree topologies based on the Yule process. I argue that Velasco’s argument in favour of the Yule priors and against the uniform prior on tree topologies is flawed. I suggest that prior probabilities of tree topologies should be assigned based on a mixture of the uniform and the Yule distribution.

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Bain, Jonathan
Interpreting Effective Field Theories
Many authors have suggested that, because of the essential role the cut-off plays in the standard (Wilsonian) method of constructing an effective field theory (EFT), an appropriate interpretation of an EFT requires a realistic interpretation of the cut-off.  For some, this suggests an ontology of “quasi-autonomous domains” (Cao and Schweber 1993); for others, it suggests an ontology in which space is discrete and finite (Fraser 2009); and for yet others, it suggests that EFTs engage in idealizations and are inherently approximate (Fraser 2009, Castellani 2002).  I consider these interpretations in light of an alternative method of constructing an EFT which produces what Georgi (1992, 1993) refers to as a “continuum EFT”.  I will argue that a realistic interpretation of a continuum EFT (a) supports an ontology of quasi-autonomous domains; (b) supports an ontology in which space is continuous and not discrete; and (c) supports the view that EFTs need not be considered inherently approximate.

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Belanger, Christopher
Chaos and Observational Equivalence: What Can Alpha-Congruence Tell Us About Determinism?
In 1991 the mathematicians Ornstein and Weiss outlined a relationship called alpha-congruence, which they claimed was a well-defined notion of observational equivalence. Interestingly, many deterministic systems, including chaotic systems, can be proven to be alpha-congruent to indeterministic systems. This challenges the intuition that there is a clear distinction between deterministic and indeterministic descriptions. Philosophers have based metaphysical conclusions on this result, and in particular Patrick Suppes has argued that since deterministic and indeterministic systems can be shown to be alpha-congruent, metaphysical determinism and indeterminism are observationally equivalent theories, and the thesis of determinism “transcends experience.” However, these authors make uncritical use of the assumption that alpha-congruence can function as a proxy for observational equivalence. I argue that alpha-congruence is not a sufficient condition for observational equivalence, the mathematical results require re-interpretation, and thus existing philosophical claims based on alpha-congruence may be unsound.

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Casini, Lorenzo
Is Glennan’s Theory Complex Enough?
In the last two decades, Stuart Glennan (1996; 2002) has attempted to develop a mechanistic account of causation:  c causes e iff there is a mechanism linking them.  Recently (2010), despite acknowledging a form of conceptual pluralism—there are two notions: causal production and causal relevance—he has argued for the (metaphysical) priority of production over relevance: c causes e iff there is a continuous chain of causal processes linking them.  In this paper, I evaluate whether and to what extent Glennan’s account is suitable to characterise causal relationships in complex systems, i.e. systems with many components interacting at various levels of organisation (e.g. cells, brain, social groups).  After identifying several ambiguities and problems in Glennan’s account, I suggest and discuss two routes open to him: one dispositionalist, the other inferentialist.  Either way, fixing the account may require substantial revisions.

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Caulton, Adam
Is the Indistinguishability Postulate Compulsory?
There is a tradition in the philosophy of quantum mechanics that the Indistinguishability Postulate (IP) is a compulsory requirement for any assembly of equivalent systems. But recent work by Nick Huggett and Tom Imbo suggests there are contexts in which particle labels may be endowed with operational content, undercutting IP.
In this talk I defend the orthodoxy. One is faced with a dilemma: whether to treat particle labels as redundant, or as genuinely physical features. If the former, then IP is compulsory – in fact it is what I call an “analytic” symmetry. If the latter, then particle labels codify some physical quantity, in which case this quantity may instead be explicitly represented in the formalism, thereby reinstating the motivation for IP.

I also consider classical mechanics. I argue that (the analogue of) IP need not be imposed here only because it would make no difference to empirical results.

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Cei, Angelo
Carnap’s Ramsey Sentence, the Reconstruction of Theoretical Content and Structural Realism
Recently growing attention has been devoted to Carnap’s formulation of Ramsey Sentence (RS). Psillos interprets Carnap as aiming to neutrality between realism and instrumentalism, a form of Structural Realism (SR). A project that fails because RS is troubled by the Newman problem (NP). Friedman has argued that put it in the context of the Wissenschaftlogic program Carnap’s project is not troubled by NP , thus it succeed in offering a form of SR. In this paper I argue that if it were successful this project could not be a form of SR, because it involves a formulation of RS that does not serve the purposes of SR.

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Chakravartty, Anjan
Causal Powers in Scientific Explanation
One argument offered by philosophers of science (e.g. Cartwright 1999, Ellis 2001, Bird 2007, Chakravartty 2007) in favour of realism about causal powers (dispositions, capacities, tendencies, etc.) is that by positing their existence, one gains explanatory power. If there were such things, they would furnish explanations that would be lacking otherwise, and this is rendered as evidence for their existence. Conversely, the Humean tradition is typified by a rejection of such demands for explanation (e.g. Russell 1918, van Fraassen 1989, Norton 2003, Price & Corry 2007). I reflect on the question of how far demands for explanation should take the realist. On one hand, maintaining that explanatory power is an epistemic virtue is arguably an important tenet of realism. On the other hand, there are clearly limits, lest we find ourselves explanatorily infallible, able to explain natural phenomena at will simply by positing the existence of a relevant disposition.

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Chang, Hasok
Success and Maturity: Re-framing the Realism Debate
I make a critical examination of two key ideas underpinning common realist intuitions and arguments: the success of science, and mature science. In relation to the argument from the success of science (due to Boyd, Putnam, etc.), I ask:

(1) Is science actually all that successful?
(2) What exactly do we mean by “success”?
(3) Will our current success be lasting?
(4) What kind of explanation of success should satisfy us?
(5) Why do we need to explain success?

As the argument from success is generally about “mature” sciences, we need to ask what maturity really means. Contrary to common presumptions, an examination of current and past sciences reveals that the maturity of a science does not generally lead to unity and stability. And a mature scientific community would value tolerance, humility and circumspection. The quest for the ultimate theory displays the daring enthusiasm of youth, rather than maturity.
The foregoing considerations enable an optimistic rendition of the pessimistic induction: how wonderful it is that science can be so successful without even having approximately true or genuinely referring theories.

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Curiel, Erik
There Is No Gravitational Stress-Energy Tensor
The existence of gravitational stress-energy in general relativity has exercised investigators from the start. Folklore has it that localized gravitational stress-energy cannot be defined. Most arguments to that effect invoke some version of the Principle of Equivalence. Not only are such arguments necessarily hand-waving but, worse, are beside the point. Based on an analysis of what it may mean for one tensor to depend on another, I prove that, under certain natural conditions, there can be no tensor whose interpretation could be that it represents gravitational stress-energy in general relativity. Thus gravitational energy in general relativity is necessarily non-local. The result bears on several philosophical issues, including: the invalidation of a seemingly universal physical principle (the principle of the conservation of energy); conceptual and physical constraints on the appropriate understanding of “isolation” and “interaction” for physical systems; constraints on physicalist accounts of causality posed in terms of conserved quantities; and constraints on proposals for fundamental ontology (e.g., Lewis’s Humean mosaic).

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Darby, George
Vagueness and Unsharp Measurements
I am trying to figure out the relationship between the way in which indeterminacy is treated in the philosophical literature and the way it emerges on certain interpretations of quantum mechanics. In this talk I would like to explore the way things look if we take recent work on the POVM framework to have genuinely metaphysical implications, and clarify what the “fundamental fuzziness of physical quantities” in Paul Busch’s Unsharp Quantum Reality, for example, means for the mainstream vagueness debate. A subsidiary question concerns the extent to which a metaphysicist ought to take such talk at face-value, to allow the way properties are treated in particular applications (in quantum information theory, for example) to influence the framework for thinking about metaphysical indeterminacy (rather than just motivating the project). I take this as a case-study in the relationship of metaphysics to natural science.

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Dizadji-Bahmani, Foad
No short abstract submitted.

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Edge, Alasdair
Applying Blind Realism to Science
The majority of recent attempts to reformulate scientific realism in the face of the pessimistic induction have sought to identify a subset of claims of theories that are retained through theory change.

owever, such accounts have been heavily criticised, notably by Kyle Stanford, on the grounds that we are either unable to identify which elements of a theory are responsible for its success, or the parts identified turn out to be discarded in a sufficiently large number of cases to make the position untenable. In this paper I examine whether we would be forced to abandon realism if these criticisms prove telling. I will argue that an adapted form of Robert Almeder’s “Blind Realism” will allow us to accommodate these criticisms, whilst remaining realist about our best current theories.

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Fahrbach, Ludwig
The Pessimistic Meta-Induction and the Big Boost in Success
I defend scientific realism (that empirically successful theories are approximately true) against the pessimistic meta-induction which states that the history of science is full of counterexamples to scientific realism, i.e., theories that were once empirically successful but later refuted. I develop a counterstrategy against the pessimistic meta-induction using a notion of graded success of scientific theories. With its help, I argue for the claim that our current best theories enjoy far higher degrees of success than any of the refuted theories found in the history of science. I do so by examining “indicators of success” such as the amount of scientific work done by scientists, computing power, and the quantity, diversity, and precision of data.

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Farr, Matt
Towards a C Theory of Time
I assess the concept of time having a privileged direction – temporal unidirectionality – and its role in the metaphysics of time literature and contemporary physics. I argue that temporal unidirectionality is neither required by nor entailed by our best physics via consideration of (1) the role of time symmetry in physics, and (2) the inference from a theory’s requirement of a temporal orientation to time being unidirectional. I then consider the time-asymmetric structure of the A and B series, and the subsequent dependence of the A and B ‘theories’ of time on a specification of time direction. I contrast this with the temporally adirectional C series, and consider the prospects of a ‘C theory’ of time. Just as the B theorist denies metaphysical significance to tense by not admitting temporal passage into his ontology, the C theorist denies metaphysical significance to temporal perspective by not admitting temporal unidirectionality into his ontology.

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Forbes Curtis
Reinstating Chakravartty’s Stalemate
I investigate the consequences of van Fraassen’s (2008) arguments against the “appearance from reality” criterion for the realism debate.  Van Fraassen claims that a traditional criterion of adequacy for scientific representations is that they should explain the phenomena in terms of an unobservable reality; but, he argues, this criterion must be rejected, for an empiricist version of quantum mechanics is clearly acceptable science despite not meeting this criterion. 

It may seem that van Fraassen has here offered a substantial argument against eminent realist philosophies of science.  I argue that he has not, for few (if any) contemporary philosophers of science accept this criterion of adequacy for empirical science.  On my charitable account, van Fraassen’s arguments are best viewed as expository devices for his own empiricist vision of science, not as arguments against contemporary brands of scientific realism. 

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French, Steven
Disentangling Mathematical and Physical Explanation: Symmetry, Spin and the ‘Hybrid Nature’ of Physical Quantities
The role of mathematics in physical explanations has been taken to (1) imply the existence of mathematical objects; (2) imply that physical quantities have a ‘hybrid nature’.

(1) has found support in the accommodation of apparently acausal principles such as Pauli’s Exclusion Principle in recent accounts of scientific explanation. However, this support can be undermined by first paying due attention to the relevant symmetry principle, and secondly, by providing an appropriate metaphysical understanding of this symmetry.

(2) has been articulated in the context of an analysis of spin. However the measurement of spin provides no grounds for such a claim and neither does the theoretical understanding associated with the appropriate group-theoretic representation. Again, appropriate metaphysical interpretations of this representation are available that undermine (2).

These conclusions mesh with the view of mathematics as playing a ‘representational’ role only, although this view itself needs further articulation in this context.

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Frigg, Roman and Charlotte Werndl
Explaining the Approach to Equilibrium in Terms of Epsilon-Ergodicity
Consider a gas that confined to the left half of a container. Then remove the wall separating the two parts. The gas will start spreading and soon be evenly distributed over the entire available space. The gas has approached equilibrium. Why does the gas behave in this way? The canonical answer to this question, originally proffered by Boltzmann, is that the system has to be ergodic for the approach to equilibrium to take place. This answer has been criticised on different grounds and is now widely regarded as flawed. In this paper we argue that these criticisms have dismissed Boltzmann’s answer too quickly and that something almost like Boltzmann’s answer is true: the approach to equilibrium takes place if the system is epsilon-ergodic, i.e. ergodic on the entire accessible phase space except for a small region of measure epsilon. We introduce epsilon-ergodicity and argue that relevant systems in statistical mechanics are indeed epsilon-ergodic.

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Garvey, Brian
Pluralism, eliminativism and biological concepts
Many philosophers of biology agree that biological terms such as ‘innateness’, ‘species’ and ‘gene’ cannot be given single precise definitions. Because of this, some offer pluralist approaches, while others offer eliminativist approaches. I will examine John Dupré’s arguments for pluralism about species and genes, and Paul Griffiths’ arguments for eliminativism about innateness. Both Dupré and Griffiths offer arguments that are pragmatic. Dupré argues that we need to preserve nomenclature across different sciences. Griffiths argues that slippages of meaning are likely to occur if folk-biological terms are used. I argue that Dupré’s argument fails in the case of species, since we can preserve nomenclature without deciding whether a given group is a species or not. Moreover, Griffiths’ concerns about potential slippages of meaning may apply to the terms ‘species’ and ‘gene’ as well. I conclude that there is a strong case for eliminativism about species, and perhaps about genes as well.

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Glass, David
Probability, Truth and Inference to the Best Explanation 
Recent work on inference to the best explanation (IBE) tends to view it as compatible with Bayesianism. Arguably, however, this approach faces a serious problem. If the hypothesis with the highest posterior probability is always identified as the best explanation, this seems to make IBE trivial. The central claim in IBE is that explanatory goodness is truth conducive, but if ‘best’ is defined as ‘most probable’, this claim appears to be established in a trivial and unenlightening way. This paper adopts a different approach by considering a number of measures of explanatory goodness and using computer simulations to determine their ability to identify the actual hypothesis. Results show that the overlap coherence measure finds the actual hypothesis almost as often as the approach which simply selects the most probable hypothesis. Further advantages to this approach are also considered in the case where there is uncertainty in the prior probability distribution.

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Glynn, Luke
Of Miracles and Interventions
Lewis (1973, 1979) claims that, for the purposes of delivering a counterfactual analysis of causation, counterfactuals of the form “if c hadn’t occurred, then e wouldn’t have occurred” should be evaluated with respect to those possible worlds in which the non-occurrence of c is realised by a small miracle occurring shortly beforehand. Woodward (2003) disagrees. According to him, such counterfactuals ought to be evaluated with respect to those worlds in which c’s non-occurrence is realised by an intervention on whether-or-not c occurs with respect to e. The notion of an intervention, unlike that of a miracle, is causal and so Woodward’s analysis of causation is non-reductive. As one might expect, Woodward claims compensating advantages for his account. In this paper, I argue that these advantages can be had without the appeal to interventions and the consequent sacrifice of potential reductivity.

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Godman, Marion
Why many natural kinds are grounded in historical relations
I argue that neither an inductive-role nor a property-cluster type of definition will do if we want to explain the epistemic importance of natural kinds. In order to do this we need to appeal to the natural kind’s ontological grounding, such as the one provided by traditional natural kind essentialism. Nevertheless I argue that Ruth Millikan’s notion of ‘historical kinds’ (1999) yields an important alternative model for ontological grounding. This model claims that many kinds in the biological, human, and social sciences will be grounded in relational rather than intrinsic features of the members of the kind in question. Contrary to what Michael Devitt (2008) has argued, I contend that this alternative can hold its own without being supplemented by a weaker form of essentialism. Finally I show that this need not undermine the epistemic authority of these ‘special’ sciences that taken an interest in historical kinds.

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Goldfinch, Andrew
Climate change policy: cognitive adaptationist perspectives
Many individuals understand and acknowledge the threat of climate change but few are alarmed by it. This lack of alarm is a significant factor in individuals’ lacklustre attitude towards the threat of climate change. I argue that adaptationist theorising can explain this situation: alarm or fear is an adaptation that is highly sensitive to certain environmental cues, cues relating to recurrent threats in our ancestral past - climate change, however, doesn’t present these cues and thus fails to trigger the adaptation. After fleshing out this claim, I examine whether and how this insight and other cognitive adaptationist perspectives can help engineer better polices and interventions aimed at increasingly ecologically sensitive behaviour.

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Grose, Jonathan
The Fall and Rise of the Handicap Principle
Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle claims that many costly traits act as honest signals in virtue of those costs. For instance, peacocks’ tails are reliable indicators of mate quality because of their extravagance. The intuition is that only high quality signallers can afford to produce high intensity signals. My thesis is that the principle is philosophically striking as an instance of the acceptance (or not) of an evolutionary hypothesis being driven by the production of coherent formal models, rather than detailed empirical results.

The principle received what has been viewed as strong support from Grafen’s 1990 models. Although referred to typically as “costly signalling theory”, it is accepted that costliness is neither necessary nor sufficient for stabilizing signal honesty and that other mechanisms exist. Recent literature on the evolution of human behaviour appeals to Grafen’s work but there is often no reason to believe that signal costs actually fit the models.

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Heilmann, Conrad (joint work with Christian W. Bach, Maastricht)
Agent Connectedness in Dynamic Interaction
Game theory provides foundations for economics and the social sciences by formulating models of dynamic interaction between players. In this paper, we introduce a more realistic representation of players that allows us to relax inherent assumptions about their stability over time. We define a player as a set of agents corresponding to different stages of dynamic games. Moreover, the notion of agent connectedness is introduced which measures the extent to which agents’ choices are stable over time. Precisely such sequential stability properties of agents are central to the reasoning method of backward induction. Indeed, we use the concept of agent connectedness to provide new sufficient conditions for backward induction. More generally, the concept of agent connectedness allows to characterise players as persons or institutions that change over time. Dynamic games thus described lend themselves to more plausible application in economics and the social sciences.

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Irvine, Liz
Consciousness as one or more natural kinds: Pluralism vs. Eliminativism
This is an attempt to answer the question of whether consciousness, or subtypes of consciousness, are natural kinds. By looking at essentialist models of natural kinds, Boyd’s (1991, 1999) Homeostatic Property Cluster theory, and Brigandt’s (2003) suggestion of Investigative Kind Concepts, it will be argued that at best, consciousness refers to a plurality of natural kinds. However, it will be argued the way consciousness ‘splits’ into non-arbitrary kinds, clusters or research concepts is so fine-grained that these kinds are best described in lower level scientific language than as kinds of consciousness. Concepts of consciousness also fail to offer useful guidance and motivation for scientific research, and are in fact often only tacked to the products of cognitive science research. Finally, this provides an empirically motivated argument for the elimination of the concepts of consciousness from scientific (as well as philosophical) research.

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Ivanova, Milena
More worries for structural realism: a dilemma from the relativized a priori
I examine implications for structural realism of Michael Friedman’s view about relativized a priori principles. Friedman’s argument implies that there is structural preservation of constitutive principles in theory change, which suggests that the structural realist should be committed to these principles, given that they satisfy their criterion of ontological commitment. Since these principles are not regarded as representing physical structure, I argue that a dilemma arises for the structural realist. Either a distinction between mathematical structures that represent and mathematical structures that do not represent needs to be drawn, in order to block the structural realist from ontologically committing to relativized a priori principles, or the structural realist must ontologically commit to relativized a priori principles. Due to the dynamical nature of relativized a priori principles, the first option is untenable. The second option reveals implications for structural realism but also problems for Friedman’s view.  

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Kingma, Elselijn
Function and dysfunction: why aetiological accounts of function are not normative
Aetiological analyses are considered the preferred approach to biological functions. Some philosophers of medicine use accounts of function to support an analysis of health and disease. This paper does the converse; it presents examples of diseases as test cases for analyses of (dys)function. This reveals, first, that function-claims in philosophy of biology are unrealistically simplistic, and, second, that aetiological analyses fail to be normative.

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Knox, Eleanor
Emergence in Physics: Abstraction and Explanation
It has become commonplace for both physicists and philosophers of physics to refer to certain physical phenomena, or the theories that describe them as ‘emergent’, meaning that they possess some interesting degree of novelty or autonomy when compared to some lower level of theory (and phenomena).
However, no good characterisation of ‘emergence’ exists. I argue that one attempted account, in terms of multiple realizability, cannot possibly work because it cannot distinguish between mere abstraction and a genuinely novel description. However, a similar distinction (between mere abstraction and novel explanation) arises in various debates over explanation. These may point the way to a more robust characterisation of emergence.

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Kon, Maria
A Metaphysics of Non-Individuals for Quantum Mechanics
Although Krause considers a metaphysics of non-individuals to be advantageous in the development and explanation of quantum mechanics, such metaphysics has not been developed in detail. Following Krause’s bottom-up approach, I set forth a metaphysics of non-individuals that (1) makes non-individuals the fundamental entities and (2) includes some accounts of individuation and distinguishability applicable to quanta, particularly to the behaviours of bosons in the same state and entangled fermions. I assume a particle interpretation and focus on a particular property theory, namely trope bundle theory. Through an examination of tropes’ particularity, I show that our property theory can fulfil (1). Using Huggett and Imbo’s notion of approximate distinguishability, I develop our property theory to fulfil (2). To do so, I specify compresence and refer to Leibniz’s types of individuality and distinguishability. Finally, I apply our theory to bosons and fermions to show that (2) is fulfilled.

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Ladyman, James
The Two-State Vector Formalism, Weak Measurement and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
The two state vector formalism of quantum mechanics is used when measurements are being made on a system that is post-selected as well as pre-selected. So-called ‘weak measurements’ can be made on such systems. One way to model this is to consider their state at a time to be based on the time-evolution forwards in time of their initial pre-selected state, and on the time-evolution backwards in time of their final post-selected state. Lev Vaidman argues that scenarios involving weak measurement make the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics unviable. However, he interprets the backwards evolving state vector as a fiction used for book-keeping in the context of his Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this paper, I explain the two-state formalism and weak measurement in elementary terms and discuss the propects for an interpretation of quantum mechanics that treats both state vectors as on a par.

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Lange, Marc
Conservation Laws in Scientific Explanations: Constraints or Coincidences?
A conservation law in physics can be either a /constraint/ on the kinds of interaction there could be or a /coincidence/ of the kinds of interactions there actually are. This is an important, unjustly neglected distinction. Only if a conservation law constrains the possible kinds of interaction can a derivation from it constitute a scientific explanation despite failing to describe the causal/mechanical details behind the result derived. This conception of the relation between “bottom-up” scientific explanations and one kind of “top-down” scientific explanation is motivated by several examples from classical and modern physics.

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Lefevere, Merel
Disunifying ontological unification
One of the problems for unification is that it can pose a formal constraint on the research process. Mäki opposes this worry by distinguishing derivational and ontological unification. Derivational unification, as we know it by Friedman or Kitcher, is the ratio between the number of premises and the number of conclusions; ontological unification is the assumption that a set of phenomena is unified if they share the same ontic foundations.
I believe however that any unification process is by necessity ontological, although it can have different origins: it can originate from the imposed law or it can be based on common grounds that are not necessarily lawlike. I want to distinguish a top-down and a bottom-up. In order to distinguish those two types, I will take Hempel’s expectability approach into account.

This approach tackles the worry of unification as a formal constraint and will broaden the usability of unification as an explanatory virtue.

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Lehmkuhl, Dennis
Spacetime Matters. On Super-Substantivalism, General Relativity and Unified Field Theories 
In recent years, metaphysicians have revived an old position about the relationship between space and time on the one hand and matter on the other hand: super-substantivalism. The position claims that only spacetime is fundamental, and that material systems are only aspects of spacetime. 
I argue that General Relativity allows for a modest but not a radical form of super-substantivalism, but that Unified Field theories allow for even the most radical forms. 
At the same time, I call for caution: not every unified field theory will find its most natural interpretation in the form of radical super-substantivalism. Indeed, I argue that what is normally called the programme of a unified field theory really consists of three conceptually independent programmes: that of a unified field theory (in the narrow sense), that of a complete field theory and that of a geometrised field theory. Only the latter relates directly to super-substantivalism.

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Leuridan, Bert
Constitutive relations, Woodward-invariance and symbiosis
Mechanisms are commonly defined such that a mechanism’s higher-level behaviour is ‘realized by’ the organized behaviour of its lower-level parts. Carl Craver’s Explaining the Brain (OUP, London, 2007) provides one of the most elaborate accounts of mechanisms available today. According to Craver, the parts’ behaviours can be characterized by means of Woodward-invariant generalizations. Also according to Craver, the realization-relation is constitutive, not causal (since it is symmetric, synchronic, and involves parts and wholes). He considers mutual manipulability, together with ‘Glennan’s law’, as characteristic for these non-causal constitutive relations and as a condition for constitutive relevance.
I will show that mutual manipulability and Glennan’s law do not provide a sufficient condition for non-causal constitutive relevance. First, depending on the definition of invariance, mutual manipulability may imply invariance. Second, symbiotic relations in ecology may satisfy both ‘mutual manipulability’ and Glennan’s law whereas the symbiotic relations are causal.

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Lewens, Tim
Species, Essences and Explanation
There is a fairly widespread consensus in both biology itself and in the philosophy of biology that species do not have intrinsic essences. This talk considers, and rejects, two potential responses available to the essentialist. First, the anti-essentialist consensus sometimes assumes that the pheneticist account of species (according to which species are groups of organisms which are united by some form of all-things-considered resemblance) has been shown untenable. Pheneticism is not as dead as some make out: even so, I argue that not even pheneticism entails that species have intrinsic essences. Second, it is tempting to say that a given organism has thick skin, a trunk and so forth because it is an elephant.
Michael Devitt believes that this explanatory role of species membership mandates an essentialist view of some kind. Here I show how the explanatory role of species membership can be retained, even with a transition to a populational, anti-essentialist conception of species.

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Lewis, Peter J.
The Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics: Another many-worlds theory in denial?
The Transactional Interpretation (TI) is a local hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics that gets around Bell’s theorem by positing causal influences that travel backwards in time. However, the TI has been forcefully criticized by Maudlin; in fact I argue that the force of Maudlin’s criticisms has been underestimated, and that none of the extant responses are adequate. The real lesson of Maudlin’s example, I contend, is that the TI must be reconceptualized so that parts of the macroscopic apparatus in his example can be included in the quantum analysis. I sketch a way this might be done. However, on this reinterpretation of the TI superpositions of macroscopically distinct trajectories may arise, in which case the TI would reduce to a form of the many-worlds theory. I conclude by investigating ways that the TI might be defended against this form of objection by restricting the initial and final states.

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Lutz, Sebastian
On a Straw Man in the Philosophy of Science—A Defense of the Received View
I defend the Received View on scientific theories against a number of criticisms based on misconceptions. First, I dispute the claim that the Received View demands axiomatizations in first order logic, as well as the further claim that these axiomatizations must be exhaustive. Next, I contend that models are important according to the Received View.

Finally, I argue against the claim that the Received View is intended to make the concept of a theory more precise.

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Marasoiu, Andrei
The common heritage of Carnap and Quine in ontology
The paper attempts a reevaluation of the intricate relations between the consequences of Carnap and Quine’s philosophies of science for their respective ontologies. Carnap is sometimes portrayed as the enemy of ontologizing, while Quine is often seen as having made ontologizing a respectable philosophical discourse - this portrayal is misleading, suggesting the undesirable consequence that the historical connections between Quine and Carnap are lost. Focusing on the conceptual import of the views of the two authors, the paper seeks to identify the (as I shall argue) core position that Carnap and Quine shared in ontology. I will focus on the substantiation of the common core position of the two concerning the way philosophy of science shapes ontology. ____________________________________________________________________________

Marcellesi, Alexandre
Why interventionism does not save the special sciences
Several advocates of non-reductive physicalism have recently argued that adopting Woodward’s interventionist account of causation affords them a way out of Kim’s causal exclusion argument. I present an argument, advanced by Peter Menzies & Christian List, to the effect that supervenient properties can be causally relevant to other supervenient properties. I then raise two objections against this argument, and defend what I call the ‘supervenience requirement’, i.e. the requirement that the values of variables representing supervenient properties must themselves supervene upon the values of variables representing the corresponding base properties. My general conclusion is that adopting interventionism does not help solve the causal exclusion problem.

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Mayo-Wilson, Conor
The Problem of Piecemeal Induction
I argue that the piecemeal collection of data can increase underdetermination of theories by evidence. Specifically, I focus on the construction of causal theories in medicine and the social sciences, where such theories are often the product of synthesizing the results of hundreds of randomized controlled trials or observational studies (e.g. in order to determine the causes of heart disease). In this paper, I show, by way of proof of two theorems, that for any collection of variables V, there exist fundamentally different causal theories concerning V that cannot be distinguished unless all variables in V are simultaneously measured. Moreover, I show that these results can be generalized to a third that implies that, a priori, it is impossible to choose a series of small (in terms of number of variables) observational studies that will be most informative with respect to the causal theory describing the variables under investigation.

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McKay Illari, Phyllis and Jon Williamson
Are mechanisms regular?
Although there is broad agreement in the mechanisms literature that mechanisms are in some sense regular, or stable, there are few attempts to characterize this. But our ability to find mechanisms, and the use of mechanisms in understanding, predicting and controlling the world is dependent on them producing the phenomena they are responsible for in some regular or stable – or some such – way.

In this paper, we begin a characterization by disentangling different senses of regularity or stability that muddy the debate. We distinguish between a mechanism’s responsibility for a phenomenon, and its outcome pattern in producing that phenomenon. We argue that mechanisms are nomological machines, in Cartwright’s sense, generating an outcome-pattern. We apply Sandra Mitchell’s multidimensional approach to make further distinctions among outcome-pattern: scope, the extent of application of a mechanism; stability, the propensity of a mechanism to change in scope; and reliability, its reliability in outcome production.

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McKenzie, Kerry
What should the structuralist be fundamentalist about?
Ontic structural realism is often construed as a thesis about what is fundamental. Here I discuss what structuralists should take as fundamental when the relevant structure is group structure. Through a discussion of the quark model of hadrons I argue that the often-heard assertion that “the group structure is primary and the group representations constructed from this structure have a mere derivative status” both alienates other scientific realists, perhaps unnecessarily, and has yet to be conclusively defended. I suggest that endorsing an intermediate view in which group representations are ontologically promoted both makes contact with a more recognizable realism about the fundamental basis and yet also signals an interesting departure from more standard (Lewisian) views.

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Morganti, Matteo
Is there a compelling argument for ontic structural realism?
In recent years, the viability of so-called ontic structural realism (OSR) has been forcefully defended. Much less has been said, however, about why one should endorse OSR. This paper considers and rebuts two arguments that can be reconstructed from the literature. The first is based on an alleged metaphysical underdetermination besetting traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics. Against it, it is argued that i) there is no problematic underdetermination in the relevant domain; ii) the form of ‘agnosticism’ that leads to the conclusion that there is meshes badly with the endorsement of OSR; and iii) it is in any case unclear that (and, in case, how) the putative underdetermination would be avoided/broken by endorsing OSR. The second argument is that relations must be deemed ontologically fundamental given the crucial role of symmetries and invariants in the formulation of our best (physical) theories. It is contended that this underestimates the fundamental distinction between abstract and concrete properties.

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Muntean, Ioan
Explanation in string theories
The existing philosophical literature on string theory, although limited, emphasizes some of its virtues. In judging it, we should adopt a pluralistic view and not refute it only because it lacks prediction or confirmation (Cartwight, Frigg, Rickles). I show that string theory has a peculiar mechanism of explanation. I argue that explanation in string theory is only partially related to its unificatory power. From a broad perspective, string theory explains other theories (the Standard Model and General Relativity) as its low energy limit, explains spacetime, and explains its own incompleteness. I focus here mainly on the latter two. I show that spacetime, its topology and its dimensionality are explained via a combination of mathematical explanations and physical constraints.  String theory provides explanations to facts which “brute” in other theories, but does it answer the right “why” questions with the right resources? Explanation (C) is, I hypothesize, a new type of explanation typical for a candidate to a “theory of everything”.

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Murray, Gemma
Is quantum mechanics about quantum information?
In this paper I provide a reading of an interpretation of orthodox quantum mechanics as a principle theory about quantum information advocated by Bub in several recent papers.

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Parker, Matt
The Cantorian Hegemony
It is a commonplace of mathematics textbooks that Cantor discovered the correct notion of cardinal number, the number of distinct elements in a collection. Two sets have the same cardinal number if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between their elements, and Euclid’s assertion that the whole is greater than the part (Common Notion 5) is a mistake. It is true of course for finite sets, but not among the infinite, where it has been a great source of paradox and prejudice. Cantor himself often took a dogmatic tone on this point (e.g., Cantor 1915), and Gödel (1983) argued explicitly that Cantor’s is the uniquely correct account of cardinalty. More recently, however, there have been attempts to construct alternative theories of size that respect Common Notion 5 (Katz 1981; Benci and Di Nasso 2003). One possibility is to extend the ‘greater’ relation from the finite sets to pair infinite sets with their proper subsets, and then extend it further using order extension theorems (Parker 2009). The question is what properties a relation of ‘greater in number’ should have and whether any extension theorems can guarantee them. I will give a cautious assessment of the results and prospects of this approach, defending it from recent criticisms by Mancosu (2009), and I will argue briefly against Gödelian absolutism in favour of conceptual pluralism.

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Pashby, Tom
Relational New Clothes:  A Critical Look at Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics
Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics (RQM) claims to dissolve the notorious measurement problem inherent in the conventional formulation of quantum mechanics by relaxing the notion of of state so that properties of a system are meaningless unless referred to a particular observer. In adopting this view, he takes his inspiration from Einstein’s 1905 reconception of simultaneity as a relative notion.  I claim that RQM fails to be a novel solution to the measurement problem since Rovelli’s interpretative scheme is essentially equivalent to Everett’s relative state interpretation.  The analogy with special relativity is used to suggest that the Everettian schema stands in relation to RQM roughly as Minkowski’s space-time theory does to Einstein’s original proposal.  In his defense Rovelli might object that recently he has come to favour a subjectivist interpretation of probability, but I argue that doing so would undermine the basis of his original proposal.

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Pâslaru, Viorel
Ecological Explanation, Mechanisms, and Laws: Biogeography’s Mechanistic Approach
The Theory of Island Biogeography by MacArthur and Wilson is offered as an example of nomological approach in ecology, with the species-area relationship being an example of ecological law. I argue that the nomological interpretation of this canonical work of theoretical ecology does not capture significant aspects of explanatory strategy of MacArthur and Wilson. I maintain that the theory of island biogeography employs a mechanistic approach for explaining the species-area relationship. I show that the analytical and graphical models that MacArthur and Wilson present are models of a biogeographical mechanism responsible for the orderly relationship between species numbers and island area. A centerpiece of their mechanistic approach is an analog of the analytic and synthetic experimental strategies used to establish what components, organization and properties of components are relevant. Based on this analysis, I show that the nomological perspective is not sufficient to account for the nature of explanation in ecology.

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Paternotte, Cedric
What preferences explain cooperation?
In cooperative dilemma, agents’ action can only be explained by assuming that they have ‘social’ preferences (i.e. that take the others’ preferences in account). However many different sets of preferences can be used to explain cooperative behaviour. How then are we to choose between different explanations? As an alternative to game-theoretic accounts that postulate an infinite number of unjustified preferences to explain only a handful of behaviours, I present a model of rational cooperation that only postulates a small number of social preferences and rather locates the variety of observed behaviours in the different degrees of agents’ beliefs about each other. I show that this model, despite its greater simplicity, retains much predictive and explanatory power. The problem of determining which set of preferences and beliefs explain choices in interaction can be partly solved by resorting to ontological economy, empirical support and adequate modelling.

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Peters, Dean
Is the miasma theory of disease a counterexample for “partial realism”?
‘Partial realism’ is a catch-all term for positions within scientific realism which argue that only certain elements of scientific theories are essential to their predictive successes, and that these elements are conserved in successor theories, despite apparently radical theory change. The miasma theory of disease holds that certain diseases are caused by atmospheric pollution. The explanatory appeal of this theory is that it posits a common mechanism behind disparate empirical regularities, including the connections between marshes/malaria and faecal contamination/cholera. The prima facie case for it as a counterexample is that (a) the theory (partially) motivated Victorian-era sanitary reforms in Britain, which did successfully put a halt to cholera epidemics; and (b) the mechanism of atmospheric transmission of disease is essential to this putative success, but is not retained in subsequent successor theories. I argue that, despite these initial appearances, miasma theory fails as a counterexample on several counts.

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Pooley, Oliver
Relativity and the Passage of Time
Is the passage of time compatible with relativistic physics? On one view it is because (i) time’s passage is simply the successive occurrence of events and (ii) relativistic spacetimes contain events occurring in succession. What if time’s passage consists in every future event becoming momentarily present before moving ever further into the past? On a second view, this notion of passage is compatible with relativity because relativity is compatible with a global Now and a metaphysically preferred foliation of spacetime. The first view does not take temporal passage seriously. The second view does not take relativity seriously. This talk explores the prospects for views that seek to take both seriously. I review recent work by Brad Skow (on a relativistic version of the Moving Spotlight theory) and John Earman (on relativistic versions of Growing Block views of time) and relate the question to the machinery of Branching Spacetimes.

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Raftopoulos, Athanassios
Is the Perception of Colour Cognitively Penetrable?
Macpherson discusses Delk and Fillenbaum’s (1965) experiments and claims that the experience of colors can be cognitively penetrated. She argues that the strategies proponents of the cognitive impenetrability of perception use to rebut such counterexamples do not work. These strategies consist either in arguing that there is no difference in phenomenal character but only a difference in the judgments based on experience, or that while the experiences differ in phenomenal character this change is not caused by the cognitive penetration of experience but by a change in perceptual processing owing to pre-perceptual attention.

In this paper, I argue, first, that Macpherson misinterprets Pylyshyn’s views regarding the content of early vision and cognitive impenetrability. Then, I examine the Delk and Fillenbaum’s experiments and argue that they involve memory and object-centered attention that occur after early vision and, thus, do not entail that color experience is cognitively penetrated. Finally, I discuss the reasons why Macpherson thinks that the strategies for defending the cognitive impenetrability of early vision fail and argue that the results are explained by appealing to the role of post-perceptual object-centered attention.

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Reutlinger, Alexander
Getting Rid of Interventions
James Woodward claims that his analysis of any causal notion necessarily relies on other causal notions. One prominent causal notion used in the analysans is the notion of an intervention. For instance, Woodward’s definition of a direct type-level cause depends on the notion of an intervention: X directly causes Y iff there is a possible intervention on X that changes Y (Woodward 2003: 55). Some of the literature – especially, on causation, laws, mechanistic explanation, and mental causation – treats “possible interventions” as being completely unproblematic. I will argue that Woodward is wrong: First, I will present a counterexample to the claim that interventions are necessary for analyzing causation, discussed by Woodward himself. Reacting to the counterexample, Woodward requires interventions to be merely logically possible. Then, I present four arguments against logically possible interventions. I conclude that when analyzing the meaning of causal claims we best get rid of interventions.

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Roberts, Bryan W.
Time reversal and the symmetry of nothing
Before we can decide if time is “handed,” we must define what it means to “reverse time”. This paper shows how such a definition may be derived from symmetry considerations, in the context of quantum theory. I first show that the received argument for the antiunitarity of time-reversal, which appeals to the definition of time reversal in classical mechanics, falls short of its goal. This received argument has been defended by Craig Callender and others. I then prove that antiunitarity can still be established through the adoption of a symmetry principle, which amounts to the assumption that there is no preferred direction in spacetime. Finally, I show how the same principle can be used to recover the standard time-reversal and space-time-reversal operators in classical Hamiltonian mechanics as well. I conclude by arguing that we do indeed have good reason to adopt such a principle, and hence these definitions of time reversal.

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Saatsi ,Juha & Peter Vickers
Laudan’s ‘Confutation’ 30 Years On: Looking Back, Looking Forward
We reflect on three critical issues in the scientific realism debate in light of Larry Laudan’s seminar paper ‘A Confutation of Convergent Realism’ (1981) and the literature following it. These three issues are (i) the nature of historical evidence, (ii) the role played by success of science, and (iii) the nature of the theory-world relationship that realism requires. By looking at Laudan’s perspective on these issues and how the debate has evolved over the past 30 years it is possible to identify some important outstanding issues and some emerging themes to guide future research.

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Schindler, Samuel
How good a guide to the reliability of data is their replicability?
The rationale of replicability seems to be this: the more similar a replicating experiment (E*) to the experiment whose reliability is at issue (E), the fewer will be the possible targets for criticising E* for leaving out important factors which were necessary for producing the results of E (or for including factors which prohibited the reproduction of E’s results). As this paper will point out, replication is neither necessary nor sufficient for data reliability: there are experiments that have been replicated but were nevertheless deemed erroneous, and there are experiments which were never replicated but enjoy high respectability. Although, in the face of this, replicability could be viewed at least as a heuristic guide to the reliability of data, even then it faces two severe problems: firstly, it is often difficult to determine how similar E* really is to E, and secondly, replication attempts increase the likelihood of discordant evidence.

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Smart, Benjamin
A Powerful Account of a Lazy World
Joel Katzav claims dispositional essentialism is incompatible with one of our most fundamental physical theories; namely the principle of least action (PLA). Although Brian Ellis responds to these objections by considering laws to be essential properties of natural kinds, we are unhappy with this conception, and attempt to answer Katzav’s objections by appealing to dispositional properties without the commitment to a natural kind-orientated metaphysics of laws. Although it seems that if there is a PLA disposition to be instantiated by particulars, it would have to be cosmic coincidence that all particulars instantiate this property, by showing that if a single particular instantiates the kind of property required to explain the PLA it is metaphysically necessary that all particulars in the system instantiate that same property, we conclude that Bird’s account is not subject to cosmic coincidence after all, rendering his explanation of this law of universal lethargy an effective one.

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Sus, Adan
On the dynamical explanation of inertia
It has been claimed that inertia, contrary to what happens in other theories like Special Relativity, receives a dynamical explanation in General Relativity. The ground for this is that the geodesic principle, arguably the gravitational equivalent of the law of inertia, stating that free bodies move along the geodesics of the spacetime metric, can be derived from Einstein’s field equations. This claim can be challenged in different ways that question whether the status of inertia in General Relativity is in fact physically different from its status in previous spacetime theories. In this paper I state precisely the original argument, discuss the different objections and propose a formulation that is free from the problems of the original claim.

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Teh, Nicholas J.
Gravity and Gauge
In the philosophy of physics literature, there has been much discussion of the hole argument in general relativity (GR), on the one hand, and the ontological status of the connection in gauge field theory (GFT) on the other. Given the close formal similarity (but not in general identity) between the two, it is interesting to consider why the standard strategy used to defuse the hole argument in GR, viz. Leibniz equivalence, is not taken to carry over to the GFT case. In this paper, we study this disanalogy between GR and GFT by focusing on a discrete parameter d such that the two theories are formally identical for a particular value of d. The parameter d is nothing but the spacetime dimension of the theory: it has been common knowledge since the 1960s that GR and GFT formally coincide for d=(2+1); this is called (2+1) Chern-Simons theory. By studying the intersection of two theories in their space of possible worlds (or “models”), we hope to learn something not only about how they are different, but also about the root of this difference. We also study how “close” the d=2+1 and the d=3+1 worlds are to each other and consider the relevance of this question for quantum gravity.

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Thebault, Karim
Three Denials of Time in the Interpretation of General Relativity
Debate over the status of time within the spacetime structure of general relativity turns on the manner in which we interpret the Hamiltonian functions which arise in the canonical formalism. It is often claimed that since these functions are first class constraints they should be considered gauge generators according to the standard Dirac procedure. Under this interpretation all evolution would be unphysical and all impression of dynamics illusory. Barbour (among others) argues this position to be incoherent and, whilst still denying time in general relativity in a more restricted sense, insists that the Hamiltonian generates genuine physical change. Drawing on the analysis of Thiemann (2007) I will argue that both these timeless interpretations neglect technical subtleties which render the role of the Hamiltonian more deeply nuanced than has been appreciated. Time should still be denied but this denial can only reasonably be made in a third and essentially different sense.

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Tucker, Aviezer
The epistemology of the Historical Sciences and Underdetermination
Epistemically, the historical sciences: Geology, Paleontology, Evolutionary Biology, Phylogeny, Cosmology, Historical Linguistics, Archaeology, and History, share a general model of inference of common cause tokens from multiple sources of evidence that preserve similar information about their common causes: phylogeny and evolutionary biology infer the origins of species from information preserving similarities between species, DNAs and fossils; comparative historical linguistics infers the origins of languages from information preserving aspects of exiting languages and theories about the mutation and preservation of languages in time; archaeology infers the common causes of present material remains; and Cosmology infers the origins of the universe. By contrast, the Theoretical Sciences are not interested in any particular token event, but in types of events.

I examine three recent metaphysical debates about history and the historical science, Whether present evidence overdetermine or underdetermine its past causes, whether historical causes typically underdetermine their effects, and to what extent is history contingent or necessary.

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Turner, Derek D.
Out of Sync? The Molecular Clock and the Fossil Record
Traditionally, paleontologists have used the fossil record to estimate the timing of evolutionary events, such as the diversification of the major animal phyla. In the 1990s, scientists studying molecular clocks began to argue that the estimates based on fossils were wrong, and that some evolutionary events happened much earlier than the fossil record seems to indicate. The ensuing debate about the use of molecular clock evidence in paleontology is the latest episode in an ongoing discussion about the degree of incompleteness of the fossil record. Although it is tempting for philosophers of science to take a purely epistemic approach to this kind of case-perhaps treating the scientific work as a search for common causes of the fossil and molecular data-we’d be missing out on something important if we did that. The debate crucially concerns the disciplinary autonomy of paleontology.

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Veal, Damian
How not to be a naturalist about mathematics
 Pace John Burgess, the debate between nominalists and platonists over the existence of mathematical objects cannot be resolved simply by agreeing to take the literal meaning of mathematical statements at face value. If the naturalist is to be understood as a citizen of the scientific community, as Burgess suggests, his attitude should not be that of unconditional obeisance to scientific speech conventions but rather one of critical inquiry in which the answers of science are once again regarded as problems from the point of view of philosophy. This, it is suggested, is the special task of the philosopher within the scientific community. I call this approach critical naturalism in distinction from Burgess’s quiescent variety. While quiescent naturalism threatens to close off scientifically and philosophically important questions about the nature of mathematics from the outset, critical naturalism seeks to formulate such questions precisely such that they may prove empirically tractable.

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Vineberg, Susan
Mathematical Explanation and Inference
This paper discusses the recent ‘enhanced’ Indispensability Argument, which claims that we ought to accept the existence of mathematical objects on the basis of the indispensable explanatory role that mathematics plays in science, and Baker’s cicada example in which he claims mathematics does play such a role. Drawing from work on scientific explanation, it is suggested here that there are different forms of explanation involving mathematics, and that these must be distinguished in sorting out the commitments of the various uses of mathematics in explaining physical phenomena. It is argued that while mathematics may play an indispensable role in a kind of explanation of certain physical facts, the mathematical objects involved therein do not have the sort of difference making role that would ground their acceptance.

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Votsis, Ioannis
Heat in Inter-Theory Relations
In this talk I consider what the modern kinetic theory of heat managed to salvage from the outdated caloric theory and whether the inter-theoretic relations between the two theories support a realist view of science. If the realists are right, not only did certain theoretical parts of the caloric theory survive into our modern conception of heat but these parts are in fact solely responsible for the success the caloric theory enjoyed. I test this claim against two of the caloric theory’s presumed successes, namely the explanations (i) that matter expands by heating and contracts by cooling and (ii) that a special kind of heat (i.e. latent heat) is involved in changes of state.

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Williamson, Jon
Connections between logic and decision-making
While logic and decision-making are often viewed as quite separate, in this paper I explore some ways in which the two constrain each other, focusing on Bayesian decision theory and a Bayesian semantics for probabilistic logic.

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Wray, K. Brad
Optimism and the History and Future of Science
Anti-realists often appeal to the pessimistic induction to support their view. Recently, some realists have attempted to develop optimistic inductions over the history of science. They believe that, given the history of science, we are warranted in being optimistic about attaining theoretical knowledge. I examine two recently developed optimistic inductions in support of realism, Paul Thagard’s and Robert Nola’s. I argue that these optimistic inductions fail to establish what they need to establish in order to effectively blunt the concerns raised by anti-realists. The history of science does not offer adequate support for their claims to theoretical knowledge. Further, I argue that anti-realism is based on an optimistic view about the prospects of future science. Thus, I show that even given very optimistic assumptions about the future of science, we have reason to believe that our current best theories probably misrepresent the world in significant ways.