Norton for Everyone? The Material Theory of Induction and Beyond

Norton for Everyone?
October 27 -28, 2018 
Center for Philosophy of Science
1008 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA USA

Of potential interest to participants: On Friday, October 26, 3:30PM: Hasok Chang will speak in the HPS Lecture Series.

Our ability to make inductive inferences is what powers the success of science. But what makes such inductive inferences work? John Norton's new book manuscript, The Material Theory of Induction, develops a detailed new answer to this question, with broad implications for the philosophy of science. This conference brings together the latest thinking about ideas in Norton's book, beginning with an opening lecture (Friday afternoon), followed by a day of talks (Saturday) and a day of book-discussion seminars (Sunday).

Preview the book: https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/material_theory/material.html

PROGRAM

Saturday Talks, Oct. 27
1008 CL

8:00

Breakfast

9:00

Speaker 1: Elay Shech (Auburn University)
“Historical Induction Meets the Material Theory”

9:50

Speaker 2: Molly Kao (University of Montreal)
“Induction and Deduction in the Context of Pursuit”

10:40

Coffee Break

11:00

Speaker 3: Jonathan Livengood (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) “Debunking Induction” 

11:50

Speaker 4: Leah Henderson (University of Groningen) “Can we go local about induction?”

12:40

Lunch on your own

2:00

Speaker 5: Richard Dawid (University of Stockholm)
“The Material Inductivist, the Bayesian, and Complete Ignorance”

2:50

Speaker 6: Michel Janssen (University of Minnesota)
"The trouble with I in IBE” 

3:40

Coffee Break

4:00

Speaker 7: Wendy Parker (Durham University)
"Inferring the best explanation of 20th century climate change"

4:50

Speaker 8: David Wallace (University of Southern California) “Quantum inductive logic and the Everett interpretation”

Sunday Seminars, Oct. 28
1008 CL

8:00

Breakfast

9:00

Part I: The Proposal 
Led by Balazs Gyenis (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and Eric Hatleback (Carnegie Mellon University) 

10:30

Coffee Break

10:45

Part II: The Virtue Critique
Led by Siska De Baerdemaeker (University of Pittsburgh), Dasha Pruss (University of Pittsburgh), and Chris Smeenk (Western University)

12:15

Lunch on your own

1:30

Part III: The Bayes Critique
Led by Jonathan Bain (New York University) and Nora Boyd (Siena College)

3:00

Coffee Break

3:15

Part IV: The Puzzle Cases 
Led by Bryan Roberts (London School of Economics) and Jeremy Butterfield (University of Cambridge)

4:45

Concluding Remarks

5:00

Adjourn

Organizing Committee: 
John Earman, Bryan W. Roberts, Elay Shech 

For more info: 
Joyce McDonald [email protected], Bryan W. Roberts [email protected], Elay Shech [email protected]

See https://philevents.org/event/show/65790 for corresponding Special Issue of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A