Rethinking Formal Methods in Philosophy

With which methods should a competent, contemporary philosopher be familiar? Argumentation, analysis, and creative synthesis have always been in the philosopher's toolkit, but there is a rising confluence between the methods of contemporary philosophy and those  formal methods more traditionally associated with the sciences. While "logic" has been essentially synonymous with "formal methods" in philosophy for many decades, increasingly philosophers are using probability and decision theory, statistics, and even experimental design and computer simulation. This two-day workshop on this new conception of philosophical method will bring together diverse philosophers into conversation about the present and future status of formal and mathematical methods in philosophy, their institutionalization in graduate (and undergraduate) pedagogy, and how these changes now reflect and will engender evolving relationships between philosophy and other disciplines.

Two special features of this workshop:

• Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) is the official workshop blogger.
• The evening before the workshop, Cailin O'Connor (UC Irvine) will give a public lecture on her new book (with James Weatherall), The Misinformation Age (Yale UP, 2019), with a book signing afterwards.

A dinner will be held at the Republic on 09/20 at 7pm. The cost for dinner is $30 for graduate students and $40 for non-student workshop attendees. Registrants who indicate an interest in attending the dinner will receive information via email regarding payment methods.

The following event website will be updated with further information regarding the workshop in the upcoming weeks: