Seminar Spring '02 PHI 539 Readings, Presentations, Announcements

Bas C. van Fraassen

ANNOUNCEMENTS Paul Teller (UC-Davis) will give a talk in the seminar, Tuesday March 26; connected with either "Structural realism and the phenomena" or "Weyl's Paradox and Carnap's Lost World". Two of Paul's papers are in the Marx Hall Library folder for the seminar: "Twilight of the Perfect Model Model" and "Whither Constructive Empiricism?"

I invite presentations: specifically commentaries on the papers to be presented in Parts Two and Three.

Readings will be available for xeroxing in the Marx Hall Library

this document will be updated by and by ...

Part One. Representation

1. Representation, general and pictorial

A puzzle concerning perspectives and frames of reference; philosophical views on representation and picturing (e.g. Nelson Goodman)

ReadingDominic Lopes, Understanding Pictures
Selections from Introduction, Chapter 3, and Chapter 6

2. Development of linear one-point perspective

What is the 'content' of a perspective?

Reading: Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance, selection pp. 89-115 from chapter "Brunelleschi and the invention of perspective"
Erwin Panovsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, pp. 27-41 +notes pp. 75-113.

3. Projective geometry

Reading: Morris Klein, "Prfnb ojective geometry", pp. 622-641 in J. R. Newman, The World of Mathematics, volume 1.

4. Frames of reference

Galileo's and Descartes' foundations for modern physics. Galilean relativity

Reading: Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, Chapters 6-7 about Galileo
Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, pp. 94-101 and 118-129
R. B. Lindsay & H. Margenau, Foundations Of Physics, selection from Ch. 3

5. A look at 'perspectives' in 20th century physics

Reading: David Bohm, The Special Theory of Relativity, 42-60, 147-154, 172-184.

Part Two. Scientific realism

6. The Visible and Invisible World

Criteria of empirical adequacy; "observation by instruments"; how can (abstract) models can relate to the (concrete) phenomena?

7. Weyl's Paradox and Carnap's Lost World

Russell's and Carnap's attempts at structuralist accounts of science

For this session, or for a time before it, I would like to have someone present on 'the essential indexical' (texts by John Perry and/or David Lewis,
NB: it is possible that #7 will be moved to after #8, depending on how much time is taken up by the preceding.

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SPRING BREAK SPRING BREAK

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8. Structural Realism and the Phenomena

The new structural realism (recent version of scientific realism); scientific revolution and theory change as touchstone for philosophical views of science

This session is on March 26 and will have a guest presentation by Paul Teller.

Part Three. Metaphysical realism

9. Metaphysical Oblivion: Realism's Return

Putnam's 'model-theoretic argument', renamed by David Lewis as 'Putnam's paradox'. Lewis' philosophy of science

10. Metaphysics Abandoned: Realism Evaded

A non-realist response to Putnam's Paradox

11. Structure and Perspective

Thesis: Both individual and scientific opinion about what the world is like is fully and adequately expressed only in indexical language that embodies a specific perspective.