Logic List Mailing Archive

"The Authority of Science", Sydney (Australia), 8-10 April 2011 [Deadline: 15 Oct 2010]

The Authority of Science 8-10 April 2011
University of Sydney, Australia
Abstracts due: 15th October 2010
http://sydney.edu.au/foundations_of_science/events/authority_of_science.shtml
4th Sydney-Tilburg conference on the philosophy of science

Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University, The 
Netherlands Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science, University of Sydney, 
Australia

From climate change to the classification of illegal drugs the extent to which 
scientific opinion should prevail over other voices in determining public 
policy is hotly contested. What is it about the nature of science that confers 
epistemic authority on scientific opinion, and what are the scope and limits of 
that authority?

The aim of this conference is to direct the attention of philosophers of 
science and epistemologists back to this question, and to remind ourselves that 
the founders of philosophy of science saw this as a fundamental question for 
scientific epistemology. We believe that recent developments in philosophy of 
science offer new resources to address the question in ways that have direct 
relevance to the practice of contemporary science and its application in public 
policy.

Keynote Speakers:

Sir Peter Gluckman FRS (Head, Centre for Human Evolution, Adaptation and 
Disease, Liggins Institute, University of Auckland and New Zealand Prime 
Minister's Chief Science Advisor) Christian List (Professor of Political 
Science and Philosophy, London School of Economics) Theodore L. Brown 
(Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Suitable subjects for submitted papers would include:

History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) perspectives
Epistemology of complex systems modelling
Epistemology of highly mediated observation
Philosophical foundations of statistics and decision theory
Epistemology of translational research
Integrating philosophy of science into scientific practice
Philosophy of science in science education

Please send abstracts to rodney.taveira@sydney.edu.au by 15 October 2010.