10-12 April 2008
Call for Papers: Sydney-Tilburg conference on REDUCTION AND THE SPECIAL SCIENCES Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science 10-12 April 2008 http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/humanities/tilps/RSS2008/ ********************************************************************* KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: William Bechtel (UCSD), Craig Callender (UCSD), Paul Griffiths (Sydney), Kevin Hoover (Duke), Philip Pettit (Princeton) ORGANISERS: Mark Colyvan (Sydney), Stephan Hartmann (Tilburg), Maurice Schouten (Tilburg) and Katie Steele (Sydney) Science presents us with a variety of accounts of the world. While some of these accounts posit a deeper theoretical structure and fundamental entities, others do not. But which of these accounts is the right one? How should science conceptualize the world? And what is the relation between the various accounts? Opinions on these issues diverge wildly in philosophy of science. At one extreme are reductionists who argue that higher-level theories should, in principle, be incorporated in or eliminated by the basic level theory. Higher-level theories do not ultimately exhibit conceptual integrity or provide genuine explanations. At the other extreme are pluralists who take higher levels of description and explanation seriously and argue for their independence and indispensability. Our goal in this conference is to bring together representatives from as many viewpoints as possible in order to advance our understanding of this problem. We invite case studies from the natural, social and behavioural sciences as well as discussions of philosophical models of intertheoretic relations. We invite submissions of papers of up to 3000 words by 15 November 2007. Decisions will be made by 15 January 2008. GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS: A few travel bursaries for graduate students are available; if you wish to be considered please submit a short (tentative) travel budget and a CV together with your paper by 15 November 2007. Decisions will be made by 15 January 2008. BEST GRADUATE PAPER AWARD: We offer an award of 500 Euro for the best submitted paper by a graduate student. The winner will be announced on 15 January 2008. PUBLICATION: Revised versions of selected papers will be published in a special issue of Erkenntnis. The deadline for submission of the final version of the paper is 1 June 2008. The conference language is English.