4-6 Nov 2011
Notre Dame IN, U.S.A.
This is a second announcement of and invitation to the twelfth annual Midwest PhilMath Workshop (MWPMW 12). This will be held at Notre Dame the weekend of Saturday, November 5th and Sunday, November 6th. As usual, the plan is to schedule a full day of talks and discussions for Saturday and a half day for Sunday. Also as usual, there will be a workshop dinner Saturday evening, with all participants invited to attend as guests of the university. As part of this year's workshop, there will be a special symposium on "The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning". Featured speakers will include Pr. Lance Rips (Psychology, Northwestern), Pr. Martin Monti (Psychology, UCLA) and Pr. Alan Bundy (Informatics, Edinburgh). This year, the workshop will also meet in conjunction with my Ideals of Proof (IP) research group sponsored by the ANR in France. In connection with this, there will be two additional special workshops. The first will be a workshop featuring interactions between mathematics and philosophy in the modern era. This workshop will meet the day of Thursday, November 3rd. Confirmed speakers (with titles are): Andrew Arana & Sebastien Maronne: "Complexity and opacity in early modern geometry" Emily Carson: "Sensibility, understanding and number in Kant" Mary Domski: "Descartes and Newton on the Mathematical Character of Natural Philosophy" Vincenzo DeRisi: "Proving an Axiom qua Axiom. On the mathematical epistemology of Gerolamo Saccheri" Stephen Gaukroger, "Representation and Demonstration: The Roots of the Early-Modern Preoccupation with Representation" Douglas Jesseph: "Leibniz on the Eliminability of Infinitesimals: Strategies for Finding Truth in Fiction" The second is a more logic oriented workshop, which will meet the day of Friday, November 4th. The program for this workshop is not yet entirely set, but it is likely to include the following: Jouko Väänänen: TBA Richard Pettigrew: "The epistemological consequences of speed-up? Gilles Dowek: TBA John Mumma: "Uniformity versus relevance, words versus diagrams" Sean Walsh & Walter Dean: "Reverse mathematics, Hilbert's Program & Formalism" Mattia Petrolo & Alberto Naibo: "Negation as an ideality: From conservativeness to constructibility" Please consult the workshop website (http://philosophy.nd.edu/news/events/) for links that will take you to the MWPMW 12 pages. All information will be posted there as it becomes available. If you would like to give a talk during the Saturday or Sunday sessions, please email a pdf of your talk or substantial summary to Paddy (blanchette.1@nd.edu), Tim (bays.5@nd.edu), Curtis (cfranks@nd.edu) and me (mdetlef1@nd.edu). We would like to have all proposals for talks by September 1st so that we can set the program by September 10th. Talks should be 35--40 minutes, with 15--20 minutes left for discussion. We're fortunate to have Mrs. Harriet Baldwin (baldwin.1@nd.edu) as the workshop manager once again this year. Please contact her with any questions you may have concerning rooms, meals, etc.. She has booked a block of rooms for the workshop. Since there are other conferences going on the same weekend, demand for rooms may be high and it would thus be a good idea to reserve a room with Harriet as soon as possible. Please also indicate to her whether you will be joining us for lunch Saturday noon and dinner Saturday evening. When you do that you can also let her know of any special dietary requirements you may have. Finally, I'd ask that you share this announcement with others you know who might be interested, including both students and faculty. We are fortunate once again to have limited funds to help defray expenses for student participants coming from out of town whose departments do not have funds to cover their costs. These funds will generally take the form of subventions for lodging. If you are interested in applying for a subvention, please notify Mrs. Baldwin of that fact as soon as you can. Please also have an appropriate faculty member from your department email me to confirm that it cannot meet your expenses. That's it for now. I hope you're having a good spring, and I look forward to seeing you at MWPMW 12 in November. I'll be contacting you once more with final information. Cordially, Mic Detlefsen Director, MWPMW 12