5-6 Nov 2011
Notre Dame IN, U.S.A.
Dear Friends & Colleagues, This is an invitation to the twelfth annual Midwest PhilMath Workshop (MWPMW 12), to 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. What is different this year is that we'll be having both a special symposium Saturday morning and two related workshops on Thursday, November 3rd and Friday, November 4th. The special symposium Saturday morning is on The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning. It will feature talks by Alan Bundy of the Informatic School at Edinburgh, Lance Rips of the Psychology Department at Northwestern and Martin Monti of the Psychology Department at UCLA. The rest of the workshop program is given below and also at: http://philosophy.nd.edu/news/events/#Conferences The theme of the Thursday workshop is "Knowledge, Representation and Proof in the Modern Era", and the theme of the Friday workshop will be "Logic, Proof and Computation". See their programs and schedules below and also at: http://philosophy.nd.edu/news/events/#Conferences We're fortunate to have Mrs. Harriet Baldwin (baldwin.1@nd.edu) as the workshop manager 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 do so then by October 15th. Please also indicate to her whether you will be joining us for lunch and dinner Saturday and for lunch on Sunday (all as guests of the university). At that time, kindly also let her know if you have special dietary requirements. 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 the fall is off to a good start for you. I look forward to seeing you at MWPMW 12 and the other workshops in November. Cordially, Mic Detlefsen Director, MWPMW 12 "Knowledge, Representation and Proof in the Modern Era" An Ideals of Proof (IP) Workshop in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics Thursday, November 3, 2011 McKenna Hall, Room 210-214 PROGRAM 9:00am: Douglas Jesseph, Philosophy, University of South Florida "Leibniz on the Eliminability of Infinitesimals: Strategies for Finding Truth in Fiction" 10:20am: Andrew Arana, Philosophy, Kansas State University & Sebastien Maronne, Mathématiques, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse "Complexity and opacity in early modern geometry" 11:40am: Mary Domski, Philosophy, University of New Mexico "Descartes and Newton on the Mathematical Character of Natural Philosophy" LUNCH 1-2:20 (Morris Inn) 2:30pm: Emily Carson, Philosophy, McGill University "Sensibility, understanding and number in Kant" 3:50pm: Vincenzo DeRisi, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science "Proving an Axiom qua Axiom. On the mathematical epistemology of Gerolamo Saccheri" BREAK 5:15pm: Stephen Gaukroger, Philosophy, University of Sydney "Representation and Demonstration: The Roots of the Early-Modern Preoccupation with Representation" "Logic, Proof and Computation" An Ideals of Proof (IP) Workshop in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics Friday, November 4, 2011 McKenna Hall, Romm 201 9am: Sean Walsh, Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London & Walter Dean, Philosophy, University of Warwick: "Reversals and Sameness of Computational Resource" 10:20am: Richard Pettigrew, Philosophy, University of Bristol "Instrumental Nominalism and the Length of Proofs" 11:40am: Oran Magal, Philosophy, McGill University "The logical in mathematics, and the mathematical in logic" Lunch 1:00-2:20 (Morris Inn) 2:30pm: Chris Porter, Mathematics & Philosophy, University of Notre Dame "Algorithmic Randomness, Extensional Adequacy, and the Exemplary Ideal of Completeness" David McCarty: "Realism and Church's Thesis" 3:40pm: Gilles Dowek, Computer Science, INRIA, Paris "Simple type theory: the logical and the theoretical points of view" 5:00pm: Jouko Väänänen, Mathematics, University of Helsinki, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam. Visiting Professor, Philosophy, NYU "Dependence and independence in logic" Social hour: 7:00pm Dinner: 7:30pm The Twelfth Annual Midwest PhilMath Workshop (MWPMW 12) Saturday, Nov 5, 2011 University of Notre Dame Debartolo Hall, Room 129 Symposium: "The Nature of Mathematical Reasoning" 9am: Martin Monti, Psychology, UCLA "Language and structure-dependent cognition in the human brain" 10:05: Alan Bundy, Informatics, University of Edinburgh "What is a Proof?" 11:10: Lance Rips, Psychology, Northwestern University "Possible Number Systems" Lunch 12:30pm-1:55pm (Morris Inn) 2:00pm: Geoffrey Hellman, Philosophy, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities & Stewart Shapiro, Philosophy, The Ohio State University "A Categorical Point-Free Reconstruction of the Classical Continuum" 3:05pm: Roy Cook, Philosophy, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities: "Logicism, Complement and Separation" 4:10: Colin McLarty, Philosophy & Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University "Fermat's Last Theorem and Peano Arithmetic" 5:15: Daniel Sutherland, Philosophy, University of Illinois-Chicago "The Role of Enumeration in Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic" 6:30 Social Hour 7:15 Dinner (Morris Inn) The Twelfth Annual Midwest PhilMath Workshop (MWPMW 12) Sunday, Nov 5, 2011 University of Notre Dame Debartolo Hall, Room 129 9am: Jouko Väänänen, Mathematics, University of Helsinki, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam. Visiting Professor, Philosophy, NYU "Second order logic or set theory?" 10:05am: David McCarty, The Logic Program, Indiana University "Realism and Church's Thesis" 11:10am: Chris Pincock, Philosophy, University of Missouri "The Unsolvability of the Quintic: A Case Study in Abstract Mathematical Explanation" 12:15pm: Paola Cantu, CNRS, CEPERC, Université de Provence "An Argumentative Analysis of the Method of Ideal Elements in Mathematics" 1:30pm Lunch (Morris Inn)