MCMP Summer School Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students
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Program

Monday, 19 July

TimeTopic
14:00 - 15:00 Welcome (with Hannes Leitgeb and Christian List)
15:00 - 15:15 Info Session on the Master Program "Logic and Philosophy of Science"
15:15 - 15:30 Presentation of the Summer School
15:30 - 16:00 Get to Know Each Other
16:00 - 18:00 Evening Lecture by Rae Langton: Doing things with words in philosophical discussion: authority, gender, and empowerment

topTuesday, 20 July

TimeTopic
10:30 - 11:20 Lecture Stream I by Patricia Palacios: Emergence and Reduction in Science – Lecture 1
11:30 - 12:20 Lecture Stream I – Lecture 2
12:20 - 14:20 Lunch Break
14:20 - 14:50 Lecture Stream I – Exercise or discussion session
15:00 - 16:00

MCMP Fellows' talks
16:00 - 17:00 Social Event

topWednesday, 21 July

TimeTopic
10:30 - 11:20 Lecture Stream I – Lecture 3
11:30 - 12:20 Lecture Stream I – Lecture 4
12:20 - 14:20 Lunch Break
14:20 - 14:50 Lecture Stream I – Exercise or discussion session
Student Presentations
15:00 - 15:30 Imogen Rivers: Holes in the Hole Argument: Substantivalism and Symmetries
15:30 - 16:00 Mayra Huespe: Algebraic or Assertory Axioms? The thesis of Collapse in Ante Rem Structuralism
16:00 - 16:30 Lina Bendifallah: A Semantics for Inferentialism : Combining Formal Epistemology and Empirical Data
16:30 - 17:00 Sophie Nagler: Do We Mean the Same? A Use Theory of Meaning in n-sided Sequent Calculi

topThursday, 22 July

TimeTopic
10:30 - 11:20 Lecture Stream II by Alexandra Zinke: Suspension of Belief. Its Nature, Rationality and Logic – Lecture 1
11:30 - 12:20 Lecture Stream II – Lecture 2
12:20 - 14:20 Lunch Break
14:20 - 14:50 Lecture Stream II – Exercise or discussion session
15:00 - 16:00

MCMP Fellows' Talks
16:10 - 17:00 Round Table

topFriday, 23 July

TimeTopic
10:30 - 11:20 Lecture Stream II – Lecture 3
11:30 - 12:20 Lecture Stream II – Lecture 4
12:20 - 14:20 Lunch Break
14:20 - 14:50 Lecture Stream II – Exercise or discussion session
Student Presentations
15:00 - 15:30 Sophie Machavariani: How the Stability Theory of Belief Avoids the Problem of Conviction Based on Purely Statistical Evidence
15:30 - 16:00 Maria Buonaguidi: Naïve Comprehension in HYPE
16:00 - 16:30 Varvara Iakovleva: Can We Talk About Contradiction Without Negation?
16:30 - 17:00 Jiarui Qu: Epistemic Comparisons between Axiomatic Truth Theories using Interpretability
17:00 - 17:15 Wrap Up and Closing

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Abstracts

Rae Langton (University of Cambridge): Doing things with words in philosophical discussion: authority, gender, and empowerment

What you can do with your words depends on who you are, and how you are situated, including background patterns of authority. This applies to philosophical discussion, as to conversations anywhere. Since these patterns of authority are sometimes gendered, there can be gendered patterns of silence and empowerment, in the things we do, or fail to do, with words. Authority can evolve dynamically, following rules of accommodation (Lewis), with implications for epistemic injustice (Fricker) and ’the guru effect' (Sperber). I want to put a spotlight on this dynamic, as a force for ill, but also, potentially, for good.

Alexandra Zinke (University of Tübingen): Suspension of Belief. Its Nature, Rationality and Logic

We believe many things, and we disbelieve many others. With respect to most questions, however, we suspend belief. Some questions we haven’t considered yet, others are still under investigation, and yet others seem not to allow for a definite answer. We often suspend belief, and more importantly, we do so rationally. Doxastic suspension is ubiquitous.
While traditional epistemology has focused on the positive notions of belief and disbelief, or on graded belief, this lecture will explore the concept of suspension of belief. We will first analyze the nature of suspension and then discuss the normative profile of doxastic suspension. We will address questions such as: Is suspension of belief nothing but the absence of belief, or is it a sui generis mental attitude involving, e.g., some kind of neutral judgment or higher-order beliefs? When is it epistemically rational to suspend belief? How does suspension of belief relate to worldly or linguistic indeterminacy? And how can we understand rational action under suspension of belief? The third part of the lecture will examine the logic, or logics, of suspension. We will discuss classical attempts to formally represent suspension of belief within precise and imprecise Bayesianism, and raise the question whether there can be a unique formal representation of suspension. If time allows, we will apply the systematic results to theories of religious agnosticism and the conceptions of Cartesian and Pyrrhonian skepticism.

Recommended reading:

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Patricia Palacios (University of Salzburg/MCMP): Emergence and Reduction in Science

The topic of emergence and reduction is nowadays one of the liveliest areas of research in both science and philosophy. The reason for this is related with recent developments in a number of successful research programs within physics, biology, chemistry and social sciences. These developments have encouraged us to rethink the relationship between complex entities and their parts as well as the relationship between different theories and, in this way, to revise claims about reduction and emergence in science. In this course we will address issues concerning this topic from an inter-disciplinary perspective. We will begin with the study of contemporary classics that will allow us to grasp the concept of emergence and reduction, then move forward to analyse potential examples of emergence in physics, continue with the discussion of potential examples of emergence in biology, and lastly, consider possible examples of reduction in economics. The main goal of this course is to introduce students to recent discussions in emergence and reduction in different sciences.

Recommended reading:

  • Batterman, R. "The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence", Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Butterfield, J. "Less is Different: Emergence and Reduction Reconciled", Foundations of Physics, 41:1065–1135, 2011.
  • Guay, A. and Sartenaer, O. "A New Look at Emergence. Or When 'After' is Different", European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 6:297-322, 2016.
  • Hoover, K. "Idealizing Reduction: The Microfoundations of Macroeconomics", Erkenntnis, (1975-), 73(3):329-347.Nagel, E. "Issues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations", chapter 19 of M. A. Bedau and P. Humphreys, "Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science", MIT Press, 2008.
  • Palacios, P. "Phase Transitions: A Challenge for Intertheoretic Reduction?". Philosophy of Science, 86:612–640, 2019.

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