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The Philosophy of Ian Hacking

Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Dates: 29th and 30th of March, 2019.

Organizer: The MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group

Ian Hacking’s thought has contributed highly original insights to the philosophical landscape of the late 20th and early 21st century. His interests in the history and philosophy of mathematics and the natural sciences in general (The Logic of Statistical Inference, Representing and Intervening, Why is There Philosophy of Mathematics at All?); in the concept of probability in particular (The Emergence of Probability, The Taming of Chance); and in the metaphysical and social scientific implications of human (or interactive) kinds (Rewriting the Soul, Mad Travelers, The Social Construction of What?) all provide significant additions to the canon of analytic philosophy.

This conference aims to engage all aspects of Ian Hacking’s philosophy, bringing together scholars working in the fields touched upon by Hacking’s body of work in the philosophy of logic, the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of the social sciences. Contributions from all areas of philosophy and scientific thought are welcome, aiming to address the questions including, but not limited to the following:

General assessments:

-          How does Hacking’s philosophy relate to its influences in both the analytic and the continental traditions? How did it influence philosophy in the 21st century?

-          What connections are there between the main areas of interest in Hacking’s philosophical body of work?

Specific topics:

-          What role does the concept of probability play in scientific reasoning, and how did the concept emerge to fulfill that role?

-          What is the relation of language to philosophical thought in the early 21st century?

-          How does experimentation influence theory choice (and vice versa) in scientific thinking?

-          What are the peculiar characteristics of human (or interactive) kinds contrasted with natural kinds?

Abstracts of about 500 words should be sent to Dr. Akos Sivado, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Speakers include:

Rachel Cooper (Lancaster University)
Janette Dinishak (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Axel Gelfert (Technical University of Berlin)
Mark Risjord (Emory University)
Paul A. Roth (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Luca Sciortino (University of Leeds)
Jonathan Tsou (Iowa State University)

The deadline for submissions is 1st December 2018.

The MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group
cordially invites you to its workshop

HUMEANISMS - The 2nd Bucharest-Budapest Workshop in Philosophy

Program:

Saturday, 28 July 

Chair: Tamas Demeter

9:00 - 10:00 Kevin Mulligan, Relations of Ideas after Hume

coffee break 

10:30 - 11:00 Ilie Parvu, Einstein and Hume: Theoretical Similarities

11:00 - 11:30 Jason Kay, Why the Humean Needs Natural Properties

coffee break 

11:45 - 12:15 David Kovacs, There Is no “Circularity Problem” for Humeanism about the Laws of Nature 

12:15 - 12:45 Elise Johnson, Does the Humean Account of Laws Entail Their Elimination? 

lunch 

Chair: Laszlo Kocsis

15:00 - 16:00 Manuela Ungureanu, The Many Social Layers of Public Languages: Davidsonian Triangulation and the Epistemology of Testimony after Hume 

16:00 - 16:30 Daniel Jayes O'Brien, Is Hume a Humean with Respect to Testimony? 

coffee break 

16:45 - 17:15 Vassilis Livanios, Can Properties of a Humean Base Confer Dispositions? 

17:15 - 17:45 Tomasz Bigaj and Antonio Vassallo, Is Humeanism Violated in Quantum Mechanics? 

coffee break 

18:15 - 19:15 Michael Esfeld, Super-Humeanism in Contemporary Metaphysics and Philosophy of Physics 

Sunday, 29 July 

Chair: Iulian Toader

9:00 - 10:00 Marian David, Hume’s Psychologism, Inherited from Locke: May It Rest In Piece, or Does It Deserve a Renaissance?

coffee break 

10:30 - 11:00 Daniel Pallies, Humeans Really Are Out of Their Minds 

11:00 - 11:30 Constantin Brincus & Mircea Flonta, Rethinking the Humean Internal Sense-Reason Correlation

coffee break 

11:45 - 12:15 Krisztián Pete, A Humean Treatment of the Nonidentity Problem 

12:15 - 12:45 Olof Leffler, The Virtues of the Humean Theory of Motivation 

lunch 

Chair: Laszlo Kocsis

15:00 - 16:00 Stefanie Rocknak, A Humeanistic Response to a Husserlian Critique of Hume

16:00 - 16:30 Josef Moural, Phenomenological Humeanism: Husserl, His Mentors and His Heir 

coffee break  

17:00 - 17:30 Aaron Segal, Humeanism: Metaphysical and Epistemological 

17:30 - 18:30 Miren Boehm, Quasi-realism or Realism? Hume on Causal, Moral and Aesthetic Properties

Date of the event: 28-29th July 2018
Venue of the event: 1097 Budapest, 4. Tóth Kálmán st.

Gábor Zemplén's review essay on Harvey Siegel's 2017 book (Education’s Epistemology: Rationality, Diversity, and Critical Thinking) entitled "Siegel’s Educational Ideal and Non-instrumental Philosophical Practice"Siegel’s Educational Ideal and Non-instrumental Philosophical Practice" has been published in Science & Education.

Two members of our research group are going to give talks at this year's congress of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) in Groningen which takes place between the 9th and 12th of July 2018. Ádám Tamás Tuboly's talk on "The 1940-45 Neurath-Carnap correspondence and its philosophical significance" is going to be part of the panel on "Rudolf Carnap's Professional Correspondences", while Iulian Toader is going to give a talk "On von Neumann’s Use of Hankel’s Principle of Permanence of Forms".