Events

September 17, 2009, 4 PM (note special time)

Richard Boyd and Christopher Boyd (Cornell University and UC Berkeley)

Natural kinds and ceteris paratis generalizations: In praise of hunches

It is widely assumed that scientific categories must obey strict criteria in order to count as natural kinds: that kinds should have necessary and sufficient membership conditions; that the boundaries between kinds be sharply distinguishable; that kinds must appear in exact, exceptionless laws of nature. Yet molecular species are individuated in terms of continuously variable quantities like bond lengths and bond angles, suggesting that the boundaries between molecular kinds are vague, and chemical laws express defeasible tendencies rather than universal regularities. Similar considerations apply for other chemical kinds—kinds of chemical species or of reaction mechanisms, for instance. Drawing on examples from biology as well as chemistry, Richard Boyd and Christopher Boyd propose a more liberal, and accurate, conception of kinds and their role in science, emphasizing the importance of approximations, rules of thumb and moderately reliable hunches in chemical prediction and explanation.

October 14, 2009, 6–7:30 PM

Adam Sennet (UC Davis)

Propositional Structure and Unarticulated Constituents

One proposal in the debate over the semantics-pragmatics includes positing Unarticulated Constituents, or pragmatically driven additions to the proposition expressed by an utterance of a sentence. Whether or not there are UCs is a continued source of contention. I argue that the definitions of UCs that are on offer are all inadequate and fall prey to easy counterexample given the nature of the phenomenon they are trying to model and characterize and consider how one might improve upon our understanding of the relevant notions in a manner consistent with the general goals of UC theorists.

November 12, 2009, 4 PM (note special time)

Richard Zach (University of Calgary)

January 27, 2010, 6–7:30 PM

James Joyce (University of Michigan)

March 31, 2010, 6–7:30 PM

Laurie Paul (University of North Carolina)

April 21, 2010, 4 PM (note special time) (location TBA)

Alan Richardson (University of British Columbia)