Second workshop in the Workshop Series on Logic, Reasoning, and Rationality

50 Shapes of Scientific Explanation

This workshop uses the 50th anniversary of the publication of Carl Hempel’s
book Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of
Science as an occasion to reflect on the future of the philosophical study
of scientific explanation.

It all started with Hempel’s deductive-nomological model, that was proposed
as the one and only format for all scientific explanations. Hempel soon
added the inductive-statistical model. Other authors have come up with
amongst others the causal-mechanical model (Salmon), the unification model
(Kitcher) and the counterfactual model (Woodward). At this moment an
abundance of models is available for describing the shapes that scientific
explanations can have.

The core questions of this workshop are:

•       why study scientific explanation as a philosopher?
•       what are interesting aims in studying scientific explanation       and
what are  the appropriate methods (formal as well as informal)?
•       how should different philosophical models of explanation be treated: as
competitors or as complementary to each other?
•       what do philosophers of science working on scientific explanation have to
offer to scientists?
•       what should be the role of scientific practice (e.g. historical case
studies) in philosophical reflection on explanation?

The keynote speakers will address (some of) these issues in their talks.
Contributed papers can be on any topic in the area of scientific
explanation, but we prefer talks that pay some attention to the issues
listed above.

Location: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, Belgium
Date: November 13-14, 2015
Website: http://www.lrr.ugent.be

Invited speakers:

Henk de Regt (VU Amsterdam)
Phyllis McKay Illari (University College London)
Erik Weber (Ghent University)

Submission details:

Authors are invited to submit an abstract of 300 to 500 words to: lrr@ugent.be

Important dates:

Abstract submission deadline: August 31
Notification: September 11