*CAUSALITY AND MODELLING IN THE SCIENCES*

CaMitS

*Madrid* 29th June-1st July 2015

Organiser: María Jiménez Buedo (UNED, Madrid)

This is the tenth conference in the Causality in the Sciences series of
conferences.

http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/jw/cits.htm

Both causality and modelling play a central role in the sciences. Causal
inference (finding out what causes what) and causal explanation (explaining
how a cause produces its effect) are major scientific tasks in fields as
diverse as astrophysics, biochemistry, biomedical or social and behavioural
sciences, and questions of causality are typically investigated by building
models. Many models have become famous in their own right, such as Bohr’s
model of the atom, still used long after the background theory was
abandoned; the Lotka-Volterra model of the dynamic interactions between
predator and prey; the Ising model in physics (and now econophysics)
showing by simulation how phase change can be caused by a small number of
parameters; the Schelling model in social sciences, demonstrating again by
simulation that only a mild preference for living closer to those of
similar racial origin to yourself can lead to the formation of ghettos; and
the Phillips Machine built to model the macro-economy. Styles of models
range from complex computational simulations to equations or groups of
equations, to conceptualisations of a problem, often made more concrete in
diagrams or animations. There has been recent work on many aspects of
modelling, including issues that impact on the public domain, such as the
appropriateness of economic models in light of the global financial crash,
or the challenges of climate modelling.

Previous conferences in the Causality in the Sciences series have
investigated the relationship between causality and challenging concepts
such as probability, mechanisms, evidence, experimentation and complexity.
This one will focus on the relationship between causality and modelling.
This raises many important questions deeply embedded in the practices of
the sciences:

·         What are models and how can we use them to establish or
investigate causal relations?

·         Is the nature of models the same or different across scientific
domains? What are the relevant distinctions between different modelling
practices?

·         How should we regard formal techniques for quantitative
representation of causal relations, and for data mining?

·         Can purely predictive models be useful in investigating causal
systems?

·         What good are models for pedagogical purposes?

·         How should we trade off close relationship to the target system
with increasing idealization and sophistication of the model?

**Speakers **

*Caterina Marchionni (University of Helsinki)   *

*Michael Weisberg (University of Pennsylvania)*

*Charlotte Werndl (Salzburg University) *

**Timetable**

·    *15th March 2015*: deadline for submission of titles and abstracts of
papers for presentation at the conference

Please submit your anonymized abstract (500 words max) in doc, docx, txt,
rtf or pdf format. Preference will be given to papers that discuss both
modelling and causality, and also to papers that develop examples or case
studies within the sciences.

To be emailed to María Jiménez-Buedo (mjbuedo@fsof.uned.es)

·   *15th April 2015*: notification of acceptance.

·   *20th May 2015*: deadline for receipt of *early* *registration*

Registration fee: 90 euros (early registration:* 60 euros*)

·   *29th June-1st July 2015*: conference

Abstracts will be refereed by the CitS steering committee and the local
organiser:

Isabelle Drouet, Phyllis Illari, Bert Leuridan, Julian Reiss, Federica
Russo, Erik Weber, Jon Williamson together with María Jiménez-Buedo.

For further information email mjbuedo@fsof.uned.es