Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Wednesday (tomorrow) 1 February from 1-2:30 in HPS in the basement is our second CamPoS, with Cambridge's own Adrian Currie of CSER talking on ‘Why Common Cause Explanation Is Not the Main Business of Historical Reconstruction’. His abstract reads:
‘It’s sometimes thought that the historical sciences---archaeology, paleontology and geology, for instance---are substantively different from other, ‘experimental’, sciences. In making such claims, abstract accounts of scientific methods are often contrasted. A common story about historical reconstruction is that it relies on common cause explanation: we uncover the past by discovering surprising correlations between traces, and then hypothesizing events in the past which would unify them. But what is the warrant for such inferences, and is it actually the main business of historical reconstruction? To the first question, I argue that appealing to common causes is often justified, but not on the grounds thus far suggested. Where others prefer common cause reasoning to be justified on some global, a priori or a posteriori fact, I argue that that they are justified on local a posteriori grounds. To the second question, I concede that the identification of common causes is an important aspect of historical construction, but argue that taking it as the central method of historical reconstruction is impoverished and can’t explain such science’s successes. I’ll discuss how the richness of our understanding of past causal milieus often plays a central role in warranting historical reconstruction, and close by making some suggestions about how philosophers ought to approach evidential reasoning in the sciences.’ Regards, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
