The Value of Scientific Representation. Classic Issues and Contemporary Challenges
Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, 21–22 June 2023
Keynote speakers: Alisa Bokulich and Michela Massimi.
The conference aims to explore issues from the current debate on scientific representation that may be – directly or indirectly – connected with Mary B. Hesse’s theoretical understanding of science. On a general level, the speakers will engage with open questions related with the value of the scientific world-explanation from a variety of viewpoints that shall not be limited to a philosophical or linguistic analysis of the issues explored, but may also involve contributions devoted to classic figures of the history and philosophy of science.
Book of absctracts here.
Org. Pietro Gori & Maria Grazia Rossi
Programme
21/06/2023
9:30–10:00 Registration & welcome
10:00–11:30 SESSION 1
Quentin Ruyant, Values and Levels of Abstraction in Scientific Representation
Filip Buekens, The truth of a proposition vs. the accuracy of a representation
Virginia Grigoriadou and Frank A. Coutelieris, Similarity and representation: an ongoing dialogue
11:30–12:00 Coffee break
12:00–13:00 KEYNOTE 1
Michela Massimi, Inferential blueprints and windows on reality
13:00–15:00 Lunch
15:00–16:30 SESSION 2
Laura Bujalance, Mary Hesse to the rescue in contemporary realism debates
John Preston, Mary Hesse’s Scientific Realism(s)
David Hommen, Wittgenstein and Hesse on Metaphors and Family Resemblance
16:30–17:00 Coffee break
17:00–18:30 SESSION 3
Kristina Engelhard, Theories, Models and Modeling in Metaphysics: The Value of Scientific Representation and the Problem of Progress in Metaphysics
Lorenzo Sartori, What Scientific Pictures Tell us
Robert Hudson, The Return of the Pragmatic Theory of Observation
22/06/2023
10:00–11:30 SESSION 4
Benjamin Genta, Inferring Relations by Analogy
Davide Vecchi and Giorgio Airoldi, Analogies as global narratives in sentience research
Helene Scott-Fordsmand and Mauricio Suárez, Negative Analogies and Representation in Medical Practice: A Case from Clinical Orthopaedics
11:30–12:00 Coffee break
12:00–13:00 KEYNOTE 2
Alisa Bokulich, Reconstructing Extinct Life: Analogues, Homologues, & Biomechanical Models
13:00–15:00 Lunch
15:00–16:30 SESSION 5
Francesco Striano and Alberto Romele, Hermeneutics of technoscience: expanding Hesse’s approach to scientific modeling and the case study of the use of images
John Huss, Models, Paradigms, and Narratives: a Hesse legacy
Amedeo Robiolio, Causal Explanations and Explanatory Causation
16:30–17:00 Coffee break
17:00–18:30 SESSION 6
Luca Guzzardi, How scientific models shape sociality. A case study from multi-messenger astrophysics
Victoria Martín del Campo, Heuristics on explanations from black box AI models
Zed Adams, The Dialectic of Mind Design