Philosophical Café: TO AND FRO. Physics and Modern Applications of Rationality

Joan Bertran-San Millán, Vera Matarese and Aldo Filomeno

Afternoon with the Institute of Philosophy

Invitation

Invitation PDF

Dear colleagues, friends and supporters of the Institute of Philosophy,
we would like to invite you to the first English edition of the Philosophical Café, dedicated to the international researchers from our Institute. Aside from the language used, however, everything else will stay the same, so you can look forward to an informal meeting of the members of the Institute of Philosophy and their friends and supporters – all as a part of the "Afternoon with the Institute of Philosophy" platform.

In the first international Philosophical Café we will welcome three researchers from the Formal Epistemology Centre directed by prof. Ladislav Kvasz, namely Joan Bertran-San Millán, Vera Matarese and Aldo Filomeno and explore some interrelations between logic, the theory of knowledge and the empirical evidence provided by physical science in the following talks:

1) Frege as the Founder of Modern Logic (Joan Bertran-San Millán)
Frege's contributions to logic are traditionally considered to mark the starting point of modern logic. I will evaluate this claim and compare Frege's leading work on logic with that of some of his contemporaries. The focus of this evaluation will be the relation between mathematics and logic and Frege's critique of a psychological foundation of logic.

2) On the Relation between Ontology and Epistemology in Physical Theorizing (Vera Matarese)
Since modern physical theories are formulated in mathematical language, we must look at mathematics in order to understand what these theories tell us about the physical world. But in what ways does mathematics reveal the nature of the world? Either we let mathematics dictate the structure of our physical world, or we use our intuitions and subjective understanding of the world as guides to interpret mathematical formalism. In my talk, I will discuss these two options and argue for a middle way that appeals to some new epistemological principles.

3) Reasoning under Uncertainty (Aldo Filomeno)
A variety of arguments in philosophy and science recur to probabilities. For instance, consider the 'anthropic cosmological principle', which is based on recent discoveries in cosmology to support the existence of the multiverse or the existence of God. This argument, however, is implicitly assigning unwarranted probabilities. My project consists in the assessment of arguments of this sort found in philosophy and science, in light of proper assignations of the probabilities.

Everyone is warmly welcome not only to participate in the audience, but also to take part in the discussion.