開催日：2018年11月27日

会場：東京大学本郷キャンパス法文1号館319教室

The Philosophy Department of The University of Tokyo and Musashino University will hold the 48th International Meeting of Hongo Metaphysics Club by inviting Professor Darrell Rowbottom under the joint auspices of the Society of Philosophy, Japan, based upon the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (18K00008).  Everyone is welcome. 

　　Date & Time: The 4th December 2018 (Tuesday), from 1:00 pm to 2:45 pm.

　　Venue: The Room 319, Hobun Building 1, The University of Tokyo, Hongo Campus,
                   
　  Programme                                  

   Professor Darrell Rowbottom ( Lingnan University, Hong Kong)             
         “The Instrument of Science”                                              

Abstract: In my forthcoming book, The Instrument of Science: Scientific Anti-Realism Revitalised (Routledge), I develop and defend a position that I call ‘cognitive instrumentalism’. This involves three core theses. First, science makes theoretical progress primarily when it furnishes us with more predictive power or understanding concerning observable things. Second, scientific discourse concerning unobservable things should only be taken literally in so far as it involves observable properties or analogies with observable things. Third, scientific claims about unobservable things are probably neither approximately true nor liable to change in such a way as to increase in truthlikeness. In this talk I will offer some arguments for each thesis, using examples from the history of science, and hence cognitive instrumentalism as a whole.

Bio: Darrell P. Rowbottom is Professor of Philosophy at Lingnan University, and serves as Editor in Chief of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. He is the author of Popper’s Critical Rationalism: A Philosophical Investigation (Routledge, 2011)and Probability (Polity, 2015 – also forthcoming in Japanese with Iwanami Shoten). He also co-edited Intuitions (OUP, 2014) with Anthony R. Booth. He has published numerous articles in leading journals, including Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (Parts A and C).

Organiser: Masaki Ichinose 

     Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo
      Professor of Musashino University
      E-mail: masaichi@musashino-u.ac.jp