Over the years, the methodological toolbox of philosophers of science has widened considerably. Today, formal and experimental methods importantly complement more traditional methods such as conceptual analysis and case studies. So far, however, there has not been much interaction between the corresponding communities. Formal work is all too often conducted in an a priori fashion, drawing on intuitions to substantiate various assumptions and to test their consequences. Experimental work, on the other hand, is often limited to testing various assumptions and intuitions, and often does not identify or create new phenomena that can subsequently be integrated into a formal framework. The working assumption of this workshop is that philosophy of science can gain a lot from combining formal and experimental studies. By doing so, philosophy of science will become increasingly scientific as a crucial aspect of the scientific endeavor lies in the combination of formal theories and experimental insights.

This workshop aims to explore the relation between formal and experimental approaches to the philosophy of science. We invite meta-theoretical papers, but especially papers that fruitfully combine both methods to problems from the philosophy of science. This first Pittsburgh-Tilburg workshop will pay special attention to the philosophy of the social sciences, but a focus on other subfields of philosophy of science is also welcome.

We invite submissions of both a short abstract (max. 100 words) and an extended abstract (1000-1500 words) by 1 May 2011. Decisions will be made by 15 May 2011.

Keynote Speakers
Christina Bicchieri, Philadelphia
Mark Colyvan, Sydney
Ralph Hertwig, Basel

Publication

Selected papers will be published in a special issue of Synthese (subject to the usual refereeing process). The submission deadline is 31 December 2011. The maximal paper length is 7000 words.

Organizers
Stephan Hartmann, Tilburg
Chiara Lisciandra, Tilburg
Edouard Machery, Pittsburgh

Program Committee
Jason Alexander, London School of Economics and Political Science Horacio Arlo-Costa, Carnegie Mellon University David Chalmers, Australian National University and New York University Branden Fitelson, Rutgers University Clark Glymour, Carnegie Mellon University Thomas Grundmann, University of Cologne Christopher Hitchcock, California Institute of Technology Joshua Knobe, Yale University Shaun Nichols, University of Arizona Mike Oaksford, Birkbeck College London Erik Olsson, University of Lund David Papineau, King's College London Wolfgang Spohn, University of Konstanz Jesús Zamora, UNED Madrid