History and Philosophy of Science
Eötvös University, Budapest
Philosophy of Science Colloquium
Room 1.817 (1st floor) Monday 4:00 PM
Pázmány P. sétány 1/C  Budapest Phone/Fax: (36-1) 372 2924 Location?

>>> Printable poster (pdf)


May                         Preliminary!
2006


8 May  4:00 PM  1st floor 1.817 
Richard D. McKirahan
 Classics Department, Pomona College, Claremont, CA
 
 Zeno's Arguments against Motion
The paradoxes of Zeno have provoked philosophical discussion since antiquity and never more so than in the last century, from the time when Betrand Russell attacked them with the aid of the recently elaborated modern concept of the mathematical infinite.  The literature on Zeno contains a large number of interpretations and solutions to his paradoxes. Further, many of the contemporary treatments of problems inspired by Zeno range beyond the analytical (and in particular the mathematical) tools available to Zeno in the fifth century B.C., and beyond the paradoxes as he formulated them. 
This paper places Zeno in his historical setting and examines his best known paradoxes, the four arguments against motion, known as The Stadium (or Dichotomy), The Achilles (or Achilles and the Tortoise), The Flying Arrow, and The Moving Rows.  The interpretation of all four remains controversial.  The analysis here presented, which closely follows the ancient evidence, principally that of Aristotle and to a lesser extent of Aristotle's commentator Simplicius, yields new interpretations of all four paradoxes.

15 May  4:00 PM  1st floor 1.817 
No seminar session! (Horwich Conference, Pécs)


22 May  4:00 PM  1st floor 1.817 
Tamás Demeter
 Institute for Philosophical Research
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
 
 Miért nincsenek többszörösen megvalósítható tulajdonságok?
(Why are there no multiply realisable properties?)
A mentális állapotokra vonatkozó fizikalista elméletek elengedhetetlen komponense az a tézis, hogy a mentális állapotokat fizikai állapotok valósítják meg, realizálják. A kurrens elméletek ezt a viszonyt nem kizárólagosnak gondolják el, nem úgy vélik, hogy mentális állapotok tipusaihoz hozzárendelhetjük fizikai állapotok típusait, hanem inkább úgy vélik, hogy az egyes mentális állapotokat többféle fizikai állapot is megvalósíthatja. Az előadásban úgy fogok érvelni, hogy ez a tézis inkoherens, és ezért a mentális állapotokkal kapcsolatos realizmus nem tartható. Először a fizikalizmus státuszát veszem szemügyre a filozófiában, majd rekonstruálom a mentális állapotok fizikai megvalósításának két, az előadásban Fodor és Kim által reprezentált elméletét, s azt igyekszem megmutatni, hogy Fodor változata tarthatatlan. Noha Kim álláspontja védhető, következményei megmutatják, hogy a realizáció fogalma köré nem építhető fizikalista elmélet. Végezetül szemügyre veszek egy első pillantásra plauzíbilis menekülési útvonalat a fizikalisták számára, amely azonban zsákutcának bizonyul.

29 May  4:00 PM  1st floor 1.817 
Balázs Gyenis
 HPS, University of Pittsburgh
 
 Maxwell and the normal distribution
Maxwell's early works on the kinetic theory, including his derivation of the velocity distribution law, are among the focuses of historical research in the field. Proposition IV of Maxwell's 1860 paper Illustrations of the Dynamical Theory of Gases is frequently cited as "one of the most important passages in physics". Many point out its connection to an almost identical derivation in a review article written in 1850 by Herschel. However, little or no attention has been paid to the question of whether Maxwell tried to justify the basic assumptions of his derivation and, if he did, how he proceeded. The lecture will provide an answer to this question. A careful examination of manuscripts and of some preparatory propositions of the 1860 article shows that Maxwell (as one could expect from someone who attempts to introduce and legitimize a new type of scientific inquiry) struggled to reconciliate a deterministic, Newtonian underlying dynamics with the resulting statistical behavior of the ensemble. The resulting semi-Newtonian picture of collisions yields surprisingly strong results in that it allows derivation of probabilities based on very general physical assumptions, and renders Maxwell's early proofs of convergence of mean kinetic velocities of mixed gases more intelligible than it is stressed in the literature. Although later Maxwell abandons this approach and comes up with a new derivation in his 1867 article, the techniques of which would become the basis of Boltzmann's infamous proof, the study of his original approach provides valuable insights for those interested in the the connection between micro and macro level phenomena.


The colloquium is open to everyone, including students, visitors, and faculty members from all departments!

The 60-minute lecture is followed by a 10-minute break. Then we hold a 30-60-minute discussion. The language of presentation can be English () or Hungarian ().

The organizer of the colloquium: László E. Szabó  (email: leszabo@hps.elte.hu)