AFOS
Association for the Foundations of Science, Language and Cognition
AFOS is an international professional association of both working scientists
and theorists of science, language and cognition who seek to learn how
well founded knowledge of the states of affairs and processes surrounding
us can be achieved and communicated in a systematic, applicable and improvable
form. The association has a number of purposes. Principal among these is
to bring together scientists and those interested in scientific method
to discuss foundational issues in a precise and rigorous manner. AFOS will
engage in all the forms of activity typical for scientific associations:
conferences, workshops, publications, sponsoring and/or supervising specific
research projects. For more info about the aims, see the Constitution
of AFOS.
Full membership is be open to qualified scientists, theorists of science,
and philosophers who are in sympathy with the objectives of the Association.
Contents:
News
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You can now participate in the AFOS e-mail
debate on reductionism, which starts from two
texts, by Grzegorz Bialkowski and Steven Weinberg.
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Call for Papers: Prof. Fritz Rohrlich is in charge of collecting
and processing the contributions by AFOS members to the TWCP next August.
The deadline for manuscripts is November 15, '97, and therefore this reminder
for people who wish to contribute.Three copies of the paper (less than
2500 words) including an abstract (less than 100 words) should reach Prof.
Rohrlich by November 15, 1997 at:
Prof. Fritz Rohrlich, Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse,
NY 13244-1130, USA.
Letters of acceptance will go out March 1st, 1998. These letters can
then be used for applications to get local support.
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Recent developments are discussed in the May
1997 issue of the AFOS newsletter, including the
First
Summer School for Theory of Knowledge organized under auspices of AFOS
which will be held in Warsaw-Madralin, 16 - 31 August this year, the organization
of two AFOS sessions at the 1998 20th
World Congress of Philosophy, and activities of the AFOS Regional Groups.
An affiliated AFOS-meeting is planned to take place during the 20th Intl. Wittgenstein
Symposium.
About this Web site
We would like to invite all members of AFOS to send us suggestions about
the content of this WWW site. In particular we would like to receive information
about links that we could make with AFOS related www pages, such that the
AFOS WWW site can function as a continuously updated forum of information
for our AFOS members and regional AFOS groups. We especially invite the
chairpersons of the AFOS regional groups:
if they have their own www page, to send us this address so that pages
can be linked to the AFOS main www site.
if they do not have their own www page, a special page can be made for
them on this site. In this case the regional groups should send us the
material, preferably already ordered and structured in such a way as it
should be for the construction of their www page (compare to the structure
of the main AFOS site).
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE of AFOS
President: Ryszard Wojcicki (Poland): afos@plearn.edu.pl
Vice-President: Paul
Humphreys (USA): pwh2a@virginia.edu
Secretary: Diederik Aerts (Belgium):
diraerts@vub.ac.be
Executive Committee :
The President, Vice-President, and the Executive Committee deal with and
coordinate the business of AFOS.
HOW TO JOIN AFOS
All scientists as well as all theorists and philosophers of science who
believe that foundational problems of science deserve to be systematically
studied and discussed are kindly invited to join AFOS. Note please that
AFOS does not have a rigid organizational structure. Rather, it is a community
of people who share interest in specific problems and join in specific
activities. The communication among the members of AFOS is kept via this
web-site, via the AFOS-newsletter which is distributed electronically and
via FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE, the official journal of AFOS.
All who wish to join AFOS should sent a short bio-sketch (not more than
150 words) to the Secretary of AFOS, Diederik AERTS (diraerts@vub.ac.be).
The bio-sketch should contain both electronic and regular address for communication.
It should also list those scientific activities (publications in particular)
which prove that the candidate satisfies the requirements of the Constitution
of AFOS. The candidates whose applications are accepted by the Executive
Committee of the Association will be listed in the Directory of AFOS.
Only those candidates who have a direct electronic address can be accepted
as FULL MEMBERS of the Association. People who do not have a direct access
to interenet, but they can be reached electronically via a full member
of AFOS who explicitly agrees to act as a go-in-between might apply for
ASSOCIATE MEMBERSHIP.
AFOS mailing lists
Two electronic mailing lists have been created at the Free University of
Brussels, to facilitate the communication among members of AFOS: afos@listserv.vub.ac.be
(for announcements) and afos-wg@listserv.vub.ac.be (for discussions). The
mailing lists are open to new subscriptions. To subscribe one has to proceed
in the following way: send an e-mail message to the address majordomo@listserv.vub.ac.be
leaving the subject field of the message empty and writing in the text
field either:
subscribe afos
end
(subscription to the announcements list) or
subscribe afos-wg
end
(subscription to the discussion list)
Specific questions about the mailing lists can be directed to Diederik
Aerts (diraerts@vub.ac.be)
Foundations of Science (FOS) is the name of the official journal of AFOS.
It is presently edited by Diederik Aerts and published by Kluwer Academic.
SUBSCRIPTION ORDER INFORMATION
Beginning from 1997 Foundations of Science, is published by Kluwer.
Payments for subscription fees should be addressed to Bookkeeping Dept.,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Spuiboulevard 50, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands
either in cheque to the above address or payment to the bank:
Bankers: ABN-AMRO, Dordrecht, Account Number: 51.34.52.206
PUBLICATION PROGRAM, 1995/97:
Volume 1 (4 issues published in March and September of 1995 and 1996.)
Volume 1, number 1:
Guest Editor: Bas C. van Fraassen, Department of Philosophy, Princeton
University, 1879 Hall, Princeton NJ 08540, USA.
FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE - DISCUSSION: ...................................5-18
Bas van Fraassen........A Philosophical Approach to Foundations of Science
Patrick Suppes...........A Pluralistic View of Foundations of Science
Arne Collen.............The Foundation of Science
THE FOUNDATIONS OF STATISTICS:
David Freedman.........Some Issues in the Foundations of Statistics....19-39
Comments by James Berger, E. L. Lehmann, Paul Holland,
Clifford Clogg, Neil Henry.............................................41-67
David Freedman..........Rejoinder .....................................69-83
Diedrik Aerts and Sven Aerts......Applications of Quantum
Statistics in Psychological Studies of Decision Processes..............85-97
Maria Carla Galavotti...Operationism, Probability and Quantum
Mechanics ............................................................99-118
Paul Humphreys..........Computational Empiricism.....................119-130
VARIA:
Joseph Agassi...........Blame Not the Laws of Nature.................131-154
***
Biographical Notes...................................................155-157
On AFOS (some history of the initiative
and some recent developments)........................................159-160
Joseph Agassi.......Summary of AFOS Workshop, 1994...................161-166
Volume 1, number 2
AUTOMATED DISCOVERY
Herbert Simon............Machine Discovery
Wei-Min Shen.............The Process of Discovery
Jan Zytkow...............A Survey of Automated Discovery
Volume 1, number 3
TRUTH IN SCIENCE I;
Susan Haack - Science is neither Sacred Nor a Confidence Trick.......323-335
Ryszard Wojcicki - Theories, Theoretical Models, Truth. Part I:
Popperian and Non-Popperian Theories in Science......................337-406
Guliano Toraldo di Francia - Historical Truth........................407-416
Comments by Helena Eilstein, Jerzy Topolski..........................417-425
Guliano Toraldo di Francia - Answers to My Discussants...............427-428
VARIA:
Gerhard Schurz - Scientific Explanation: a Critical Survey...........429-471
***
Limits of Science - Cracow, 1996.....................................473-475
Some facts on AFOS...................................................477-478
Volume 1, number 4
TRUTH IN SCIENCE II
Ryszard Wojcicki - Theories, Theoretical Models, Truth. Part II:
Tarski's THeory of Truth and its Relevance for the Theory of Science.483-528
Pawel Zeidler and Danuta Sobczynska - The idea of Realism in the
new Experimentalism and the Problem of the Existence of
Theoretical Entities in Chemistry....................................529-547
Comments by Ian Hacking..............................................549-554
VARIA:
Glenn Shafer: The Situation of Causality.............................555-575
FOS 2:1
Mathematics Essential Tensions.
Guest editors: M. Heller
(Vatican Observatory, V-00120, Vatican Sity State),
J. Urbaniec (Institute of Computer Science, Jagiellonian University, Krakow).
Main paper:
Roman Duda "Mathematics: Essential Tensions"
FOS 2:2.
THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENCE,
Guest Editor: Matthias Kaiser (National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology (NENT), Norway)
Contents:
Matthias Kaiser: Introduction
John Lemons, Kristin Shrader--Frechette and Carl Cranor:
The Precautionary Principle: Scientific Uncertainty and Type I and Type II Errors
Laura Westra
Post-Normal Science, the Precautionary Principle and the Ethics of Integrity
Philippe H. Martin
``If You Don't Know How to Fix It, Please Stop Breaking It!" The Precautionary Principle and Climate Change
Sven Ove Hansson
The Limits of Precaution
Matthias Kaiser
Fish--Farming and the Precautionary. Principle.
POPPERIAN FORUM
Adam Grobler
Popper's Switch from Justification to Critical Preferences
Timothy Childers
Popper on Naturalism and the Foundations of Methodology
Noretta Koertge
Popper's Contributions to our Understanding of Social Science
Ryszard Wójcicki
Popperian vs. Suppesian Theories
Helena Eilstein
Two Remarks
SOME AFOS ACTIVITIES
FIRST SUMMER SCHOOL FOR THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
The School was organized under auspices of the Association for Foundations
of Science Language and Cognition in cooperation with the Institute of
Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Science. It was held
in Warsaw -- M\c adralin, 16 -- 31 of August, 1997.
The School was sponsored by the following two Institutions of the Soros
foundations network: The Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society
Institute and Stefan Batory Foundation.
Steering Committee of the School was:
Ryszard Wójcicki - Chair (Poland), Diderik Aerts (Belgium), Evandro
Agazzi (Switzerland), Nancy Cartwright (UK), Maria Luiza Dalla Chiara (Italy),
Irina Dobronravova (Ukraina), Gerald L. Eberlein (Germany), Leo Esakia
(Georgia), Victor Finn (Russia), Adolf Grunbaum (USA), Stephan Hartmann
(Germany), Peter Kolar (Czech Republik), Andrzej Lewenstam (Finland), Kestutis
Masiulis (Lithuania), Wolfgang Spohn (Germany), Ronald P. Thompson (Canada),
Tibor Vamos (Hungary), Paul Weingartner (Austria).
The program of the School consisted of the following
Courses:
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Risto Hilpinen (USA), Belief Systems, Knowledge and Reasoning (20 hrs)
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Ryszard Wójcicki (Poland), Main Topics in the Theory of Knowledge
(20 hrs)
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Noretta Koertge (USA), The Fundamentals of the Popperian Methodology,(6
hrs)
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Adam Grobler (Poland), The Fundamentals of the Popperian Methodology II
(6 hrs)
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Jan Zytkow (USA), Automated Discovery Systems Perspective on Knowledge
(6 hrs)
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Wolfgang Balzer (Germany), Structuralist Aspects of Social Sciences (6
hrs)
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Gerhard Schurz (Austria), Tarski and Carnap on Logical Truth (6 hrs)
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Gabriel Sandu (Finland), Logic of Presuppositions (6hrs)
Lectures
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Dagfin Føllesdal (Norway), Is there Anything `Given' in Perception
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Marian Prze\l\c ecki (Poland), Belief as an Object of Moral Valuation
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Wlodek Rabinowicz (Sweden), Dynamic Doxastic Logic and Iterated Beliefs
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Victor Finn (Russia), Argumentation Logics for Decision Making
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Wojciech Gasparski (Poland), Knowledge as a Commodity: Epistemological
Considerations on Science and Design
Popperian Forum --- panel discussion on the relevance of the Popperian
philosophy to the contemporary theory of knowledge. (4) Contributions of
the following students of the School: Fyodor Borodin, Danil Dorofeev, Alexey
Iline, Gleb Maslov, Tatiana Salnikova (Russia), Pawe\l Kawalec, Artur Koterski,
Tomasz Rzepi´nski, Wojciech Rege\'nczuk, S\'wierczy\' nski Maciej,
Anna Rykowska} (Poland), Peter Andras, George Clitan, Liliana Borsan, Corina
Cirluega Serban Leoca (Rumunia), Vihren Bouzov (Bulgaria), Olga Korpalo,
Katerina Priazenceva, Sergey Pukas (Ukraina), Alexander Kuisz (Belorus),
Sonja Smets (Belgium), Richardo Campa (Italy), Javier Arias Vilanova (Spain).
The Second
Summer School for Theory of Knowledge is planned to be held in the
same place {M\c adralin -- Warsaw} in the Second half of July 1998. For
more information contact the Organizers by e-mail: kschool@plearn.edu.pl
This Web page is provided on the Principia
Cybernetica Web by the "Center Leo Apostel",
a regional center of AFOS.