When inconsistency could be a virtue.

We noted before the all-male line up for the invited and featured speakers at a conference on the future of philosophy of science.  The organizers have just announced a preceding workship.  And it is unsurprisingly consistent with the selections for the conference:

Workshop on

Scientific Philosophy: Past and Future

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science

http://www.uvt.nl/tilps/sppf2010

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Various philosophers of the past – and many philosophers of today – believe that there can be real progress in philosophy and that such progress is facilitated crucially by a close interaction between philosophy and the sciences. “Scientific Philosophy” maintains that philosophical theses and arguments should be just as clear and precise as scientific ones; philosophers ought to build theories and models much as scientists do; and the application of mathematical methods as well as input from empirical studies are often necessary in order to gain new insights into old philosophical questions and to progress to new and deeper ones. This workshop will address what Scientific Philosophy is all about, what it has in common with science and where it might diverge from it, what we can learn from its historical successes and failures, and, most importantly, how we should assess its future prospects.

The program of workshop is now online. Please visit:

http://www.uvt.nl/tilps/sppf2010/program

The speakers are Michael Friedman, Stephan Hartmann and Jan Sprenger, Chris Hitchcock, Hannes Leitgeb, Michael Stoeltzner, Joerg Tremmel, and Thomas Uebel. The registration deadline is 15 March 2010.  

The workshop is followed by the Sydney-Tilburg conference on “The Future of Philosophy of Science” (http://www.uvt.nl/tilps/fps2010).

 (For more about our gendered conference campaign, please go here and/or search under that category over on the right side of this page.)

Omigod! The Supreme Court did what?!? And “The Pride”

The predominently Roman Catholic SCOTUS refused to block same-sex marriage in Washington, DC, and today couples started to apply for marriages licenses. 

I had  a particular context for this news,  having gone to see The Pride in Manhattan on Friday.  It contrasts the romantic  lives of  gay men in London in the 1950’s with that in the 1990’s.  My companion, a young gay man, remarked that the gay culture of the last ten years seems quite different, in part because of the foregrounding of the issue of marriage. 

His idea, I think, is that it isn’t just the dominant topic of discourse that has changed, but also the way in which one can now see becoming a more permanent partnership as a more likely outcome for a relationship. 

We’ve heard  a lot of opinions on this blog about the merits and demerits of marriage whatever one’s sexual orientation is.  We’d welcome comments on that topic  and this new development.  And, of course, whatever else you think should  be said.

Finally, if anyone wants to comment on the play, please do.  The review I’ve linked to is problematic.  It left me wondering whether the reviewer had ever experienced the sense that one is an outsider in one’s own society.