12/05/07: I have posted a Mathematica notebook (here is a pdf version), which works through Nickerson's very interesting Bayesian confirmation-theoretic models relating to Wason's selection task (which I highly recommend).
11/19/07: I have decided to reverse the order of topics for the last two weeks of the seminar. We will do the Conjunction Fallacy stuff first, and then the Wason Selection Test stuff last. I have also posted an interesting book chapter by Stove, entitled "The Myth of Formal Logic" to this week's readings.
11/05/07: I have posted a Mathematica notebook (here is a pdf version), which illustrates various salient properties of Carnap's later probability functions (as developed by Maher in this paper). This notebook makes use of my decision procedure for probability calculus: PrSAT.
11/01/07: There will be no seminar on Nov. 14 (Dretske visit). But, we will have seminar on the 21st (contrary to our original plan).
10/31/07: I have posted a Mathematica notebook (here is a pdf version), which illustrates various salient properties of Carnap's early probability functions. This notebook makes use of my decision procedure for probability calculus: PrSAT.
10/30/07: I have added links to articles by Salmon and Fine to this week's readings. I especially recommend the Salmon piece, which is a very nice discussion of "firmness" vs "increase in firmness".
10/15/07: I have added a link to Vranas's paper on the raven paradox (which I discussed at the end of my handout for week 6).
09/27/07: Reminder: seminar will not meet next week (Oct. 3). Our next meeting will be Oct. 10, and we'll be reading Hempel.
09/14/07: I have added one chapter (chapter 22) to the Keynes readings for next week (it's kind of important, since it contains his reply to the kind of "circularity" charge we talked about this week in connection with Hume). I have also posted a handout on Keynesian Logical and Probabilistic Notation, which may be of some use. I'll include much more in my notes. To simplify discussion, I will be focusing next week mainly on the simple case in which the evidence consists of a single "instantial" claim, and the hypothesis is a universal claim. This will allow us to ignore lots of the byzantine details of Keynes's discussion of Induction and Analogy.
08/31/07: I have updated the syllabus. The most significant change is that we're going to spend one week thinking entirely about Hume, before moving on to Keynes, Nicod, and others. That is, Week 3 will be all about Hume (specifically, we'll be reading two chapters of Barry's Hume book in Week 3, as I think they hit exactly the sorts of issues I want to emphasize for the remainder of the seminar). To make room for this extra week of crucial historical readings, I have deleted the subjective Bayesianism section of the course entirely (which is really no big loss for us, I think).
08/29/07: Today is our first meeting. On the agenda: the syllabus (including our initial reading schedule), and my notes for Day 1 (which includes an overview of the course as well as some technical background that I'll go over at the first meeting). For next week, the readings are from Milton and Hacking (see the syllabus page for all readings, including required and optional readings). Some useful "background readings" and overviews are included on the Notes, Handouts & Links page.