Charles Peirce introduced the term “ampliative” for reasoning in which the conclusion of an argument goes beyond that what is already contained in its premises (Collected Papers 2.623). This is how the term is still standardly used in contemporary logic and philosophy of science, and how it is to be understood in the title of this workshop.
The workshop is devoted to the philosophical analysis of different forms of ampliative reasoning as they occur in scientific practice. Abduction – forming explanatory hypotheses starting from a phenomenon that requires explanation – is one such form. A second example is inductive generalisation based on (limited) observations. Other important types are reasoning by analogy and causal reasoning (in which we arrive at a conclusion about a causal relation starting from non-causal premises).
Ampliative reasoning can be studied by philosophers from three perspectives: formal (philosophical logic, probability theory), methodological (philosophy of science, epistemology) and historical (integrated history & philosophy of science). We aim at a mix of contributions from all these perspectives.
Examples of topics within the first perspective, are
Examples of topics within the second perspective, are:
Examples of topics within the third perspective, are:
Keynote speakers: Chiara Ambrosio (University College London), Ulrike Hahn (Birkbeck – University of London and LMU Munich) & Jon Williamson (University of Kent – Canterbury).