Here are the slides from my presentation (May 17) at the Scientism workshop  in NYC. (They’re sketchy since we were trying for 25-30 minutes.) Below them are some mini notes on some of the talks.

Now for my informal notes. Here’s a link to the Speaker abstracts;the presentations may now be found at the conference site here. Comments, questions, and corrections are welcome.

Firday, May 16 (pm): Carol Cleland argued that inference to possible worlds is the best explanation for how we commonly assign truth conditions to counterfactual conditionals, yet these are not reducible to empirical science. (Physicists seems perfectly happy with multiverses, unfortunately.) Noretta Koertge wonders why hard-headed Susan Haack is concerned to combat scientism, especially given that the general public seems “increasingly reluctant to employ even the simplest principles of scientific reasoning”. Koertge certainly agrees that we should avoid faux trappings of science, but thinks philosophers of science should lean more…