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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talks and Annual Lecture Series presentation. </p><p class=MsoNormal>Attend in person in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh or</p><p class=MsoNormal>visit our live stream on YouTube at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg</a>. </p><p class=MsoNormal> </p><p class=MsoNormal> </p><p class=MsoNormal>LTT – Jim Woodward</p><p class=MsoNormal>Tuesday, March 14th @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST </p><p class=MsoNormal>Room 1117 on the 11th floor </p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Title: The Wordly Infrastructure of Causation</p><p class=MsoNormal> </p><p class=MsoNormal>Abstract: This talk is based on joint work with Naftali Weinberger and Porter Williams. It</p><p class=MsoNormal>will describe an alternative to currently dominant philosophical approaches to the metaphysics of causation. It is motivated by the gap that currently exists between metaphysical accounts and recent epistemological research on causal reasoning and methods for discovering causal relationships. Our approach aims at characterizing structural features of the actual world that support, and are exploited by, successful strategies for causal reasoning and discovery. We call these features the “worldly infrastructure’’ of causation. We identify several elements of this worldly infrastructure, sketch an account of their physical bases, and explain how they contribute to the possibility of successful causal reasoning.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>ALS – Holly Andersen</p><p class=MsoNormal>Friday, March 24th @ 3:30 pm EST</p><p class=MsoNormal>Room 1008 on the 10th floor </p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Title: Starting Points in Ohio: A pragmatist account of the asymmetry of explanation</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Abstract: Recent discussions around explanation have concerned the issue of asymmetry, an issue dating back at least to the well-known example of the shadow of a flagpole. What is the source of the directionality in explanation such that it should go one direction, and not the other? One common approach is to locate the directedness of explanation in the relation(s) that figure in an explanation: in causal explanations, for example, the direction of the causal arrow yields the asymmetry of the explanation in which the causal relation figures. I will first criticize this outsourcing of the directedness of explanation to bits of the world being directed, illustrated with the Quinean point about starting points in Ohio. I then offer an alternative, pragmatist, account of explanation on which explanation is itself already directed, regardless of the relation(s) that figure in any explanation. We don’t need the parts of the world highlighted in an explanation to be intrinsically directed for explanation to nevertheless be directed. I illustrate how this accommodates the plurality of explanations in the sciences that don’t involve straightforwardly asymmetric relationships, distinguishing ways in which explanans and explanandum can be connected that are not fully asymmetric in at least some sense, such as undirected relations, bidirectional relations, or pairs of undirected relations. Only reflexive loops fail to be explanatory on this account.</p></div></body></html>