| Week | Date | Topic | Reading and assignments due this week |
| 1 | 11 January | Introduction: The evidential basis of science; three families of inductive inference | Reading and handouts. |
| 2 | 18 January | Inductive generalization: enumerative induction, Mill's methods | Reading and Short assignment 1 |
| 3 | 25 January | Inductive generalization: Hempel's satisfaction criterion, Glymour's bootstrap, demonstrative induction | A. Short history of science paper. Reading and Short assignment 2 |
| 4 | 1 February | Hypothetical induction: saving the phenomena, hypothetico-eductive confirmation, the addition of a simplicity requirement, error statistical accounts, common cause and common origin arguments, consilience of induction | Short assignment 3 |
| 5 | 8 February | Hypothetical induction: abduction and inference to the best explanation, reliabilists accounts--historical/methodological approaches, formal learning theory | Short assignment 4 |
| 6 | 15 February | Probabilistic induction: Bayes' theorem and its use in the context of confirmation, the interpretations of probability |
Short assignment 5 Send me the title of the primary source you will use in Assignment B either by email prior to class or on paper in class. |
| 7 | 22 February | Probabilistic induction: justifications of Bayesianism--Dutch book arguments, alternative calculi | B. Long history of science paper. Short assignment 6 |
| 8 | 1 March | The problems of induction: THE problem of induction ("Hume's problem"), Goodman's grue and the new riddle of induction, The underdetermination thesis | Short assignment 7 |
| 8 March, Spring recess | |||
| 9 | 15 March | Material theory of induction | C. Short philosophy of science paper. Short assignment 8 |
| 10 | 22 March | Student presentations Each student will speak informally for five minutes to the seminar on any topic of relevance (historical, philosophical) to their project. | |
| 11 | 29 March | Student presentations 1. Danielle Rosenberger 2. Brandy Smolnik 3. Michael Mitrovich 4. David Salcido |
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| 12 | 5 April | Student presentations 1. Burlton Griffith 2. Nicole Tinkey 3. Alexis Moore 4. Joseph Gallo |
D. First draft of term paper. |
| 13 | 12 April | Editing term paper drafts. I will be out of town this week. | |
| 14 | 19 April, Last day class | Student presentations 1. Kevin Medovitch 2. Suzy Fuchs |
E. Final revised version of term paper due Friday April 22. |