May 22 and 23, 2019: 7th Epistemology Conference
7th Montpellier Universities Epistemology Conference:
Argumentation: A Multifaceted Practice?
Wednesday, May 22, and Thursday, May 23, 2019
UM Faculty of Sciences, Classroom SC-10.01 (Triolet Campus, Building 10)
Place Eugène Bataillon, 34090 Montpellier — Tram 1: Universités
Events organized jointly by UM and UPVM3 | open to all, free admission
https://epistemologie.umontpellier.fr/journees_epist/
This two-day event, organized jointly by UM and UPVM3, will feature four invited plenary lectures, an online discussion workshop, a roundtable, and poster presentations (call for submissions currently open).
Argument:
When we speak of argumentation, we often think of the speeches of politicians or lawyers, who seek to convince their audiences. Yet argumentation is also at the heart of many other social practices, particularly scientific ones. When developing new models or theories, researchers engage in an argumentative process of justifying, evaluating, and critiquing the hypotheses they put forward. Studying argumentation in science thus amounts to focusing on the processes of knowledge construction rather than on the status of already established knowledge. These processes are the site where theory and experiment intersect in the experimental sciences, or where the exploration of conjectures and proof intersect in mathematics. They are also the site of complex social interactions playing out at the discursive level. Argumentation appears as a cross-cutting social practice, found in fields as varied as law, the experimental sciences, mathematics, and the linguistic sciences. Certainly, the content on which argumentation focuses differs from one field to another. The same is true of the aims of argumentation. Beyond these obvious differences, can we identify deeper disparities that would lead us to speak of several “forms” of argumentation? Conversely, can we identify common characteristics that would lead us to view argumentation as a universal mode of human thought? These 7th Epistemology Days, dedicated to argumentation, aim to explore these questions from a comparative perspective by bringing together epistemological approaches to argumentation across a variety of fields: language sciences, experimental sciences, mathematics, and law. The goal is thus to better understand the possible forms and functions of argumentation in these different fields.
Program:
Wednesday, May 22, 2019, afternoon (1:45–6:00 p.m.)
1:45 p.m. – Welcome and opening remarks
2:00 PM – Introduction to the conference by Manuel Bächtold
2:20 PM – Lecture by Otto Pfersmann: The four legal arguments and the need to distinguish them
3:20 PM – Lecture by Catherine Allamel-Raffin: Images and argumentation: analysis of a radio astronomy article
4:20 PM – Coffee break and poster presentations
4:50 PM – Workshop: online science-society debate via the AREN platform – 15-minute introduction by K. de Checchi, C. Huet, and G. Pallarès
6:00 PM – End of the session
Thursday, May 23, 2019, morning (9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.)
9:00 a.m. – Lecture by Christian Plantin: The Restructuring of Argumentation Studies
10:00 AM – Lecture by Nicolas Balacheff: Mathematical Argumentation, a Necessary Concept for Thinking About the Learning of Proof
11:00 AM – Coffee break and poster presentations
11:20 AM – Workshop summary and synthesis by K. de Checchi, C. Huet, and G. Pallarès, leading into the roundtable discussion
11:20 a.m. – Roundtable discussion with guest speakers, moderated by Muriel Guedj
12:50 p.m. – Closing (session ends at 1:00 p.m.)
Note: To participate in the online discussion workshop, please bring a laptop (or tablet) with Wi-Fi or 4G connectivity (connection instructions will be provided on-site).
