This seminar will be meeting in Mary Gates Hall (#248) every second week through the Winter quarter, beginning January 7th and ending with the Roundtable (March 7-9): January 7, 21; February 4, 18; March 3.

Please see Readings and Assignments, below, for a short list of material that will be useful background for discussing reading plans in the first seminar meeting.

This seminar is linked to the 10th Annual Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable, which will be hosted by the University of Washington, March 7-9, 2008. It is intended for graduate students in any area of the social sciences or humanities who share in interest in questions about the presuppositions of social inquiry. These include foundational questions in social theory; models of explanation and canons of evidence characteristic of the social sciences; and ethical and political problems that are distinctive of research involving human, social subjects. The seminar will provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of work on these issues by keynote speakers and participants in the 2008 Roundtable. A set of common readings based on the Roundtable program will be the focus of bi-weekly seminar discussions; participants in the seminar will have an opportunity to meet the keynote speakers and will be expected to attend the Roundtable.

Information about the Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable (including previous programs and links to the Roundtable Special Issues of Philosophy of the Social Sciences) is available at: 

• Roundtable website: http://philosophy.ucsc.edu/Roundtable.html

The program for the 2008 Roundtable will shortly be finalized. Altogether 50 abstracts were submitted for review this year by the deadline, December 15. We have room in the Roundtable program for just 12 papers, in addition to the two keynote speakers, so the organizing group has some difficult decisions to make. A composite file of the abstracts is posted in the Readings folder (top of the left column); please review them and identify 10 to 15 that you find especially interesting.

Also, take a look at the Roundtable description posted in the "Roundtable Information" folder, and at the Roundtable website (links are in the left column) to get a sense of the range of topics in philosophy of the social sciences covered by past Roundtable programs. You'll find posted on the Roundtable website the programs for all previous  meetings as well as the tables of contents for special annual issues of the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences based on the Roundtable. For additional background, see the "Leiter" letter posted in the "Roundtable Information" folder; it includes a description of the scope of the field as outlined by the four organizers of the Roundtable in a letter that appeared on the Gourmet Guide to Graduate Programs in Philosophy, a website maintained by Brian Leiter.