Rather than allow the blog to languish entirely, I thought I’d put up this bit of organizational matter to defend the claim that I really am working on stuff. Below is the outline of the paper I’ll be delivering at the 2015 International Whitehead Conference in Claremont, CA, this coming June. (I’ll be presenting in Section IV, Track 2, Session 5.)

1. Intuition and Radical Empiricism
   1. Wigner’s problem
      1. The “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”
      2. Insight and reality
   2. Radical Empiricism
      1. William James
         1. The three principles
         2. Closing the gap between empiricism and realism
      2. Alfred North Whitehead
         1. “Radical realism”
         2. Relations as real
         3. Continuity between natural philosophy and metaphysics
   3. Intuition
      1. Selection vs. creation
      2. Radical empiricism means it is all “there.”
         1. Whitehead’s answer to Wigner
2. The Measurement Problem of Cosmology
   1. Einstein and the “monometric” approach
      1. Collapses the geometric and physical tensor
      2. Why is this a problem?
         1. The need for a stable measurement relation
         2. Loss of necessary/contingent distinction
         3. The choice itself was never necessary
            • alternatives to Einstein exist
            • they have never been given the same benefit of the doubt
   2. Whitehead’s bimetric approach
      1. Separate the geometric/necessary relations from the physical/contingent relations
         1. Whitehead wrote in 1922
         2. Nathan Rosen credited with first bimetric theory, for his 1940 papers!
      2. Whitehead explicitly offered an approach, his specific theory was an exempli gratia.
      3. Can we really doubt the uniformity of nature?
         1. Radical empiricism again.
         2. Uniformity of relations a part of our experience
3. Intuitions, Models, and Explanations
   1. Whitehead’s place in a history of neglect
      1. Spurts of interest, decades of disregard
         1. Synge, et al.
      2. Clifford Will and the PPN framework
         1. Misrepresenting Whitehead
   2. Model Centrism and the Prioritization of Theory
      1. Examples of Model Centrism
         1. The Standard Model of cosmology and a few problems
            • No problem so fundamental it can’t be “fixed” with a new parameter
         2. String theory – is it even science?
         3. The role of gate-keepers
      2. The Construction of Intuition
         1. The IIO syllogism (It Is Obvious)
         2. Expectation and Confirmation Bias
         3. Simplicity isn’t simple