SASci 2007 Annual Meeting
(San Antonio, Texas, February 21-24)
Panel Proposal
Panel title: Formalization as a tool for empirical research: what it buys us and what it doesn't.
 
Organizer:
 
Prof. David Kronenfeld, University of California, Riverside
 
Annotation: Our concern is with “formalization”–why it's important, what a formalization can buy us, but also what may be pertinent limitations and how sometimes we can be misled by even a good formalization.  We take a minimalist definition of “formal”: explicit definitions and operations.  But the important part concerns formal models and theories.  The goal here is threefold:  a) to get out on the table the range of kinds of formalizations that pertinent people have in mind, b) to get participants to addresses the uses (the "what it buys you") of their chosen approach, and c) to get some participants to address what one or another GOOD formalism still does NOT do (but that people sometimes speak it as if it does).  Pertinent issues concern 1) the relationship between analytic goal, assumptions one is willing to make, and the resulting formalization and 2) the relationship between a formal representation of some empirical phenomenon (process, set of relationships, whatever) and the on-the-ground reality that one actually experiences.

Participants:
 
  1. 1.Michael Fischer, University of Kent at Canterbury
  2. 2.Alan G. Fix, University of California, Riverside
  3. 3.Nick Gessler, UCLA
  4. 4.David Kronenfeld, University of California, Riverside
  5. 5.Lawrence Kuznar, Indiana University -Purdue University, Fort Wayne
  6. 6.Murray Leaf, University of Texas, Dallas
  7. 7.F. K. Lehman, University of Illinois
  8. 8.Dwight Read, UCLA
  9. 9.Doug White, University of California, Irvine
 
Others who wish to participate are invited to contact David Kronenfeld (david.kronenfeld@ucr.edu)