Carnegie Mellon University Philosophy Colloquium Talk-Saira Khan
On Friday, March 15, Carnegie Mellon University Philosophy Department is hosting their Carnegie Mellon University Philosophy Colloquium Talk. The speaker is Saira Khan, Postdoc Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh .
As a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Philosophy of Science, she works primarily in the philosophy of biology and decision theory, with interests in game theory, epistemology (formal and social), and feminist philosophy.
Prior to the University of Pittsburgh, she completed a Ph.D. in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. She also completed a PGCert in Central Banking and Financial Regulation at the University of Warwick and a B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford.
Her work in the philosophy of biology concerns the evolution of cooperation in humans and other organisms. It combines approaches and evidence from disparate fields- archaeology, anthropology, biology, psychology, cognitive science and game theory. In decision theory, she works on transformative experiences, deliberative decision theory, and interpretations of the representation theorem.
Her upcoming talk, “Coarse-grained Theories of Cooperation: Lessons from Myxobacteria” will be from 3:30-4:50 PM EDT, in Baker Hall A51.
Read her abstract below:
Abstract:
Many theories have been offered to explain why organisms have evolved to cooperate with one another. These include kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, group selection, and commitment, among others. In this talk, I will demonstrate that such theories fail to explain some social phenomena. As a case study, I will consider the cooperative predation of a particular strain of myxobacteria known as Myxococcus xanthus. I argue that cooperation in M. xanthus predation cannot be sustained by the same mechanisms proposed to account for cooperation in other areas of its lifecycle (kin selection, signalling and punishment). Part of the reason lies in a possible mischaracterisation of the cooperative problem at hand. Another part lies in the insensitivity of these theories to ecological and genomic context. These insights provide important lessons for our use of simplified models to explain real-world behaviours in a variety of organisms.