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News

Catching Up With Naftali Weinberger

Posted on January 11, 2022 by cheryl

Featured Former Fellow talks resume on January 25 when our speaker will be Naftali Weinberger (Postdoc 2018-19.) What’s he been up to since then? Find out.

naftali weinbergerWhere are you now?  At the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

What are you working on?  Right now I have two primary projects: One on causation in dynamical systems and another on causally modeling discrimination. I’m also involved in several collaborations with people I know primarily through my time at the Center

Favorite memory of The Center?   This is a hard one! One of the first things that jumped to mind though was the time Bill and Barbara Wimsatt had the fellows over for pizza. They lived in a high amenity apartment complex in Lawrenceville where everyone was either a 28-year-old hipster or a Wimsatt, and it seems like they were basically co-opted by the building’s other residents as honorary grandparents. For some reason I found it very amusing to eat pizza with the other fellows in the lobby while watching an endless parade of millenials and their dogs. 

What you you say is your greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center? Learning German. I even on occasion have gotten Germans to laugh (with me, I think). 

What’s the best book/movie/tv you’ve enjoyed lately? I really enjoyed Jordan Peele’s “Us”. I also think lots of Center members would enjoy Bill Bryson’s recent book on the history of the human body. Much of it will be familiar, but it has lots of great HPS anecdotes and is written with so much infectious enthusiasm that it’s a joy to read. 

Join us for Naftali’s talk, “Signal Manipulation & the Causal Analysis of Racial Discrimination” online only on Jan. 25.
Register here

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Tony Beavers Talk Moved Online

Posted on November 19, 2021 by cheryl

Please note, Anthony Beavers’ talk scheduled for Friday, Nov. 19 has been moved to online-only.

See the talk listing for Zoom registration.

Or, you can stream the talk live on our YouTube channel.

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Catching Up With Erik Curiel

Posted on November 18, 2021 by cheryl

erik curielOur last Featured Former Fellows talk of the fall is happening right after Thanksgiving break! These online-only talks occur throughout the year and reunite our Center community with past Fellows from around the globe.

The next Featured Former Fellow will be Erik Curiel on Tuesday, Nov. 30. Erik was a postdoc Fellow at the Center in 2008-09 under then-Center Director John D. Norton. We sat down with Erik ahead of his talk to catch up with him.

Register for Erik’s talk

 

1. Where are you now?

I am assistant professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (LMU Munich) and Senior Research Fellow at the Black Hole Initiative (Harvard).  Between 2016-2019, I split my time eight months inMunich and four months at Harvard; starting this year, I’ll be spending ten months in Munich, two months at Harvard.  Munich is home.

2.  What are you working on?

I am working on a number of different projects at the moment: writing a book on foundational problems in black hole thermodynamics and semi-classical gravity; writing a series of papers developing a novel account of the structure and semantics of physical theories, including an analysis of the way that theory and experiment make contact with each other; trying to figure out a new way to attack the Measurement Problem; and vigorously championing Pragmatism à la Peirce, Carnap and Stein in contraposition to standard forms of realism and instrumentalism

3. What is your favorite memory of The Center?

My favorite memory of the Center, hmm, that’s hard.  I think it’s a 3-way tie.  One is pleasantly sozzled karaoke with all the fellows at Bootleggers (with Knickerbocker beers for $1!), followed by heroically dressed hot-dogs and ridiculously large servings of fries at The O.  The second is a collective memory, all the weekly fellows’ reading-group meetings.  We had a superlative group of fellows my year, collegial and fun as all hell.  (It was the Year of the Italian Women.)  The third is dropping into John Norton’s office whenever the mood struck me to run some new idea by John and having him invariably analyze and reconstruct it on the spot to present it back to me in marvelously simpler, clearer, and more illuminating form.

4. Greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center

My greatest non-professional achievement—continually learning to be an ever more psychologically well adjusted and healthier person as I grow older.

5. Best book/movie/tv you’ve seen this year?

I’ll take “this year” to mean going back to May 2020, not the 2021 calendar year.  Best book:  “The Guermantes Way” (Volume 3 of “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” now working on volume 4); best movie: “Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau” (for the 4th or 5th time, but it’s still the best); best tv show: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (again, for the 4th or 5th time, but still the best!).

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Catching Up With Yann Benétreau-Dupin

Posted on October 19, 2021 by cheryl

yann benetreau-dupin

Our Featured Former Fellows Lunchtime Talk series continues next week on Oct.26 when we’ll be joined by Yann Benétreau-Dupin.  Yann was a Postdoc Fellow at the Center during the 2016-17 year.  What’s he up to these days? Find out below, and of course
join us for Yann’s talk.

 

 

1. Where are you now?

I now work as a Senior Editor for PLOS ONE, the large, multidisciplinary, open-access journal of the Public Library of Science (PLOS). As of this writing, I am working from home just a few miles away from my office—still almost empty because of the pandemic—in San Francisco.

I am also a visiting researcher at San Francisco State University, where I previously worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor right after I left the Center.

2.  What are you working on?

At PLOS ONE, I oversee the peer-review process for some of the many thousand submissions we receive each year: I select submissions that are ready for peer-review, help ensure that our articles meet our publication criteria for rigor, ethics, and data availability. In short, I tackle the reproducibility crisis one paper at a time.

As one of two dozen staff editors, I help define the editorial policies of a multidisciplinary journal that welcomes all rigorous science, regardless of how novel or impactful the findings are. I work more specifically in the behavioral and social sciences team, along with psychologists, an economist, and a neuroscientist.

For instance, I recently led the development of registered reports as a new article type at the journal, a format whereby papers are reviewed both before and after the empirical part of the work so as to improve transparency in reporting and minimize publication bias (you can find more details about it here).

Occasionally, I have to follow specific submissions very closely, particularly when they deal with sensitive topics that could easily be misinterpreted in the media (see for instance this article on police deadly use of force for which we commissioned a formal comment to help contextualize the results).

With colleagues at SFSU (Isabelle Peschard and Chris Wessels), I am working on a book on the philosophy of risk. It should come to a bookstore or classroom near you next year or so, perhaps? This project grew out of an undergraduate class that works well to introduce students, non-majors in particular, to issues in epistemology, philosophy of science, but also ethics.

3. Favorite memory of The Center?

It’s difficult to pick just one favorite memory from my time at the Center, between the city of Pittsburgh itself, the vibrant philosophy community both at Pitt and CMU, an office window with Gothic arches, the incredible talk series, or a formal epistemology workshop on ignorance I was fortunate enough to organize with John Norton and Lee Elkin.

My favorite memory of the Center is probably the Fellows’ reading group weekly sessions where we talked in depth, in a collegial but lively way, about our research in progress, in turn.

4. Greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center?

I have become an amateur developmental psychologist (see photo).

5. Best book/movie/tv you’ve seen this year?

After more than a year trapped at home I feel like I have to answer Groundhog Day, no? Other than that, I found Michael Sandel’s Tyranny of Merit thought-provoking and unsettling (and somewhat uncomfortable), in a good way.

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Catching Up With Peter Vickers

Posted on September 22, 2021 by cheryl

peter vickers 2021Next week we’ll be kicking off our new Lunchtime Talk series Featured Former Fellows! These online-only talks will occur throughout the year and reunite our Center community with past Fellows from around the globe.

Our first Featured Former Fellow will be Peter Vickers on Tuesday, Sept. 28. Peter was a postdoc Fellow at the Center in 2010-11 under then-Center Director John D. Norton. We sat down with Peter ahead of his talk to catch up with him.

1. Where are you now?

University of Durham, UK

2.  What are you working on?

Just in the very final stages of completing a monograph entitled “Identifying Future-Proof Science.”

3.  What is your favorite memory of The Center?

So many!

If I had to pick one: Probably February 2011, being grilled on my 5000 words by John Norton and the 2010-11 Fellows in the Center reading group. An experience I’ll never forget!

4. What would you say is your greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center?

Raising two kids, now aged 7 and 9. I also ran a 50 mile ultramarathon in the mountains of Wales, but that’s nothing compared with raising kids!

5. Best book/movie/tv you’ve read/seen this year?

TV: My Octopus Teacher
Fiction Book: “Normal People” (Sally Rooney)
Non-fiction book: “Other Minds” (Peter Godfrey-Smith)

Click here for details and to register for Peter’s talk.

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Sept. 22 LTT Cancelled

Posted on September 22, 2020 by cheryl

We regret that today’s (Sept.22) Lunchtime Talk with Subrena Smith has been cancelled.  Apologies for the inconvenience, and we hope you can join us for our next Lunchtime Talk!

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Register now for Lunchtime Talks!

Posted on August 5, 2020 by cheryl

Our classic Lunchtime Talks series will begin online this Fall.  We have an interesting slate of speakers this September, including Mark Wilson, Liam Bright, Yolonda Wilson, Mike Dietrich, and Subrena Smith.

 

Pre-registration to the Zoom webinars is required.  Please visit our October calendar for access to the links and more details on each talk.  We hope to “see” you there.

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