Annual Lecture Series (in-person)
Lunchtime Talks (in-person)
Conferences (in-person)
Online-Only Events
Title: Gricean inferentialism about scientific representation: A framework and two applications. Abstract: Traditional views of scientific representation are “referentialist.” They argue that a representation’s meaning is determined by a substantive relation (canonically, similarity or isomorphism) to what it represents. These views face well known problems in accounting for idealization and the “problem of style” – […]
Title: People Prefer Moral Discretion to Algorithms: Algorithm Aversion Beyond Intransparency Abstract: We explore aversion to the use of algorithms in moral decision-making. So far, this aversion has been explained mainly by the fear of opaque decisions that are potentially biased. Using incentivized experiments, we study which role the desire for human discretion in moral […]
Title: Quantum Nanowires: A case study on reproducibility in natural sciences Abstract: Three years ago, I and a friend found major problems in a Nature paper in my field. The paper has since been retracted, along with another Nature paper. Several more are recommended for retraction, are under expressions of concern or pending corrections. I […]
Title: How much are large language models narrowing the gap to human intelligence? Abstract: ChatGPT was released in late October 2022. It is a public interface to GPT-3, an artificial neural network with 175 billion parameters trained on terabytes of text from the internet. It is paradigmatic of the class of Large Language Models (LLMs) […]
Title: "A quantitative field theoretical for spontaneous collapse" Abstract: Any model of spontaneous collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics must involve alterations of the standard Schrödinger equation to allow non-unitary dynamics. In the past two years I have developed a model for a change to the quantum field theory for fermions to allow […]
Title: From Epistemology to Quantum Mechanics: A Phenomenological Proposal Abstract: Contemporary epistemology is dominated by externalist approaches. In this picture, evidence is not constituted by our experiences but by facts and the epistemic status of our beliefs is not determined by what is internally accessible to us but by external factors such as reliability. This […]
Title: The Sense of Commitment in Joint Action: Towards a Comparative Perspective Abstract: Recent research provides evidence that, in the context of joint action, individuals’ sense of commitment sustains their motivation to persist in performing actions which their joint action partners are expecting and may be relying on them to perform. I will provide an […]
Title: Inductive Risk and Value Freedom, Revisited Abstract: Work on the role of values in science has grown and diversified dramatically in the 21st century. But there is a near-consensus on one basic point, namely the value-ladeness – that is, ladeness with social, moral and political values – of all aspects of the scientific process, […]