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LTT: Luis Favela

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

New Tools Drive New Concepts into Neuroscience Luis Favela, Center Visiting Fellow U. of Central Florida Abstract:  Increases in the spatial and temporal resolution of data obtained from neuronal activity are largely enabled by technological innovations, for example, single neurons integrating inputs from thousands of other neurons and then distributing energy back to the network. […]

LTT: Jean Baccelli

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Title TBA Jean Baccelli, Post-Doc Fellow Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

LTT: Jonathan Fuller

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Squaring the Extrapolator’s Circle Jonathan Fuller, HPS University of Pittsburgh Abstract:  To explain or predict the effect of some exposure in a human target population, health scientists and social scientists often extrapolate from a study done on some other human or non-human population. This procedure is used frequently in toxicology and epidemiology, where the exposure is a potential toxin or carcinogen, the outcome is a disease […]

LTT: Paolo Palmieri

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Baroque Mathematics Paolo Palmieri, HPS University of Pittsburgh Abstract:  In this talk I conjure, or evoke by supernatural power, or jugglery, the emergence of early modern calculus, the geometry of indivisibles, in confrontation with the ghost of Archimedes, the wonders of Baroque aesthetics, rhetoric, and the estranging creative power of extenuated metaphor.

LTT: Marian Gilton

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Title TBA Marian Gilton, HPS University of Pittsburgh

LTT: David Wallace

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Title TBA David Wallace, Phil/HPS University of Pittsburgh Abstract TBA

LTT: Nicholas Rescher

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Relevance and its Problems Nicholas Rescher U. Pittsburgh, Philosophy Abstract: Relevance to significant questions is one of the main evaluative factors with respect to scientific findings, along with originality and reproducibility. The talk will elucidate some aspects of how this conception actually works.

LTT: Christian Feldbacher-Escamilla

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Abductive Epistemic Engineering Christian Feldbacher-Escamilla, Center Visiting Fellow U. Duesseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) Abstract: We investigate virtues of creative abductive concept formation (cf. Schurz 2008) and their application in epistemic engineering (cf. Brun 2017, Cappelen 2018). It will be shown that abductive virtues allow for an explication of traditional conditions […]

LTT: Paola Hernández-Chavez

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Cheating, Deceiving, and Corruption. Reshaping the Empirical Data Paola Hernández-Chávez, Center Visiting Fellow U. Juárez del Estado de Durango, Cognitive Sci. Research Ctr. Abstract: Characterizations of corruption convolute in conceptualizing it as a violation of a social norm in order to obtain a particular benefit, as in political corruption, defined as the use of public […]

LTT: Sander Verhaegh

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

The American Reception of Logical Positivism Sander Verhaegh, Center Visiting Fellow Tilburg U. ABSTRACT: In the late-1930s, a small number of European logicians and philosophers of science sought refuge in the United States, escaping the quickly deteriorating political situation on the continent. Within a few years, these logical positivists significantly reshaped the American philosophical landscape. […]

LTT: Samuel Fletcher

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Severe Testing Samuel Fletcher, Ctr. Visiting Fellow U. of Minnesota Abstract: The methods of classical statistics have tilled the experimental soil from which twentieth-century science has grown. Philosophers of science, meanwhile, have showered those methods mostly with withering epistemological criticism. One of its few steadfast philosophical defenders, Deborah G. Mayo, has over decades developed her own approach […]

LTT: Philipp Haueis

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

A Generalized Patchwork Approach to Scientific Concepts Philipp Haueis Bielefeld University, Dept. of Philosophy Abstract:  Patchwork approaches hold that scientists implicitly subdivide their concepts into several, partially overlapping segments or “patches” to describe, classify and explain the investigated part of reality appropriately. For example: based on the measurement technique, different patches of the concept “hardness” […]

LTT: Christine Heybl

A Kantian Approach to Climate Justice and the Reasons Why We do not Act Christine Heybl Leuphana University of Lüneburg   Abstract:  In this lunchtime talk, I invite you to hear what Kant would have had to say about the great injustices of our age. Namely I will focus on climate change and how Kant […]

LTT: Alex Broadbent

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Evolution, Reasoning and Causal Nihilism Alex Broadbent University of Johannesburg Abstract:  Causal reasoning is widely thought to be a cognitive trait that is a distinguishing feature of humanity, accountable for our success at spreading through the world and shaping it. In this paper I argue that there is neither empirical nor conceptual evidence to support […]

LTT: Jeffrey Schwartz

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Did Humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans interbreed? Facts versus Received Wisdom in Molecular Systematics Jeffrey H. Schwartz Emeritus Professor of Anthropology University of Pittsburgh Abstract:  Belief in the infallibility of molecular analyses – especially of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA – in determining “who’s related to” and even “who’s been sleeping with whom?” pervades human evolutionary studies, […]

LTT: Andrew Buskell

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Cognitive Novelties, Informational Form, and Structural-Causal Explanations Andrew Buskell, Center Visiting Fellow Abstract:  Recent work has established a framework for explaining the origin of cognitive novelties—qualitatively distinct cognitive traits—in human beings. This niche construction approach argues that humans engineer epistemic environments in ways that facilitate the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of such novelties. I here […]

LTT: Simon DeDeo

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Explosive Proofs of Mathematical Truths Simon DeDeo, CMU & the Santa Fe Institute Abstract: Justifications for believing a mathematical proof are traditionally based in the validity of its underlying deductive steps. However, in a skeptical argument going back to Hume, this should make even weak belief in a theorem unjustified because errors compound exponentially. To […]

LTT: Gillian Barker

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Healing or Hacking the Earth?: Lessons from the Metaphors of Climate Intervention Gillian Barker, University of Western Ontario Abstract:  Thinking about interventions in the climate system designed to have effects at the global scale takes us into new conceptual territory. Scientists and others have drawn on a wide array of metaphors to help navigate its […]

LTT: John Worrall

1117 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

A Less Myopic View of the Virtues of Blinding and of Tests for Blinding in Clinical Trials John Worrall, London School of Economics Abstract: Performing a clinical trial double-blind controls for various biases that might affect the outcome if the trial were unblinded.   It would seem, then, that a trial that begins and continues to be […]

LTT: Liam Bright

Online Lecture

Liam Bright, London School of Economics Scientific Conclusions Need Not Be Accurate, Justified, or Believed by their Authors (This talk is being given by Liam Bright and was coauthored by Haixin Dang) ABSTRACT: It is often claimed that assertions are utterances held to certain norms, called norms of assertion. Some philosophers believe assertions are governed […]

LTT: Mike Dietrich

Online Lecture

Michael Dietrich, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Dept. of HPS The Politics of Embryology: Johannes Holtfreter’s Flight from Nazi Germany ABSTRACT:  Johannes Holtfreter was forced to leave Nazi Germany.  Unlike other exiled biologists though, Holtfreter was not of Jewish ancestry.  He was a rare political refugee.   But, did his forced migration have an impact on his […]

LTT: Mark Wilson

Online Lecture

Mark Wilson, Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh How “Wavelength” Found its Truth-Values ABSTRACT:  Philosophers of science and metaphysicians frequently declare that they are only interested in the “fundamental part” of a theory T, and not in the grubby tactics utilized to extract concrete conclusions from them.  “As a philosopher I am only interested in […]

LTT: Subrena Smith

Online Lecture

CANCELLED  Subrena Smith, Univ. of New Hampshire, Dept. of Philosophy Constructing Human Behavior ABSTRACT:  Behavioral sciences purport to give descriptive accounts of human beings as behavioral systems. Those accounts have it that human beings, because of their nature, behave in certain ways. In this talk, I show that this is not what is done. Infused […]

LTT: Yolonda Wilson

Online Lecture

Yolonda Wilson, National Humanities Center Fellow & Encore Public Voices Fellow Empathy and Structural Injustice in the Assessment of Patient Noncompliance ABSTRACT:  It is well established that health status is at least partly socially determined. Yet even with this awareness, patients are sometimes treated as though compliance with medical advice and health-seeking behavior are solely […]

LTT: James Woodward

Online Lecture

James Woodward, Univ. of Pittsburgh Dept. of HPS Flagpoles, Anyone? Independence, Invariance and the Direction of Causation  This talk will be a Zoom webinar and registration is required.  Registration link: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ky9mJLfcQDmwfxX9wy_EaA   ABSTRACT: This talk will explore some recent ideas concerning the directional features of explanation (or causation). I begin by describing an ideal of […]

LTT: Mak Pedroso

Online Lecture

Mak Pedroso, Center Visiting Fellow Wicked Nature: Coping with Uncertainty through Redundancy This talk will be held via Zoom and pre-registration is required.  Registration link: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T-Z7lis2QqSLhbvhVRQnrg ABSTRACT:  In their struggle for existence, organisms grapple with high levels of uncertainty since they possess limited information about their environments. As a result, the evolutionary fate of lineages […]

LTT: Diane O’Leary

To Be Determined

Diane O'Leary, Center Visiting Fellow Making Philosophical Sense of Medicine’s Position on Mind and Body This talk will be held via Zoom and pre-registration is required.  Registration link: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DdjHmqsNQ5mpAlcoWamrQg ABSTRACT:  Medicine has cultivated a philosophical identity in the last forty years, challenging the biomedical model in favor of a holistic approach that “integrates mind and […]

LTT: Ed Slowik

Online Lecture

Ed Slowik, Center Visiting Fellow A Note on Kant as Precursor of Mach: Reconsidering Kant’s "Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science" from a Huygensian Frame This talk will be held via Zoom and pre-registration is required.  Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_H0Xxw_YDRqaaW_NQJe1yYw ABSTRACT:  Over the past several decades, important studies of Kant’s pre-critical period natural philosophy (by, e.g., Watkins, […]

LTT: Nic Fillion

Online Lecture

Nic Fillion, Center Visiting Fellow The Cogency of Arguments Involving Approximations This talk will take place via Zoom and pre-registration is required. Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KHPk9mCNRGOESTGHeskKdg ABSTRACT:  In philosophy, we spend a great deal of time talking about what makes arguments cogent, since an understanding of what makes arguments cogent plays a crucial role in our […]

LTT: Mike Schneider

To Be Determined

Mike Schneider, Center Visiting Fellow Stabs in the Dark Sector This talk will be held via Zoom and pre-registration is required.  Registration link:  https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DbLCsyAGQH-V9sk0i_2RmQ ABSTRACT:  ?CDM, our current theory of the evolution of large scale structure (LSS) in cosmology, constitutes an extraordinary achievement of modern physics. Consequent to our trust in the theory, empirical claims […]