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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

Antonella Tramacere, Research Fellow at Mississippi State University, Associate Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Appointed Research Fellow at the University of Bologna Lost in Abstraction: Awareness of Action through Time and Causality This talk will be held online via Zoom and pre-regstration is required.  Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2IgfHc_9QHSp-hbZpYSwOw […]

Simon DeDeo, CMU & the Santa Fe Institute Explosive Proofs of Mathematical Truths This will be on online lecture via Zoom, and pre-registration is required.  Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_l0jdzxEDTSupgpaXzkJwZw 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, […]

Edouard Machery, Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science and Pitt HPS Are Perverse Incentives Responsible for the Replication Crisis? This will be an online talk via Zoom and pre-registration is required.  Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jtArjv8yS4eTHjXBHTq53w ABSTRACT:  It is commonly claimed that unacceptable or questionable scientific practices, including fraud, salami publishing, and p-hacking, are due […]

Roberto Fumagalli, King’s College London We Should Not Use Randomization Procedures to Allocate Scarce Life-Saving Resources This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required.  Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4p2ZbBl6QvCBhBV_MBIXww ABSTRACT: In the recent literature across philosophy, medicine and public policy, many influential arguments have been put forward to support the use of […]

Wayne Wu, Carnegie Mellon University Dept of Philosophy (& Peter Lush, University of Sussex) Reassessing the Empirical Argument for Ownership in the Rubber Hand Illusion This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required.  Please register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7xWYT1kYQDOxRBmCwNtV2Q   ABSTRACT:  The Rubber Hand Illusion, published in a one page report in […]

Melissa Jacquart, University of Cincinnati Idealization and Representation in Astrophysical Computer Simulations This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q3M6SodYQVWUcRmZbUo9mA ABSTRACT: Scientific models and computer simulations are indispensable to scientific practice. Through their use, scientists are able to effectively learn about how the world works, and to […]

Nick Byrd, Carnegie Mellon University and the Stevens Institute of Technology Your Health vs. My Liberty: Philosophical Beliefs Dominated Reflection and Identifiable Victim Effects when Predicting Public Health Recommendation Compliance during COVID-19 Pandemic This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LCTU5Oi8SjCLu4CC5pgNqQ ABSTRACT:  Philosophers and scientists have emphasized […]

John D. Norton, University of Pittsburgh Dept of HPS How to Make Possibility Safe for Empiricists This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required.  Please register here:  https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wijbswi3T-Cvz5HQOrBY6Q ABSTRACT: What is possible, according to the empiricist conception, is what our evidence positively allows; and what is necessary is what it […]

Kevin Zollman, Carnegie Mellon University Conformity, Social Networks, and the Emergence of Pluralistic Ignorance This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qhw1ZPEMQIyOriVzFfxTGg ABSTRACT: Occasionally, people refuse to publicly state their beliefs because they think others disagree.  Others do in fact share their belief, but are also afraid […]

Paolo Palmieri, Pitt HPS Thermodynamic Myths This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Register here:  https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_HDxPfvXgS7WJoOByiQiVwQ ABSTRACT:  Tricksters, sorting demons and anthropomorphism in thermodynamics... or how myth and science must needs cross their paths. And how is thought experimenting at the joints of macro- and microscopic nature? Are physicists […]

Subrena Smith, University of New Hampshire Turning Race Inside Out This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Register here:  https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-pAsFsJ6QI62VKdTFx3o5w ABSTRACT:  Suppose you were to look at me and say of me that I am a Black person. Suppose, further, that you proceed to treat me as a Black […]