Annual Lecture Series (in-person)
Lunchtime Talks (in-person)
Conferences (in-person)
Online-Only Events
Ruth Kastner, University of Maryland, Center Visiting Fellow Curing Several Diseases of Physics with One Simple Remedy Abstract: Modern physics presents us with a number of stubborn problems and challenges, chief among them the measurement problem of quantum theory. I suggest that many of these problems arise from an underlying, unduly classical metaphysical picture of […]
Heather Douglas, Michigan State University, Center Senior Visiting Fellow Rethinking Public Funding for Science Abstract: Public funding for science increased dramatically after WWII. The initial justifications for public funding for science centered on the idea that basic research needed public funding because private funding would not be forthcoming for research so far removed from practical […]
Leonardo Bich, University of the Basque Country, Center Visiting Fellow An Operational Approach to Defining Life Abstract: Despite numerous and increasing attempts to define what life is, there is no consensus on necessary and sufficient conditions for life. Accordingly, some scholars have questioned the value of definitions of life and encouraged scientists and philosophers alike […]
Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk: Maria Serban, University of East Anglia The trouble with construct validity Abstract: An important part in the methodological discourse of psychology focuses on establishing the field as a hard science. The longstanding operationalist tradition emphasised the commitment to experimentalism, to identifying and individuating measurable variables, and to developing local […]
Serife Tekin, University of Texas, San Antonio Unmuting Patients in Psychiatric Epistemologies: Insights from the Opioid Crisis One of the central aims of psychiatry is to identify the properties of mental disorders to enable their diagnosis and treatment. As a branch of both science and medicine, psychiatry draws on a variety of scientific and medical […]
Ravit Dotan, University of California Berkeley AI Ethics and Investors Abstract: Should investors integrate AI ethics into investment strategies? If so, how? The goal of my talk is to lead a conversation about this topic. To that end, I will go over what AI is, what AI ethics is, how AI ethics can impact companies' […]
Pamela Reinagel The limited role of null hypothesis testing in Biology: A practicing biologist's perspective on the Reproducibility Crisis Abstract: In recent years there has been much discussion of rigor, reliability and reproducibility in science. Some metascience analyses, reproducibility projects, and proposed science reforms appear to make naive assumptions about the goals, methods, and products of […]
Join us for a lunch time talk by Aydin Mohseni, University of California, Irvine. Title: Modeling Interventions in the Replication Crisis Scientific studies vary in their methodological soundness. Interventions in evidentiary standards and research practices can differentially affect studies as a function of their soundness. The conjunction of these facts has unrecognized implications for proposed […]
This Talk has been postponed, date TBA. Title: "The Concept of Control" Abstract: The talk will argue that control is a complex and inherently unclear inception ill suited to the significant work that philosophers--especially ethicists--have envisioned for it. This talk will also be available live streamed on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
Title: Gender and values at the intersection of molecular biology and psychiatry Abstract: This talk points to socio-political values that call for more integration between molecular and social-environmental approaches to human cognition and neuropsychiatry, such as improving human mental health and reducing societal inequities. My general perspective on the overall landscape of human behavior research […]
Title: Pattern Finding and Pattern Making Abstract: Human beings are proficient pattern finders (e.g., scientific laws), and pattern makers (e.g., art, architecture, political systems). According to philosophical tradition, going back at least to Aristotle, these different capacities are made possible by fundamentally distinct cognitive competencies: theoretical vs. practical reason. But some of our most effective […]
Title: The Bearable Thinness of Being: A Pragmatist Metaphysics of Affordances Abstract: Taking a pragmatist stance toward the practices and products of science shapes our answers to central philosophical questions. I will explicate how scientists’ conceptual and representational practices work in concert with their observational and experimental ones to stabilize acceptance of claims of scientific […]
Title: Essentially Dynamic Concepts Abstract: Important biological concepts often display unruly behavior: there is consensus that they designate something important, but not how that 'something' should be defined, identified, or theorized—and the set of options changes over time. My talk will present an ongoing effort to make sense of this general phenomenon. First I sketch a […]
Rules Made to be Broken: Calibrating Climate Proxies Abstract: Philosophical analysis of measurement in scientific practice often focuses on the development and use of measurement standards. However, when it comes to proxy measurements in climate science---e.g. indicators such as tree rings that are used to reconstruct past climate variables like temperature---scientists develop measurement standards only […]
Title: Stating structural realism: mathematics-first approaches to physics and metaphysics Abstract: I respond to the frequent objection that structural realism fails to sharply state an alternative to the standard predicate-logic, object / property / relation, way of doing metaphysics. The approach I propose is based on what I call a `math-first' approach to physical theories […]
Title: Philosophy of the Cosmological Constant Abstract: The (re)introduction of lambda into cosmology has spurred debates that touch on central questions in philosophy of science, as well as the foundations of general relativity and particle physics. We provide a systematic assessment of the often implicit philosophical assumptions guiding the methodology of precision cosmology in relation […]
Title: Measurement in a network approach to psychopathology Abstract: In psychology, the standard model for measurement is the latent variable model. In a latent variable model of depression, the correlations between depression symptoms are explained through these symptoms all being manifestations of depression. However, it seems implausible that symptoms such as “insomnia” and “concentration problems” […]
Title: Fringe theories and epistemic tolerance Abstract: In this talk, I push the upward bound of our epistemic tolerance in science to its reasonable limit. In particular, I support the unpopular position that we should actively cultivate a receptive attitude towards even the wildest fringe theories. First, I unpack the concepts of ‘fringe’ and ‘mainstream’ […]
Title: Functionalism in physics and inter-theoretic relations Abstract: Philosophers of physics appeal to functionalism in a variety of contexts. This talk will explore what kind of functionalism they should be appealing to and what it might have to do with inter-theoretic relations. This talk will also be available live streamed on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
Approximating Bayes? On The Role of Approximations in Bayesian Cognitive Science The Bayesian framework is prominent in contemporary cognitive science. Its key tenet is that many aspects of cognition can be modeled as a one form or another of Bayesian inference. Early work within the framework applied this idea in a fairly direct manner. But, […]
Title: A Unified Theory of Probability Abstract: I defend a partial entailment/degree-of-support interpretation of probability as a unified theory of both physical and epistemic probability. On this interpretation, probabilities are necessary and a priori relations between propositions, and measure the degree to which one proposition supports, or “partially entails”, another. I begin by providing a […]
Title: “Control Problems.” Abstract: The concept of control plays a prominent role in pure and applied science. And it features prominently in ethics too. The paper’s issue is how these things fit together. This talk will also be available live streamed on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
Title: Are the problems of neuroscience just like everyone else's? And what should philosophers do about them? Abstract: Lately, there have been many papers criticizing various methods in neuroscience as failing to yield results that can support the desired conclusions. Specifically, while neuroscientific results identify correlations and causal relations, scientists often aim to draw conclusions […]
Title: Richard Lewontin and the Complications of Linkage Abstract: During the 1960s and 1970s population geneticists pushed beyond models of single genes to grapple with the effect on evolution of multiple genes associated by linkage. The resulting models of multiple interacting loci suggested that blocks of genes, maybe even entire chromosomes or the genome itself, should be […]
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 […]