Annual Lecture Series (in-person)
Lunchtime Talks (in-person)
Conferences (in-person)
Online-Only Events
Identifying Future-Proof Science Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk: Peter Vickers, Durham University This will be an online event. Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_HRqsVLWNS-u0Q_2puihG_Q ABSTRACT: My forthcoming book Identifying Future-Proof Science argues that we can confidently identify many scientific claims that are future-proof: they will last forever (so long as science continues). Examples include the evolution of […]
Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk: Yann Benetreau-Dupin, University of Western Ontario This will be an online event. Is Reading Peer Review a Good Idea? ABSTRACT: After a few years as a full-time staff editor for the large, multidisciplinary, open-access journal PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science), I wonder if leaving academic philosophy to read peer-review […]
Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk: Erik Curiel, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy This will be an online event. Math Does Not Represent ABSTRACT: On the standard---almost universally (albeit often only implicitly) accepted---picture of the relation of mathematics in a physical theory to the world, mathematical entities represent physical entities, mathematical structures represent physical structures, and […]
Featured Former Fellow Lunchtime Talk: Naftali Weinberger, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy Signal Manipulation and the Causal Analysis of Racial Discrimination ABSTRACT: Discrimination is, in part, a causal concept. To say that an individual was discriminated against based on race entails that her race made a difference to how she was treated. Yet demographic variables […]
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 […]
Join us for an online lecture by Alison Fernandes (Trinity College) Naturalism, Agency and the Metaphysics of Science Abstract: Methodological naturalism is a plausible approach to the metaphysics of science: we should use the methods of science when giving accounts of what science says there is and what it is like. Methodological naturalism is particularly […]
Title: Discovery in Synthetic Biology: A Call for Doing Philosophy in Science Abstract: The work of synthetic biologists strikes some as strange and foreign (Keller 2009). Synthetic biologists are in the business of exploring a range of biological possibilities rarely sampled by the nature world – or the world outside the lab (Malaterre 2013). In this talk, I’ll argue that a common logical structure characterizes the mode of discovery adopted by many research […]
Title: The World Crisis – And What To Do About It Abstract: Humanity faces two fundamental problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning how to become civilized. We have solved the first problem, but not the second, and that puts us in a situation of great danger. Almost all our global problems have […]
Title: Understanding Integration: Lessons from Integrative Modeling in Structural Biology Abstract: Although the value of integrative research has been widely acknowledged, philosophers have yet to develop a comprehensive understanding of what, precisely, integration consists in and what makes it effective. In this paper, we provide a detailed descriptive and normative account of integration in structural […]
Title: Characterizing a Collaboration by Its Communication Structure Abstract: I present first results of my analysis of a collection of about 24,000 email messages from internal mailing lists of a major particle physics collaboration during the years 2010–2013. I represent the communication on these mailing lists as a network in which the members of the […]
Title: Are Universal Criteria of Analogical Reasoning Hopeless? Abstract: One of the most common forms of reasoning in science is reasoning by analogy. Roughly speaking, such reasoning involves the transposition of solutions that work well in one domain to another, on the basis of analogous properties between the two domains. Sometimes such reasoning works, and […]
Title: Grasping Observational Facts in Modern Cosmology Abstract: The understanding of the concept of ‘fact’ in modern (post-WWII) cosmology has been fluid. Cosmologists and philosophers’ perspectives have ranged, with some asserting the virtual indisputability of certain general cosmological facts, and others contending that the very use of the word 'fact' is an impediment to cosmological […]
Title: Problems and Possibilities: A Theory of Scientific Understanding Abstract: In this talk I will discuss joint work with Soazig Le Bihan on a novel theory of scientific understanding. Extant theories of scientific understanding fail to be suitably comprehensive. Either they fail to countenance relevant kinds of scientific understanding, e.g.~non-explanatory understanding or practical understanding, […]
Title: Is It the Same Experimental Result? Replication in Physics Abstract: One of the interesting issues in the philosophy of experiment is that of the replicability of experimental results. The scientific community enthusiastically endorses the idea that “Replication – the confirmation of results and conclusions from one study obtained independently in another is considered the […]