Annual Lecture Series (in-person)
Lunchtime Talks (in-person)
Conferences (in-person)
Online-Only Events
Aydin Mohseni, UC Irvine, Center Post-Doc Fellow HARKing: from Misdiagnosis to Misprescription ABSTRACT: The practice of HARKing---hypothesizing after results are known---is commonly maligned as undermining the reliability of scientific findings. There are several accounts in the literature as to why HARKing undermines the reliability of findings. We argue that none of these is right and […]
What is the relationship between Gibbsian and Boltzmannian statistical mechanics? Relatedly, how should Gibbsian statistical mechanics and Boltzmannian statistical mechanics be interpreted? Is Gibbsian statistical mechanics or Boltzmannian statistical mechanics more fundamental? David Wallace (University of Pittsburgh, HPS Dept.) and Charlotte Werndl (University of Salzburg & LSE, Logic & Phil of Science) will walk us […]
Konrad Werner, University of Warsaw, Poland Defining Institutions: A Shared Objective of the Social and Cognitive Sciences ABSTRACT: There is consensus in the field of economics (economic history) and the social sciences more generally that institutions matter significantly when it comes to why certain nations, societies or states prosper while others don’t. However, there is […]
Heather Douglas, Michigan State, Center Senior Fellow Rethinking the Social Contract for Science ABSTRACT: The dominant way of thinking about the relationship between science and society has been a “social contract” that grew out of the debates about science funding in the post-WWII US. This social contract presumed that the most public good would come […]
Hyundeuk Cheon, Seoul National University, Center Visiting Fellow Explicating the Principle of Explicability ABSTRACT: In this talk, I attempt to explicate the principle of explicability for artificial intelligence (AI). While there is widespread consensus that AI needs to be explicable (expressed by different terms such as explainability, interpretability, transparency, or accountability), there are unresolved issues […]
Sara Green, University of Copenhagen Philosophy of Science as Visioneering Assessment: The Case of Precision Medicine ABSTRACT: Biomedical science is not only driven by theoretical achievements and technological developments, but also by visions for the future of medicine and society in general. By “visioneering”, I refer to the communication of visions by influential proponents within […]
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 […]
Brian McLoone, Higher School Economics, Center Visiting Fellow How Should We Think about Models with Impossible Assumptions? ABSTRACT: This talk will be about complications that emerge when one renders a scientific model with an impossible assumption as a counterfactual. The talk will touch on a variety of topics, such as the nature of (im)possibility, the […]
Somogy Varga, Aarhus University, Center Visiting Scholar The Aim of Medicine ABSTRACT: Recent debates about the scope and societal role of medicine raise fundamental questions about its aim. The main task of the talk is to contribute to clarifying this issue. I start by outlining the idea medicine deploys a particular kind of understanding. Then, […]
Nick Huggett, LAS Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago Quantum Gravity on a Tabletop? ABSTRACT: The characteristic – Planck – energy scale of quantum gravity is utterly beyond current technology, making experimental access to the relevant physics apparently impossible. Nevertheless, low energy experiments linking gravity and the quantum have been undertaken: the […]
Matthew Parker, University of Western Ontario, Center Visiting Fellow What Counts as Evidence in a Vast Universe? ABSTRACT: Ziv has a psychological theory and claims that an experiment has confirmed it. Nick says this is irrelevant; the universe is so big that someone was bound to make the same observation even if the theory is […]
Simon DeDeo, Carnegie Mellon/Santa Fe Institute Consilience and Epistemic Values in the Royal Society ABSTRACT: Consilience, the idea that scientific knowledge should draw together disparate phenomena into common frameworks, is a widely accepted value in contemporary science. Little is known, however, about how and when this value first appeared in practice. Using the full-text archives […]
This talk has been moved to online-only. Anthony Beavers, University of Evansville, Center Visiting Fellow Concerning a Machine Command Theory of Ethics ABSTRACT: In this presentation on meta-ethics, I will consider the possibility of a Machine Command Theory (MCT) of ethics that may allow an artificial intelligence to outperform conventional moral theories in determining and […]
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 […]
A public talk in partnership with with the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Words like “nothingness” and “empty space” may seem like simple concepts, referring to the complete absence of content. But in practice, these concepts have been topics of ongoing debate with important implications for our understanding of the universe. This […]
Adolf Grünbaum 2022 Memorial Lecture James Owen Weatherall, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, UC Irvine The Philosophy Behind Dark Matter Abstract: According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, more than 80% of the total matter in the universe is "dark": it does not emit or reflect light, and so its presence and properties […]
Ravit Dotan, University of California Berkeley, Center Postdoc Fellow Participatory AI Ethics Governance ABSTRACT: I am designing a new approach for AI ethics governance, based on meaningful stakeholder participation. Currently, the prominent approach in AI ethics governance focuses on articulating AI ethics principles on topics such as transparency, fairness, and privacy. A minority of organizations […]
The New Modern Medicine Description: In this local online workshop, guests will respond to themes and work-in-progress from Jonathan Fuller’s current book project, titled The New Modern Medicine. This monograph explores characteristic philosophical problems that arise in the medicine that emerged by the late twentieth century, especially around contemporary epidemics (cancers, chronic diseases, and emerging infectious diseases), […]
Cordelia Fine, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne Fairly Criticised or Dangerously Politicised? Conflicts in Sex/Gender Science Conflicts in the Neuroscience of Sex Differences in the Human Brain Investigations of sex differences in the human brain take place on politically sensitive terrain. While some scholars express concern that gendered biases and stereotypes […]
Edouard Machery, Distinguished Professor of HPS, University of Pittsburgh Formal Modeling in Philosophy of Science - Let’s be realistic! ABSTRACT: In recent years, formal models have become increasingly important in philosophy of science, particularly among social epistemologists. They have also become an important component of metascience. This talk will argue that formal modelers in philosophy […]
Caspar Jacobs, Dept. of HPS, University of Pittsburgh Are Mass Scalings Symmetries of Newtonian Mechanics? ABSTRACT: There has been some recent debate over whether mass scalings - uniform scalings of all particle masses - are symmetries of Newtonian mechanics. The brief answer is that this depends on whether one also inversely scales G, the gravitational […]
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 […]
Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh A Fallen Branch from the Tree of Knowledge: The Failure of Futurology. ABSTRACT: The talk will examine the futurology bubble of the 1950-1980 era, and considers the reasons for its rise and demise. Please Note: Non-Pitt individuals who want to attend our in-person talks must […]
Robert Batterman, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Mesoscale Models and Many-Body Physics ABSTRACT: What is the best way to study the bulk behavior of many-body systems? A natural, common sentiment among philosophers and physicists is to take a foundational perspective. Examine the theory that characterizes the interactions among the components of such many-body systems […]
Robert Pennock, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University Curiosity Systematized: Virtue Philosophy of Science and the Philosophy of Mind ABSTRACT: I have argued for a virtue philosophy of science as a normative reconstruction of the mindset and characteristic practices of scientists—a peculiarly curious population of knowledge-seekers. Arising in relation to the scientific task […]
Eugen Fischer, University of East Anglia, Center Visiting Fellow Experimental Argument Analysis: How Stereotypes Shape Arguments ABSTRACT: The analysis of philosophical arguments is commonly regarded as model of an armchair activity. The talk explains when and why experimental methods need to complement familiar armchair methods of argument analysis; it reviews methods from psycholinguistics that can […]
John D. Norton, Distinguished University Professor of HPS, University of Pittsburgh How Analogy Helped Create the New Science of Thermodynamics ABSTRACT: In 1824, Sadi Carnot’s “On the Motive Power of Fire” laid out the general framework of thermodynamics. The work seems to burst unexpected and fully formed into science, brimming with extraordinary, novel ideas. He […]
Gayle Rogers, University of Pittsburgh The Science of Speculation: A Revolution in Experimentation and Moneymaking Abstract: This talk will trace the development of speculation as a twin phenomenon in the scientific and financial revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Initially doubted as a mode of airy, conjectural thought inferior to demonstrable experimentation, speculation came […]
Eran Tal, Department of Philosophy, McGill University Measurement Outcomes as Best Predictors Abstract: I argue for a view of measurement that treats measurement results (‘outcomes’) as predictors of patterns in data. The data in question may be records of instrument indications, such as thermometer readings, or future data, such as records of health outcomes. Not […]
Laura Menatti, University of the Basque Country, Center Visiting Fellow Health and environment: A Relational Account Abstract In this talk I propose a situated and relational framework to address the relationship between health and environment. This research has been developed at the crossroad of environmental philosophy and philosophy of medicine. Historically, the environment has received little attention in the definitions […]