Annual Lecture Series (in-person)
Lunchtime Talks (in-person)
Conferences (in-person)
Online-Only Events
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. […]
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 […]
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” […]
Progress and its Problems: Coming to Terms with Theory Change in the Metaphysics of Science Kerry McKenzie, University of California, San Diego Abstract: Progress is often cited as definitive of science. Thinking about the sense, if any, that metaphysics progresses might therefore help us get a purchase on the demarcation between science and metaphysics and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]