Readings and more information can be found on the PSP7 Discord
Bob Batterman (Pitt, Philosophy)
- Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence
- This seminar will be a somewhat opinionated survey of philosophical issues involving explanation, reduction, and emergence in scientific theories. We will consider several views about explanation coming out of the logical empiricist and post logical empiricist traditions; Nagelian and non-Nagelian views about reduction and inter-theory relations; and mid 1980s philosophical theories of emergence and more contemporary responses. Most examples will come from the physical sciences, but no prior knowledge will be required or assumed.
Janella Baxter (Sam Houston State University, Department of Psychology and Philosophy)
- Rethinking the “Universal” Genetic Code
- Since the genetic code was deciphered in the 1960s, Francis Crick’s Frozen Accident Theory has been the dominant view in biology. This theory states that the genetic code is a frozen, universal feature of life on earth. However, beginning in the late 1970s alternative genetic codes have been identified in a dazzling array of microbes, spanning not just different species, but different taxa as well. How are we to make sense of such apparently “deviant” cases? Scientists currently disagree. While some authors maintain that Crick’s theory remains “alive and well,” others argue that ubiquitous microbial exceptions constitute the “final ‘nail in the coffin’ of the frozen accident theory.” In this course, we will explore what explains the ongoing scientific disagreement and how, if at all, nonstandard genetic codes should prompt biology to rethink one of its most fundamental theories.
Laura Gradowski (Pitt, Center for Philosophy of Science)
- Theory-Informed Observation and Theory Evaluation
- There is some consensus amongst philosophers of science that scientific evidence is not theory-free; that is, observations only support or disconfirm a hypothesis when informed by a theory. This allows for the possibility, and indeed it is the case, that scientists with different theories sometimes see the very same experimental data in drastically different ways. How can we and how should we settle scientific debates in light of the fact that all observations are theory-informed?
Edouard Machery (Pitt, History and Philosophy of Science)
- Should We Trust Science?
- The behavioral and biomedical sciences have gone through a decade-long replication crisis: Scores of influential findings happen to be very hard to replicate when independent scientists try to redo an experiment. This replication crisis has led to widespread debates about the scientific experimental, and statistical practices in the behavioral and biomedical sciences and about scientists’ incentives and the organization of scientific communities. More fundamentally, it raises questions about how much trust lay people and scientists alike should have in science.
John Norton (Pitt, History and Philosophy of Science)
- Thought Experiments in Science
- Thought experiments in science are remarkable, or at least they appear so. Through them, we can learn about the world, not by conducting a real experiment, but merely by imagining such experiments. This poses the problem that will be the focus of our meeting:
The epistemological problem of thought experiments in science:
How can merely experimenting in thought provide new knowledge of the natural world?
Lisa S. Parker (Pitt, Center for Bioethics)
- Genetic Technologies: Personal Decisions and Social Responsibilities
- James Watson, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA, commented in 1989, “We used to think that our fate was in our stars, but now we know that, in large measure, our fate is in our genes.” But myriad genetic technologies—from gene testing to preimplantation genetic diagnosis to gene editing—seem to place, if not our fate, at least a lot of power in the hands of people (and parents) who would select or alter the genetic makeup of themselves (or their children). We will examine the sociopolitical context of those personal decisions and evaluate arguments for and against a range of uses of those technologies.
Subrena Smith (University of New Hampshire, Philosophy)
- Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?
- In this course, we will discuss arguments for and against the possibility of evolutionary psychology.
Alexander Tolbert (Penn, Philosophy)
- Exploring Race and Intersectionality Bias in Causal Modeling and AI
- In this seminar, we will explore two papers that address important issues in the philosophy of science, causal modeling, and machine learning. The first paper, “Causal Agnosticism about Race” by Alexander Williams Tolbert, defends the position that it is reasonable to withhold judgment on whether race is a cause, and highlights the importance of variable selection and stable causal relationships in causal modeling. The second paper, “Addressing Bias in Machine Learning Models with Intersectionality” by Alexander Williams Tolbert and Emily Ruth Diana, proposes an approach to address bias in machine learning models using intersectionality, which accounts for the intersection of different groups and the potential bias that arises from under-representation of certain groups in the training data.
Wayne Wu (CMU, Philosophy)
- Attention and Consciousness
- Debates about attention’s role in perceptual consciousness draw on a rich set of experimental data that purport to show that attention is necessary for consciousness. To adequately assess that claim, we need to understand both what consciousness and attention are. This discussion will focus on attention as a topic of philosophical and empirical investigation. Attention will be situated within an explanatory framework proposed by David Marr that begins with defining the function of attention and then draws on behavioral and neuroscientific work to flesh out how attention is implemented in the primate brain. We will discuss the idea of top-down and bottom-up modulation and of the prospects for a unified account of attention. We then return to the debate about consciousness and show that despite widespread agreement that attention is necessary for consciousness, the standard evidence falls short of supporting that claim. We’ll look at the role of attention in consciousness as well, with an emphasis on integrating psychological and neural data. So, the title can be the cognitive science of attention.