[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wednesday 30 May: Mazviita D. Chirimuuta (Pittsburgh), 'Constructing the Organism in the Age of Abstraction' (new title)
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, CamPoS continues tomorrow, Wednesday 30 May, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2. This will be the last talk this year. (For next year, Matt Farr will be convening CamPoS.) We will have Mazviita D. Chirimuuta from Pittsburgh (visiting Birmingham this term), speaking on 'Constructing the Organism in the Age of Abstraction.' She kindly rescheduled her talk from Lent during the strike. Note that this is a new title. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: This paper examines the mutual influence between Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) and his cousin, the neurologist Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965). For both Cassirer and Goldstein, views on the nature of human cognition were fundamental to their understanding of scientific knowledge, and these were informed both by philosophical theorising and empirical research on pathologies of the nervous system. Between the wars, Goldstein published a series of famous case studies on brain damaged WW1 veterans with the Gestalt psychologist Adhémar Gelb. This activity culminated in the book published by Goldstein in exile, Der Aufbau des Organismus: Einführung in die Biologie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Erfahrungen am kranken Menschen (translated for publication as, The Organism: A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in Man). In contrast to Harrington (1996), I argue that Goldstein’s methodological prescriptions are not straightforwardly holistic, but require the biologist to alternate between holistic and “dissective” ways of characterising living organisms (Goldstein 1934/1995, p.316). Following Cassirer, and in agreement with the contemporary logical empiricists, Goldstein held that the physical sciences had progressed by arriving at abstract, mathematical forms to take the place of qualitative characterisations of empirical reality. Unlike the logical empiricists, Goldstein was not sanguine about the fruitfulness of the abstractive approach in biology. An interesting point of comparison is with the other famous Aufbau treatise of the era, Carnap’s Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Whereas Carnap constructed the scaffolding for a unified science operating according to mathematical and logical principles, Goldstein argued that biology must retain descriptions of the “qualities” that are excluded by mathematical abstractions (Goldstein 1934/1995, p.315). According to Friedman (2000, p.155-6), the rejection of mathematical logic as the unifying language for natural and human sciences motivated Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms as a means to provide a systematic epistemology for the non-mathematical disciplines. Friedman points to Cassirer’s failure to buttress his claims for the “underlying unity” of the symbolic forms in human cognition as the reason for the failure of his programme. I examine the ways in which the neurological writings of Goldstein offer insights into Cassirer’s unificatory project, where the bio-medical sciences take an intermediate position between the human and the physical sciences. J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS, Wednesday 23 May: Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnan/Durham), ‘What _Can_ Scientific Realists Think about Scientific Method(s)?’
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, CamPoS continues tomorrow, Wednesday 23 May, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2. We will have Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnan/Durham) tell us ‘What _Can_ Scientific Realists Think about Scientific Method(s)?’ His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: First, I will identify a methodological thesis associated with scientific realism. This has different variants, but each concerns the reliability of scientific methods in connection with acquiring, or approaching, truth or approximate truth. Second, I will show how this thesis bears on what scientists should do when considering new theories that significantly contradict older theories. Third, I will explore how vulnerable scientific realism is to a reductio ad absurdum as a result. Finally, I will consider which variants of the methodological thesis are the most defensible in light of the earlier findings. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS, Wednesday 16 May: Mike Stuart (LSE), ‘A New Way to Defend the Value Free Ideal for Science’
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, CamPoS continues tomorrow, Wednesday 16 May, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2. We will have Mike Stuart from LSE to speak on ‘A New Way to Defend the Value Free Ideal for Science’. His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: Philosophers of science debate whether a value-free ideal can or should be maintained for scientific activity. But actual scientific activity (like all organized human activity) will not easily confirm claims about how it can or should function. When faced with the task of understanding complex systems, scientists often create simplified models. We examine what happens to the debate if we recast philosophers as imaginatively simplifying scientific activity by devising models of it. Some models might focus on the influence of epistemic values by ignoring all non-epistemic values. Some might do the opposite. And such models might fruitfully be combined. Thus recast, some disagreements between philosophers evaporate, as different models explain different aspects of the same system of activity. Remaining disagreements exist, but these concern the coherence and usefulness of models, which are more fruitful sorts of disagreement. Finally, two new ways to understand the value free ideal are identified, both of which may be plausible when considered in weaker forms. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS: Agnes Bolinska (HPS) and Julie-Anne Gandier (Toronto), 'Understanding Protein Function through Multiple Models of Structure: Barriers to Integration'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, CamPoS continues tomorrow, Wednesday 9 May, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2. We will have HPS's own Agnes Bolinska and collaborator Julie-Anne Gandier of Toronto to speak on ‘Understanding Protein Function through Multiple Models of Structure: Barriers to Integration’. Their abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: In order to understand protein function, information from models of structure generated from different experimental techniques must often be integrated. We show that such integration sometimes takes the form of the undue influence of models of structure produced using one experimental technique on the interpretation of data from another. We argue that interpretation of data should instead take place with close attention to the experimental context in which it was generated, resulting in models that best exhibit features of the protein which that context is designed to showcase. Integration should take place only thereafter and should take the form of “integration that maintains pluralism” (Mitchell & Gronenborn 2017): information from each model should be integrated to inform understandings of protein function, while nonetheless retaining each model. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] revised CamPoS Easter term schedule
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Please find here the _further_ revised Easter schedule for CamPoS, which moves Mike Stuart's talk into the mid-May slot left by the cancellation of the Naomi Oreskes departmental seminar. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts 2 May: Natalie Gold, Oxford/KCL, ‘Guard against Temptation: Team Reasoning and the Role of Intentions in Exercising Willpower’ 9 May: Agnes Bolinska, HPS and Julie-Anne Gandier, Toronto, ‘Understanding Protein Function through Multiple Models of Structure: Barriers to Integration’ 16 May: Mike Stuart, LSE, ‘A New Way to Defend the Value Free Ideal for Science’ 23 May: Darrell Rowbottom, Lingnan/Durham, ‘What _Can_ Scientific Realists Think about Scientific Method(s)?’ 30 May: Mazviita D. Chirimuuta, Pittsburgh: ‘Prediction, Explanation and the Limits of Neuroscience’ -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Easter term schedule
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Please find here the revised Easter schedule for CamPoS, which includes some revision due to the strike during Lent. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts 2 May: Natalie Gold, Oxford/KCL, ‘Guard against Temptation: Team Reasoning and the Role of Intentions in Exercising Willpower’ 9 May: Agnes Bolinska, HPS and Julianne Gandier, Toronto, ‘Understanding Protein Function through Multiple Models of Structure: Barriers to Integration’ 16 May: no talk [Naomi Oreskes speaks elsewhere] 23 May: Darrell Rowbottom, Lingnan/Durham, ‘What _Can_ Scientific Realists Think about Scientific Method(s)?’ 30 May: Mazviita D. Chirimuuta, Pittsburgh: ‘Prediction, Explanation and the Limits of Neuroscience’ 6 June: Mike Stuart, LSE, ‘A New Way to Defend the Value Free Ideal for Science’ -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS: Natalie Gold (KCL), 'Guard against Temptation: Team Reasoning and the Role of Intentions in Exercising Willpower'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, CamPoS resumes tomorrow, Wednesday 2 May. A schedule revised partly due to the Lent strike will appear shortly. As usual talks will be at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Tomorrow we welcome Natalie Gold of King's College London, who will speak with the title 'Guard against Temptation: Team Reasoning and the Role of Intentions in Exercising Willpower'. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: Sometimes our judgments of what it is best to do may undergo a temporary shift at the time of action, for example in cases where we face temptation. Instrumental rationality requires that we are guided by our preferences at the time of action, similar to a condition that Michal Bratman calls ‘rational priority of present evaluation’. This raises the question of how it can be rational to resist temptation and questions about the rational standing of intentions. According to one type of account, which we can call Rational Non-Reconsideration (RNR), there is a norm of rationality that one should not reconsider one’s intentions, so one can rationally resist temptation by forming an intention not to succumb. However, these accounts have no resources if the agent does re-open the question and, I argue, involve a puzzling account of the relationship between the agent and her resolution to resist temptation. I present an account of intertemporal choice that is located within decision theory, where individuals use ‘intra-personal team reasoning’, which shows how it can be rational to resist in the face of temptation. Intra-personal team reasoning allows that there can be two levels of agency, the transient agent and the person over time. In this framework, willpower is the ability to align one’s present self with one’s extended interests by identifying with the person over time. I contrast the role of intentions in this account with their role in RNR accounts. According to intrapersonal team reasoning, both resisting and succumbing to temptation can be rational, depending on which level of agency the decision-maker identifies with at the time. I argue that instrumental rationality cannot tell someone which level of agency to identify with and explore some other types of arguments for identifying with the person over time. _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS (Rune Nyrup) CANCELLED for 14 March
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, In view of the ongoing industrial action, tomorrow's talk by Rune Nyrup (Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge), ‘How Archaeologists Resolve the Inductive Risk Argument’, has been CANCELLED. I expect it to be rescheduled in Easter. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] Reminder: CamPoS (Mazviita Chirimuuta) CANCELLED for 7 March
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Notwithstanding any automated reminders, today's talk by Mazviita D. Chirimuuta (Pittsburgh), ‘Prediction, Explanation and the Limits of Neuroscience’, has been CANCELLED in view of ongoing industrial action. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS (Mazviita Chirimuuta) CANCELLED for 7 March
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, In view of the ongoing industrial action, tomorrow's talk by Mazviita D. Chirimuuta (Pittsburgh), ‘Prediction, Explanation and the Limits of Neuroscience’, has been CANCELLED. I expect it to be rescheduled in Easter. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] Lehmkuhl abstract for quasi-CamPoS at the Eagle, 28 February at 1
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, In view of the strike, the talk by Dennis Lehmkuhl (Caltech/Einstein Papers), ‘The Interpretation of Black Hole Solutions in General Relativity’, will NOT occur at HPS at 1. Those interested in hearing Dennis discuss such topics might be able to do so nearby at a quasi-CamPoS event at the Eagle pub at 1, however, space permitting. His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: The history and philosophy of physics community has spent decades grappling with the interpretation of the Einstein field equations and its central mathematical object, the metric tensor. However, the community has not endeavoured a detailed study of the solutions to these equations. This is all the more surprising as this is where the meat is in terms of the physics: the confirmation of general relativity through the 1919 observation of light being bent by the sun, as well as the derivation of Mercury’s perihelion, both depend much more on the use of the Schwarzschild solution than on the actual field equations. Indeed, Einstein had not yet found the final version of the field equations when he predicted the perihelion of Mercury. The same is true with respect to the recently discovered black holes and gravitational waves: they are, arguably, tests of particular solutions to the Einstein equations and how these solutions are applied to certain observations. Indeed, what is particularly striking is that all the solutions just mentioned are solutions to the vacuum Einstein equations rather than to the full Einstein equations. This is surprising given that black holes are the most massive objects in the universe, and yet they are adequately represented by solutions to the vacuum field equations. In this talk, I shall discuss the history and the diverse interpretations and applications of the two most important (classes of) solutions: the Schwarzschild solution and the Kerr solution. I will address especially the history of how the free parameters in these solutions were identified as representing the mass, charge and angular momentum of isolated objects, and what kind of coordinate conditions made it possible to apply the solutions in order to represent point particles, stars, and black holes. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] no official CamPoS on 28 February, but Dennis Lehmkuhl will be around
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, In view of the strike, the talk by Dennis Lehmkuhl (Caltech/Einstein Papers), ‘The Interpretation of Black Hole Solutions in General Relativity’, will NOT occur at HPS at 1. Those interested in hearing Dennis discuss such topics might be able to do so nearby at a quasi-CamPoS event at the Eagle pub at 1, however, space permitting. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] special CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS: Mariam Thalos (Utah), 'Disaggregating Goods'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, In a welcome departure from our originally scheduled pause, CamPoS is happening tomorrow, 21 February. It is, as usual, at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2. Mariam Thalos of Utah will speak on 'Disaggregating Goods'. (This talk was originally scheduled for the HPS departmental seminar on the 22nd.) Her abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: The history of the theory of decision is profoundly consequentialist, as perhaps it must be, at least regarding certain decision contexts. The central task, within such a theory, is to weigh the consequences on a scale that can take everything into consideration simultaneously. But this task is monumental, and potentially impossible. Not that the consequences are unknowable---although that too is a problem. I will set that problem to one side for this study. The problem I am focusing on is that consequences, goods of value generally, are very hard to mensurate, whether we are considering a decision from the point of view of ethics or not. I shall argue here that the wisest way with the question of weighing goods is not via a means of aggregating their value, but instead via a judicious means of dis-aggregating them. This goes very much against the tradition in decision analysis. I want to articulate the reasons why this is the most defensible form of consequentialism. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS: Craig Callender (UCSD), ''Yikes! Why Did Past-Me Say He’d Give a Talk on Future Discounting?'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow, 14 February, is the fourth meeting of CamPoS for Lent, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Craig Callender of UC San Diego will be speaking on 'Yikes! Why Did Past-Me Say He'd Give a Talk on Future Discounting?' An abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: That we discount future utility is a behavior studied in work on savings, addiction, health, public policy, and more. Is it rational? Economists: yes, but only if the rate is exponential. Philosophers: no. Psychologists: we judge not, but note that high discount rates are associated with poor life outcomes. Pulling these strands together, a conventional wisdom has arisen that identifies discounting as a cognitive bias. Economics or philosophy supplies a normative standard and psychology tells us that we systematically depart from this standard. Discounting or non-exponential discounting happens when hot fast emotional systems demand immediate gratification, swamping our otherwise cool rational temporally neutral systems. My talk aims to challenge this conventional wisdom and defend alleged time biases. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS: Wolfgang Schwarz (Edinburgh), ‘No Interpretation of Probability’
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow, 7 February, is the third meeting of CamPoS for Lent, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Wolfgang Schwarz of Edinburgh University will be speaking on ‘No Interpretation of Probability’. An abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: Many scientific theories involve probabilities. What would the world have to be like for such a theory to be true? I argue that none of the usual interpretations of probability provides a plausible answer. Instead, I suggest that we should not give probabilistic theories truth-conditional content at all. The aim of such theories is not to register facts about a special probabilistic quantity, but to capture noisy patterns in the world. I also explore some ramifications of this view for our knowledge of probabilities. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 pm, HPS: Bennett Holman (Yonsei), ‘Dr. Watson: The Impending Automation of Medical Diagnosis and Treatment’
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow, 31 January, is the first meeting of CamPoS for Lent, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Bennett Holman of Yonsei University will be speaking on ‘Dr. Watson: The Impending Automation of Medical Diagnosis and Treatment’. An abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: Recent advancements in patient-networking and patient advocacy are beginning to have dramatic impacts on the regulation of drugs. While patient empowerment is typically portrayed positively, the advent of online networking sites such as “Patients Like Me” have allowed patients to coordinate with each other in ways that rarely possible in the past. Irrespective of what ones view on this movement, I will argue that it is descriptive fact that the modern regime of regulating drugs relies on passive or at least cooperative study participants. I will show through a case study of ALS treatments how patient activists have used online networking sites to unblind themselves of their trial group assignment and thus undermine the use of double-blind RCTs as a means to establish efficacy. However, new developments on the horizon of medicine offer a new alternative to this (I claim doomed) regime. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, J. Brian Pitts (Philosophy, Cambridge), ‘Even Observables Change in Hamiltonian General Relativity’ J
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow, 24 January, is the first meeting of CamPoS for Lent, as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. I will be speaking on how ‘Even Observables Change in Hamiltonian General Relativity’. An abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: The Hamiltonian formulation of Einstein's General Relativity is the one most readily suited for merger with quantum mechanics. But since the 1950s there has been a worry that change has disappeared, especially from the physically real `observables'. The freedom to change time coordinates, already important in Special Relativity and greatly amplified in General Relativity, also seems to disappear from the Hamiltonian formulation. These issues yielded a memorable 2002 exchange between Earman and Maudlin. This talk, building on a reforming literature from the 1980s onward, discusses how the radical relativity of simultaneity, change, and even change in observables are to be found. Key moves include recognizing that the Hamiltonian formulation is a special case of the more familiar and fundamental Lagrangian formulation (implying that radical conceptual novelty cannot arise) and redefining observables such that equivalent theory formulations have equivalent observables. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Lent termcard
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Please find below the CamPoS termcard for Lent, along with a list of speakers for Easter. As usual, all talks are from 1-2:30 on Wednesdays in HPS in room 2 (the basement). See you soon! Brian Pitts Lent: 24 January: J. Brian Pitts, Philosophy: ‘Even Observables Change in Hamiltonian General Relativity’ 31 January: Bennett Holman, Yonsei: ‘Dr. Watson: The Impending Automation of Medical Diagnosis and Treatment’ 7 February: Wolfgang Schwartz, Edinburgh: ‘No Interpretation of Probability’ 14 February: Craig Callender, UCSD: ‘The Sense of Time’ 21 February: no talk 28 February: Dennis Lehmkuhl, Caltech/Einstein Papers: ‘The Interpretation of Black Hole Solutions in General Relativity’ 7 March: Mazviita D. Chirimuuta, Pittsburgh: ‘Prediction, Explanation and the Limits of Neuroscience’ 14 March: Rune Nyrup, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, ‘How Archaeologists Resolve the Inductive Risk Argument’ Easter: 2 May: Natalie Gold, KCL 9 May: Agnes Bolinska, HPS 16 May: no talk [Naomi Oreskes speaks elsewhere] 23 May: Darrell Rowbottom, Lingnan/Durham -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Emily Thomas (Durham), 'What’s the Point of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World? Travel, Science, and Thought Experiments'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow (today as most of you read this), 6 December, is the 9th (BONUS!) meeting for CamPoS, at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Emily Thomas of Durham (Ph.D. from Cambridge) will tell us 'What’s the Point of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World? Travel, Science, and Thought Experiments'. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: 'Travel has a long and intimate history with philosophy. Travel also has a long and intimate relationship with fiction. Sometimes travel fiction acts as ‘thought experiments’, experiments that we can run through in our heads. This talk explores a 1666 fiction travelogue, Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World. In the novel, a virtuous young lady is kidnapped and travels by boat through the North Pole into a new world. I argue this is no mere piece of science fiction. Instead, this travelogue acts as a distinctly philosophical thought experiment, exploring the pros and cons of Baconian philosophy of science, utopias, and what it means to be real.' -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Alisa Bokulich (Boston University), ‘Representing and Explaining: The Eikonic Conception of Explanation’
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow (today as most of you read this), 29 November, is the eighth meeting for CamPoS, at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Alisa Bokulich of Boston University will speak on ‘Representing and Explaining: The Eikonic Conception of Explanation’. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: The widely-accepted ontic conception of explanation, according to which explanations are "full-bodied things in the world," is fundamentally misguided. I argue instead for what I call the eikonic conception of scientific explanation, according to which explanations are an epistemic activity involving representations of the phenomena to be explained. What is explained, in the first instance, is not the phenomenon in the world itself, but a particular representation of that phenomenon, which is contextualized within a particular research program and explanatory project. I conclude that this eikonic conception of explanation has the following five virtues: first, it is able to better make sense of scientific practice; second, it allows us to talk normatively about explanations; third, it makes sense of explanatory pluralism; fourth, it helps us better understand the role of mathematics, models, and fictions in scientific explanation; and fifth, it makes room for the full range of constraints (e.g., ontic, epistemic, and communicative) on scientific explanation. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] abstract for CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Harvey Brown (Oxford), 'Quantum Bayesianism: the ineffable reality behind "participatory realism"'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Today is the sixth meeting for CamPoS, which happens at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Harvey Brown (Oxford) will talk about 'Quantum Bayesianism: the ineffable reality behind "participatory realism"'. His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: The recent philosophy of Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, represents an attempt to solve the traditional puzzles in the foundations of quantum theory by denying the objective reality of the quantum state. Einstein had hoped to remove the spectre of nonlocality in the theory by also assigning an epistemic status to the quantum state, but his version of this doctrine was recently proved to be inconsistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics. In this talk, I present plausibility arguments, old and new, for the reality of the quantum state, and expose what I think are weaknesses in QBism as a philosophy of science. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Harvey Brown (Oxford), 'Quantum Bayesianism: the ineffable reality behind "participatory realism"'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Tomorrow (today as most of you read this) is the sixth meeting for CamPoS, which happens at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Harvey Brown (Oxford) will talk about 'Quantum Bayesianism: the ineffable reality behind "participatory realism"'. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] abstract for CamPoS, Paul A. Roth (UC Santa Cruz), 'Reviving Analytical Philosophy of History'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, Please find Prof. Roth's CamPoS abstract for 'Reviving Analytical Philosophy of History': A call to revive philosophy of history will, I expect, quickly prompt at least the following two questions: first, what exactly would this revival revive; and, second, why bother? My primary concern will be to outline where certain key issues now stand with regard to the first question, i.e., with an aim to identifying those aspects within philosophy of history that both merit and demand renewed philosophical consideration. Specifically, I focus on those features that make historical explanation distinctive and yet belonging on any satisfactory catalogue of explanatory strategies. I conclude with two examples meant to illustrate how an answer to the first question answers as well the second. In this case, it does so by suggesting how our professional lives exist enmeshed in agendas set by historical narratives. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Paul A. Roth (University of California, Santa Cruz), 'Reviving Analytical Philosophy of History'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of Science, Today is the fifth meeting for CamPoS, which happens as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Paul A. Roth (University of California, Santa Cruz) will talk about 'Reviving Analytical Philosophy of History'. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Melissa Fusco (Columbia), 'Causal Decision Theory and Tragic Evidence: Death in Damascus Revisited'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday, today as most of you read this) is the fourth meeting for CamPoS, which happens as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Melissa Fusco (Columbia University) will talk about 'Causal Decision Theory and Tragic Evidence: Death in Damascus Revisited'. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: Recent literature on causal decision theory (CDT) has featured much discussion of what Hare & Hedden call "decision dependence"---the fact that, for a causalist, the expected utility of an act a can sometimes depend on how confident one is that one will perform a. In this talk, I will focus on decision dependent cases in which CDTers believe that they are subject to tragic evidential correlations (henceforth TECs). According to the standard theory, the more confident a CDTer grows that she will perform a given act a in a TEC case, the more confident she becomes that she will regret doing a. Yet as Joyce (2012) puts it, in such cases the CDTer "[does] not...fully trust the accuracy of the future beliefs on which [her] regrets about [her act] will be based." This talk will be devoted to sketching the accuracy argument both in TEC cases and in their causal analogues. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Eric Martin (Baylor): ‘“The battle is on.” Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the Student Protests’
Dear Cambridge philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday, today as most of you read this) is the fourth meeting for CamPoS, which happens as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Eric Martin from Baylor will present '"The battle is on." Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the Student Protests'. His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: This paper shows how late 1960's student protests influenced the thought of Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. I argue that student movements shaped their work from this period, specifically Lakatos' "Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" and Feyerabend's Against Method. Archival documents show that their political environments at London and Berkeley inflected their writing on scientific method, entrenching Lakatos' search for a rationalist account of theory change, and encouraging Feyerabend’s "anarchistic" theory of knowledge. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Sam Fletcher (Minnesota): 'The Principle of Stability'
Dear Cambridge philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday, today as most of you read this) is the third meeting for CamPoS, which happens as usual at 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. Sam Fletcher from Minnesota will present 'The Principle of Stability'. His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: How can inferences from idealized models to the phenomena they represent be justified when those models deliberately distort the phenomena? Pierre Duhem considered just this problem, arguing that inferences and explanations from mathematical models of phenomena to real physical applications must also be demonstrated to be approximately correct when the (idealized) assumptions of the model are only approximately true. Despite being little discussed among philosophers, mathematicians and physicists both contemporaneous with and subsequent to Duhem took up this challenge (if only sometimes implicitly), yielding a novel and rich mathematical theory of stability with epistemological consequences. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 1 p.m. at HPS, Jacob Stegenga (with Zoë Hitzig): 'The Perils of P-Hacking and the Promise of Pre-Analysis Plans'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the second meeting for CamPoS, which returns to its usual time of 1 p.m. in the HPS department in seminar room 2 in the basement. HPS's own Jacob Stegenga (co-author Zoë Hitzig of Harvard) will present 'The Perils of P-Hacking and the Promise of Pre-Analysis Plans'. Their abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: P-hacking involves the manipulation of data to find a statistically significant result. Many claim that p-hacking is a problem in science, especially in the medical and social sciences, while others deny this. The problem with p-hacking is usually articulated from a frequentist perspective. In this paper we articulate the epistemic peril of p-hacking using Bayesian confirmation theory and model selection theory, which we then draw on to explain the arguments on both sides of the debate. This requires a novel understanding of Bayesianism, since a standard criticism of Bayesian confirmation theory is that it cannot accommodate the influence of biased methods. A methodological device widely used to mitigate the peril of p-hacking is a pre-analysis plan. Some say that following a pre-analysis plan is epistemically meritorious while others deny this, and in practice pre-analysis plans are often violated. We use the formal groundwork developed earlier in the paper to resolve this debate, offering a modest defence of the use of pre-analysis plans. In the longer run our ambition is to use this approach to make sense of scenarios in which scientists depart from pre-analysis plans. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, NOON at HPS, Carlo Rovelli, with abstract: 'What is quantum theory actually telling us about the world? The "relational" interpretation'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Today is the first meeting for CamPoS. Unusually, it will meet at NOON at (us usual) HPS in seminar room 2 in the basement. Physicist Carlo Rovelli (Aix-Marseille University) will speak on 'What is quantum theory actually telling us about the world? The "relational" interpretation'. Rovelli is well known for his work on quantum gravity. He also effectively presents science to the public and defends the value of philosophy for science. His abstract follows: 'What exactly is quantum theory is telling us about the world remains a hotly disputed topic among physicists and philosophers alike, with answers ranging from the existence of "many worlds" to a physical role for consciousness, from the existence of a priori unobservable facts, to the impossibility of a representation of physical reality. I briefly recall the terms of the discussion and present a perspective on the problem, emerged in the late 90's and denoted "Relational Interpretation", which is currently receiving increasing attention. It is a refinement of the original view emerged from Heisenberg and Bohr's the discussions, where key ambiguous terms like "observer" and "measurement" are replaced by plain notions like "physical system" and "interaction". I briefly discuss the philosophical implications of this reading of quantum theory.' Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
Re: [CamPhilEvents] CamPoS term card, Michaelmas 2017: co-author added
Dear everyone, One of our speakers wishes to ensure properly shared credit with a co-author, so I attach an improved term card: 11 October, 12 noon: Carlo Rovelli, Marseille, ‘What is Quantum Theory Actually Telling us about the World? The “Relational” Interpretation’ 18 October, 1 p.m.: Jacob Stegenga (with Zoë Hitzig), HPS, ‘The Perils of P-Hacking and the Promise of Pre-Analysis Plans’ 25 October: Sam Fletcher, Minnesota, ‘The Principle of Stability’ 1 November: Eric Martin, Baylor, ‘“The battle is on.” Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the Student Protests’ 8 November: Melissa Fusco, Columbia, ‘Causal Decision Theory and Tragic Evidence: Death in Damascus Revisited’ 15 November: Paul Roth, UC Santa Cruz, ‘Reviving Analytical Philosophy of History’ 22 November: Harvey Brown, Oxford, ‘Quantum Bayesianism: The Ineffable Reality behind “Participatory Realism”’ 29 November: Alisa Bokulich, Boston University, ‘Representing and Explaining: The Eikonic Conception of Explanation’ 6 December: Emily Thomas, Durham, ‘What’s the Point of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World?’ -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS term card, Michaelmas 2017
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science and other interested parties, Please find below the Michaelmas term card for CamPoS, the Cambridge Philosophy of Science weekly colloquium. It meets in the History and Philosophy of Science Department in room 2 (the basement) on Wednesdays, usually at 1 p.m. till 2:30. This term's schedule has two special features. First, our term opens on 11 October with a talk by an eminent physicist, Carlo Rovelli. Unusually, this talk will start at 12 NOON. All other talks will be at 1 p.m. Second, we have a bonus talk at the end of the term, giving us nine, not a mere eight, occasions of enlightenment. 11 October, 12 noon: Carlo Rovelli, Marseille, ‘What is Quantum Theory Actually Telling us about the World? The “Relational” Interpretation’ 18 October, 1 p.m.: Jacob Stegenga, HPS, ‘The Perils of P-Hacking and the Promise of Pre-Analysis Plans’ 25 October: Sam Fletcher, Minnesota, ‘The Principle of Stability’ 1 November: Eric Martin, Baylor, ‘“The battle is on.” Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the Student Protests’ 8 November: Melissa Fusco, Columbia, ‘Causal Decision Theory and Tragic Evidence: Death in Damascus Revisited’ 15 November: Paul Roth, UC Santa Cruz, ‘Reviving Analytical Philosophy of History’ 22 November: Harvey Brown, Oxford, ‘Quantum Bayesianism: The Ineffable Reality behind “Participatory Realism”’ 29 November: Alisa Bokulich, Boston University, ‘Representing and Explaining: The Eikonic Conception of Explanation’ 6 December: Emily Thomas, Durham, ‘What’s the Point of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World?’ -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 24 May: Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech, 'Listening to the Chirps: How do the LIGO results test general relativity?'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Our fourth and final CamPoS talk is Wednesday the 24th of May, 'today' when most of you see this. We have Lydia Patton from Virginia Tech talking about 'Listening to the Chirps: How do the LIGO results test general relativity?'. Her abstract follows. As usual, CamPoS meets in the basement of HPS (Seminar Room 2) from 1-2:30. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: 'LIGO's detection of gravitational waves is one of the most significant recent experimental results in physics. But moving from the data to conclusions about the parameters of the binary black hole (BBH) systems that are the data's putative source is not trivial. And it is by means of parameter estimation that the real test of general relativity will take place. Many current presentations of the LIGO results focus on how the detection confirms general relativity, or Einstein's predictions. But ideally the detection of BBH systems should provide a heuristic platform for further research, and for ever more rigorous testing of the theory. I explain how the results can be taken to decide between Newtonian theory and GR. But I also argue that existing ways of parsing the observed data could go farther to provide a platform for testing. Finally, the paper explores ways of analyzing the LIGO results to draw conclusions about how theories can be robust in applied contexts.' -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 17 May: Alison Gopnik, UC-Berkeley, 'The theory theory 2.0: Bayesian models, causal inference and cognitive development'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Our second CamPoS talk is tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday the 17th of May. We have Alison Gopnik from UC-Berkeley talking about 'The theory theory 2.0: Bayesian models, causal inference and cognitive development'. Her abstract follows. As usual, CamPoS meets in the basement of HPS (Seminar Room 2) from 1-2:30. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: I will report the latest ideas and results in our research exploring how children develop and revise intuitive theories. Two lines of research show, first, that young children can infer over hypotheses, abstract relations, and “framework theories” from data, as well as inferring specific cause effect relationships, and second that varieties of sampling used in machine learning can provide a good account of how this is possible at the algorithmic level. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 10 May: Catherine Kendig (Michigan State): 'How can we homologize holobionts, and whose lineage matters?'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Our second CamPoS talk is tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 10 May. We will have Catherine Kendig of Michigan State discussing 'How can we homologize holobionts, and whose lineage matters?' Her abstract follows. As always, CamPoS meets in the basement of HPS (Seminar Room 2) from 1-2:30. Sincerely, Brian Pitts With some notable exceptions (Hall 1992, 2003, 2012; Minelli 1996, 2003; Brigandt 2007; Love 2007; Ereshefsky 2012, Wagner 2016), the continued debate over the meaning of homology within philosophy and history of biology over the last 25 years has focused on defining homology rather than on its use in practice. Those focusing on scientific practice in a number of disciplines from linguistics to chemistry claim that knowledge is always understood with reference to a particular context and in light of the actions of epistemic agents. Knowledge-making activities are not the result of universal rules for deriving explanation from facts but the result of critical intersubjective modes of investigation in “systems of practice” (Chang 2012, 2016). It would seem then that taking a science-in-practice approach would, if used to understand the meaning and role of homology, turn attention to the activities of homologizing and communication between scientists in order to characterize the nature of inquiry within comparative biology (Kendig 2016). But does this emphasis on practice imply a kind of eliminitivism with regard to metaphysics? If not, what is the relationship between the underlying metaphysical commitments that make homologizing possible, (e.g., non-empirical considerations), empirical practices, and knowledge-making activities? I employ Chakravartty’s (2017) notion of “metaphysical inference” in order to suggest an alternative practice-based approach. In doing so I attempt to show how metaphysical inference affects homologizing activities in at least three ways: 1) in the articulation of the nature of continuity, 2) the specification of the units of comparison, and 3) the individuation of parts. An attempt to answer the question which is the title of this talk, How can we homologize holobionts, and whose lineage matters?, is made by investigating how specific metaphysical inferences work, in situ, for lichen physiology and classification. Lichens are made up of multiple organisms that can themselves be members of three kingdoms. I explore what the nature of continuity and individuation means for being a lichen and how lichenologists consider lineage. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Easter term card
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Here are the talks scheduled for your enjoyment and illumination this Easter 2017 term at CamPoS (Wednesday at 1 pm in the HPS basement as usual): 3 May: Tushar Menon, Oxford: 'Affine Balance: Algebraic Spacetime Functionalism as a Guide to Identifying Spacetime' 10 May: Catherine Kendig, Michigan State, 'How Can We Homologize Holobionts, and Whose Lineage Matters?' 17 May: Alison Gopnik, UC-Berkeley, 'The Theory Theory 2.0: Bayesian Models, Causal Inference and Cognitive Development' 24 May: Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech, 'Listening to the Chirps: How do the LIGO results test general relativity?' J. Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 3 May: Tushar Menon (Oxford): 'Affine Balance: Algebraic Spacetime Functionalism as a Guide to Identifying Spacetime'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Welcome to CamPoS for the Easter term! The term card should come soon. Our first talk will be on Wednesday, 3 May. We will have Tushar Menon from Oxford, who will tell us what space-time is. His title is 'Affine Balance: Algebraic Spacetime Functionalism as a Guide to Identifying Spacetime'. His abstract follows. As always, CamPoS meets in the basement of HPS from 1-2:30. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: Our two most empirically successful theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, are at odds with each other when it comes to several foundational issues. The deepest of these issues is also, perhaps, the easiest to grasp intuitively: what is spacetime? Most attempts at theories of quantum gravity do not make it obvious which degrees of freedom are spatiotemporal. In non-general relativistic theories, the matter/spacetime distinction is adequately tracked by the dynamical/non-dynamical object distinction. General relativity is different, because spacetime, if taken to be jointly, but with some redundancy, represented by a smooth manifold and a metric tensor field, is not an immutable, inert, external spectator. Our dynamical/non-dynamical distinction appears no longer to do the work for us; we appear to need something else. In the first part of this talk, I push back against the idea that the dynamical/non-dynamical distinction is doomed. I motivate a more general algebraic characterisation of spacetime based on Eleanor Knox’s spacetime functionalism, and the Helmholtzian notion of free mobility. I argue that spacetime is most usefully characterised by its (local) affine structure. In the second part of this talk, I consider the debate between Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley, on one hand, and Michel Janssen and Yuri Balashov, on the other, about the direction of the arrow of explanation in special relativity. Characterising spacetime using algebraic functionalism, I demonstrate that only Brown’s position is neutral on the substantivalism–relationalism debate. This neutrality may prove to be highly desirable in an interpretation of spacetime that one hopes will generalise to theories of quantum gravity---it seems like poor practice to impose restrictions on an acceptable quantum theory of spacetime based on metaphysical prejudices or approximately true effective field theories. The flexibility of Brown’s approach affords us a theory-dependent a posteriori identification of spacetime, and arguably counts in its favour. I conclude by gesturing towards how this construction might be useful in extending Brown’s view to supersymmetric field theories (and theories of quantum gravity). J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 15 March: Remco Heesen (Philosophy), 'Why the Priority Rule Does Not Exist'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 15 March, CamPoS will have Cambridge's own Remco Heesen (Philosophy) to speak on 'Why the Priority Rule Does Not Exist'. His abstract follows. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: Scientists are rewarded for their work with prestige, and this prestige is allocated according to the priority rule. The priority rule says that the first scientist to make a discovery takes all the credit for it. This helps philosophers predict what kinds of behavior scientists are incentivized to engage in. We argue that there is no such thing as the priority rule: what counts as a discovery and how much credit is awarded for a given discovery makes all the difference insofar as determining scientists’ actual incentives is concerned. We show this in two ways. First, we briefly review Strevens’ account of the optimality of the priority rule for the division of cognitive labor and show that his argument breaks down when slightly more complicated cases are considered. Second, we introduce a new game-theoretic model of scientists aiming to maximize credit in a context where only statistically significant results are publishable (as is roughly the case for a number of scientific fields). We show that under some prima facie plausible interpretations of the priority rule this model generates very bad results – scientists claiming discoveries on the basis of essentially no evidence. This problem is avoided when the priority rule is augmented with a rule that says more credit is awarded depending on the level of rigor with which a discovery is shown to hold, but this represents a significant departure from the priority rule. The talk is based on joint work with Kevin Zollman (Carnegie Mellon University). -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 8 March: Christopher Austin (Oxford), 'A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 8 March, CamPoS will have Christopher Austin (Oxford) speak on 'A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism'. His abstract follows. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract Although contemporary metaphysics has recently undergone a neo-Aristotelian revival wherein dispositions, or capacities are now commonplace in empirically grounded ontologies, being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, a central Aristotelian concept has yet to be given serious attention – the doctrine of hylomorphism. The reason for this is clear: while the Aristotelian ontological distinction between actuality and potentiality has proven to be a fruitful conceptual framework with which to model the operation of the natural world, the distinction between form and matter has yet to similarly earn its keep. In this paper, I offer a first step toward showing that the hylomorphic framework is up to that task. To do so, I return to the birthplace of that doctrine - the biological realm. Utilising recent advances in developmental biology, I argue that the hylomorphic framework is an empirically adequate and conceptually rich explanatory schema with which to model the nature of organisms. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 1 March: Andrew Buskell, HPS, 'Ecological Factors of Attraction and Causal Explanation in Cultural Attractor Theory'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 1 March, CamPoS will have Andrew Buskell (HPS, Cambridge) speak. His title is 'Ecological Factors of Attraction and Causal Explanation in Cultural Attractor Theory'. The talk runs from 1-2:30 in HPS. The abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Cultural Attractor Theory (CAT) employs what they call ‘factors of attraction’ to explain the distribution and form of cultural variants. CAT theorists differentiate ecological from psychological factors of attraction, yet vary in their commitment as to whether psychological factors of attraction should occupy a privileged explanatory role. Here I argue that CAT should, in fact, privilege the psychological. CAT explanations appeal to a distinctive causal-explanatory relationship called biasing. This characterises the fine-grained way in which factors of attraction influence the acquisition and expression of cultural variants. After identifying and clarifying biasing, I argue that psychological factors of attraction enter into such relationships. By contrast, ecological factors of attraction do not. While these latter factors are not causally irrelevant to explaining the distribution and form of cultural variants, they exert coarse-grained ‘switch-like’ effects—constraining the evolvability of culture. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS abstract for Yang Liu
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Yang Liu's talk 'Towards a More Realistic Subjective Decision Theory' has this abstract: 'Abstract. In his seminal work “the Foundations of Statistics,” Savage put forward a theory of subjective probabilities. The theory is based on a well-developed axiomatic theory of rational decision making. In constructing his system, additional problematic assumptions are however required. First, there is a Boolean algebra of events on which subjective probabilities are defined. Savage's proof requires this algebra to be a σ-algebra. However, on Savage's view, one should not require the probability to be σ-additive. He, therefore, finds the insistence on a σ-algebra peculiar and unsatisfactory. But he sees no way of avoiding it. Second, the assignment of utilities requires the constant act assumption: for every given consequence there exists a constant act which has that consequence in every state. This assumption is known to be highly counterintuitive. The paper on which this talk is based includes two mathematical results. The first, and the more difficult one, shows that the σ-algebra assumption can be dropped. The second states that, as long as utilities are assigned to finite gambles only, the constant act assumption can be replaced by the plausible, much weaker assumption that there are at least two non-equivalent constant acts. In this talk, I will first review Ramsey and Savage’s classical decision-theoretic models. I will then discuss the notion of “idealized agents” in standard normative decision theory. I will argue that our simplified system, which is adequate for all the actual purposes for which the system is designed, involves a more realistic notion of idealized agents. This will be followed by a brief outline of our new technique of tripartition trees which leads to the construction of quantitative probabilities in Savage-style systems without the σ-algebra assumption.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 22 February: Yang Liu, CSER, 'Towards a More Realistic Subjective Decision Theory'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 22 February, CamPoS will have Yang Liu (CSER, Cambridge) speak. His title is 'Towards a More Realistic Subjective Decision Theory.' The talk runs from 1-2:30 in HPS. Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Weds. 15 February: Hasok Chang, HPS, 'Pragmatist Coherence as the Source of Truth and Reality'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 15 February, CamPoS will have Cambridge HPS's own Prof. Hasok Chang speak on 'Pragmatist Coherence as the Source of Truth and Reality'. As usual, the talk runs from 1-2:30 in the basement in HPS. His abstract follows: 'In this talk I seek to defend an epistemology that does not confine itself to the knowledge of propositions. In the first section I will try to motivate this move. The second section will discuss further how knowledge may be understood to reside in actions, and advance a notion of pragmatist coherence as the relationship between activities that we should seek. The third and final section will discuss the implications of the notion of coherence, including how it can serve as the core of new notions of truth and reality in the pragmatist tradition.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, 8 February: Matthew Parrott, KCL, ‘Delusional Cognition as Explanation’
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (as I write), Wednesday, 8 February, CamPoS will have Matthew Parrott of KCL speak on ‘Delusional Cognition as Explanation’. As usual, the talk runs from 1-2:30 in the basement in HPS. His abstract follows: ‘One idea that has been extremely influential within cognitive neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry is that delusions arise as intelligible responses to highly irregular experiences. More precisely, over a number of years Brendan Maher developed a proposal which maintained that an individual adopts a delusional belief because it serves to explain a ‘strange’ or ‘significant’ experience (see Maher 1974, 1988, 1999). Maher’s approach to understanding delusions is often called ‘explanationism’ (Bayne and Pacherie 2004). Even though explanationist accounts have been fairly popular in cognitive neuropsychiatry, the framework has been questioned by a number of philosophers on the grounds that delusions are quite obviously very bad explanations. Indeed, since delusions strike most of us as highly implausible, it is hard to see how they could explain any experience, no matter how unusual. This talk will have two aims. First, I shall distinguish three distinct ways in which a delusion might be thought to be explanatorily inadequate, each of which poses a distinct challenge for the explanationist approach. I shall then defend the approach from these challenges by sketching how it can plausibly explain two delusions involving misidentification, the Capgras delusion and thought insertion. As we will see in the discussion of these delusions, the sort of explanationist account I propose posits at least two discrete ways in which delusional cognition departs from ordinary cognition, one of which involves the cognitive mechanisms underlying hypothesis generation.’ Regards, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS 1 February: Adrian Currie, CSER, ‘Why Common Cause Explanation Is Not the Main Business of Historical Reconstruction’
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Wednesday (tomorrow) 1 February from 1-2:30 in HPS in the basement is our second CamPoS, with Cambridge's own Adrian Currie of CSER talking on ‘Why Common Cause Explanation Is Not the Main Business of Historical Reconstruction’. His abstract reads: ‘It’s sometimes thought that the historical sciences---archaeology, paleontology and geology, for instance---are substantively different from other, ‘experimental’, sciences. In making such claims, abstract accounts of scientific methods are often contrasted. A common story about historical reconstruction is that it relies on common cause explanation: we uncover the past by discovering surprising correlations between traces, and then hypothesizing events in the past which would unify them. But what is the warrant for such inferences, and is it actually the main business of historical reconstruction? To the first question, I argue that appealing to common causes is often justified, but not on the grounds thus far suggested. Where others prefer common cause reasoning to be justified on some global, a priori or a posteriori fact, I argue that that they are justified on local a posteriori grounds. To the second question, I concede that the identification of common causes is an important aspect of historical construction, but argue that taking it as the central method of historical reconstruction is impoverished and can’t explain such science’s successes. I’ll discuss how the richness of our understanding of past causal milieus often plays a central role in warranting historical reconstruction, and close by making some suggestions about how philosophers ought to approach evidential reasoning in the sciences.’ Regards, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS talk Wednesday 25 January: Stephen John, Cambridge, ‘Wishful Speaking: Science, Truth and Dictatorship’
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Wednesday (today as most of you read this) 25 January from 1-2:30 in HPS in the basement is our first CamPoS talk of the Lent term, with Cambridge's own Stephen John talking on ‘Wishful Speaking: Science, Truth and Dictatorship’. His abstract reads: ‘In 1948 a meeting at the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences decided that Michurinism - an account of epigenetic inheritance more commonly known as Lysenkoism - was preferable to Mendelianism, with significant implications for teaching and research. Many treat the Lysenko affair as a paradigmatic example of how politics and science should not relate. How, though, should we characterise this case, given recent claims that scientific justification cannot or should not be "value-free"? This paper investigates these issues, arguing that concerns over "wishful speaking" - rather than the more familiar "wishful thinking" - should be central to our thinking about the proper relationship between political institutions and scientific practice.’ Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Lent termcard
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Please find below the CamPoS termcard for Lent (along with a partial schedule for Easter!). As usual, CamPoS meets downstairs in the HPS Department on Wednesdays from 1 to 2:30. Afterwards, those who are interested can go with the speaker to a coffee shop. See you next week! Brian Pitts Lent: 25 January: Stephen John, Cambridge, ‘Wishful Speaking: Science, Truth and Dictatorship’ 1 February: Adrian Currie, Cambridge, ‘Why Common Cause Explanation Is Not the Main Business of Historical Reconstruction’ 8 February: Matthew Parrott, KCL, ‘Delusional Cognition as Explanation’ 15 February: Hasok Chang, Cambridge, ‘Pragmatist Coherence as the Source of Truth and Reality’ 22 February: Yang Liu, Cambridge, ‘Towards A More Realistic Subjective Decision Theory’ 1 March: Andrew Buskell, Cambridge, ‘Why Us? The Puzzle of Hominin Cognition and Dynamical Accounts of Culture’ 8 March: Christopher Austin, Oxford, ‘A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism’ 15 March: Remco Heesen, Cambridge, ‘Why the Priority Rule Does Not Exist’ Easter 2017 (partial): 3 May: TBD 10 May: Catherine Kendig, Michigan State, TBD 17 May: TBD 24 May: Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech, TBD -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wed. 30 Nov., HPS: Stefan Hartmann, 'Assessing Scientific Theories'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday), 30 November, our last CamPoS speaker for the term will be Prof. Stefan Hartmann, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, LMU-Munich, speaking on ‘Assessing Scientific Theories’. His abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: Scientific theories are usually assessed in the light of their empirical consequences. But how shall one proceed if a theory, such as string theory or proposals for a quantum theory of gravity, has no empirical consequences (yet)? Are such theories scientific at all? The goal of this talk is to identify two recent argumentation schemes (viz. the no-alternatives argument and analogue simulation) and to show how they can be analysed and assessed in the framework of Bayesian confirmation theory. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wed. 23 Nov., HPS: Kirsten Walsh, Nottingham, ‘Newton’s Laws and “Epistemic Amplification”’
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday), 23 November, our CamPoS speaker will be Kirsten Walsh from the University of Nottingham (but a frequent visitor here), speaking on ‘Newton’s Laws and “Epistemic Amplification”’. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: Newton claimed his laws of motion are certainly true, and yet his justification was surprisingly weak: he merely cited a handful of experiments and the ‘agreement of mathematicians’. Surely then these laws are probable at best. I examine the experimental evidence Newton provided and argue that, while this evidence gives strong support for the laws in limited cases, and justifies their use in Newton’s mathematical system, it does not justify such strong epistemic claims. In modern Bayesian terms, we might say that Newton’s laws merit high subjective priors. This does not make them certain. I then suggest that Newton’s laws earn epistemic warrant in another way: via a process I call ‘epistemic amplification’. On this account, Newton’s laws, as the axioms of the theory, gain epistemic status by virtue of the theory’s success. In some places, this looks like straightforward confirmation: since the motions of the planets confirm Newton’s theory, they must also confirm the laws. But in other cases, Newton’s mathematical model seems to provide a crucial test of the laws. I sketch an account of this notion of epistemic gain. I then draw some conclusions about Newton’s methodology. While my account offers some vindication for Newton’s grand epistemic claims (not so far as ‘certainty’, however), it contradicts his own methodological statements. In short, the case highlights a key difference between Newton’s method of ‘deduction from phenomena’ and the popular hypothetico-deductive method. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wednesday 16 November, HPS: Jim Weatherall, 'What Makes Econophysics Distinctive?'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday), 16 November, the long CamPoS drought ends! Our CamPoS speaker will be Jim Weatherall from the University of California Irvine, speaking on ‘What Makes Econophysics Distinctive?’ His abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: "There is a long history of ideas (and people) moving from fields such as physics and mathematics into finance. In the past, the ideas and methods of physicists have been rapidly integrated into economic thought. Beginning around 1990, however, a new movement of physicists attempting to apply methods from statistical physics to economic problems began. Strangely, this time the ideas from physics have not been widely adopted or integrated into mainstream economics. Instead, a new, largely autonomous field of "econophysics" has appeared, in which people trained mostly in physics or by physicists work on problems of economics. In this talk, I will explore some of the reasons for the appearance of this new field. Ultimately I will argue that what make econophysics distinctive -- both from economics, and from past attempts to import ideas from physics -- is that econophysicists seem to recognize, and attempt to meet, an explanatory demand that economists reject, concerning the relationship between models of individual actors and market-level and economy-level models." -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS CANCELLED for 9 November
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Last week CamPoS took the week off in view of some people's travel to Atlanta for the PSA/HSS meeting. Tomorrow's talk, alas, has been cancelled due to the speaker's ill health. We hope to reschedule it. Possibly some mechanized reminders will still go out, but don't believe them Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wednesday 26 October, HPS: Johanna Thoma, LSE, 'Risk Aversion and the Long Run'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow, 26 October, our CamPoS speaker will be Johanna Thoma from LSE, speaking on 'Risk Aversion and the Long Run'. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: According to the dominant theory of rational choice in the face of risk and uncertainty, rationality demands that agents maximise expected utility. Critics argue, however, that this theory is not sufficiently permissive of attitudes to risk that are both common, and seem intuitively rational. The problem, according to Buchak (2013), is that for an agent to be risk averse with regard to a single good such as money, the utility function needs to display decreasing marginal utility with regard to that good. If the utility function is to capture the way in which the agent values the good, this means that the good has to be worth less to the agent, the more she has of it. However, intuitively it does not seem to be irrational to value a good in a linear way, and nevertheless be risk averse with regard to it. We often seem to display risk aversion because we want to avoid risk, not because we do not value the goods in question in a linear way. Expected utility theory does not allow for such an independent role for risk. Several alternatives to expected utility theory, notably Buchak’s own risk-weighted expected utility (REU) theory, which builds on Quiggin’s (1982) rank dependent utility theory, allow for risk to matter independently from the shape of the utility function. This paper poses a challenge to such theories as normative theories of rational choice. I argue that theories like Buchak’s can only make sense of examples of ordinary risk aversion if the agents in question framed their decision problems too narrowly, and thus displayed a kind of practical irrationality. Once an agent takes account of the fact that any risky choice is only one in a long series of risky choices in her life, these alternatives can no longer account for ordinary cases of risk aversion. But since these are the very examples that motivate these theories in the first place, they lose much of their appeal as normative theories of rational choice. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: HANDOUT (take 3) for today's talk by Arif Ahmed (Philosophy), 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Today's CamPoS speaker, Philosophy's own Arif Ahmed, has kindly provided a handout for his talk 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'. This should be a PDF version (whereas the Word version was defective) and should be already shared. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_BGW4SkiOiwZDZRNWRjR1dPYnM/view?usp=sharing Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: HANDOUT (take 2) for today's talk by Arif Ahmed (Philosophy), 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Today's CamPoS speaker, Philosophy's own Arif Ahmed, has kindly provided a handout for his talk 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'. I think that various email lists removed the attachment last time, so I am trying again in a different way. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_BGW4SkiOiwQ3pTYVMtdllUUWc/view?ths=true Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: HANDOUT for today's talk by Arif Ahmed (Philosophy), 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Today's CamPoS speaker, Philosophy's own Arif Ahmed, has kindly provided a handout for his talk Belief and Statistical Evidence'. Please find it attached. Sincerely, Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wednesday 19 October, Arif Ahmed (Philosophy), 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow, 19 October, our CamPoS speaker will be Arif Ahmed from Philosophy, talking on 'Belief and Statistical Evidence'. His abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts 'Hume's argument concerning miracles and the well-known gate-crasher paradox are both cases where people seem reluctant to believe something, or courts seem reluctant to convict someone, despite extremely strong statistical evidence that the thing is true or that the person is guilty. I propose to account for this in terms of some simple ideas from Signal Detection Theory. The upshot is that Hume is still right, but the courts may sometimes be wrong.' _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wednesday 12 October, Georgina Statham (Philosophy), 'Using organic chemistry to probe the limits of interventionism'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow, 12 October, is the first meeting of CamPoS for the year. Our speaker is Georgina Statham from Philosophy, talking on 'Using organic chemistry to probe the limits of interventionism'. Her abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts ‘A chemical reaction is a causal process in which one set of chemical species is converted into another set of chemical species. Chemists are able to intervene on this process, influencing the product distribution by manipulating a range of variables. This process looks very much like interventionist causation; at a cursory glance, chemical reactions therefore seem well suited for interventionist causal modeling. I test this supposition, using James Woodward's interventionist theory of causation to model three different ways that chemists are able to manipulate the reaction conditions in order to control the outcome of a reaction. These consist in manipulations to the reaction kinetics, thermodynamics, and whether the kinetics or thermodynamics predominates. It is possible to construct interventionist causal models of these kinds of manipulation, and therefore to account for them using Woodward's theory. However, I show that there is an alternate, more illuminating way of thinking about the third kind of reaction control, according to which chemists are actually manipulating which causal system is instantiated. Our ability to manipulate which system is instantiated is an important part of our ability to control the world, as is therefore especially relevant to interventionism. Thus, considering examples from organic chemistry leads to the identification of an important extension to Woodward's theory.’ -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Michaelmas schedule
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Please find below the Michaelmas schedule for CamPoS talks. Excepting the special event on Saturday 12 November at Trinity College, all talks happen downstairs in the HPS Department on Wednesday from 1-2:30 in Seminar Room 2. Afterwards those interested can go to coffee with the speaker. Sincerely, Brian Pitts 12 October: Georgina Statham, Philosophy, 'Using organic chemistry to probe the limits of interventionism' 19 October: Arif Ahmed, Philosophy, 'Belief and Statistical Evidence' 26 October: Johanna Thoma, LSE, 'Risk Aversion and the Long Run' 2 November: no meeting due to the PSA/HSS in Atlanta 9 November: Matthew Parrott, KCL, 'Delusional Cognition as Explanation' Saturday, 12 November: Cambridge Masterclass in the Philosophy of Physics, 'Structure and Equivalence in Physical Theories,' Trinity College, with James Weatherall, Adam Caulton, and Eleanor Knox. 16 November, James Weatherall, UC-Irvine, 'What Makes Econophysics Distinctive?' 23 November, Kirsten Walsh, Nottingham, 'Newton's Laws and "Epistemic Amplification"' 30 November, Stephan Hartmann, LMU-Munich, 'Assessing Scientific Theories' -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS tomorrow, abstract for Alex Blum's 'The Inconsistency of Quantum Electrodynamics: A History'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Here is the abstract for Alex Blum's CamPoS talk 'The Inconsistency of Quantum Electrodynamics: A History', which happens tomorrow at HPS at 1. 'Renormalized quantum field theories form the basis of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, an enormously successful microscopic theory of physical nature. Yet, the 1970s and 1980s saw what has been called by some historians and philosophers of physics a veritable paradigm shift, namely the emergence of the view that such theories should merely be regarded as approximate effective field theories, possibly to be replaced by some underlying theory at very high energies. The talk will deal with the question of how this widespread distrust of our "best" physical theories came about, focusing on the prehistory of the effective field theory paradigm, in particular on the attempts by prominent physicists, such as Wolfgang Pauli and Lev Landau, to prove that renormalized quantum electrodynamics is an inconsistent theory. The expectations of a fundamental physical theory underlying these attempts will be investigated.' -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS tomorrow, HPS: Alex Blum, MPIWG, 'The Inconsistency of Quantum Electrodynamics: A History'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday 25 May) we have the final CamPoS talk of the academic year, from Alex Blum from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin. You have heard that quantum electrodynamics is amazingly successful, but what about its inconsistency? His title is 'The Inconsistency of Quantum Electrodynamics: A History.' The talk is at HPS downstairs (seminar room 2) at 1pm as usual. Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS tomorrow, HPS: Ken Waters, Calgary: 'No General Structure'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday, 11 May) CamPoS resumes with a talk in the philosophy of biology by Prof. Ken Waters of Calgary. His title is 'No General Structure'. The talk is at HPS downstairs at 1 as usual. The talk is related to this paper of the same name here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12010/, which has the following abstract: 'This chapter introduces a distinctive approach for scientific metaphysics. Instead of drawing metaphysical conclusions by interpreting the most basic theories of science, this approach draws metaphysical conclusions by analyzing how multifaceted practices of science work. Broadening attention opens the door to drawing metaphysical conclusions from a wide range of sciences. This chapter analyzes conceptual practice in genetics to argue that the reality investigated by biologists lacks an overall structure. It expands this conclusion to motivate the no general structure thesis, which states that the world lacks a general, overall structure that spans scales. It concludes that the no general structure thesis counts as metaphysics because it says something very important and general about the world. This thesis informs science as well as philosophy of science, and it provides a useful perspective for societies that look upon science to help solve complex problems in our changing world.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS tomorrow: Daniel Mitchell, HPS: 'What's nu? Maxwell's Electrical Metrology and the Electromagnetic Theory of Light Reappraised'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday, 4 May) CamPoS resumes with a talk by HPS's own Daniel Mitchell: 'What's nu? Maxwell's Electrical Metrology and the Electromagnetic Theory of Light Reappraised'. The talk is at HPS downstairs at 1 as usual. His abstract follows. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: Maxwell's derivation of an equality between the speed of wave propagation c in a hypothetical electromagnetic medium and the ratio of electrostatic and electromagnetic units of electrical quantity ν was historically his most important argument for the electromagnetic theory of light. He argued that it provided strong grounds for believing that light was an electromagnetic wave and the optical and electromagnetic ether were two different names for the same thing. Acceptance of this identity, Maxwell knew, substantiated his field-theoretic approach to electricity and magnetism at the expense of Continental action-at-a-distance theories. This study begins by problematizing the equality between ν, ostensibly a numerical ratio, and c, a canonical physical quantity. We are thereby drawn into a critical examination of the evolution of Maxwell's practices of representing physical quantities, units, and their dimensions, with the expectation of shedding light on the nature of physical constants, units, and dimensions in modern scientific practice. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS today, HPS at 1: David Crawford, HPS: ‘Hierarchical Transition Modes of Biological Systems are Evolvable’
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Today (Wednesday, 27 April) CamPoS resumes with a talk by David Crawford (HPS) on how ‘Hierarchical Transition Modes of Biological Systems are Evolvable’. As I should have mentioned, this talk and all others (except where otherwise specified) are in the HPS Department at 1 pm downstairs. Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS tomorrow: David Crawford, HPS: ‘Hierarchical Transition Modes of Biological Systems are Evolvable’
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday, 27 April) CamPoS resumes with a talk by David Crawford (HPS) on how ‘Hierarchical Transition Modes of Biological Systems are Evolvable’. Sincerely, Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Easter schedule
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Please find below the Easter schedule for CamPoS talks. The first is tomorrow. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Wed, 27 April 2016 David Crawford, HPS: ‘Hierarchical Transition Modes of Biological Systems are Evolvable’ Wed, 4 May 2016 Daniel Mitchell, HPS: ‘What’s nu? Maxwell’s Electrical Metrology and the Electromagnetic Theory of Light Reappraised’ Wed, 11 May 2016 Ken Waters, Calgary: ‘No General Structure’ Wed, 25 May (not the 18th!), Alex Blum, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science: ‘The Inconsistency of Quantum Electrodynamics: A History’ Please also notice the Cambridge Masterclass in Philosophy of Physics: Saturday 14 May at Trinity College: Speakers: N P Landsman (Nijmegen), Fred Muller (Rotterdam), Owen Maroney (Oxford). Topic: Measurement, Emergence, and the Classical-Quantum Interface https://cambridgemasterclass.wordpress.com Registration: £5 on the day in cash for beverages. _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wed. 9 Feb: Nic Teh (Notre Dame), "Unifying Theories: Some Lessons from the Cartwright-Smith Exchange"
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, This message is a reminder that tomorrow (Wednesday), 9 March, Nic Teh, now of Notre Dame, will be talking about "Unifying Theories: Some Lessons from the Cartwright-Smith Exchange." The talk will be at HPS downstairs at 1 as usual. The abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: I examine the Cartwright-Smith debate over the disunity of classical physics as a test case for understanding the relationship between a formal strategy called Schematic Unification (SU) and “horizontal” Theoretical Unification (TU). I then argue that (i) Smith’s charge of incoherence against Cartwright is unsuccessful; and (ii) the abstract unification proposed by Smith (which turns out to be a form of SU) falls short of securing TU for classical physics. On the other hand, Cartwright's deflationary attitude towards SU seems to neglect some of its genuine virtues: as we shall see, it can play an important role in theory/model construction and in formulating contrastive explanations. J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wed. 2 Feb: Alex Broadbent (Johannesburg), 'Prediction and Medicine'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, This message is a reminder that today Alex Broadbent from Johannesburg will talk about 'Prediction and Medicine'. The talk will be at HPS downstairs at 1 as usual. The abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts 'Prediction and Medicine' Historian of medicine Roy Porter maintains that the position of medicine in society has had, and still has, little to do with its ability to make people better. There is a line of thinking in both history and philosophy of medicine that we might call medical nihilism (following Jacob Stegenga). This view holds that medicine is not what it is cracked up to be. But this view assumes (unlike Porter) that the purpose of medicine is indeed to cure people. In this paper I argue that the core medical competence is not to cure, nor to prevent, but to predict disease. The predictions expected of doctors are both actual and counterfactual: both "When will I get better?" and "What would have happened if I had not taken my medicine?". This "predictive thesis" does a better job than the "curative thesis" at explaining why not all medicine is concerned with curative efforts, and it enjoys considerable historical support from the ancient entanglement of prophesy and medicine and from the fact that medicine thrived for centuries with almost no effective cures, and continues to thrive today in various non-Western and complimentary forms that are mostly without curative efficacy. I also argue that it relieves medicine of the pretences of potency that generate the anger implicit in the arguments for medical nihilism. This view also affects expectations of epidemiology, which is sometimes criticised for cataloguing predictive risk factors whose causal relation to the outcome is unclear, instead of identifying decisive interventions. Finally I ask whether this descriptive thesis about the nature of medicine offers any normative lessons for the development of medicine. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Wed. 2 Feb: Alex Broadbent (Johannesburg), 'Prediction and Medicine'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, On Wednesday, 2 February, Alex Broadbent from Johannesburg will talk about 'Prediction and Medicine'. This is an update from the previously announced title 'Interventions, Contrasts, and the Methodological Revolution in Epidemiology'. The talk will be at HPS downstairs at 1 as usual. The abstract is below. Sincerely, Brian Pitts 'Prediction and Medicine' Historian of medicine Roy Porter maintains that the position of medicine in society has had, and still has, little to do with its ability to make people better. There is a line of thinking in both history and philosophy of medicine that we might call medical nihilism (following Jacob Stegenga). This view holds that medicine is not what it is cracked up to be. But this view assumes (unlike Porter) that the purpose of medicine is indeed to cure people. In this paper I argue that the core medical competence is not to cure, nor to prevent, but to predict disease. The predictions expected of doctors are both actual and counterfactual: both "When will I get better?" and "What would have happened if I had not taken my medicine?". This "predictive thesis" does a better job than the "curative thesis" at explaining why not all medicine is concerned with curative efforts, and it enjoys considerable historical support from the ancient entanglement of prophesy and medicine and from the fact that medicine thrived for centuries with almost no effective cures, and continues to thrive today in various non-Western and complimentary forms that are mostly without curative efficacy. I also argue that it relieves medicine of the pretences of potency that generate the anger implicit in the arguments for medical nihilism. This view also affects expectations of epidemiology, which is sometimes criticised for cataloguing predictive risk factors whose causal relation to the outcome is unclear, instead of identifying decisive interventions. Finally I ask whether this descriptive thesis about the nature of medicine offers any normative lessons for the development of medicine. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS abstract for Ruth Hibbert, 'Entangled Histories: Enactivism, Representationalism, and Frederic Bartlett'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Please find Ruth Hibbert's abstract for her CamPoS talk 'Entangled Histories: Enactivism, Representationalism, and Frederic Bartlett': 'The distributed cognition perspectives (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended cognition) are not just a new invention, but have long histories in the cognitive sciences. This talk will particularly concern the historical origins of the framework variously known as enactive or enacted cognition, enactivism, or radical embodied cognitive science. The starting point is Anthony Chemero’s helpful schematic history of the framework, and the main contribution is the addition of extra complexity to his picture with particular reference to the work of psychologist Frederic Bartlett in the 1920s and 1930s. This extra complexity suggests that we might have to look in places we might never expect to uncover the roots of radical embodied cognition, and that its apparent kinship to the other distributed cognition frameworks could in fact be the result of a shared family tree. In the light of this, any convergent evidence from apparently disparate members of the distributed cognition family should not impress us too much.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: Ruth Hibbert (Kent), 'Entangled Histories: Enactivism, Representationalism, and Frederic Bartlett'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, On Wednesday Ruth Hibbert from Kent will talk at CamPoS about 'Entangled Histories: Enactivism, Representationalism, and Frederic Bartlett'. It will be in HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: Juha Saatsi (Leeds), "Explanatory Abstractions"
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, On Wednesday Juha Saatsi will talk at CamPoS about "Explanatory Abstractions." It will be in HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. His abstract reads: "I talk about attempts to analyse the connection between explanations' abstractness and their explanatory power. I advocate a view according to which abstract, non-causal, and 'mathematical' explanations have much in common with counterfactual causal explanations. This opposes a recent trend (Lange, Pincock, etc.) to regard abstractions as explanatory in a sui generis way." Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, Eran Tal, HPS, 'Measurement Error and the Problem of Quantity Individuation'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Today Eran Tal will talk at CamPoS about 'Measurement Error and the Problem of Quantity Individuation'. It will be in HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. His abstract reads: 'When discrepancies are discovered between outcomes of different measuring instruments two sorts of explanation are open to scientists. Either (i) some of the outcomes are inaccurate or (ii) the instruments measure different quantities. Here I argue that, due to the possibility of systematic error, the choice between (i) and (ii) is in principle underdetermined by the evidence. This poses a problem for philosophical views that attempt to analyze ‘basic’ measurement concepts like quantity and scale independently of ‘applied’ concepts like accuracy and error. I show that such analysis in untenable in light of scientific practice, and propose an alternative, model-based account of measurement that acknowledges the co-dependence between foundations and application. This account dissolves the problem of quantity individuation, and provides new insights into the role measurement error plays in maintaining the unity of quantity concepts.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS, corrected!: Emily Adlam, DAMTP, 'The Problem of Confirmation in the Everett Interpretation'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Sorry for sending this week's news with last week's subject line. This is take 2: Tomorrow (Wednesday) 3 February, Emily Adlam from DAMTP will talk at CamPoS about 'The Problem of Confirmation in the Everett Interpretation'. It will be an HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. Her abstract reads: 'I argue that the Oxford school Everett interpretation is internally incoherent, because we cannot claim that in an Everettian universe the kinds of reasoning we have used to arrive at our beliefs about quantum mechanics would lead us to form true beliefs. I show that in an Everettian context, the experimental evidence that we have available could not provide empirical confirmation for quantum mechanics, and moreover that we would not even be able to establish reference to the theoretical entities of quantum mechanics. I then consider a range of existing Everettian approaches to the probability problem and show that they do not succeed in overcoming this incoherence.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
Re: [CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: Huw Price, 'CSER and the Leverhulme CFI: How, What, and Where Next'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday) 3 February, Emily Adlam from DAMTP will talk at CamPoS about 'The Problem of Confirmation in the Everett Interpretation'. It will be an HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. Her abstract reads: 'I argue that the Oxford school Everett interpretation is internally incoherent, because we cannot claim that in an Everettian universe the kinds of reasoning we have used to arrive at our beliefs about quantum mechanics would lead us to form true beliefs. I show that in an Everettian context, the experimental evidence that we have available could not provide empirical confirmation for quantum mechanics, and moreover that we would not even be able to establish reference to the theoretical entities of quantum mechanics. I then consider a range of existing Everettian approaches to the probability problem and show that they do not succeed in overcoming this incoherence.' Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: Huw Price, 'CSER and the Leverhulme CFI: How, What, and Where Next'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday) 27 January, Prof. Huw Price from Philosophy will talk about 'CSER and the Leverhulme CFI: How, What, and Where Next'. It will be an HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS: Natalja Deng, 'Does Time Seem to Pass?'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow, Wednesday 20 January, CamPoS resumes for the Lent term. We have the pleasure to hear Natalja Deng (Divinity, Cambridge) who will discuss 'Does Time Seem to Pass?' It will be an HPS downstairs from 1-2:30 as usual. Sincerely, Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Lent schedule
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Please find below the Lent schedule for CamPoS talks. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Wed 20 January, Natalja Deng, Divinity, Cambridge, ‘Does Time Seem to Pass?’ Wed 27 January, Huw Price, Philosophy, Cambridge, ‘CSER and the Leverhulme CFI: How, What, and Where Next’ Wed 3 February, Emily Adlam, DAMTP, Cambridge, ‘The Problem of Confirmation in the Everett Interpretation’ Wed 10 February, Eran Tal, HPS, Cambridge, 'Measurement Error and the Problem of Quantity Individuation' Wed 17 February, Juha Saatsi, Leeds, ‘Explanatory Abstractions’ Wed 24 February, Ruth Hibbert, Kent, ‘Entangled Histories: Enactivism, Representationalism, and Frederic Bartlett’ Wed 2 March, Alex Broadbent, Johannesburg, ‘Interventions, Contrasts, and the Methodological Revolution in Epidemiology’ Wed 9 March, Nic Teh, Notre Dame, ‘Capacities, Fundamentalism, and Schematic Unification’ _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Wednesday at 1, HPS: Maria Serban, 'On Geometrical Concepts, Proofs and Understanding in Pure and Applied Mathematics'
Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow we have the privilege of hearing Maria Serban from LSE. Her topic is 'On Geometrical Concepts, Proofs and Understanding in Pure and Applied Mathematics'. Sincerely, Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Wednesday at 1, HPS: Sang Yi's 'Three Junctures of Science and Democracy: Knowledge, Value and Policy'
Dear Philosophers of Science, After a Wednesday off due to the statistical mechanics event at Trinity College, CamPoS resumes tomorrow with Sang Yi's 'Three Junctures of Science and Democracy: Knowledge, Value and Policy'. It should be good, so please come! Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPoS Wednesday at 1, HPS: Jacob Stegenga on 'Absolute Measures of Effectiveness'
Dear Philosophers of Science, Today at CamPoS we have the pleasure to hear Jacob Stegenga speak on 'Absolute Measures of Effectiveness' at HPS at 1. See you there! Sincerely, Brian Pitts J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPOS Wednesday at 1, HPS: Catrin Campbell-Moore on 'Imprecise Credences and the Probabilistic Liar'
Dear Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday) CamPOS resumes at 1 in HPS. We have the pleasure to hear Catrin Campbell-Moore of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, who will speak on 'Imprecise Credences and the Probabilistic Liar'. Sincerely, Brian Pitts _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPOS today at 1, HPS: Shahar Avin, 'Simulating Scientific Merit Dynamics'
Dear Philosophers of Science, Today CamPOS resumes at 1 in HPS. We have the pleasure to hear Shahar Avin of CSER, Cambridge speaking on 'Simulating Scientific Merit Dynamics'. Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] CamPOS Wednesday at 1, HPS: Bernhard Salow, 'Expecting Misleading Evidence'
Dear Philosophers of Science, Tomorrow (Wednesday) CamPOS resumes at 1 in HPS. We have the pleasure to hear Bernhard Salow of Trinity College speaking on 'Expecting Misleading Evidence'. Sincerely, Brian Pitts -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
[CamPhilEvents] revised CamPOS term card, talk today
Dear all, Welcome to the regular Michaelmas CamPOS term. I hope that you all have seen the CamPOS termcard and perhaps attended the special event with Sam Schweber. This week, in fact today, we have Raphael Scholl of Cambridge HPS speaking on 'The Argument from the Good Lot: Unconceived Alternatives and 20th Century Genetics'. This will be in the usual time Wednesday 1-2:30pm in Seminar Room 2. The termcard is hereby revised, however---see attached or below for it. Next week's speaker has changed. Alison Wylie has become unable to speak at CamPOS on 21 October, though she has other events in the department later in the week. For more on her work, see below. Instead we will get to hear Bernhard Salow of Trinity College speak on 'Expecting Misleading Evidence'. We were going to hear from Bernhard during Lent term, but he has kindly moved his talk up. There is also a special event on thermal/statistical physics at Trinity College on Saturday, 14 November with David Wallace twice, James Ladyman, and Roman Frigg. I asked Alison Wylie if she had some papers that approximated the content of her now-cancelled talk. She sent me two: the 2012 APA Pacific presidential address "Feminist Philosophy of Science: Standpoint Matters" and "Why Standpoint Matters" in _Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology_, edited by Robert Figueroa and Sandra Harding (2003). If you would like copies, please let me know. Brian Pitts Thurs 17 Sept 4:00-5:30Sam Schweber Harvard, Brandeis ‘On the Transformation of “Fundamental” Physics in the Decade 1975-1985’ Wed 14 Oct Raphael SchollHPS, Cambridge ‘The Argument from the Good Lot: Unconceived Alternatives and 20th Century Genetics’ Wed 21 Oct Bernhard SalowTrinity College ‘Expecting Misleading Evidence’ Wed 28 Oct Shahar Avin CSER, Cambridge ‘Simulating Scientific Merit Dynamics’ Wed 4 Nov Catrin Campbell-MooreCorpus Christi, Cambridge ‘Imprecise Credences and the Probabilistic Liar’ Wed 11 Nov Jacob StegengaUtah ‘Absolute Measures of Effectiveness’ Sat 14 Nov 10:00-11:00David Wallace Oxford, Southern Cal ‘Quantum Aspects of Statistical Mechanics’ 11:30-12:30 David Wallace ‘Two Kinds of Maxwell’s Demon’ 2:00-3:00James Ladyman Bristol ‘Is Thermodynamics a Control Theory? If So What Follows, and If Not What Is It?’ 3:30-4:30Roman Frigg LSE‘Rethinking Equilibrium’ Wed 18 Nov no talk Wed 25 Nov Sang Wook YiHanyang, HPS Cambridge ‘Landauer on the Physical Nature of Information’ Wed 2 Dec Maria Serban LSE ‘On Geometrical Concepts, Proofs, and Understanding in Pure and Applied Mathematics’ -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge jb...@cam.ac.uk Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
