Rotman members took part in a variety of conferences, gave a number of talks, and had some new publications during the month of April. In addition, the final Rotman event of the term took place on April 6–a public lecture by Hanna Pickard: Why Do Addicts Use? Getting Real about Drugs, Identity, and Adversity. Video of her talk is available on our YouTube channel, and an interview of Dr. Pickard is available on our blog. In late May, several members of the Institute will take part in the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences–stay tuned for a blog post listing those activities. Listed below, in alphabetical order, are member activities that took place during April or are happening in early May.

Rotman alumnus Yann Benétreau-Dupin presented a talk titled “Probabilistic Reasoning and Self-locating Uncertainty in Cosmology” at the Foundations of Cosmology Workshop on April 9 at the University of Michigan.

Samantha Brennan gave a talk titled “Structure of thresholds for options” at the annual meeting of the Centre de Recherche en Ethique & University of Toronto Ethics Center on April 27-28.

Samantha Brennan attended the Second Workshop of the Collaborative for Research and Innovation in Social Sciences and Humanities Education at MacMaster University, on April 29. She represented the Canadian Philosophical Association as its Vice President.

Louis Charland was a moderator and participant in a group discussion, Bioethics in Pain Medicine, with Dr. Geoff Bellingham (Associate Professor and Program Director of the Pain Medicine Residency Program, St. Joseph’s Hospital, London, Ontario) on April 20.

Michael Cuffaro and Markus Müller will be giving a joint talk titled  “A New Constructional System” at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy on May 3, and at the University of Bristol on May 5.

Michael Cuffaro is co-organising a workshop called Exploring Scientific Method: Evidence, Explanation, and Unification in Science, taking place on May 8-9 at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He will be giving a talk at the workshop titled “On Algorithmic How-Possibly Explanation.”

Michael Cuffaro will be giving a talk titled “Causality and Complementarity in Kant, Hermann, and Bohr” at the University of Hannover on May 11.

Justin Donhauser’s paper “Differentiating and Defusing Theoretical Ecology’s Criticisms: a Rejoinder to Sagoff’s Reply to Donhauser (2016)” was published “online first” in Studies in History & Philosophy of Biological & Biomedical Sciences in April.

In April, Emma Ryman’s review of the book “Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy” by Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby was published in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics.

Emma Ryman gave a talk at the conference “Reproductive Ethics: New Ideas and Innovations” in Albany, put on by the Alden March Bioethics Institute on April 7-8. The talk was titled “Fiduciary Duties in Commercial Surrogacy“.

Chris Smeenk gave a talk titled “Explaining the Initial State” at the Foundations of Cosmology Workshop on April 9 at the University of Michigan.

Chris Smeenk gave a talk titled “Explaining the Origin of the Universe” at the Invited Symposium: Philosophy of Physics and Cosmology in Practice at the 2017 APA Pacific Division Meeting on April 14 in Seattle.

Chris Smeenk gave a talk titled “Newtonian Time” at the Annual Conference in the History of Metaphysics: Time at the University of Toronto on April 29.

Jackie Sullivan was a speaker at the Book Symposium: Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence Shapiro, The Multiple Realization Book at the 2017 APA Pacific Division Meeting on April 14 in Seattle.

Valérie Lynn Therrien will be giving a talk titled “The Axiom of Choice as Paradigm Shift: The Case for the Distinction between the Ontological and the Methodological Crisis in the Foundations of Mathematics.” at the Society for the Study of the History of Philosophy 2017 Annual Meeting taking place May 8-10 at the University of Calgary.

Pictured above: Anthony Skelton presented on ethics and stem cells at the high school outreach event, StemCellTalks London, held on April 21.