Colin Howson: Should Probabilities be Countably Additive?
ABSTRACT Though it may not sound like a very exciting question, a good deal of both the mathematics and the interpretation of probability depend on the answer to it. Many of the striking theorems of mathematical probability, like the celebrated 'with probability 1' convergence theorems, depend on the axiom of countable additivity, as does the [...]
Kyle Stanford: The Difference Between Ice Cream and Nazis: Evolution and the Emergence of Moral Objectivity
ABSTRACT Kyle Stanford delivered this lecture entitled, "The Difference Between Ice Cream and Nazis: Evolution and the Emergence of Moral Objectivity", where he examined the evolutionary function of moral projection. SPEAKER PROFILE Photo by L. Perniciaro Kyle Stanford has been a Professor in the department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the [...]
Andrew Janiak: Three Concepts of Cause in Newton’s Thought
ABSTRACT Dr. Andrew Janiak, of Duke University, examines how Newton’s assertion that objects spread across space can interact causally is related to his endorsement of the traditional metaphysical concepts of substance and of causation. Download a copy of the lecture handout. SPEAKER PROFILE Andrew Janiak has been a Professor at Duke University since 2002. He [...]
Frederique de Vignemont: Bodily Immunity to Error
ABSTRACT Dr. de Vignemont’s lecture considers the question ‘Are bodily self-ascriptions immune to error through misidentification?’ According to the classic view, one cannot be mistaken about whose body part it is when experiencing them on the basis of body senses. De Vignemont considers two putative objections to this ‘bodily immunity.’ SPEAKER PROFILE Frederique de Vignemont [...]
Sandra Mitchell: GMOs and Policy in a Complex, Diverse World
ABSTRACT Dr. Mitchell’s lecture considers how both biological diversity and value pluralism thwart simple regulatory models for genetically modified organisms. For example, we talk about policy for BT modified plants, yet there are about 600 known strains of Bacillus thuringiensis and the effect of different strains on different host plants as well as the consequences [...]
Katherine Brading: Unity, Change, and What There Is
ABSTRACT Dr. Brading’s lecture considers such fundamental questions as ‘What is there?’ and ‘How, if at all, can what there is undergo change?’ She explores the relationships between matter, space and time by means of an approach to physics that has its origins in Newton’s engagement with Descartes’ philosophy. SPEAKER PROFILE Katherine Brading is an [...]
Alison Wylie: A Plurality of Pluralisms – Collaborative Practice in Archaeology
ABSTRACT Dr. Wylie’s lecture focuses on examples of collaborations between archaeologists and descendant communities that are epistemically productive in ways that are systematically obscured by the sharply drawn conflicts of headline news. SPEAKER PROFILE Alison Wylie is a feminist philosopher of science at the University of Washington, Seattle. She works on epistemic questions raised by [...]
Sylvia Berryman: How Many Philosophers Does It Take To Haul A Ship? Thoughts on the Philosophical Reception of Ancient Greek Mechanics
ABSTRACT Sylvia Berryman’s talk focuses on ancient Greek mechanics, which were so crucial to the emergence of the ‘mechanical world picture’ and the New Science in the seventeenth century. These same mechanics also provoked philosophical responses from the philosophers of late antiquity. By observing responses to Aristotle’s ‘ship hauler’ problem, Berryman will reveal a new [...]
Nancy Cartwright: Evidence, Argument and Mixed Methods
ABSTRACT Dr. Cartwright’s lecture, Evidence, Argument and Mixed Methods, focuses on effectiveness predictions for illustration. Effectiveness predictions are predictions that well-defined policies will produce targeted outcomes in the present, as soon as they are implemented. Randomized controlled trials are touted as a gold standard for effective prediction claims – but there is a catch, which [...]
Nancy Cartwright: Wiser Use of Social Science, Wiser Wishes, Wiser Policies
ABSTRACT In Dr. Cartwright’s lecture, Wiser Use of Social Science, Wiser Wishes, Wiser Policies, she considers the rhetoric of blame and accountability with regards to social issues such as protection of children from domestic abuse. Amidst calls for best practice, and the insistence on implementing only policies that work, Cartwright questions whether policies that ‘work’ [...]
Michael Parker: Moral Craft in the Genetics Clinic and Laboratory
ABSTRACT Dr. Parker’s talk will explore the moral world of the contemporary genetics profession at a key moment in its development. In particular, the talk will focus on the relationships between the well-established and reasonably stable moral commitments underpinning ideas of ‘good practice’ in contemporary clinical genetics –- such as those to the care of [...]
Moira Howes: Agency and the Evolution of Human Reproductive Immune Functions
Dr. David S.H. Chu International Student Centre International and Graduate Affairs Building, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Dr. Howes’ talk is on how a variety of problematic assumptions about human biology in the environment of evolutionary adaptation are made in evolutionary and immunological accounts of reproductive immunology. Drawing on evidence from numerous scientific fields, Howes will argue that these assumptions are scientifically flawed and that they involve substantial oversights. SPEAKER PROFILE [...]
Stephen Gaukroger: Sensibility and Metaphysics: Diderot, Hume, Baumgarten and Herder
ABSTRACT In the 1760s, Herder sets out a program for replacing metaphysical inquiry into the nature of thought with an anthropological account of the nature of thought. To understand the novelty and significance of Herder’s project, Gaukroger places Herder’s philosophical anthropology in the context of his contemporaries, Diderot, Hume and Baumgarten. SPEAKER PROFILE Stephen Gaukroger [...]
George Reisch: The Paranoid Style in American History of Science
ABSTRACT 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Reisch points out that it is no coincidence that the book was conceived, written, and published in America during the most stressful and anxiety-ridden years of the cold war. Reisch’s talk traces Kuhn’s influential book’s relationship [...]
Lainie Ross: Deceased Donor Kidney Allocation: Equity, Efficiency and Unintended Consequences
ABSTRACT In her talk, Ross describes three ways that kidney donations are allocated to those in need of a kidney transplant, including the Equal Opportunity Supplemented by Fair Innings (EOFI) method. She will discuss the conceptions of efficiency and equity that are employed by each model, and evaluate whether EOFI could conform to the National [...]
Patricia Churchland: Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality
ABSTRACT In her talk, renowned philosopher Churchland speaks about how the evolution of the mammalian brain led to the expansion from ‘me’ to ‘me-and-mine’ – the very heart of morality. Learn about ‘caring circuitry’ in the brain, and how the brain molecule oxytocin is at the hub of the intricate neural adaptations sustaining our society. [...]
Eric Schliesser: What Happened to Knightian (and Keynesian) Uncertainty Post WWII?
Dr. David S.H. Chu International Student Centre International and Graduate Affairs Building, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT In this talk, Schliesser discusses the displacement of Knightian uncertainty from economics after 1945 by two new strategies. He will look at this discarded theory that could no longer be articulated, or even recognized, by the new theories that displaced it. Schliesser will also discuss the recent return to the concept of economic uncertainty [...]
John Norton: Einstein as the Greatest of the 19th Century Physicists
ABSTRACT Modern writers often endow Einstein with a 21st century prescience about physical theory that, it just so happens, is only now vindicated by the latest results of the same writers’ research. Norton explores another side of Einstein – the sense in which his work fulfills the discoveries of the 19th century. SPEAKER PROFILE John [...]
John Norton: Approximation and Idealization
ABSTRACT This Rotman Lecture focuses on approximation and idealization, and how important the fact that only idealizations involve novel reference is when describing infinite limits, as in statistical mechanics. SPEAKER PROFILE John D. Norton studied chemical engineering at the University of New South Wales (1971-1974), then worked for two years as a technologist at the [...]
Wendy Parker: Beyond Prediction: The Computer as ‘Inductive Device’ in the Study of Weather and Climate
ABSTRACT In this talk, Parker will examine how scientists have used computers to understand weather and climate, and how the computer might be even better used in the future to impact our understanding of meteorology. She discusses this against the backdrop of the study of severe storms and climate change. SPEAKER PROFILE Wendy Parker is [...]