Work in Progress Seminar with Cailin O’Connor
Room 7107 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, London, ON, CanadaJoin Cailin O'Connor for a work in progress seminar focused on her paper, Measuring Conventionality. ABSTRACT Conventions are usually treated as univocal, but I argue here that they are better thought of as coming in degrees of arbitrariness. In doing so, I use information theory to measure the degree to which a convention could have been [...]
Panel Discussion: Health, Equity, and Well-Being
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaAlthough every citizen of Canada has access to publicly funded health insurance, not all Canadians enjoy the same level and quality of health.
Dan Hausman: Fairness
Room 1170 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT There are few theories of fairness in the philosophical literature, and those theories are controversial. They give conflicting answers to important policy questions, such as whether to rely on cost-effectiveness information to allocate health-related resources. For example, suppose that individuals in group A have a health condition that is slightly less cost-effective to treat [...]
Work in Progress Seminar with Jennifer Flynn: Is Bioethics Action-Centered?
Room 7107 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, London, ON, CanadaJoin us for a work in progress seminar with Rotman visiting fellow Jennifer Flynn based on her paper "Is Bioethics Action-Centered?" Please register below if you plan to attend. ABSTRACT Iris Murdoch criticized the moral philosophizing of her day as overly focused upon action and choice. I shall explore this criticism and the extent to [...]
Rotman Dialogue with Sarah Robins: Memory and Optogenetic Intervention
Room 1145 - Stevenson Hall Stevenson Hall, Room 1145, London, Ontario, CanadaRotman Dialogues are events based on a specific book or reading, that are facilitated by Institute graduate students. Conducted much as an author-meets-critics event, these informal discussions begin with a brief introduction by the author, followed by questions from the one or two graduate students chairing the session. Finally, the dialogue is opened up to [...]
Corey Maley: Analog Computation and Representation
Room 4190 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, Room 4190, London, Ontario, CanadaNeuroscientists and psychologists regularly appeal to computation to explain (and not just model) what the brain and mind is doing. But it is rather clear that, whatever they mean by computation, it is not digital computation. Could it be analog computation? Based on historical examples, I argue that there is more to analog computation than [...]
CANCELLED: Robert Rupert: Self-knowledge as a Subpersonal Phenomenon
Room 4190 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, Room 4190, London, Ontario, CanadaEVENT CANCELLED DUE TO THE EVOLVING COVID-19 SITUATION. PLEASE VISIT COVID-19 INFORMATION FOR THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY FOR MORE INFORMATION. In this talk, I begin by briefly describing and motivating a picture of human psychology as “flattened from above,” one in which the states and processes normally thought to appear at a distinctive personal level instead appear [...]
CANCELLED: Samir Okasha — Evolution, Altruism and Selfishness
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaEVENT CANCELLED DUE TO THE EVOLVING COVID-19 SITUATION. PLEASE VISIT COVID-19 INFORMATION FOR THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY FOR MORE INFORMATION. Are animals altruistic? From eusocial animals like ants & bees, to well-documented cases of humpback whales rescuing seals from orcas, there are numerous examples of what looks like altruism in nature. Among many bird and mammal [...]
CANCELLED: Samir Okasha — The Metaphor of Agency in Biology
Room 1130 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, London, ON, CanadaEVENT CANCELLED DUE TO THE EVOLVING COVID-19 SITUATION. PLEASE VISIT COVID-19 INFORMATION FOR THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY FOR MORE INFORMATION. It is striking that evolutionary biology often uses the language of intentional psychology to describe the behaviour of evolved organisms, their genes, and the process of natural selection that led to their evolution. Thus a cuckoo [...]
Arthur Sullivan — Wittgenstein, Carnap & Copernicus: adapting the a priori
Join us for a pre-read & virtual discussion with Rotman visiting fellow Arthur Sullivan. Please register below if you plan to attend. The reading for this event will be distributed to registered attendees a week before the event date. A link to the Zoom event will be shared the day before the event. ABSTRACT My point [...]
CANCELLED – Boundaries and Reality: 2020 Annual Philosophy of Physics Conference
Room 3000 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaIn light of the evolving COVID-19 situation, this year's conference has unfortunately been cancelled. Boundaries between spacetime regions, boundaries between interacting physical systems, and relations across boundaries, play an important role in contemporary physics. Boundary degrees of freedom, in particular, have recently raised much interest in the literature on general relativity, gauge field theories and [...]
CANCELLED – 2020 Philosophy of Logic Math and Physics Graduate Student Conference
Room 1145 - Stevenson Hall Stevenson Hall, Room 1145, London, Ontario, CanadaThe 20th annual Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Physics (LMP) Graduate Conference will take place on Saturday-Sunday, June 25-26th, 2020, at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.
Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi: Language Development From an Ecological Perspective
Virtual (register for Zoom link)The philosophy of cognitive science reading group will host Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi for a virtual talk on her 2018 paper, Language Development From an Ecological Perspective: Ecologically Valid Ways to Abstract Symbols.
Responsibilities to Others: 2020 Philosophy Lecture Series
Virtual (register for Zoom link)Our attempts to deal with the effects of COVID-19 have revived significant interest in a question of enduring philosophical interest: what do we owe to each other? This series of public lectures will examine our responsibilities (if any) to others. It will include discussions on the evolution of altruism, on the idea that both [...]
Meredith Schwartz: It Takes Two – Trusting the Public in Public Health Messaging and Policy
Virtual (register for Zoom link)ABSTRACT Much of the existing public health literature describes strategies by which health authorities can build and maintain trust from the public. Typically, this relationship is assumed to be one-directional and instrumental: the public should trust health authorities because this will increase public cooperation and compliance. However, trust is a two-way relationship, and I argue [...]
Christopher Preston: Potholes on the Road to a Synthetic Age
Virtual (register for Zoom link)Join our philosophy of synthetic biology reading group as they host Christopher Preston for a virtual talk on his 2018 book, The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World.
Emerging Minds Colloquium Series
Virtual (register for Zoom link)Beginning January 2021, The Rotman Institute of Philosophy will be hosting the 'Emerging Minds' colloquium—a series of virtual talks delivered by members of the Institute and scholars from around the world. We invite you to take part by both presenting and attending, in order to network with others who are completing novel interdisciplinary work [...]
Karen Adolph: Infant Motor development
Virtual (register for Zoom link)The philosophy of cognitive science reading group will host Karen Adolph for a virtual talk on her 2019 paper, Motor development: Embodied, embedded, enculturated, and enabling, co-authored with Justine Hoch. Individuals interested in attending the talk need not participate in the reading group, but will need to register to receive a link to the [...]
Eva Jablonka: Inheritance Systems and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
Virtual (register for Zoom link)Join us for a virtual talk by geneticist Eva Jablonka (Tel Aviv University) on inheritance systems and the extended evolutionary synthesis. This event will take place via zoom. REGISTER TO ATTEND ABSTRACT There is a debate among evolutionary biologists today about the need to significantly revise the neo-Darwinian model of evolution that was dominant over [...]
Rotman Graduate Student Conference (RGSC2021): Complexity & Explanation
Virtual (register for Zoom link)The Rotman Institute of Philosophy is excited to announce the inaugural Rotman Graduate Student Conference (RGSC2021), taking place on Saturday, May 15 and Sunday, May 16, 2021 over Zoom. We are pleased to announce biologist, Dr. Daniel McShea (Duke University) and Presidential Professor of Philosophy, Dr. Muhammad Ali Khalidi (City University of New York) as [...]