The Institute hosted three visitors in March: Stathis Psillos, Anjan Chakravartty, and Lisa Feldman Barrett. During his stay, Stathis Psillos taught a graduate seminar titled, "What is a Law of Nature?". He also gave commentary during a Rotman Dialogue with Anjan Chakravartty, based on his book, "Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology”. Chakravartty [...]
It's been another year, and we've had another round of fantastic entries to our annual Philosophical Photography Contest. As in years past, people were invited to submit photos that managed to capture an abstract philosophical concept in a creative way. Once again, our judges had a very difficult time choosing a winner. Photos were judged [...]
During the first week of February, the Institute hosted Erik Angner, who delivered the final lecture of the library series on well-being, in addition to a second talk on campus. Science journalist Kayt Sukel also joined us during that week, and hosted a workshop on science writing for a general audience. Kayt also was the [...]
This month the Institute's annual public lecture series, prepared in partnership with the London Public Library and Western's department of philosophy, began. This year's series, Happiness and Well-Being: Philosophical Perspectives, has been exceptionally successful. Talks by Samantha Brennan, Anthony Skelton, and Rachel Margolis all took place in January. The final talk of the series, by [...]
The purpose of this competition is to promote new work in the emerging interdisciplinary field of philosophy of cosmology, in particular by encouraging scholars at all career stages to consider the central questions in this area. We solicit papers on any topic concerning the philosophy of cosmology. We are particularly (but not exclusively) interested [...]
Rotman members finished off 2018 with a busy December. One exciting piece of news came from Adrian Owen, who has been named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) as part of the 2019 New Year’s Honours list recognising “the achievements of a wide range of extraordinary people” across the [...]
Please mark your calendar for the upcoming workshop, Philosophy of Dark Energy, to be held in Irvine, California. PHILOSOPHY OF DARK ENERGY WORKSHOP March 8 - 10, 2019 University of California, Irvine In the late 1990s, scientists working on the High-Z Supernovae Search Team and the Supernova Cosmology Project provided the first evidence that the [...]
The Rotman Institute YouTube channel continues to grow, and is currently up to over 3,300 subscribers. With videos from our annual speakers series, Institute hosted academic conferences, and unique events like our Rotman Dialogues, our channel includes content on a range of philosophical topics and areas. Listed below are our top 10 most popular [...]
In 2018, four of our graduate student members successfully defended their doctoral theses. Please join us in congratulating each of them on this accomplishment! FRÉDÉRIC-ISMAEL BANVILLE A Practical and Practice-Sensitive Account of Science as Problem-Solving Defense Poster DANIEL BOOTH Empirical Evidence and the Multiple Realization of Mental [...]
We're thrilled to begin our news for this month with two exciting announcements. First, Gillian Barker was the winner of the 2018 PSA Women's Caucus Prize in Feminist Philosophy of Science for her recent book, Beyond Biofatalism: Human Nature for an Evolving World. The full announcement from the PSA Women's Caucus can be seen here. Please join [...]
