Neil Dewar (Munich): “On Absolute Units”
What is the best way to characterise the intrinsic structure of physical quantities? Field’s program shows one approach (that also delivers a nominalist treatment of such quantities); in this talk, I outline how group-theoretic methods can deliver a somewhat simpler, although non-nominalist, way of doing this for scalar and vector quantities. I […]
Chrysovalantis Stergiou (The American College of Greece): “On Empirical Underdetermination of Physical Theories in C*Algebraic Setting”
Empirical underdetermination of physical theories by observational data lies at the heart of the debate over scientific realism. Antirealists of different strands contend that if observation cannot determine the state of a physical system then to talk about a uniquely defined state […]
Johanna Thoma (LSE): “Time for Caution”
Precautionary principles are frequently appealed to both in public policy and in discussions of good individual decision-making. They prescribe omission or reduction of an activity, or taking precautionary measures whenever potential harmful effects of the activity surpass some threshold of likelihood and severity. One crucial appeal of precautionary principles has been that […]
Michael Diamond-Hunter (LSE): “The limits of accuracy for retrospective descriptions of racial groups”
In this paper, I will provide a discussion and solution for a phenomenon that has been left untouched by contemporary philosophical accounts of race: the understanding of groups in history. This paper is centrally concerned with retrospective description: the usage of contemporary racial terms as […]
Jonathan Birch (LSE): “Science and policy in extremis: the UK’s initial response to COVID-19”
For those of us interested in developing norms for effective scientific advising, the SAGE minutes (59 sets of which are now publicly available) are a valuable resource. Drawing on these minutes, I consider the wider lessons for norms of scientific advising that can be […]
David Papineau is Professor of Philosophy of Science at King’s College London. In this episode, David discusses causes and correlations, worrying about branching universes, and the problem with “brilliance”…
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What’s really at stake in the mind-body debate? Jonathan Birch looks at some of the explanatory differences in approaches to the metaphysics of consciousness.
The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method seeks applications for a one-year LSE Fellowship in philosophy, to start 1 January 2021. The deadline for applications is Sunday 29 November.
Richard Bradley (LSE): “Social Ethics Under Ambiguity”
In his two famous papers of 1953 and 1955 defending Utilitarianism, Harsanyi draws on the same simple idea: that to determine what is morally best we should put ourselves in the shoes of an impartial, but sympathetic, rational evaluator of states of affairs that differ in terms of the wellbeing of […]
Marius Backmann (LSE): “Time for Freedom”
Views on free will are classically classified along their compatibility with determinism. Accounts that require a power to do otherwise require the existence of alternative future possibilities, which are taken to be incompatible with determinism. I argue that determinism does not automatically imply that the future is not settled, and neither does […]
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