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Chris Timpson (Oxford): “Timelike Experimental Metaphysics: What does violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality actually show?”
Monday 14th October; 17:15pm - 18:45pm BSPS Speaker: Chris Timpson (Oxford) Title:
Find out more »David Corfield (Kent): “Homotopy Type Theory; a revolutionary language for philosophy of logic; mathematics; and physics?”
Monday 25th November; 17:15pm BSPS Speaker: David Corfield (Kent) Title: Homotopy Type Theory; a revolutionary language for philosophy of logic; mathematics; and physics?
Find out more »Joseph Melia (Leeds; Oxford): The Hole Argument; Particle Permutations and Structuralism
27 January 2014 Joseph Melia (Leeds; Oxford) The Hole Argument; Particle Permutations and Structuralism
Find out more »Julian Reiss (Durham): Two Approaches to Reasoning from Evidence or Why We Need a Theory of Inferential Judgement
Abstract: There are two paradigms of reasoning from evidence at work in the biomedical and social sciences: the experimental and the inferential. The experimental paradigm is currently dominant in all the domains labelled
Find out more »Katie Steele (LSE): Climate Models; Calibration and Confirmation
9 June 2014 Katie Steele (LSE) Climate Models; Calibration and Confirmation Model-Selection Methods & the
Find out more »Bryan W. Roberts (LSE): Curie’s hazard: From electromagnetism to symmetry violation
Abstract: We explore the facts and fiction regarding Curie’s own example of Curie’s principle, one of the more famous symmetry principles in modern science. Curie’s claim is vindicated in his suggested example of the electrostatics of central fields, but not without difficulty, and Curie’s claim turns out to fail in many others. Nevertheless, the failure of Curie’s claim is still…
Find out more »Peter Vickers (Durham): Contemporary Scientific Realism and the Challenge from the History of Science
abstract tbc
Find out more »Nicholas Shea (KCL): Functions for Representation
Abstract: In the cognitive sciences, representations play a central role in explaining behaviour. Characteristically, representing correctly explains successful behaviour and misrepresentation explains failure. The standards of success and failure at play here are often tacit. What are they based on? Teleosemantics offers one answer: success is a matter of performing an evolutionary function. This paper uses case studies from cognitive…
Find out more »Jonathan Birch (LSE): “Kin selection, group selection and cultural change”
Abstract: The relationship between kin and group selection is a vexed issue in evolutionary theory, and matters are not helped by a tendency to conflate questions of methodology with questions of causal reality. Drawing inspiration from W. D. Hamilton, I suggest we conceptualise the distinction between kin and group selection in terms of differences of degree in the structural features of…
Find out more »Eran Tal (Cambridge): “The Shifting Economies of Measurement Uncertainty”
Abstract: TBA
Find out more »Anna Mahtani (LSE): “Knowledge and the Sure Thing Principle”
Abstract: Suppose that you were to discover that there is some piece of evidence E that you don't currently know, and that E is evidence in favour of some proposition P. Should you increase your credence in P in the light of this piece of information? I argue that this suggestion seems compelling, but it cannot always be rational to adjust…
Find out more »James Ladyman (Bristol): “The Hole Argument and Homotopy Type Theory”
It has been argued that thinking in terms of univalent Homotopy Type Theory (HoTT) blocks the Hole Argument. In this talk I consider how this kind of argument might be made rigorous and whether it works. I argue that HoTT can be used to block the hole argument but that, contrary to what is some have claimed, it does not automatically do so … #BSPSLecture
Find out more »Wendy Parker (Durham): “Scientific Modelling and Limits to the Value-Free Ideal” (BSPS Lecture)
According to the value-free ideal, the internal workings of science, including the evaluation of evidence, should be kept free from the influence of non-epistemic values as much as possible. We identify an underappreciated limit on the extent to which the value-free ideal can be achieved in practice.
Find out more »Luke Fenton-Glynn (UCL): “Probabilistic Actual Causation” (BSPS Lecture)
Actual (token) causation – the sort of causal relation asserted to hold by claims like the Chicxulub impact caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene exitinction event, Mr. Fairchild’s exposure to asbestos caused him to suffer mesothelioma, and the H7N9 virus outbreak was caused by poultry farmers becoming simultaneously infected by bird and human ‘flu strains – is of significance to scientists, historians, and tort and criminal lawyers. It also plays a role in theories of various philosophically important concepts, such as action, decision, explanation, knowledge, perception, reference, and moral responsibility. Yet there is little consensus on how actual causation is to be understood, particularly where actual causes work only probabilistically. I use probabilistic causal models to cast some light on the nature of probabilistic actual causation.
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