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Current Visitors

 

 Bruno Borge

Bruno Borge holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is Associate Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires (FFyL-UBA), where he leads a research group in Metaphysics of Science. Throughout his academic career, he has been a Visiting Researcher at several esteemed institutions, including the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Granada, the University of Málaga, and the University of Valencia. His main areas of interest are the metaphysics and epistemology of science, with a focus on scientific realism, scientific structuralism, laws of nature,  and scientific disagreement.  

Dates of visit: May 2023

Email: brunojborge@gmail.com 

Research Project

Lakatos on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Laws of Nature

Bruno Borge’s research project explores the tension between fallibilism and epistemological optimism in Lakatos' philosophy of science and proposes a solution in favour of a form of epistemic realism. He focuses on Lakatos' perspective on the metaphysics and epistemology of laws of nature,. The proposed solution, Moderate Nomological Realism (MNR), preserves the idea that the growth of knowledge aligns with a closer approximation to truth while acknowledging the incomplete and fallible nature of our understanding of natural laws. The project makes use of Hempel's theory of provisos and Yablo's notions of partial content and partial truth to clarify Lakatos' ideas and engage with contemporary theories about the metaphysics and epistemology of laws of nature.

 

 

Satoshi Nakada

Norihito Sakamoto is an associate professor at the Tokyo University of Science. His current interest is in a class of acceptable social evaluation methods with variable populations. He analyzes some possibility and impossibility results that are deeply rooted in well-known dilemmas in population ethics. Moreover, he revisits traditional egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism in the distributive justice theory, and examines some logical relationships of these normative principles and how they should be defined. He is also greatly interested in the history and philosophy of poverty and the evolutionary origins of moral and discriminatory behavior in the human species. He tries to analyze moral norms and their compatibility, as well as moral sentiments that appear to have biological origins, in order to build a better society.

Dates of visit: June 2022 – March 2024

Email: n-sakamoto@rs.tus.ac.jp

Research Project

Practical Evaluation Methods Using Efficient and Equitable Social Welfare Orderings

Norihito’s research project aims to provide reasonable and practical methods for the following three issues through axiomatic and normative analysis.

(i) Acceptable Social Welfare Orderings with Variable Populations

He characterizes a class of acceptable SWOs with variable populations and proposes some practical applications for comparing international income or wealth. Moreover, he shows some possibility/ impossibility results by revisiting classical dilemmas in population ethics.

(ii) Reexamination of Classical Normative Concepts and Ideas

He classifies and scrutinizes some classical concepts of normative ideas such as egalitarianism, sufficientarianism, responsibility, liberalism, etc. Moreover, he shows some logical relationships among these ideas.

(iii) Acceptable Social Welfare Orderings under Risky or Uncertain Situations

He characterizes a class of acceptable SWOs axiomatically under uncertain or risky situations. In addition, he compares and classifies some alternative solutions such as the precautionary principle and simple cost-effectiveness analysis.

 

Calum Robson

Calum graduated from Durham with a PhD in Mathematical Physics in 2020. Since then he has taught mathematics, first at Durham and now at the LSE. He has benefited greatly from attending the Bootcamp Seminars at the CPNSS, and is excited to contribute to the academic life of the department as a visitor this summer.

Dates of visit: April - October 2023

Email: c.j.robson@lse.ac.uk

Clifford Algebras and Relational Ontology

This project forms part of a larger programme to investigate how continuous spacetime structure could arise from an underlying quantum or semi-quantum discrete structure. This summer, the project will approach this in two ways.  On the mathematical side, it will explore the properties of the Spacetime Algebra Cl(3,1), which provides an algebraic representation of Mikowski Space and its transformations. In particular, the aim is to investigate the symplectic strucure of this object, and how it relates to classical and quantum phase spaces.  On the philosophical side, the project will respond to recent debates around the Relational interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, with the goal of clarifying what a quantized spacetime might look like ontologically. 

Apart from this, Calum has a general interest in the theology of science, and also in Neoplatonism and its development in the Christian and Islamic traditions.

 

Norihito Sakamoto

Norihito Sakamoto is an associate professor at the Tokyo University of Science. His current interest is in a class of acceptable social evaluation methods with variable populations. He analyzes some possibility and impossibility results that are deeply rooted in well-known dilemmas in population ethics. Moreover, he revisits traditional egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism in the distributive justice theory, and examines some logical relationships of these normative principles and how they should be defined. He is also greatly interested in the history and philosophy of poverty and the evolutionary origins of moral and discriminatory behavior in the human species. He tries to analyze moral norms and their compatibility, as well as moral sentiments that appear to have biological origins, in order to build a better society.

Dates of visit: June 2022 – March 2024

Email: n-sakamoto@rs.tus.ac.jp 

Research Project

Practical Evaluation Methods Using Efficient and Equitable Social Welfare Orderings

Norihito’s research project aims to provide reasonable and practical methods for the following three issues through axiomatic and normative analysis.

(i) Acceptable Social Welfare Orderings with Variable Populations

He characterizes a class of acceptable SWOs with variable populations and proposes some practical applications for comparing international income or wealth. Moreover, he shows some possibility/ impossibility results by revisiting classical dilemmas in population ethics.

(ii) Reexamination of Classical Normative Concepts and Ideas

He classifies and scrutinizes some classical concepts of normative ideas such as egalitarianism, sufficientarianism, responsibility, liberalism, etc. Moreover, he shows some logical relationships among these ideas.

(iii) Acceptable Social Welfare Orderings under Risky or Uncertain Situations

He characterizes a class of acceptable SWOs axiomatically under uncertain or risky situations. In addition, he compares and classifies some alternative solutions such as the precautionary principle and simple cost-effectiveness analysis.

 

Stefan Schubert

Stefan Schubert is a researcher working in the intersection of philosophy and moral psychology. He completed a Ph.D. in philosophy at Lund University in 2011 and subsequently did a postdoc at London School of Economics and Political Science. In recent years, his research has focused on effective altruism—how we can use our time and money to maximize our positive impact. He has worked at the Centre for Effective Altruism, and most recently at the Social Behaviour and Ethics Lab at the University of Oxford.

Dates of visit: August 2021 – July 2023

Email: s.schubert@lse.ac.uk

Research Project

Effective Giving

Stefan’s key project at CPNSS is a book on effective giving that he is writing together with the psychologist Lucius Caviola. They provide a psychological explanation of why most charitable giving does not go to the most effective charities. They show that there is a range of factors that cause people to donate ineffectively, including preferences for ineffective charities, false beliefs about how to donate effectively, as well as the norms of charitable giving. They also discuss strategies to promote more effective giving. In addition, Stefan will also pursue other projects relating to effective altruism during his time at CPNSS.

 

Cristian Soto

Cristian Soto is associate professor at the Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de Chile, and a Newton International Fellow for the British Academy based at the CPNSS, LSE (2022-2024). He works on philosophy of science and metaphysics, with a special focus on the history and philosophy of laws of nature, metaphysics of science, different approaches to scientific realism and empiricism, scientific pluralism, and some early-modern HPS. He is a founding member of the Chilean Society for the Philosophy of Science (www.sochific.cl), and director of the Grupo de Estudios de Filosofía de las Ciencias at the Universidad de Chile. While at the LSE, he will be looking into the intertwining of physical laws, modelling, and the application of mathematics. Further information is available on www.csoto.cl

Dates of visit: July 2022 – June 2024

Email: c.soto1@lse.ac.uk  

Research Project

Physical laws and the application of mathematics

This investigation addresses the problem of the effectiveness of mathematics in the articulation of physical laws. Since Eugene Wigner’s (1960) landmark statement of the problem, scientists, philosophers, and historians of science have reflected on whether mathematics’ effectiveness had to be deemed unreasonable after all.

One aspect of our research is this. We bring together two fields of research, namely: the history and philosophy of laws of nature, and the recent philosophy of applied mathematics, the latter including issues concerning modelling, representation, abstraction, and idealisation. From this perspective, the project has three main goals: first, to develop a philosophical framework for understanding the various contributions of mathematics to physical laws; second, to provide an analysis of nomic modality that accounts for the contribution of both physics and mathematics to the modal space of possibilities and necessities informed by physical laws; and third, to examine the distinction between mathematical and physical structures in physical laws.

Another aspect of our research advances a pluralist interpretation of scientific practices, one of whose core tenets within the framework of our project is this: physical laws need not be a central element in ontology, nor do they need to be equally present across epistemic practices. This will prove beneficial in various ways, especially since the talk of laws is not inane: it imposes a certain understanding of scientific practices (for example, some epistemic practices are successful at finding out about laws, whereas others are not), and a way to value their results (in particular, epistemic practices informing us about laws are somehow more important, and we should grant them priority because they provide what the Newtonian tradition considers genuine scientific knowledge). We cast doubt on this interpretation. We examine, indeed, whether we are currently writing the last chapter of the biography of laws, as Lorraine Daston’s framework for the biographical approach to scientific objects may suggest. Furthermore, laws may well be dispensed with in both ontology and scientific parlance, hence giving way to rather more egalitarian concepts and less demanding ontological presuppositions. For the latter points, we shall benefit from insights coming from both the history of science and the social studies of science. 

 

Dominique Waissbluth-Kingma

Dominique Waissbluth-Kingma (she/her) is a Ph.D. student at the Instituto de Filosofía, PUC de Chile. Her doctoral research focuses on bioethical issues concerning Alzheimer’s disease, especially identity, memory, autonomy, and policies for relevant decision-making processes throughout the development of this condition. She previously held a doctoral visiting appointment at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, UK. And before that, she obtained her MA degree in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a Bachelor of Philosophy at the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile, undertaking investigation of bioregionalism and cultural identity.

Dates of visit: July 2022 – July 2023

Email: dawaissbluth@uc.cl 

Research Project

Project Title: Animal Consciousness and Animal ProtectionPeter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, is well known in the animal protection movement. It is an important premise that animals can suffer (sentient, as he said) in his theory. In a recent lecture, Singer explained why animals can suffer again:• Anatomical and physiological similarities with human.• Behavioral parallels in appropriate circumstances.• Shared evolutionary history.If someone encounter silicon lifes like ‘Horta’ (Star Trek) in future, will he/she still be able to judge whether they are conscious or not by the ways given before?This project will try to find inspirations helping solve the problems above.