Jessie Munton (Cambridge): “Base rate neglect in the service of modal knowledge”
Are there ever good epistemic reasons to misrepresent base rates? I investigate this question in the context of recent legislation restricting the presentation of gender stereotypes, and the representation of minority groups in children’s books. I argue that our hesitancy around certain base rates makes sense […]
Misinformation
Information may be power, but misinformation appears to be usurping the throne. From COVID-19 to QAnon, misinformation is more ubiquitous and more dangerous than ever. But why is it so much more attractive to so many? Are there factors that make misinformation more (or less) likely to be believed? What draws people into the world of conspiracy […]
Miklós Rédei (LSE): “On the Tension Between Physics and Mathematics”
Because of the complex interdependence of physics and mathematics their relation is not free of tensions. The talk looks at how the tension has been perceived and articulated by some physicists, mathematicians and mathematical physicists. Some sources of the tension are identified and it is claimed that the […]
Julia Staffel (Colorado): “Updating Incoherent Credences – Extending the Dutch Strategy Argument for Conditionalization”
In this paper, we ask: how should an agent who has incoherent credences update when they learn new evidence? The standard Bayesian answer for coherent agents is that they should conditionalize; however, this updating rule is not defined for incoherent starting credences. We show […]
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 […]
The Musical Mind (Forum for Philosophy)
Music is thought to have played an important role in human evolution, but how far back does it go? What role did it play in the evolution of the mind? Does music today have anything in common with music in prehistory? And is the ability to hear music uniquely human or something we share with […]
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