The Ethical Human (Forum for Philosophy)
Where do our ideas of right and wrong come from? Can the evolutionary processes that produced human beings explain the moral frameworks adopted by human societies? And what can developmental biology tell us about the emergence of ethical behaviour in children? From anthropology to cognitive science, philosophy to evolutionary biology, we shed some […]
Stephen John (Cambridge HPS): “Epistemic risk paternalism”
A recent wave of work in philosophy of science has identified multiple points in the justificatory process at which scientists must make decisions involving “epistemic risk”. In turn, many have argued that these decisions must or should be decided by appeal to non-epistemic values. However, […]
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech): “Severe Testing: A Conjecture Passes a Severe Test Only if a Refutation Would Probably Have Occurred if it’s False”
High-profile failures of replication in the social and biological sciences underwrite a minimal requirement of evidence: If a conjecture is retained when little or nothing has been done that would have refuted it, then […]
Replication Crisis? (Forum for Philosophy)
The hallmark of good science is often supposed to be experiments that produce the same results when repeated. But over the last number of years, scientists have replicated a number of established, high-profile experiments and produced different results. Does it point to serious flaws and biases in the sciences? Or it is evidence of […]
Marius Backmann (Konstanz): “Necessarily the Old Riddle – Necessary Connections, Laws of Nature, and the Problem of Induction”
In my talk, I will criticise recent attempts to solve the problem of induction by invoking a notion of necessary connections, as provided by necessitarian accounts of laws of nature or recent neo-Aristotelian powers accounts.
The basic model of the […]
Jonathan Livengood (University of Illinois): “Back to the Rubbish Bin: Experimental Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Causation”
For at least the last fifty years, philosophical research on causation has relied heavily on judgments about cases. We are asked to consider cases such as when Billy and Suzy throw rocks—one right after another—at a window and the window breaks, […]
Brave New World (Forum for Philosophy)
In this age of utopian technologies, we can design mechanical limbs for amputees and chemically engineer happiness for depressives. From the fluoride in our water to genetically modified babies, scientific advances pose complex new ethical questions. We explore the major bioethical issues of our time. Is philosophy braced for this brave new world? Are scientists […]
Paul Menzel (Pacific Lutheran): “The Subjective Value of Life: What Is It?”
One kind of value that a person’s life has is subjective – the value of life to the person whose life it is. This value plays an important role in certain moral philosophies, in health economics and health policy, and in a wide range of normative […]
Doping (Forum for Philosophy)
World-class athletes push themselves beyond normal limits and transform their bodies through training and diet. But in the wake of various scandals across the world of sport, we know pharmaceuticals can also play a role. Doping is considered a form of cheating, but should it be? And with the arrival of ‘smart drugs’, this is […]
W E B Du Bois (Forum for Philosophy)
W. E. B. Du Bois is usually remembered as a sociologist and civil rights campaigner, and his analysis of race and racism continues to shape the way social scientists think about these issues today. But a genuine polymath, he was also a skilled philosopher and in this event we […]
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