Hasok Chang (Cambridge): “If you can spray phlogiston, is it real? A pragmatist conception of reality”
Any statements we make in science are about some presumed entities (e.g., hormones, electrons, or the gross national product), unless it is a pure report of sensation within oneself. Entity-realism is prior to truth-realism, since it would not make sense to maintain […]
Nora Boyd (Pittsburgh): “Daedal Data: The Problem of Empirical Adequacy”
Whatever else our theories about the natural world are, they ought to be consistent with the evidence produced by our interactions with it – our theories ought to be at least empirically adequate. This is the minimal commitment of empiricism. Yet the central notions of evidence and empirical […]
Karim Thébault (Bristol): “Cosmic Singularity Resolution via Quantum Evolution”
Classical models of the universe generically feature a big bang singularity. That is, when we consider progressively earlier and earlier times, physical quantities stop behaving in a reasonable way. A particular problem is that physical quantities related to the curvature of spacetime become divergent. A long standing hope is […]
Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow): “Scrutability and the Problem of Cross-Family Quantification”
In Constructing the World, David Chalmers aims to defend strong reductionist claims he calls “scrutability theses”. One such thesis says, roughly speaking, that every truth about the world could, in principle, be “read off” a complete list of the physical facts and the facts about conscious experience. However, […]
The Minds of Whales (Forum for Philosophy)
What is it like to be a whale? How do they think and what do they feel? How are their social groups structured, and how do whale ‘cultures’ arise? And how has human thought and human culture been influenced by interaction with whales? In this dialogue, two internationally recognized whale experts — […]
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John Worrall: “The ‘Universe’ Starring Man? The Impact of Scientific Revolutions on Humankind’s View of Itself”
Many people unreflectingly think that ‘Man’ plays a special role in the Universe. Although this view was endorsed by Aristotelian cosmology, revolutionary developments in science, particularly those associated with Copernicus and with Darwin, seem to have made it entirely untenable. So what does science […]
Jo E. Wolff (KCL): “Absolutism about Quantity – Decision by case study?”
Recent work on physical quantities has focused on a debate over absolutism vs. comparativism about quantities. In this talk I will be interested in whether this debate can be decided by arguments from physics. I will look at several case studies from the physical sciences, some […]
The Social Lives of Microbes (Forum for Philosophy)
What are microbial societies? In what ways do they resemble human societies and in what ways do they differ? Can the same ideas that explain cooperation in larger animals also explain cooperation in microbes? And what can we learn from microbes about what it is to be human? In […]
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Ruth Byrne (University of Dublin): “Counterfactual Thought”
This talk was recorded at the LSE Workshop on Scientific Imagination and Epistemic Representations, 28 October 2016.
This one-day workshop was co-sponsored by the LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, The British Society for the Philosophy of Science and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the […]
Catharine Abell (University of Manchester): “Epistemic Problems with Eliciting Imaginings”
This talk was recorded at the LSE Workshop on Scientific Imagination and Epistemic Representations, 28 October 2016.
This one-day workshop was co-sponsored by the LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, The British Society for the Philosophy of Science and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and […]
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