Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) Conference

Many philosophers of science dismiss imagination as ill-suited for scientific reasoning. The notion of imagination that they assume often coincides with that of irrational or unconstrained thought that enables us to escape reality. This idea disregards the fact that imagination seems also to provide knowledge of reality. For example, imagination seems to play a role in philosophical and scientific thought experiments, scientific modelling, counterfactual reasoning, problem solving, practical deliberations about contingent facts, and more. But how can the same mental ability enable us to escape reality and also learn about it?

Four experts on imagination will address this question from the perspective of philosophy of science, epistemology, cognitive science, and aesthetics.

Recent literature on emergence in physics and on foundational issues in statistical mechanics has stressed the importance or lack thereof of the thermodynamic limit. In this workshop we will consider various case studies portraying either emergent behaviour or other important issues in statistical mechanics and assess the indispensable vs. dispensable nature of of the thermodynamic limit (or other similar limits such as the continuum limit). Our goal is is make some headway in identifying the role that such limits may or may not play in understanding emergence, reversibility, etc.

This one-day workshop has been organised by Roger Backhouse and Philippe Fontaine and is supported by by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network (GDRE #711).

This conference will bring together researchers and graduate students in Philosophy, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Physics, Medicine, Computer Science and related fields to discuss issues in the philosophy of probability. Keynote speakers: Maria Carla Galavotti (University of Bologna) Anna Mahtani (LSE) Julia Staffel (Washington University in St Louis) Sylvia Wenmackers (KU Leuven)   Further information is available on the conference website.

Why, how, and when do scientists imagine, and what epistemological roles does the imagination play in scientific progress? This conference aims to connect work on artistic and scientific imagination, and to advance our understanding of the epistemic and heuristic roles that imagination can play. Further information is available of the conference website.

The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics will host a one-day workshop on the interpretation of (revealed) preferences and preference-based modeling in economics. The methodology of revealed preference approaches and their associated behavioral interpretation of preference have been subject to seemingly devastating, long-standing criticisms from both philosophers and economists, but continue to be prevalent in economics. The talks in this workshop will explore both defenses of and alternatives to revealed preference approaches, and tackle larger questions about the methodology of economics, particularly questions around the nature and role of intention-based modeling.

This three-day interdisciplinary workshop will addresses attitudes in various ways, ranging from philosophical to formal aspects, and from normative to empirical aspects.

This event is jointly organised by the French-German research project Collective Attitude Formation (ColAForm) and by the LSE Choice Group, based at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS). The named organisers are Mikael Cozic and Franz Dietrich.

The workshop is free to attend but registration is required. Please email the organisers to register.

On 13 January, LSE Philosophy will host the launch of the first volume in the BSPS Open book series: The Material Theory of Induction, by John D. Norton. Further information is available on the event web page.