Alexander Bird (Cambridge): “Against Empiricism”
Most philosophers of science are realists. Most philosophers of science are, at least implicitly, empiricists. But, I argue, it is not reasonable to be both an empiricist and a realist, because empiricism is motivated by epistemological internalism and realism requires the rejection of internalism. Nor is instrumentalism a reasonable position. So an empiricist […]
John Dougherty (LMU): “I ain’t afraid of no ghost”
This paper criticizes the traditional philosophical account of the quantization of gauge theories and offers an alternative. On the received view, gauge theories resist quantization because they feature distinct mathematical representatives of the same physical state of affairs. This resistance is overcome by a sequence of ad hoc modifications, […]
Zoë Johnson King (USC): “Varieties of Moral Mistake”
Some philosophers think that if someone acts wrongly while falsely believing that her action is permissible, this moral mistake cannot excuse her wrongdoing. And some think that this is because it is morally blameworthy to fail to appreciate the moral significance of non-moral features of an action of which one […]
Kate Vredenburgh (LSE): “Causal explanation and revealed preferences”
Revealed preference approaches to modeling choice in the social sciences face seemingly devastating predictive, explanatory, and normative objections. In this talk, I will focus on predictive and explanatory objections, and offer two defenses. First, I argue that when revealed preferences are multiple realizable, revealed preferences can causally explain behavior well. […]
How can we mitigate the risks of future pandemics? Jonathan Birch looks at the role of human behaviour in the emergence of new zoonotic diseases.
Emily Adlam (Cambridge): “Generalized Probabilistic Theories as Structural Realism”
In the field of quantum foundations there is a thriving research programme which involves placing quantum mechanics in a wider space of operationally defined theories in order to gain insight into its structure. There are various existing philosophical analyses of this research framework, but most have a strongly instrumentalist […]
Marc Fleurbaey (Paris School of Economics): “Measuring Well-Being and Lives Worth Living”
We study the measurement of well-being when individuals have heterogeneous preferences, including different conceptions of a life worth living. When individuals differ in the conception of a life worth living, the equivalent income can regard an individual whose life is not worth living as being better […]
Ella Whiteley (LSE): “Harmful Salience Structures”
Physical and psychological violence, to false beliefs and credibility deficits, have already been identified as potentially harming an individual or group, but facts about salience have not seemed particularly relevant to harm. In this talk, I argue that certain salience structures can indeed be harmful. One can harm an individual or group […]
A beginner’s guide to wild animal suffering (Co-Hosted with LSE SU Animals’ Society)
Many people have an idyllic view according to which nature is like a great paradise to nonhuman animals. However, the evidence available shows that animals face many threats to their well-being, including among others hunger and thirst, harmful weather events, disease, and injuries. In fact, […]
Ulrich Meyer (Colgate): “Topology and Action at a Distance”
This paper presents a novel argument against the possibility of action at a distance, with realism about space-time topology as its main premise.
Ulrich Meyer is a Professor or Philosophy at Colgate University. His research interests include metaphysics, logic, philosophy of science and the philosophy of time.
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