Many researchers now agree that animal consciousness is more common than once believed. One of the leading animal sentience researchers is LSE Philosophy Professor Jonathan Birch. His research is often met with scepticism from inside and outside the Philosophy world. However, he sometimes is a reasonable sceptic himself. In our latest blog post, Jonathan Birch gives insights into his inner […]
Mathematical knowledge has puzzled philosophers for millennia. The LSE’s own Imre Lakatos coined the term “Euclidean Programme” for the historically dominant way of thinking about this phenomenon. In a new volume published in the Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics series by Cambridge University Press, Alexander Paseau (Oxford) and Wesley Wrigley (LSE) trace the history of the Euclidean […]
Rational agents can be uncertain about what is objectively valuable. Former CPNSS visitor Luca Zanetti shows how the debate on model uncertainty in science is relevant to the debate on moral uncertainty in normative ethics. This offers new ways of managing moral uncertainty.
We can be uncertain not only about natural and social phenomena, or because our […]
In our latest blog article Jonathan Birch talks about his life as a researcher and reflects on the questions: What can we do to reduce the risk of living absurdly? And should we want to?
Imagine you’re the UK Health Secretary during the worst pandemic in a century, signing your name under the most restrictive public health rules […]
What does the future hold for analytic and experimental philosophy? Petr Jedlička looks at current research methods and asks where the next generation of philosophers might lead us.
When advisors warned of “significant concerns” about the Alpha variant, the UK government acted quickly. But suspicions about Alpha’s greater transmissibility were first noted a week earlier. Jonathan Birch suggests that when the stakes are so high, even low confidence in a particular outcome can be enough to justify policy interventions.
What does the evidence say about the effectiveness of statins and about the balance between effectiveness and possible adverse side-effects? John Worrall – a long-time analyst of evidence in medicine – has recently had personal reason to reconsider these questions.
How can the philosophy of science help inform our response to COVID-19? Stephan Guttinger looks at the history and philosophy of ribonucleic acid (RNA), a central but often overlooked molecule in the story of the pandemic.
Scientific advice cannot be completely neutral or independent, says Jonathan Birch. But records from autumn 2020 suggest that the Cabinet Office leant on SAGE to build in optimistic assumptions about the government’s ability to control the pandemic.
Modelling is vital if we are to control COVID-19, but it is not infallible. In this post, Roman Frigg and James Nguyen explain how epidemiological models work and consider the uncertainty inherent in their predictions.
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