Sep
28
Sat
Isaac Levi Conference and Memorial @ Columbia University, Philosophy rm tba
Sep 28 all-day

Conference Schedule

10AM       Teddy Seidenfeld – Conditional Probability, Conditionalization, and Total Evidence

11AM       Eleonora Cresto – Beyond Indeterminate Utilities. The Case of Neurotic Cake-Cutting

11:20AM  Ignacio Ojea Quintana – Unawareness and Levi’s Consensus as Common Ground

11:40AM  Rush Stewart – Uncertainty, Equality, Fraternity

1PM         Nils-Eric Sahlin – Levi’s Decision Theory: Lessons Learned

1:45PM    Wilfried Sieg – Scientific Theories as Set-Theoretic Predicates?

2:45PM    Panel Discussion – Learning from Levi

Abstracts available in attached documents under “Supporting material.”

Memorial

A memorial service will be held at 5PM at St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus. Reception to follow on the 7th floor of Philosophy Hall.


https://philevents.org/event/show/75850

Nov
15
Fri
Foundations of Physics Workshop, In Celebration of David Albert’s Birthday @ Columbia U Hamilton Hall 717
Nov 15 – Nov 16 all-day

David Albert’s work has been of seminal importance to the foundations of physics, exerting central influence on the direction the field and laying foundations for much of its ongoing development. In celebration of David’s many past and continuing contributions, we will be hosting a conference at Columbia University on the foundations of physics. We expect talks on a range of topics, including the foundations of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, the possible emergence of space and time, the metaphysics of science, and the nature of agency.

Confirmed Speakers

Jeff Barrett (UC Irvine)

Gordon Belot (Michigan)

Craig Callender (UC San Diego)

Sean Carroll (Caltech)

Eddy Chen (UC San Diego)

Sidney Felder (Rutgers)

Alison Fernandes (Dublin)

Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers)

Ned Hall (Harvard)

Barry Loewer (Rutgers)

Tim Maudlin (NYU)

Michael Miller (Toronto)

Alyssa Ney (UC Davis)

Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv)

David Wallace (Pittsburgh)

Nino Zanghi (Genoa)

Organizing Committee

Alison Fernandes (alison.fernandes@tcd.ie)

Michael Miller (mike.miller@utoronto.ca)

Porter Williams (porterwi@usc.edu)

.

The conference is open to the public. Please direct any questions to Porter Williams (porterwi@usc.edu).

Friday, November 15

8:45 am: Breakfast

9:30 am: Jeff Barrett (UC Irvine): Quantum Randomness and Empirical Underdetermination

10:15 am: Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers): Typicality, Humean Probability, and the Mentaculus

11:00: Coffee Break

11:20 am: Craig Callender (UC San Diego): No Time for Time from No-Time

12:05 pm: Alyssa Ney (UC Davis): WFR or QFT?

12:50: Lunch

2:20 pm: Gordon Belot (Michigan): The Mach-Einstein Principle of 1917-1918

3:05 pm: Sean Carroll (Caltech): The Mentaculus as a Causal Network

3:50: Coffee Break

4:10 pm: David Wallace (Pittsburgh): TBA

4:55 pm: Ned Hall (Harvard): Respectful Deflationism

5:45 pm: Adjourn

Saturday, November 16

8:45 am: Breakfast

9:30 am: Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv): The many-worlds interpretation and the Born rule

10:15 am: Eddy Chen (UC San Diego): Nomic Vagueness

11:00: Coffee Break

11:20 am: Michael Miller (Toronto): Infrared Cancellation and Measurement

12:05 pm: Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin): The Direction of Records

12:50: Lunch

2:20 pm: Sidney Felder (Rutgers): Gödel’s Rotating Solutions, Bilking, and Natural Laws

3:05 pm: Nino Zanghi (INFN Genova): TBA

3:50: Coffee Break

4:10 pm: Tim Maudlin (NYU): S = k ln(B(W)): Boltzmann entropy, the Second Law, and the Architecture of Hell

4:55 pm: Barry Loewer (Rutgers): The Consequence Argument Meets the Mentaculus

5:45 pm: Adjourn

Sep
27
Mon
Robert Iliffe – ‘A Thousand Fictions’: Cultism and Delusional Metaphysics in the Newton-Leibniz Disputes @ ZOOM - see site for details
Sep 27 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

The rich philosophical and mathematical disputes that took place between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz at the start of the eighteenth century have received more historical attention than any other exchange in the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, in this talk, Robert Iliffe discusses a prominent but neglected aspect of their disagreement, namely the mutual claim that their opponents’ conceptual foundations were fictional, and were the product both of diseased thinking and of illegitimately organized intellectual structures. Newton assailed Leibniz’s allegedly debased metaphysics in various prominent places, and mobilized allies such as Roger Cotes and John Keill to do the same. Nevertheless, by far the most sophisticated critique of illicit philosophical assumptions was launched against Newton by Leibniz in his correspondence with Samuel Clarke. In the Fifth letter to Clarke, Leibniz identified core Newtonian positions as infantile, vulgar, and profoundly irreligious, asserting that they were dangerous fictions that were less plausible and much less edifying than the rational romances of writers in the previous century. Although Leibniz saved his most potent intellectual weapons for his final letter to Clarke, Robert Iliffe suggests that his attack on the fictional status of Newton’s work was no mere codicil to his general critique of Newton’s philosophy, but instead lay at the heart of it. This famous debate, while of course somewhat sui generis, is indicative of more general and dynamic features of intellectual debate.

Event Speaker

Robert Iliffe, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford

Event Information

This event is free and open to the public; Registration required. Please contact scienceandsociety@columbia.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.

Feb
2
Wed
Art in the Brain of the Beholder @ ZOOM - see site for details
Feb 2 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

What can science teach us about how we perceive and understand art? How can art help us understand ourselves and each other? In this event, the Zuckerman Institute explores the interactions between our brains and the artistic world, finding connections and parallels between art and science.

Event Speakers

Please visit the event webpage to view the speaker list.

Event Information

Free and open to the public, registration is required by January 28, 2022. This event will also be live-streamed. Please email zuckermaninstitute@columbia.edu with any questions.

This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Feb
23
Wed
Elly Truitt – The Structure of Scientific Progress: The Case of Roger Bacon @ ZOOM - see site for details
Feb 23 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

This talk explores the importance of the medieval period and nineteenth-century medievalism to the invention of modern science by placing the work of thirteenth-century Franciscan, polymath, and scholastic natural philosopher Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-1292) into conversation with later scholars, especially William Whewell (1794-1866). Elly Truitt argues that Bacon’s work and reputation became central to a narrative about the development of science that insisted on Europe as the only possible place of origin. Furthermore, Truitt argues that this narrative was constructed, in part, by ignoring large parts of Bacon’s corpus and erasing his deep engagement with medieval scholars working in the Arabic tradition, and by relying instead on a narrative structure that emerged in the context of late antique and medieval Christianity.

Event Speaker

Elly Truitt, Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania

Event Information

This event is free and open to the public; Registration required. Please contact scienceandsociety@columbia.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.

Sponsoring Organizations:

  • The University Seminars at Columbia University
  • Columbia University in the City of New York
  • NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study
  • The Graduate Center, City University of New York
  • The New York Academy of Medicine
  • The New York Academy of Sciences

The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or (212) 853-1612 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage.

Mar
9
Wed
The Causal Structure of Reality, David Papineau (KCL) @ Zoom
Mar 9 @ 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

The current pandemic has focused attention on the techniques used by epidemiologists and other non-experimental scientists to infer causal hypotheses from correlational data. I have previously argued* that we need to explain these techniques by reducing causal relationships to dependencies in systems of structural equations with probabilistically independent exogenous variables. In this talk I shall aim to use this account to cast light on (a) single-case counterfactual dependence and actual causation, (b) the content and practical relevance of generic causal claims like “smoking causes cancer”, (c) the temporal asymmetry of causation, and (d) the proper understanding of rational action under risk.

*In particular, I’ve argued this in http://weebly-file/1/8/5/5/18551740/stat_nat_csn_monist.pdf. I will also be giving a talk on it at the CUNY Logic and Metaphysics workshop on Monday 7 March 1615-1815.

The talk will be on Zoom. All are welcome to attend!

The zoom link will be distributed through the MAPS mailing list. If you are not on the MAPS mailing list and would like to receive the Zoom link for the talk, please email nyphilsci@gmail.com.

Mar
24
Thu
Olivia Branscum, “Fairness, Objectivity, and Grading Multimodal Assessments.” @ 716 Philosophy Hall
Mar 24 @ 4:10 pm – 6:00 pm

LTF Event: Olivia Branscum,
“Fairness, Objectivity, and Grading
Multimodal Assessments.”

Mar
23
Thu
The Conventionality of Real-Valued Quantities. Marissa Bennett (Toronto) @ Columbia [ZOOM]
Mar 23 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm