The 1st Latinx Philosophers Conference is an initiative of some Latin American PhD candidates in the Columbia Philosophy Department. We hope to initiate a tradition of annual conferences to serve the following ends. First, to foster the creation and development of a Latinx Philosophers Network in the United States. This network, in turn, will help us provide a space for camaraderie and collaborative work, as well as identify and pursue the common interests of Latinx Philosophers in the U.S. Second, to provide a space for discussing issues of particular relevance to Latinx from a philosophical perspective.
The conference will take place on April 29-30 and will be organized around two clusters of topics. The first day will be devoted to issues in Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science. The second day will focus on Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, and Latin American Philosophy. We are happy to announce that Otavio Bueno and Jorge Gracia will be our keynote speakers for each day, respectively.
We invite graduate students who identify as Latinx or who are interested in forming part of the Latino/a Philosophers Network to submit papers on any of the topics mentioned above. We encourage submissions by women. We also encourage submissions that discuss issues relevant to the Latinx experience.
Papers should not exceed 4000 words (or the equivalent of a 30-minute presentation). They should be prepared for blind review and sent as a PDF file to latinophilosophersnetwork@gmail.com. In a separate PDF attachment, please include your name, academic affiliation, email address, telephone number, paper title, and an abstract of no more than 250 words. Any questions can be directed to César Cabezas (cgc2125@columbia.edu), or Ignacio Ojea (ignacio.ojea@columbia.edu). Acceptances will be announced by March 15.
This event is supported by:
MAP (Minorities and Philosophy), and
The Center for Race, Philosophy and Social Justice at Columbia University
Heart of DARCness
Huw Price (University of Cambridge)
4:10 pm, Thursday, October 13th, 2016
Faculty House, Columbia University
Abstract. Alan Hajek has recently criticised the thesis that Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction (renaming it the DARC thesis, for ‘Deliberation Annihilates Reflective Credence’). Hajek’s paper has reinforced my sense that proponents and opponents of this thesis often talk past one other. To avoid confusions of this kind we need to dissect our way to the heart of DARCness, and to distinguish it from various claims for which it is liable to be mistaken. In this talk, based on joint work with Yang Liu, I do some of this anatomical work. Properly understood, I argue, the heart is in good shape, and untouched by Hajek’s jabs at surrounding tissue. Moreover, a feature that Hajek takes to be problem for the DARC thesis – that it commits us to widespread ‘credal gaps’ – turns out to be a common and benign feature of a broad class of cases, of which deliberation is easily seen to be one.
Rationalizability, originally proposed by Bernheim and Pearce, generalizes the notion of Nash equilibrium. Nash equilibrium requires common knowledge of strategies. Rationalizability only requires common knowledge of rationality. However, their original notion assumes that the payoffs are common knowledge. I.e. agents do know what world they are in, but may be ignorant of what other agents are playing.
We generalize the original notion of rationalizability to consider situations where agents do not know what world they are in, or where some know but others do not know. Agents who know something about the world can take advantage of their superior knowledge. It may also happen that both Ann and Bob know about the world but Ann does not know that Bob knows. How might they act?
We will show how a notion of rationalizability in the context of partial knowledge, represented by a Kripke structure, can be developed.
Gödel’s disjunction asserts that either “the mind cannot be mechanized” or “there are absolutely undecidable statements.” Arguments are examined for and against each disjunct in the context of precise frameworks governing the notions of absolute provability and truth. The focus is on Penrose’s new argument, which interestingly involves type-free truth. In order to reconstruct Penrose’s argument, a system, DKT, is devised for absolute provability and type-free truth. It turns out that in this setting there are actually two versions of the disjunction and its disjuncts. The first, fully general versions end up being (provably) indeterminate. The second, restricted versions end up being (provably) determinate, and so, in this case there is at least an initial prospect of success. However, in this case it will be seen that although the disjunction itself is provable, neither disjunct is provable nor refutable in the framework.
UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON LOGIC, PROBABILITY, AND GAMES
Gödel’s Disjunction
Peter Koellner (Harvard University)
5:00 pm, Friday, April 7th, 2017
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University
The umwelt is a notion invented by the Baltic-German biologist Jakob von Uexküll. It represents how a creature, an animal, a child or even an adult “sees” the world and is a precursor to the Wumpus world in contemporary AI literature. A fly is caught in a spider’s web because its vision is too coarse to see the fine threads of the web. Thus though the web is part of the world, it is not a part of the fly’s umwelt. Similarly a tick will suck not only on blood but also on any warm liquid covered by a membrane. In the tick’s umwelt, the blood and the warm liquid are “the same”.
We represent an umwelt as a homomorphic image of the real world in which the creature, whatever it might be, has some perceptions, some powers, and some preferences (utilities for convenience). Thus we can calculate the average utility of an umwelt and also the utilities of two creatures combining their umwelts into a symbiosis.
A creature may also have a “theory” which is a map from sets of atomic sentences to sets of atomic sentences. Atomic sentences which are observed may allow the creature to infer other atomic sentences not observed. This weak but useful notion of theory bypasses some of Davidson’s objections to animals having beliefs.
Russell, Stuart J., and Peter Norvig. “Artificial intelligence: a modern approach (International Edition).” (2002).
Von Uexküll, J., von Uexküll, M., & O’Neil, J. D. (2010). A foray into the worlds of animals and humans: With a theory of meaning. U of Minnesota Press.
We examine general decision problems with loss functions that are bounded below. We allow the loss function to assume the value ∞. No other assumptions are made about the action space, the types of data available, the types of non-randomized decision rules allowed, or the parameter space. By allowing prior distributions and the randomizations in randomized rules to be finitely-additive, we find very general complete class and minimax theorems. Specifically, under the sole assumption that the loss function is bounded below, every decision problem has a minimal complete class and all admissible rules are Bayes rules. Also, every decision problem has a minimax rule and a least-favorable distribution and every minimax rule is Bayes with respect to the least-favorable distribution. Some special care is required to deal properly with infinite-valued risk functions and integrals taking infinite values. This talk will focus on some examples and the major differences between finitely-additive and countably-additive decision theory. This is joint work with Teddy Seidenfeld, Jay Kadane, and Rafael Stern.
UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON LOGIC, PROBABILITY, AND GAMES
Finitely-Additive Decision Theory
Mark Schervish (Carnegie Mellon)
4:10 pm, Friday, February 16th, 2018
Faculty House, Columbia University
as our understanding of the universe and its basic building blocks extends to shorter and shorter distances, experiments capable of probing these scales are becoming increasingly difficult to construct. Fundamental particle physics faces a potential crisis: an absence of data at the shortest possible scales. Yet remarkably, even in the absence of experimental data, the requirement of theoretical consistency puts stringent constraints on viable models of fundamental particles and their interactions. In this talk I’ll present some of these constraints and discuss their applications for cosmology, string theory and more.
There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
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UPCOMING:
Abstract: conventional wisdom holds that since the advent of the first full theories of quantum mechanics in the mid-1920s, the Copenhagen interpretation has been the default interpretation of quantum mechanics, and has enjoyed the support of a majority of physicists ever since. This is not the case. While it is indeed true that a majority of physicists have long professed that they subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation, the plain fact of the matter is that there is no single coherent position known as the Copenhagen interpretation, nor has there ever been one. Moreover, none of the positions that go by the name “Copenhagen interpretation” do a good job of solving the measurement problem, the central interpretive problem at the heart of quantum foundations. Nor do they evade the nonlocality that is dictated by Bell’s theorem. In this talk, I will give an overview of the history of the Copenhagen interpretation from 1926 to the present, explain its multiple inconsistencies and failures, and attempt an answer at a persistent puzzle: why does the Copenhagen interpretation remain popular among physicists despite its manifest flaws and the existence of multiple superior alternatives
About the speaker: Adam Becker is the author of What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics. He has a PhD in physics from the University of Michigan and he is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Book Grant. He is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Office for History of Science and Technology.
Abstract: TBD.
Abstract: TBD.
Abstract: My main aim is to make a remark about the relation between (i) dualities between theories, as `duality’ is understood in physics and (ii) equivalence of theories, as `equivalence’ is understood in logic and philosophy. The remark is that in physics, two theories can be dual, and accordingly get called `the same theory’, though we interpret them as disagreeing—so that they are certainly equivalent, as `equivalent’ is normally understood. So the remark is simple: but, I shall argue, worth stressing—since often neglected.
My argument for this is based on the account of duality by De Haro and myself: which is illustrated here with several examples, from both elementary physics and string theory. Thus I argue that in some examples, including in string theory, two dual theories disagree in their claims about the world.
I also spell out how this remark implies a limitation of proposals (both traditional and recent) to understand theoretical equivalence as either logical equivalence or a weakening of it.
Abstract: TBD.
What we are hoping for is a free, open, wide-ranging and informal conversation about a number of topics that people have lately been thinking more and more about – and that seem likely to play increasingly central roles, over the next several years, in the foundations of physics. These include questions of the emergence/fundamentality of space and time, the philosophical analysis and scientific role of chance, the relationship between physics and agency, and the possibility, desirability and scientific appropriateness of a complete and fundamental theory of nature.
Location: Pupin Hall Theory Center (8th floor), Columbia University.
Directions: Pupin Hall is located at the northwest end of the campus, in between the Northwest Corner building and Schapiro (south side of 120th Street). The Center for Theoretical Physics is located on the left once you arrive on the 8th floor in Pupin Hall.
RSVP: Please send an email to sr3109@columbia.edu if you would like to attend.
Workshop schedule:
Friday October 26, First Session: “Questions of chance”
– 10:00 – 11.15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Barry Loewer (Rutgers): “The metaphysics of laws and chance in physics”
– 11.15 – 11.30: Break
– 11.30 – 1:00: Panel with Jeff Barrett (UCI), Sean Carroll (Caltech), Mario Hubert (Columbia) and Charles Sebens (UCSD)
– 1:00 – 1:30: General Discussion
– 1:30 – 3:00: Lunch in Columbia area
Friday October 26, Second Session: “Physics and agency”
– 3:00- 4:15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Jenann Ismael (Columbia): “Physics and agency: the missing piece of the puzzle”
– 4:15 – 4:30: Break
– 4:30 – 6:00: Panel with David Albert (Columbia), Thomas Blanchard (IWU), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin) and Michael Strevens (NYU).
– 6:00 – 6:30: General Discussion
– 7:00: Conference Dinner
Saturday October 27, First Session: “The future of space and time”
– 10:00 – 11.15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Carlo Rovelli (Aix-Marseille): “Do we all mean the same, when we say ‘space’ and ‘time’?”
– 11.15 – 11.30: Break
– 11.30 – 1:00: Panel with Gordon Belot (Michigan), Sean Carroll (Caltech), Nick Huggett (UIC) and Jill North (Rutgers)
– 1:00 – 1:30: General Discussion
– 1:30 – 3:00: Lunch in Columbia area
Saturday October 27, Second Session: “Fundamentality and the ultimate aspirations of physics”
– 3:00- 4:15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Kerry McKenzie (UCSD): “Delusions of a final theory: the problem of progress in physics and metaphysics”
– 4:15 – 4:30: Break
– 4:30 – 6:00: Panel with David Albert (Columbia), Michael Miller (Toronto), Rachel Rosen (Columbia) and Porter Williams (USC)
– 6:00 – 6:30: General Discussion
Sponsor: The event is jointly organized by the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Physics at Columbia University, in association with the MA programme in the Philosophical Foundations of Physics. We would like in particular to acknowledge the generous and invaluable support both to the MA programme and to the workshop from Guerman Aliev.
I argue that we do not understand gauge theory as well as we think we do, when boundaries are present. I will briefly explain the conceptual and technical issues that arise at the boundary. I will then propose a tentative resolution, which requires us to think of theories not in space-time, but in field-space.
Two proof-systems P and P* are said to be complementary when one proves exactly the non-theorems of the other. Complementary systems come as a particular kind of refutation calculi whose patterns of inference always work by inferring unprovable conclusions form unprovable premises. In the first part of my talk, I will focus on LK*, the sequent system complementing Gentzen’s system LK for classical logic. I will show, then, how to enrich LK* with two admissible (unary) cut rules, which allow for a simple and efficient cut-elimination algorithm. In particular, two facts will be highlighted: 1) for any given provable sequent, complementary cut-elimination always returns one of its simplest proofs, and 2) provable LK* sequents turn out to be “deductively polarized” by the empty sequent. In the second part, I will observe how an alternative complementary sequent system can be obtained by slightly modifying the Gentzen-Schütte system G3. I will finally show how this move could pave the way for a novel approach to multi-valuedness and proof-theoretic semantics for classical logic.