RUTGERS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND BIOSTATISTICS www.stat.rutgers.edu
Seminar θSpeaker: Professor Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech
Title: Probing with Severity: Beyond Bayesian Probabilism and Frequentist Performance
Time: 3:20 – 4:20pm, Wednesday, December 3, 2014 Place: 552 Hill Center
ABSTRACT
Probing with Severity: Beyond Bayesian Probabilism and Frequentist Performance Getting beyond today’s most pressing controversies revolving around statistical methods, I argue, requires scrutinizing their underlying statistical philosophies.Two main philosophies about the roles of probability in statistical inference are probabilism and performance (in the long-run). The first assumes that we need a method of assigning probabilities to hypotheses; the second assumes that the main function of statistical method is to control long-run performance. I offer a third goal: controlling and evaluating the probativeness of methods. An inductive inference, in this conception, takes the form of inferring hypotheses to the extent that they have been well or severely tested. A report of poorly tested claims must also be part of an adequate inference. I develop a statistical philosophy in which error probabilities of methods may be used to evaluate and control the stringency or severity of tests. I then show how the “severe testing” philosophy clarifies and avoids familiar criticisms and abuses of significance tests and cognate methods (e.g., confidence intervals). Severity may be threatened in three main ways: fallacies of statistical tests, unwarranted links between statistical and substantive claims, and violations of model assumptions.
Please join us in conversation with Philip Kitcher as we discuss themes from his new book, Life after Faith. While atheist writers gleefully cataloguing religion’s intellectual and moral vices have been numerous of late, too few have treated their target with the respect it deserves for successfully providing emotional comfort and social cohesion. Kitcher changes that, acknowledging religion’s virtues even as he constructs a secular humanist alternative to replace it.
Talk with him about this on Monday, February 23, 2015 at 7:00pm at Book Culture, 536 West 112th St., NY, NY (212) 865-1588
The Philosophy of Statistics: Bayesianism, Frequentism and the Nature of Inference,
2015 APS Annual Convention
Saturday, May 23 2:00 PM- 3:50 PM in Wilder
(Marriott Marquis 1535 B’way)
Presenters:
Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics & Political Science, Columbia University
Stephen Senn, Head of Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS) Luxembourg Institute of Health
D.G. Mayo, Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Tech
Richard Morey, Session Chair & Discussant, Senior Lecturer School of Psychology, Cardiff University
I know what you’re thinking. “Can’t summer just be over already? Are there going to be any great public philosophy events in Brooklyn soon? And are authentic romantic relationships even possible?”
Well, I’m here to tell you: yes, yes, and maybe.
Coming up on Tuesday, 9/1 at 7:00 P.M., Skye Cleary (Columbia University), author of the recently published Existentialism and Romantic Love, joins Brooklyn Public Philosophers to share some of her work on the subject. Here’s a bit more about the talk, in Dr. Cleary’s own words:
Existentialism and Romantic Love
Romantic love suggests images of perfect happiness, harmony, understanding, and intimacy that make the lovers feel as if they are made for each other. The ideal is alluring but flawed, because romantic loving often involves conflicts and disappointments.
While every existential philosopher interprets being in the world differently, there is a common emphasis on concrete personal experience, freedom, authenticity, responsibility, individuality, awareness of death, and personal determination of values. It is therefore not surprising that they also consider the question of romantic loving.
This talk draws on the philosophies of Max Stirner, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir in order to examine the roots of disappointments and frustrations within our everyday ideas about romantic love, as well as possibilities for resolution and creating authentically meaningful relationships.
Tell your friends/students/countrymen! Bring a date!
As usual, we meet at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (10 Grand Army Plaza), in the Info Commons lab.
See you there, I hope!
Paul Kottman, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, gives a lecture entitled “Love as Human Freedom”.
Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, or as a reflection of reigning ideologies, this lecture presents love as a practice that changes over time, through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. Drawing on Hegel, via interpretations of literary works, Kottman argues that love generates and explains expanded possibilities for freely lived lives, and is a fundamental way that we make sense of temporal change, especially the inevitability of death and the propagation of life.
About the speaker:
Paul Kottman is the author of Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), A Politics of the Scene (Stanford University Press, 2008) and is the editor of Philosophers on Shakespeare (Stanford University Press, 2009), and The Insistence of Art: Aesthetic Philosophy and Early Modernity (Fordham UP, forthcoming). His next book is tentatively entitled Love as Human Freedom. He is also the editor of a new book series at Stanford University Press, called Square One: First-Order Questions in the Humanities.
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.
Metro Area Philosophy of Science Presents:
Elizabeth Miller (Yale),
Title: TBA.
Jonathan Bain (NYU)
What Explains the Spin-Statistics Connection?
The spin-statistics connection plays an essential role in explanations of non-relativistic phenomena associated with both field-theoretic and non-field-theoretic systems (for instance, it explains the electronic structure of solids and the behavior of Einstein-Bose condensates and superconductors). However, it is only derivable within the context of relativistic quantum field theory (RQFT) in the form of the Spin-Statistics Theorem; and moreover, there are multiple, mutually incompatible ways of deriving it. This essay attempts to determine the sense in which the spin-statistics connection can be said to be an essential property in RQFT, and how it is that an essential property of one type of theory can figure into fundamental explanations offered by other, inherently distinct theories.
Philosophers have employed two different varieties of felt necessity to explain central aspects of agency in addiction and love, respectively. In the case of addiction, the relevant felt need is often described in terms of an appetite, whereas love is characterized by necessities arising from a particular kind of caring. On Dr. Wonderly’s view, the extant literature offers an instructive, but incomplete picture of the roles of felt necessity in addiction and love. Dr. Wonderly argues that a third form of felt necessity – attachment necessity – often better captures central aspects of agency in love and addiction. Recognizing the role of attachment necessity will not only illuminate how felt necessity can impact the value of certain relationships, but it will also allow us to discern important features of addiction and love that remain obscured on extant approaches.
Monique Wonderly is the Harold T. Shapiro Postdoctoral Research Associate in Bioethics. She is primarily interested in puzzles at the intersection of ethics and the nature of emotions. She has published in the areas of applied ethics, philosophy of emotion, and history of philosophy. Her current research focuses on emotional attachment – and in particular, on questions concerning moral agency and ethical treatment that arise when considering certain attachment-related pathologies, including psychopathy and (some forms of) addiction. For more, visit here.
Reception to follow.
One way for an attempt at explanation to fail is for the explanans (which does the
explaining) to be too close to the explanandum (the thing explained). In this paper
I discuss this feature, which I call explanatory distance. I consider some different
approaches to explanatory distance, and propose an account of explanatory
distance articulated in terms of dependence. I then discuss the implications of this
View for some recent applications of grounding.
Schedule for Spring 2018
Here is a sneak peak at our exciting line-up of speakers and events for Spring 2018. Some times and rooms TBA.
Elanor Taylor, February 8, CUNY Graduate Center, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307, 4:00-6:00pm
Virginia Aspe Armella and Ma. Elena García Peláez Cruz (co-sponsored with SWIP-Analytic Mexico), March 2, NYU Room 202, 2:00-4:30pm
Round Table Women in Philosophy: Publishing, Jobs, and Fitting In (co-sponsored with NYSWIP), March 8, CUNY Graduate Center, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307, 4:30-7:30pm
Graduate Student Essay Prize Winner Presentation, April 12
Sophie Horowitz (UMass, Amherst), April 26
Love
is patient, it is kind, it is cruel, it is blind, it hurts, it heals, it is a sickness, it is the drug, it is like oxygen, it is all you need, it stinks, it is supreme, it is eternal, it fades, it is the answer, it is life.
Join us for a symposium on that which makes us human.
Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 8p.m. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink. Reservations are recommended (646.590.0142)
Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.
Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid! Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY. He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.
You probably know the Lucas Brothers from their Netflix comedy special On Drugs or their appearances in TV shows and movies like Lady Dynamite and 22 Jump Street. You might not know that they are serious students of philosophy. Join us on Wednesday, November 28th at 7:30 PM in the Strand Bookstore’s 2nd Floor Art Department as Kenny and Keith Lucas join Michael Brownstein (Associate Professor of Philosophy at John Jay College and author of The Implicit Mind) to discuss how philosophy shapes their comedy, how comedy works, the weirdly popular idea that comedians are today’s philosophers, and more.
The price of admission is a $5 gift certificate to the Strand. (You were probably going to spend $5 at the Strand some time soon, anyway.) Please purchase tickets here and share the Facebook event. I will take all the help I can get in spreading the word.
Stay tuned for more info about Kwame Anthony Appiah’s December 4th talk about identity at Philosophy in the Library!