Calendar

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

Kicking it all off will be Liz Camp (Rutgers University), who will be speaking on Monday 1/26 about why metaphors make good insults. Here’s a bit more about Dr. Camp’s talk, in her own words:

“Why Metaphors Make Good Insults”

Metaphors are powerful communicative tools because they ‘frame’ their subjects in certain ways. These effects are especially palpable when the metaphor is an insult that denigrates the hearer or someone she cares about. In such cases, comprehending the metaphor can produce a kind of complicity, one that cannot be undone just by denying the speaker’s claim. Where some theorists take this to show that metaphors accomplish something different in kind from ordinary talk, I argue that metaphorical insults are so rhetorically powerful because they combine three distinct features, each of which is independently common in communication.  This result is not just theoretically interesting; it also helps to suggest more effective techniques for hearers to fight back.

As usual, we meet at 7:00 P.M. at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in the Info Commons Lab. Hope to see you there!

Spring 2015 Schedule:

1/26 – Liz Camp
(Rutgers)

2/23 – Geoff Holtzman
(CUNY Graduate Center)

3/30 – Serene Khader
(Brooklyn College)

4/27 – Frank Kirkland
(Hunter College)

5/20 – Bruce Matthews
(Bard High School Early College)

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

The Liberal Studies department at the New School for Social Research and the Culture & Media Department at Eugene Lang College are pleased to jointly present “Appetite for Distraction: Social Media and Today’s Attention-Economy,” an evening lecture by Chair and faculty memeber Dominic Pettman, which also marks the publication his forthcoming book Infinite Distraction (Polity Press, 2016).

It is often argued that contemporary media homogenize our thoughts and actions, without us being fully aware of the restrictions they impose. But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity.

Infinite Distraction examines the deliberate deployment of what Pettman calls hypermodulation, as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily clicking ourselves to death. This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.

A Q&A will follow the lecture and refreshments will be on hand.

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.

A talk by Anne Simon, moderated by Eliza Zingesser

Zoopoetics aims to highlight the plurality of stylistic, linguistic and narrative tools used by writers to express the plurality of animal activities, affects and worlds, as well as the intricacies of the interactions between humans and animals. Such an approach helps to understand that all life forms are in a relationship of dependence with an archè (Husserl)—an origin, a reason, a refuge, a dwelling, the Earth— and that animals are more stylistic or rhetorical beings than we usually think of them as being. Evolution and biomorphic logics allow us to intuitively understand other species related to us, to share many of their emotions and expressions, and to be able to account for them through specific human means, such as evocative and figurative language. The lecture will show that perspectivism, metamorphosis and hybridity are universal patterns and experiences that literature embodies in different ways.

Anne Simon is a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Française and a Member of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), where she leads the Project « Animots » ; an author of Trafics de Proust, 2016 and La rumeur des distances traversées, to be published in 2018. Her research focuses on disturbing relationships between philosophy and literature, and on zoopoetics.