science
TagPhilosophers Among New Class of AAAS Fellows
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAs) has announced its 2020 class of fellows. Most of the 489 new fellows are scientists, but three are philosophers. (more…)
Things Philosophers Know About Science That You Don’t
What do philosophers know that others don’t? This post intiates an occasional series that asks philosophers to engage with the “conventional wisdom” on various topics by sharing strongly-supported or widely-held philosophical insights and ideas about them.
Philosophers Win Artificial Intelligence Award
The Tetrad Automated Causal Discovery Platform, a software and text project developed by Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, Richard Scheines and Joe Ramsey of Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy, earned the “Leader” Award at the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference this past July. (more…)
Rigor in Math
Sometimes progress requires rigor, and sometimes progress can’t wait for rigor—at least in math. (more…)
Philosophers Among Recent NSF Grant Winners
The National Science Foundation (NSF) may not be the first place people think of when they think about support for philosophical research, but several philosophers are among recent winners of grants from the agency. (more…)
A Philosophy & COVID-19 Bibliography
Jef Delvaux, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at York University, has undertaken the project of putting together a bibliography of writings by philosophers about the COVID-19 pandemic and related issues. (more…)
“There is no philosophical essence”
“The question I regularly encountered, and still do, is: Is that still Philosophy?” (more…)
Understanding the Brain
“Maybe human brains aren’t equipped to understand themselves.” (more…)
Countenancing Segregation Based on Imaginary Science (guest post)
“Papers like this should be left ignored, and certainly not mistaken for brave declarations of inconvenient truths.” (more…)
$2.6 Million Funding for Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider
An interdisciplinary research group has received funding totalling approximately US$2.6 million to pursue its study of “the world’s largest research instrument”: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. (more…)
Scholars Object to Publication of Paper Defending Race Science
Scholars are objecting to the decision of the editors of the journal, Philosophical Psychology, to publish an article that calls for “free inquiry” into possible inherited genetic bases of group differences on IQ tests. (more…)
A Philosopher Takes on Evolutionary Psychology
“Evolutionary psychological inferences commonly fail to satisfy reasonable epistemic criteria.” The failures are so significant that good evolutionary psychology may not be possible. (more…)
Philosophers Win NSF Grant to Study False Beliefs
Two philosophers have won a $431,892 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the formation and spread of false beliefs and their implications for the public understanding of science. (more…)
2019 Popper Prize Winner Announced
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS) has selected Carlos Gray Santana (University of Utah) as the winner of its 2019 Karl Popper Prize for his “ground breaking” paper in the philosophy of geology. (more…)
Philosopher Wins €3 Million Grant for Project on Public Trust in Expert Opinion
Maria Baghramian, Head of the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin, has won a €3 million (approximately US$3.3 million) grant for three-year research project on “the role of science in policy decision making and the conditions under which people should trust and rely on expert opinion that shapes public policy.” (more…)
Should We Get Rid of Peer Review?
“Where philosophers of science have claimed the social structure of science works well, their arguments tend to rely on things other than peer review, and that where specific benefits have been claimed for peer review, empirical research has so far failed to bear these out. Comparing this to the downsides of peer review, most prominently the massive amount of time a..
“Philosophers for Future” – Focusing Philosophical Work on Climate Change
There is now a call for philosophers to join with others who have been protesting the lack of action on climate change.
New: The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique
There’s a new, open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal focusing on philosophy of technology and related fields, with an emphasis on public engagement. (more…)
Philosophers On a Physics Experiment that “Suggests There’s No Such Thing As Objective Reality”
Earlier this month, MIT Technology Review published an article entitled “A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.” It was one of several publications to excitedly report on a recent experiment conducted by Massimiliano Proietti (Heriot-Watt University) and others. (more…)
Philosopher Finnur Dellsén Wins Nils Klim Prize
Finnur Dellsén, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland and part-time associate professor at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, is the 2019 winner of the Nils Klim Prize. (more…)
How Science Can Get the Philosophy It Needs
A recent essay in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by an interdisciplinary group of scholars argues that philosophy has had “an important and productive impact on science” and provides recommendations for how to facilitate cooperation between philosophers and scientists.
The NSF and the Rise of Value-Free Philosophies of Science (guest post by Joel Katzav & Krist Vaesen)
Why were social, moral and political issues relatively neglected in philosophy of science during the 20th Century? Joel Katzav (Queensland) and Krist Vaesen (Eindhoven) continue their investigation of the institutional and sociological influences on the history and development of analytic philosophy in the following guest post.*
New Home for Reviews of Philosophy Books
The British Society for the Philosophy of Science has created a new online home for the book reviews published in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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Naturalism, Science, and the Possibility of Philosophy
“It is perfectly possible to do philosophy (even metaphysics or epistemology) if you do not believe that your views about mind, language, and reality can be used to ground (or dismiss) science.” (more…)
Writing Philosophy and Developing Curricula with Undergrads
Some professors see their students, at least sometimes, as partners in education, but Matthew Slater, professor of philosophy at Bucknell University, does impressive work to make that partnership a reality.
Challenges Facing Philosophy of Science
What are the most significant challenges facing philosophy of science today? Nick Zautra, a PhD student in the history and philosophy of science at Indiana University Bloomington, interviewed 30 philosophers of science over the past two years, asking them this question, and presented a summary of their answers at the recent 2018 Philosophy of Science Association (PS..
Does Philosophy of Math Need a Practical Turn?
When we dig beneath the neatly composed surface we find a great buzzing, blooming confusion of ideas, and we have a lot to learn about how mathematics channels these wellsprings of creativity into rigorous scientific discourse. But that requires doing hard work and getting our hands dirty. (more…)
2018 Lakatos Award Winners Announced
The Lakatos Award is given annually “for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted, in the form of a book published in English during the current year or the previous five years.” This year two recipients were selected: (more…)