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Dyason Lecture 2022: Peter Godfrey-Smith

The Evolution of Sentience

Thursday 13 October at 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Friends Room in the Mitchell Building, State Library of New South Wales

1 Shakespeare Place, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

In the 2022 Dyason Lecture presented by the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science, Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith considers the evolution of sentience.

How did evolution give rise to feelings, such as pleasure and pain? And which organisms experience the events of their lives in this way? Do insects feel pain? Octopuses? How about plants? Where might we locate the true limits of sentience?

Bookings are essential. Bookings can be made on the State Library event page.

Download the flyer

Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith

Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Sydney, and he has a PhD in philosophy from UC San Diego. He taught at Stanford University between 1991 and 2003, and then combined a half-time post at the Australian National University and a visiting position at Harvard for a few years. He moved to Harvard full-time and was Professor there from 2006 to 2011, before moving to the CUNY Graduate Center. Since 2015 he has also had a half-time position in the HPS Unit at the University of Sydney.

Peter’s main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He also works on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. Peter has written six books: Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, which won the 2010 Lakatos Award, Philosophy of Biology, Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Both of the Mind. Peter’s photos and videos have appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, The Guardian, Science, The Boston Globe and elsewhere.

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The Statistics Wars and Their Casualties

WORKSHOP

The Statistics Wars and Their Casualties

22-23 September 2022
15:00-18:00 pm London Time*
ONLINE
(London School of Economics, CPNSS)

To register for the workshop,
please fill out the registration form here.

*These will be sessions 1 & 2, there will be two more online sessions (3 & 4) on December 1 & 8.

While the field of statistics has a long history of passionate foundational controversy, the last decade has, in many ways, been the most dramatic. Misuses of statistics, biasing selection effects, and high-powered methods of big-data analysis, have helped to make it easy to find impressive-looking but spurious results that fail to replicate. As the crisis of replication has spread beyond psychology and social sciences to biomedicine, genomics, machine learning and other fields, the need for critical appraisal of proposed reforms is growing. Many are welcome (transparency about data, eschewing mechanical uses of statistics); some are quite radical. The experts do not agree on the best ways to promote trustworthy results, and these disagreements often reflect philosophical battles–old and new– about the nature of inductive-statistical inference and the roles of probability in statistical inference and modeling. Intermingled in the controversies about evidence are competing social, political, and economic values. If statistical consumers are unaware of assumptions behind rival evidence-policy reforms, they cannot scrutinize the consequences that affect them. What is at stake is a critical standpoint that we may increasingly be in danger of losing. Critically reflecting on proposed reforms and changing standards requires insights from statisticians, philosophers of science, psychologists, journal editors, economists and practitioners from across the natural and social sciences. This workshop will bring together these interdisciplinary insights–from speakers as well as attendees.

Speakers/Panellists:

Yoav Benjamini (Tel Aviv University), Alexander Bird (University of Cambridge), Mark Burgman (Imperial College London),  Daniele Fanelli (London School of Economics and Political Science), Roman Frigg (London School of Economics and Political Science), Stephan Guttinger (London School of Economics and Political Science), David Hand (Imperial College London), Margherita Harris  (London School of Economics and Political Science), Christian Hennig (University of Bologna), Daniël Lakens (Eindhoven University of Technology), Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech), Richard Morey (Cardiff University), Stephen Senn (Edinburgh, Scotland), Jon Williamson (University of Kent)

Sponsors/Affiliations:

The Foundation for the Study of Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science (E.R.R.O.R.S.); Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), London School of Economics; Virginia Tech Department of Philosophy

Organizers: D. Mayo, R. Frigg and M. Harris
Logistician (chief logistics and contact person): Jean Miller
Executive Planning Committee: Y. Benjamini, D. Hand, D. Lakens, S. Senn

To register for the workshop,
please fill out the registration form here. 

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The Statistics Wars and their Casualties workshop: Sept 22 & 23 (online)

Phil Stats Wars logo

Dear Colleagues,

The Statistics Wars and their Casualties workshop will now be fully online. The first 2 meetings (sessions 1 & 2) will be the scheduled dates, but only in the afternoons from 15-18:00 pm London time on Sept 22 and 23, 2022. There will be two future online meetings (sessions 3 & 4) probably in December with dates and times to be announced. There will be lots of opportunities to engage in discussion with attendees and special panelists.  We very much hope to see you there!

To register/receive notification of updates and schedules for the workshop, please visit this link. We really appreciate the continued interest many of you have shown in this workshop and associated forums over the past 2 years. We will strive to avoid duplicate messages. Write to us if you prefer not to receive any further updates on these events.

We would be grateful if you would forward this e-mail to interested colleagues.

Warmest Wishes,
D. Mayo
R. Frigg
M. Harris

The Statistics Wars and Their Casualties

22-23 September 2022
15:00-18:00 pm London Time*

ONLINE

To register/receive notification of updates for the  workshop, please fill out the registration/notification form here.

*These will be sessions 1 & 2, there will be two more future on-line sessions (3 & 4) to be announced.

Yoav Benjamini (Tel Aviv University), Alexander Bird (University of Cambridge), Mark Burgman (Imperial College London),  Daniele Fanelli (London School of Economics and Political Science), Roman Frigg (London School of Economics and Political Science), Stephan Guettinger (London School of Economics and Political Science), David Hand (Imperial College London), Margherita Harris (London School of Economics and Political Science), Christian Hennig (University of Bologna), Daniël Lakens (Eindhoven University of Technology), Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech), Richard Morey (Cardiff University), Stephen Senn  (Edinburgh, Scotland), Jon Williamson (University of Kent)

While the field of statistics has a long history of passionate foundational controversy the last decade has, in many ways, been the most dramatic. Misuses of statistics, biasing selection effects, and high powered methods of Big-Data analysis, have helped to make it easy to find impressive-looking but spurious, results that fail to replicate. As the crisis of replication has spread beyond psychology and social sciences to biomedicine, genomics and other fields, people are getting serious about reforms.  Many are welcome (preregistration, transparency about data, eschewing mechanical uses of statistics); some are quite radical. The experts do not agree on how to restore scientific integrity, and these disagreements reflect philosophical battles–old and new– about the nature of inductive-statistical inference and the roles of probability in statistical inference and modeling. These philosophical issues simmer below the surface in competing views about the causes of problems and potential remedies. If statistical consumers are unaware of assumptions behind rival evidence-policy reforms, they cannot scrutinize the consequences that affect them (in personalized medicine, psychology, law, and so on). Critically reflecting on proposed reforms and changing standards requires insights from statisticians, philosophers of science, psychologists, journal editors, economists and practitioners from across the natural and social sciences. This workshop will bring together these interdisciplinary insights–from speakers as well as attendees.

Sponsors/Collaborations:
Sponsors: The Foundation for the Study of Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science (E.R.R.O.R.S.); Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), London School of Economics
Organizers: D. Mayo, R. Frigg and M. Harris
Logistician (chief logistics and contact person): Jean Miller

To register/receive notification of updates for the workshop, please fill out the registration/notification form here.

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CFP: Society for the Metaphysics of Science Session at the 2023 APA Eastern

Dear Members of the Society for the Metaphysics of Science,

In addition to its stand-alone annual conference, the Society for the Metaphysics of Science has often hosted group sessions at the American Philosophical Association divisional meetings. While those sessions have primarily been at the Central and Pacific meetings in the past, this year we are adding a session at the Eastern division meeting (Montreal, 4–7 January 2023) with an open call for papers.

Anonymized abstracts of 400-700 words should be submitted through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=smsapae23 ) by Friday, 10 June. Final presentations will be roughly 30 minutes.

Abstracts are welcome in:

  • The metaphysics of any area of natural or social science
  • The implications of any area of natural or social science for metaphysics

Presenters must be members of the APA at the time of the conference and registered for the 2023 Eastern Division meeting.

For any questions please contact the Society for the Metaphysics of Science's APA Eastern division representative, Ryan Miller (Ryan.Miller@unige.ch).

For more information on the Society for the Metaphysics of Science, please see our website: https://socmetsci.org .

SMS Announcements

Kerry McKenzie’s book Fundamentality and Grounding is open access until 23 February 2022.. The CFP for our 2022 Conference, to be held 7–9 September 2022 at the University of Bristol, is now available.
socmetsci.org

Sincerely,

Tyler Hildebrand, Secretary of the SMS

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ISHPSSB Off-Year Workshops

The ISHPSSB Off-Year Workshop Committee has been hard at work, and we are pleased to announce two more workshops have been approved.  This brings the total number of 2022 ISHPSSB Off-Year Workshops to five!  You can view all of them on the ISHPSSB webpage here:

https://ishpssb.org/meetings#off-year-workshops

Please note the new website for the “Echoes of Scientific Thought in Society” workshop, and the upcoming Apr. 30 CFP for “Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences XI.”

Our two new workshops:

Sustainable Practices Workshop

University of Minnesota, June 10, 2022 (virtual)

Workshops

EASPLS 2022 (European Advanced School in Philosophy of the Life Sciences): “Dealing with Complexity in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences”

Institute for Philosophy in Biology & Medicine, ImmunoConcEpT lab, and University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, Sept. 5-9, 2022 (in-person)

Website https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/easpls-bordeaux-2022/

This adds to the previously approved workshops:

Echoes of scientific thought in society: the late 19th century-early 20th century ‘race science’ in Argentina and Brazil

University of São Paulo, Brazil, Sep. 19-23, 2022. (virtual)

Website: https://19racialtheoriesla.wixsite.com/racialtheories (NEW WEBSITE!)

A triple helix: metaphor, society, and the science of evolution. A workshop in memory of Richard Lewontin

UNAM, Mexico, Oct. 3-7, 2022. (hybrid)

Contact information: David Suárez Pascal (david.suarez@ciencias.unam.mx)

Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences XI (PBCS XI)

University of Salamanca, Spain, Nov. 3-4, 2022 (in-person)

Contact information: PBCSXI@usal.es.

Website: https://pbcsxiworkshop.wordpress.com/

Call for Participation (deadline April 30): https://pbcsxiworkshop.wordpress.com/cfp/

Thanks to all the organizers of these workshops for their hard work.  Please share with your interested colleagues and students.

Best,

Your ISHPSSB Off-Year Workshop Committee,

  • Matt Haber, University of Utah (chair)
  • Alex Aylward, University of Oxford
  • Jenny Bangham, Queen Mary University of London
  • Luciana Garbayo, University of Central Florida
  • Vivette García Deister, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
  • Eva Guadalupe Hernández Avilez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
  • Maria Elice de Brzezinski Prestes, Universidade de São Paulo
  • Lucia Neco, University of Western Australia
  • Charles Pence, Université catholique de Louvain
  • Javier Suárez, Universit of Oviedo
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2022 AusSTS workshop

Decorative abstract image

The Call for Applications for the 2022 AusSTS workshop is now open: https://aussts.wordpress.com/aussts2022/

It will be a multi-sited event, with in-person nodes in Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin and Wellington NZ.

The workshop will take place on the 28th and 29th of July 2022.

Theme: Generation

Plenary: Anne Pollock (King’s College London)

Intergenerational Plenary: Hana Burgess (UoA), Mythily Meher (UoA), Billy van Uitregt (VUW)

Please do spread the word to HDR candidates and ECRs that you think may be interested in applying. Applications close 30 May.

Thank you all

Very Best,
Roberta

Roberta Pala, coordinator for AusSTS

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Postdoctoral Fellowships at Yale – Climate Change

Yale University

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication invites applications for 2 full-time Postdoctoral Research Fellows to contribute to our ongoing research on the public's climate change knowledge, risk perceptions, policy preferences, and behavior. The program conducts scientific surveys and message experiments at the national, international, and global scales, as well as with specific communities and organizations. The program also includes several projects that engage the public in climate change science and solutions.

Responsibilities

Conduct scientific research to advance the theory and practice of effective climate change communication, and the psychological, cultural, political, and social factors influencing public awareness, risk perceptions, policy preferences and behavior.

  • Work with an interdisciplinary and international network of researchers.
  • Postdoc 1: Contribute to survey research design, implementation, data analysis and data management.
  • Postdoc 2: Contribute to message experiment research design, implementation, data analysis and data management.
  • Author peer-reviewed publications and public reports.

Required education and experience

  • Candidates must have a PhD in a relevant field or discipline, such as survey research, risk perception, communication (climate change, science, environment, public health, and/or political communication), behavior change, psychology, political science, sociology, or geography.
  • Proficiency in survey and/or experimental research design, methods, and analysis.
  • Proficiency in data analysis, using SPSS, R, or other statistics packages.
  • Proficiency in data and project management.
  • Demonstrated ability to work as part of a team.
  • Demonstrated ability to communicate research results to both expert and non-expert audiences.
  • Excellent writing and presentation skills in English.

The review of applications will begin on April 8, 2022, and the positions will remain open until filled. Salary will be commensurate with experience and qualifications. The positions are full-time appointments for one year, with full benefits, and with the possibility of renewal for a second year, dependent upon performance and availability of funding.

For full consideration, applicants must submit an application to climatechange@yale.edu Please put either "Survey Postdoc Application – (your last name)" or "Experimental Postdoc Application – (your last name)" in the subject line. Applications should include: (1) a cover letter addressed to Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, including a statement of research interests and career goals, with names and contact information for three professional references, and (2) a curriculum vita. Applications should contain all documents in a single PDF attached to the email.

Yale University Statement on Non-Discrimination