November & December 2016 Lunchtime Abstracts & Details

::: Bayesian Inferences and Conceptual Spaces: On How to Learn Words and Acquire Concepts
Peter Brössel
University of Pittsburgh, HPS (Visiting Scholar)
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce a new account of concept acquisition and word learning that combines the very popular account of Bayesian word learning by Xu and Tenenbaum (2007) with Gärdenfors' (2000, 2014) account of conceptual representation and conceptual thought. According to Xu and Tenenbaum's 2007 Bayesian account of word learning, children learn new words as if they were perfect Bayesian agents. But how should we determine the relevant probabilities? The very rough idea of Xu and Tenenbaum is to tie these probabilities to the size of the concept that we refer to with the given word, which, according to them, roughly corresponds to the average dissimilarity of the objects falling under it. In this paper, we not only criticize Xu and Tenenbaum’s proposal but we also demonstrate that Xu and Tenenbaum's approach can be made more precise and fruitful by relying on Gärdenfors’s Conceptual Spaces account of conceptual representation. Based on recent work of Douven and Decock (2015), one then can show how the geometrical structure of the phenomenal space determines the relevant probabilities for learning phenomenal concepts such as BROWN, SQUARED, DARK and the corresponding words.

::: Realist Pragmatism: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches to Particles
Anjan Chakravartty
University of Notre Dame (Center Sr. Fellow)
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Is realism about subatomic particles a tenable view? Their properties (mass, charge, and spin) are represented in the Standard Model of particle physics as invariants of certain symmetry groups. Some interpret this as indicating a structuralist ontology, and I describe this thinking as "top-down": it focuses on a mathematical formalism from which it derives a characterization of properties in the world. Others, more concerned with issues of experimental practice, conceive these properties in causal terms, which I describe as a "bottom-up" approach: it characterizes properties in terms of manipulations and interventions and regards the mathematical formalism as a (mere) description. I consider arguments for and against conceptions of realism associated with these approaches, point out some difficulties, and offer a suggestion for what realists should say instead.

::: When is a Genetic Cluster a Race?
Quayshawn Nigel Julian Spencer
University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Recent work in population genetics has identified various levels of genetic clusters in sexually reproducing species using new genetic clustering software. Sometimes geneticists use genetic clusters as prima facie evidence for a group of organisms being a population, a subspecies, or even a race. In this talk, I will focus on the claim that some genetic clusters flag races, and in particular on Esteban Burchard et al.’s (2003) claim that K = 5 human genetic clusters flag US census races. I will argue that Burchard et al.’s claim is essentially correct, however, I will call the relevant US census races OMB races due to their ties to the US Office of Management and Budget. I will begin with a brief introduction to the relevant genetic research and Burchard et al.’s claim. Next, I will summarize all of the major scholarly objections to calling any human genetic cluster a ‘race’. Third, I defend the thesis that OMB races just are the biological populations currently flagged by current K = 5 human genetic clusters using abduction, three important phenomena about OMB races, and rarely used background assumptions in the philosophy of race, such as referential semantics. Fourth, I respond to salient objections. Finally, I discuss two important consequences of my thesis being true: one for the metaphysics of race and one for medicine.

::: What Quantum Measurements Measure
Robert Griffiths
Carnegie Mellon University, Physics
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Discussions of the infamous measurement problem of quantum foundations tend to focus on how the output of a measurement, the pointer position, can be thought of in consistent quantum mechanical terms, while ignoring the equally important issue of what this outcome says about the earlier microscopic situation the apparatus was designed to measure. An experimental physicist is typically much more interested in the path followed by a particle before it triggered his detector than in what happened later, and if quantum mechanics cannot provide a clear explanation, how can one claim that this theory has been confirmed by experiment? The talk will use Wheeler's delayed choice paradox to identify the fundamental conceptual issues underlying this second measurement problem, and then sketch the resolution provided by the consistent histories interpretation, using a modification of Birkhoff and von Neumann's quantum logic.