October 2018 Lunchtime Abstracts & Details

How Biological Technology Should Inform the Causal Selection Debate
Janella Baxter, Center Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Minnesota, Dept. of Philosophy
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
12:05 pm, 1119 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Waters’ (2007) actual difference making and Weber’s (2013, 2017) biological normality approaches to causal selection have received many criticisms, some of which miss their target. Disagreement about whether Water’s and Weber’s views succeed in providing criteria that uniquely singles out the gene as explanatorily significant in biology has led philosophers to overlook a prior problem. Before one can address whether Waters’ and Weber’s views successfully account for the explanatory significance of genes, one must ask whether either view satisfactorily meets the necessary conditions for causal selection in the first place. An adequate defense of causal selection must meet two desiderata. First, there must be an explanatory property that sets some causes apart from others. Second, the property identified must be one that is recognized by biologists as relevant to their domain(s) of inquiry. I argue that both fall short of meeting the second condition. I demonstrate this by showing how many of the biological technologies crucial to experimentation do not fit either view very well. I offer a more adequate proposal that accommodates non-actual and artificial causal variables. A consequence of my view is the following: When analyzing the causal selection practices of biologists, philosophers should consider the explanatory targets relevant to a research program – including ones whose explanans must appeal to biological technologies. I then explain how this proposal can inform the existing debate between Weber (2017) and Griffiths et al. (2015).

Simultaneity in Closed Flat Spacetime
Chunghyoung Lee, Center Visiting Fellow
Pohang University of Science & Technology, S. Korea
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
12:05 pm, 1119 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Our universe may be not infinite in all directions but closed like the surface of a cylinder or sphere. Consider simple closed spacetime, namely, 2-dimensional cylindrical spacetime which is temporally open but spatially closed—this spacetime is flat (i.e., has the geometry of Minkowski spacetime). In this spacetime it is possible for one twin to travel around the universe to return to the other twin while none of them goes through any acceleration.

I argue that considerations of such closed flat spacetime provide new insights about special relativity and various philosophical puzzles thereof. First, cylindrical spacetime is significantly different, though locally indistinguishable, from (2-dimensional) Minkowski spacetime. Most fundamentally, Reichenbach’s Round-trip axiom fails to hold in this spacetime: For three inertially moving objects, A, B, and C, which are at rest relative to one another, if two light signals are sent from A simultaneously so that one signal makes a round trip in the order of A-B-C-A while the other travels in the opposite order of A-C-B-A, then the two signals return to A simultaneously in Minkowski spacetime, but not necessarily in closed flat spacetime. Consequently, distant clocks cannot be synchronized following the standard procedure proposed by Einstein except for those under some particular motion, and so there are privileged inertial frames. And it is simplest to take the one-way speed of light to vary from inertial frame to inertial frame and the simultaneity relation to be not relative but absolute. These features have important implications for various philosophical issues regarding time and special relativity.

Scientific Naturalism and Normative Explanation
Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame
Friday, October 12, 2018
12:05 pm, 1119 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Naturalism has been characterized in many ways and, in one form or another, is widely held. Scientific naturalism, in and outside the field of philosophy of science, is especially well respected.  Philosophers have distinguished reductive and non-reductive versions of naturalism—in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and ethical theory. A challenge to scientific naturalism, even in non-reductive versions, is to accommodate normative explanations, particularly those purporting to explain non-normative phenomena such as human actions and other empirical phenomena, by appeal to apparently moral facts. Are such explanations possible without reducing normative properties to natural ones? What would such reduction require?  This paper seeks to clarify both these questions and some of the concepts essential for understanding naturalism in any form. A main aim of the paper is to show how both normative perception and moral explanations are compatible with a worldview plausibly considered a version of scientific naturalism.

Localization and Complex Temporal Dynamics
Naftali Weinberger, Center Postdoctoral Fellow
Tilburg University, Netherlands
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
12:05 pm, 1119 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: A common strategy for modeling a complex system is to divide it up into “near-decomposable” subsystems such that the short-run behavior of each subsystem is nearly independent of those of the other subsystems (Simon, 1962, Bechtel and Richardson, 1993). For systems that are not decomposable in this way, it remains an open question whether standard causal or mechanistic accounts of explanation apply (Rathkopf, 2015). The aim of this talk is to clarify the relationship between the conditions that enable one to decompose a system and those that license one to make causal attributions about it. I first present Iwasaki and Simon’s (1994) framework for showing how the causal representation of a system varies with the time-scale at which the system is considered, and explain how the framework involves the concept of near-decomposability. I argue that even in cases where one does not explicitly consider time-scale, this framework is relevant for understanding the abstractions and idealizations involved in making causal attributions. I then consider the relevance of near-decomposability methods for causal inference. I highlight analogies between the representational devices that Iwasaki and Simon use to represent a system at multiple scales and those that are used in econometric time-series methods such as SVAR models. This part of the talk provides only a preliminary exploration, but suggests that the concept of near-decomposability is relevant to determining when such econometric models can be causally interpreted.

On Experience in Feyerabend’s Philosophy
Deivide Garcia da Silva Oliveira, Center Visiting Fellow
Federal University of Reconcavo of Bahia
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
12:05 pm, 1119 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract:  The use of experience as a source of discovery and justification is, and perhaps always will be, a problem for both scientific knowledge and for knowledge in general. Traditionally, it has been assumed that metaphysical knowledge has no legitimate role to play in justifying knowledge based on experience. Accordingly, since scientific justification is assumed to be empirical, there is no place for metaphysics in science. Consequently, these sorts of assumptions, that “experience can be regarded as a true source and foundation of knowledge” (Feyerabend, 1969, 132), entail that metaphysical knowledge cannot provide justification for our beliefs about the world. On the other hand, according to Feyerabend in some articles and books, such as Science without Experience (1969), Knowledge without foundations (1961) and How to be a good Empiricist: a plea for tolerance in matters epistemological (1963), metaphysics is, and ought to be, an indispensable part of modern science. Otherwise, the progress of knowledge would be compromised. This subject raises the following research questions: what does  Feyerabend mean by experience? Is there some difference between the first (before 1970) and the later (after 1970) Feyerabend about the notion of experience? Is Feyerabend’s philosophy defending scientific knowledge under a radical relativism approach, i.e., that we cannot have justification for our knowledge? What role can Feyerabend’s notion of experience play in scientific knowledge? Could we develop a conception of experience that differs from Modern Empiricists’? Motivated by these questions, the aim of this research is to clarify and analyze the notion of experience in Feyerabend’s philosophy and its implications for scientific knowledge. To do this, I will argue that one should distinguish two phases in his work (before and after 1970) and that this distinction matters for understanding experience in Feyerabend’s philosophy. We will investigate the main texts written by Feyerabend about experience from the 1960s until the 1990s as well as Against Method (1993). 

A Cognitive Theory of Information
Ronaldo Vigo, Dept. of Psychology;
Director, Consortium for the Advancement of Cognitive Science
Ohio University
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
12:05 pm, 1119 Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In this talk, I will introduce and discuss a new notion and measure of information referred to as representational information. The measure was derived from Generalized Invariance Structure Theory (GIST; Vigo 2013, 2016), a mathematical theory of human categorization and concept learning (i.e., of human generalization) that is based on invariance and abstract symmetry principles. In the first part of the talk, I will give a basic introduction to GIST, followed by a discussion of the inadequacy of Shannon information theory in cognitive science. The second part of the talk will consist of an empirical and theoretical discussion of the notion of informativeness and how representational information effectively accounts for human informativeness judgments and for the key constructs of prototypicality and representation in cognitive science.