Join the Department of History and Philosphy of Science for some talkbacks

Tuesday, November 18th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Join us in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor.

This talk will be available online:  Zoom

 

Title: Mechanisms & Machine Metaphors in Psychiatry

Abstract:

The concept of ‘mechanism’ is ubiquitous in psychiatric research and practice – yet its intended meaning is often underspecified. While more minimal New Mechanist accounts avoid the conceptual baggage of machine metaphors and analogies, I argue that the ambiguous usage of mechanism concepts in psychiatry creates a conceptual void which prompts defaulting to intuitive machine metaphors and associated interpretive tendencies. Specifically, we see an uninterrogated drift from appeals to mechanistic structures and processes to models and explanatory frameworks implicitly structured by this thicker, metaphorically-laden understanding of mechanism. I will then trace the implications of this for psychiatric research methodology, clinical assessment, and patient self-conception – illustrating how the deterministic and reductionistic tendencies often associated with biogenetic accounts of mental disorder emerge not from the accounts themselves, but rather from the machine-metaphor framework through which they are interpreted. I will conclude by proposing an alternative framework to counteract some of the problematic associations of this dominant metaphor.

 

Friday, November 21st @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST

This talk is online-only. Follow along via Zoom

 

Title: On the Limits of AI-driven Discovery in Science

Abstract: 

 

There has been much enthusiasm among the public general about recent developments in AI. The enthusiasm is echoed among scientists, culminating in the Nobel Prize for AlphaFold. In this paper, I want to dampen this enthusiasm slightly and articulate limits on attempts to make AI-driven scientific discoveries – understood as discoveries of new phenomena rather than ideas. To get a sense of the limitations of AI-driven discovery, I compare machine learning to standard scientific instrumentation and argue that the much-discussed opacity of machine learning restricts our ability to distinguish signal from noise. This constitutes a problem for both “target-specific” and “target-unspecific” learning regimes, but especially for the latter – arguably the more promising regime for the discovery of yet unknown phenomena – and gives rise to what I call the Aggravated Artifact Problem.

This talk is online-only. Follow along via Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97096992508

 

 

Tuesday, December 2nd @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Join us in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. 

This talk will be available online:  Zoom

 

Title: Methodological Intersubjectivity

Abstract:

The practical methodology of performing measurements undoubtedly makes important contributions to creating intersubjective agreement between scientific agents. Intersubjectivity has become a question of interest for understanding relational, perspectival, or agent-based interpretations of physical theories (such as relativity and quantum mechanics), which face the challenge of explaining intersubjective coordination between perspectives. It is hence important to examine what bearing methodological intersubjectivity has on these issues. I will define methodological intersubjectivity, drawing on the ideas of intersecting and interlacing from the perspectival realism literature but applying it to individual physical perspectives rather than scientific communities. As a case study, I will apply this definition to time measurements in relativistic theories, looking at how time measurements are globally coordinated, at how we construct artificial perspectives, and at the inferences needed to produce agreed-upon time values. This will highlight the role of agency in creating intersubjectivity and the difficulties of modelling this within physics.

 

Friday, December 5th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm 

Join us in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor. 

This talk will be available online:  Zoom

 

Title: Agency: The Case for an Eliminative Pluralism

Abstract:

Concepts of agency are invoked in many different sciences, from evolutionary biology to computer science and economics. In order to understand and assess the work in these sciences, therefore, it is crucial to understand these appeals to “agency.” To make progress in this, this paper makes the case for three interrelated conclusions. First, the best way to understand the question about the nature of agency is as an account that lays out defensible scientific uses of the concept of agency—not a purely metaphysical-philosophical account, or a purely interpretationist account. Second, the paper seeks to show that there is not one right answer about what an agent is—that is, we should be eliminativists about the general concept of agency. Third, though, it also shows that this should not be conflated with the view that anything goes as far as agency is concerned: in specific scientific contexts, such as economics and biology, there are more and less defensible views of agency in that context. That is, we should be scientific pluralists about agency.