2023
CPS Annual Lecture 2023: Samir Okasha
The CPS annual lecture 2023 will feature Samir Okasha, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol.
Time and place: Oct. 19, 2023 2:15 PM – 3:45 PM, GMH 205
Does the anti-essentialist consensus in philosophy of biology rest on a mistake?
A long-established consensus in the philosophy of biology holds that essentialism about biological species is incompatible with both evolutionary theory and taxonomic practice.
This anti-essentialist consensus has recently been challenged by Michael Devitt, who insists that it rests on a mistake. According to Devitt, philosophers of biology have failed to recognise the distinction between two quite different questions one can ask about species: the Category question and the Taxon question.
The various “species concepts” found in the biological literature are attempts to answer the former but are silent about the latter, Devitt claims, so do not conflict with essentialism, pace what philosophers of biology believe.
By carefully attending to the logical relation between the Category and Taxon questions, Devitt’s claim that the anti-essentialist consensus rests on a mistake is shown to be untenable.
About Samir Okasha
Okasha is Professor of philosophy of science at the University of Bristol. His book “Evolution and the Levels of Selection” (OUP 2006) was awarded the 2009 Lakatos Prize.
He has been working extensively on connections between evolutionary theory and theories of rationality, as well as a range of central topics in contemporary philosophy of science.
He currently directs the Representing Evolution research project, funded by an ERC Advanced Grant.
Organizer
Centre for Philosophy and the Sciences (CPS)
2022
CPS Annual Lecture 2022: Cecilia Heyes on “Rethinking Norm Psychology”
Our actions don’t just shape and transmit the rules, they create in each new generation mental processes that can grasp the rules and put them into action, claims professor Cecilia Heyes of Oxford University.
Time and place: Nov. 17, 2022 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, zoom
If you want to watch the webinar together with other Oslo-based participants, this will be possible in room GMH 452 at Blindern.
About the lecture
Social norms permeate human life. Most of our activities can be characterised by rules about what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden – rules that are crucial in making us hyper-cooperative animals.
I will present the current cognitive-evolutionary account of ‘norm psychology’, of the mental processes that enable normative behaviour, and propose an alternative that I believe is better supported by current evidence and better placed to promote interdisciplinary dialogue about norms.
The incumbent theory focusses on rules and claims that humans genetically inherit cognitive and motivational mechanisms specialised for processing these rules.
The cultural evolutionary alternative defines normativity in relation to behaviour – compliance, enforcement, and commentary – and suggests that it depends on implicit and explicit processes.
The implicit processes are genetically inherited and domain-general; rather than being specialised for normativity, they do many jobs in many species.
The explicit processes are culturally inherited and domain-specific; they are constructed from mentalising and reasoning by social interaction in childhood.
The cultural evolutionary, or ‘cognitive gadget’, account implies that researchers should not merely chart cultural and developmental variation in normativity, but test the extent to which that variation is due to nature (genetic factors), nurture (learning and social learning), and/or culture (cultural learning).
More broadly, the cultural evolutionary perspective suggests that people alive today – parents, peers, educators, elders, politicians, lawyers – have more responsibility for sustaining normativity than the nativist view implies.
Our actions don’t just shape and transmit the rules, they create in each new generation mental processes that can grasp the rules and put them into action.
About Cecilia Heyes
Cecilia Heyes is Professor of psychology at Oxford University, and her work is focused on the evolution of the human mind.
Heyes is Senior Research Fellow in the Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College, University of Oxford. She is also full professor affiliated with the Department of Experimental Psychology.
She was awarded the British Psychological Society's Cognitive Section Prize in 2004, Fellowship of the British Academy in 2010, and Fellowship of the Cognitive Science Society in 2018.
Heyes was President of the Experimental Psychology Society in 2018 and 2019. She has published many influential articles on the evolution of the human mind and the book “Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking” with Harvard University Press in 2018.
Organizer
CPS
2021
CPS Annual Lecture: Scientific Progress and the Search for Truth
Philip Kitcher (Columbia University, NY) will give the CPS Annual Lecture 2021.
Time and place: Oct. 21, 2021 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Sophus Bugges hus, Auditorium 2
Philip Kitcher is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University.
His work is highly influential within the philosophy of science and beyond, and some of his research interests lie in the ethical and political constraints on scientific research, the evolution of altruism and morality, and the seeming conflict between science and religion.
Kitcher was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, and the American Philosophical Association awarded him its inaugural Prometheus Prize in 2006 for lifetime achievement in “expanding the frontiers of science and philosophy.”
Abstract: Scientific Progress and the Search for Truth
Scientific progress is often viewed as directed towards a goal, the attainment of the “whole truth about nature”. I argue that this idea, when taken seriously, cannot be sustained.
Instead, I propose, scientific progress is a pragmatic progress: we advance from our current state by solving problems and overcoming limits. That immediately raises the question of how problems (and solutions) are properly determined.
Although we normally – and reasonably – defer to scientists in deciding what counts as a significant problem, I suggest that the scientific community cannot be the ultimate authority. Scientific changes are properly assessed by what they contribute to human lives and to human societies.
Those contributions take two forms. Many people evaluate fields of science by the ways in which (directly or indirectly) they deliver practical benefits. By contrast, most scientists emphasize the value of pure understanding. How should these desiderata be weighed against one another?
I approach the question by embedding the sciences in a long history of inquiry, extending far into the human and hominid past. The idea of the “search for truth” is, I claim, a latecomer in this inquiry.
Properly understood, it is the quest for understanding a “nature” that has largely been shaped by our practical interests.
Participate
The lecture is open to everyone and no registration is needed.
2020
Expertise and democracy: what can we learn from the corona virus crisis?
How does the current crisis shed light on questions regarding the relationship between science, policy and democracy? Professor Cathrine Holst gives the 2020 CPS Annual Lecture.
Time and place: Oct. 29, 2020 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Zoom
There are competing views about what characterizes the role of experts and expert knowledge in contemporary democracies. Where some see a ‘rise of the unelected’ and an increasing role of experts and professionals in policy-making and democratic decision-making, others see ‘the death of expertise’ and post-truth politics.
We also see strikingly opposing assessments of what the role of science and expertise in democracies ought to be. Where some regard more political power to experts as facilitating a more enlightened and evidence-informed public policies, others fear an ‘expertocracy’ in fundamental tension with democratic norms and that produces poor and biased decisions.
The lecture will zoom in on how the corona virus crisis sheds light on key questions regarding the actual – and the proper – relationship between science, policy and democracy.
The focus of the lecture will be on disentangling some apparent puzzles. For instance, how it can be that trust in science and expertise seemingly has achieved a boost during corona times despite a large amount of publicly exposed expert disagreement and immense levels of uncertainty.
Professor Cathrine Holst works in political sociology and democracy research, with a particular focus on the role of knowledge and expertise in policy and politics. Foto: UiO
Based on corona experiences, the lecture will also address the need to reform the institutions we have installed to bridge science and policy.
About Cathrine Holst
Professor Cathrine Holst works at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at
the University of Oslo (UiO). She is also Research Professor at the ARENA Centre for European Studies. In addition, Holst is connected to the Centre for Research on Gender Equality (CORE) and the Institute for Social Research.
Cathrine Holst's main fields of academic interest are political sociology and democracy research, social and political theory, the role of knowledge and expertise in policy and politics, EU, European integration and the Nordic model, gender policy, feminist theory and gender studies.
From fall 2020, Holst will lead a research group at the Centre for Advanced Studies at the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Letters, with a project entitled What is a good policy? Political morality, feasibility and democracy together with Jakob Elster, associate professor at the Norwegian Centre of Human Rights, UiO.
2019
How can we put knowledge to use?
'Research is an investment in our future’ according to the European Research Council. 'That’s only true if you know what to do with the research', says Professor Nancy Cartwright, who will give the first CPS annual lecture on 2. December.
Time and place: Dec. 2, 2019 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Georg Morgenstiernes Hus (Arne Næss Auditorium)
She studies how to use research to build better social policies - ones that are more fair and more reliable - and how to deliberate about them.
Professor Cartwright is one of the world's leading philosophers of science. A central aspect of her research concerns connections between objectivity, evidence and how use science to effect change.
In one of her current projects she investigates how to use social science to build better social policies and to attack specific social challenges.
She applies her philosophical approach to a broad spectrum of cases: she uses philosophy to investigate how to use scientific knowledge in areas of child welfare, HIV policies, mental health, health economies, occupational health, and climate change.
- What knowledge do we need?
- How should we use it?
- What role should values play?
- How to use our knowledge in public deliberation?
These are some of the questions Professor Cartwright addresses.
Her annual lecture entitled “Evidence and the Demands of Rigor” is specifically concerned with the demands for rigor when scientific knowledge is used in society. What makes some facts good evidence for a given hypothesis? Why does rigor matter?
Abstract
The world is full of facts. What singles out some as evidence – good, scientific evidence – for a given hypothesis and others not, as something that speaks for the hypothesis, however loudly? Where rigor matters – as it should across the natural, social and human sciences and the policies they can inform – I urge the argument theory of evidence. This theory makes two demands. First, the hypothesis itself must be clearly and explicitly stated. This might seem beneath mention in scientific contexts, but it is too often ignored. Second, the additional premises that it would take for the putative evidence to clinch the hypothesis should be explicit. Exactly what these are matters since the degree of support the evidence provides is no stronger than their joint probability. This too is often ignored. I will illustrate first with a physics example then in detail with what is now taken to be gold standard in rigor for evidencing causal claims in the human sciences, randomized controlled trial (RCTs). Here all too often in both serious science and policy contexts, rigor gives out, and way too soon.
About the Speaker:
Nancy Cartwright is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She is co-director of the Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS) and a project leader at The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS).
In the first half of her career at Stanford University Prof. Cartwright specialised in the philosophy of the natural sciences, especially physics; in the second half, at the London School of Economics and now Durham and UCSD, she has specialised in philosophy and methodology of the social sciences with special attention to economics. Her current research focuses on objectivity and evidence, especially for evidence-based policy (supported by an ERC advanced grant “Knowledge for Use”)
Nancy Cartwright is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) and a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is past President of the Philosophy of Science Association and the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division).