| Science Visions
The Newsletter of the PSA DEI Caucus |
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Contents - Caucus Announcements: Calls for Web Mistress and Nominations
- Highlighted Philosopher of Science: Kelle Dhein
- What We Wish We’d Known: Call for Topics and Contributors
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Caucus Announcements
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Statement of Solidarity: We would like to express solidarity with members of the community at the University of Waterloo and condemnation of the recent hateful attacks. We'd also like to share this open statement by Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF, national WGS association) for those interested.
- Call for Web Mistress: We are currently looking for a new web mistress who will update and manage both the caucus’ listserv and website. If you are interested in the position or have any questions, please email the co-chairs Cailin O'Connor <cailino@uci.edu> and Kino Zhao <kino_zhao@sfu.ca>.
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Goodbye to Areins: The Caucus and the Science Visions’ editorial team would like to thank Areins Pelayo, who has stepped down as webmistress, for her excellent work as well as her contribution to Science Visions! Areins became our webmistress and the editor of Highlighted Philosopher of Science in September 2020. She stepped down as editor in Winter 2022 but continued to help with the publication of the newsletter as webmistress until June 2023. We would like to express deep appreciation to Areins for all her hard work for the past three years!
- Call for Nominations: Highlighted Philosopher of Science is a column where an underrepresented philosopher of science is publicly recognized to the caucus membership once a quarter through Science Visions. It is currently managed by Katherine Valde. To nominate a philosopher of science as a future Highlighted Philosopher, fill out the form here: https://forms.gle/eocZLPobCYbgaiZUA
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Highlighted Philosop-Her of Science: Kelle Dhein
By Katherine Valde |
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| Kelle Dhein is currently a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute where his research project is entitled, “Humans, Animals, and Machines: Behavior in the Information Age”. Kelle received his PhD from Arizona State University in 2021 under the direction of Dr. Beckett Sterner. |
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Although Kelle was not a part of his High School’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program, he convinced the school counselor to admit him to an IB course his senior year of High School called “Theory of Knowledge”. During his undergraduate in Philosophy and Anthropology at Arizona State, Kelle became invested in the question of meaning – “what makes it the case that one thing is about another thing?”. Kelle was also profoundly influenced by the work of American Pragmatists, especially Charles Sanders Peirce.
Post-undergrad, Kelle wanted to become a chef. After discovering he was ill-suited to the industry, he returned to Arizona State looking for any full-time job at the university that would allow him to take free graduate courses. He ended up meeting Dr. Jane Maienschein (the director of the Center for Biology & Society), and even though it was already summer, Jane found space for Kelle in the graduate program that fall. Kelle was especially impressed that the graduate program included health insurance, unlike all his past jobs. He earned his master’s in biology from Arizona State University in 2018.
One of Kelle’s main research interests involves taking a pragmatic approach to understanding concepts like information, representational content, and cognition. He wants to see how successful research programs in the behavioral sciences make use of such concepts, and in doing so come to understand the meaning of meaning in the behavioral sciences. In Kelle’s dissertation, he argues that the concept of meaning helps scientists achieve their epistemic aims in the context of insect navigation, and that when they ascribe semantic properties to behaviors, they are saying that the behavioral trait reliably achieves a difficult goal directed function. Kelle hopes to continue this work and expand to further animal behavior research paradigms.
As part of his post-doc at the Santa Fe Institute, Kelle is looking at the history and influence of the cybernetics movement on the behavioral sciences. While many consider cybernetics to be a dead movement, Kelle believes the cybernetic dream is alive and well under new names. He wants to draw a connecting line from the big promises of cybernetics and their focus on the concept of information to contemporary research.
Kelle is also a consulting bioethicist for the Native BioData Consortium (NBDC). The NBDC is the first non-profit indigenous-led biorepository, and it is designed to prioritize indigenous data sovereignty. While this work pushed Kelle outside his favorite areas of philosophy (epistemology and logic) into ethics, as an enrolled member of the Navajo tribe, he is happy to be working to further indigenous well-being.
Kelle has benefited from several Ford Foundation fellowships and the University of Kentucky’s Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellowship, which gave him the opportunity to spend a year working with Dr. Julia Bursten. |
What We Wish We’d Known: Call for Topics and Contributors
What We Wish We’d Known is a short opinion column that features advice from philosophers of science about a particular aspect of academic life. To suggest future topics or volunteer as a writer for a future column, please contact Jacob Neal at <jacobpneal@gmail.com> |
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From the Editor
As the section editor for What We Wish We’d Known for two years now, I would like to take a moment for reflection, especially since the Caucus and this newsletter have undergone some significant changes over this period. I’ll first describe the goals of this section of the Science Visions newsletter and extend an invitation for our members to suggest topics and contributors. I’ll then highlight some of the topics we’ve covered in the past two years. * * * * * * * * * * * *
What We Wish We’d Known aims to provide opinions and advice on topics of interest to the members of the DEI Caucus. It typically takes the form of a short opinion piece written by one or two contributors on a topic in which they have lived experience or expertise. Contributions of this sort aim to offer practical advice to philosophers of science at various stages in their careers. Occasionally, the column will function more like an extended public service announcement, telling our members about various opportunities. No matter the form, the column always aims to provide practical advice on topics that will be helpful to DEI Caucus members.
Like Science Visions as a whole, this section is only possible because members, like you, suggest topics and agree to share their knowledge and advice with other members. If you have an idea for a topic you would like to see covered, or if you would like to write a contribution yourself, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always happy for suggestions and very grateful for volunteer contributors.
Over the past two years, What We Wish We’d Known has covered a variety of topics, from mentoring opportunities to practical guidance on how to establish an inclusive classroom. In our most recent issue, Sarah Arnaud and Siska De Baerdemaeker offered advice on postdocs, weighing the pros and cons of different types of postdoctoral positions. Previously, Karen Kovaka and Colin Klein described their experiences with public philosophy. They discussed how they’d gotten involved in public philosophy projects and also offered some guidance to others wishing to begin projects of this sort. In my first issues as section editor, Morgan Thompson shared some of her empirical research on minority undergraduate students in philosophy and then offered some practical tips on how to make intro philosophy classes more inclusive.
Let me end by highlighting two issues that deviate slightly from the standard opinion column format. In a section styled more like a public service announcement, Julia R. S. Bursten introduced PhilSci-Archive and extolled its virtues. Finally, as the summer conference season continues, some members might find it useful to review the issue in which I surveyed the Caucus membership for advice on conferencing. Responses from this informal survey contain many tips and tricks on how to choose which conferences to attend and how to make the most out of any conference. Please contact me if this brief highlight reel of recent topics has caused you to think of other topics that you’d like to see covered in future What We Wish We’d Known sections.
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