February 2025

Table of Contents:

From the Desk of the PSA President
Postdoc Working Group
PSA Office Hour
PSA Around the World 2025 - Call for Abstracts
Philsci Archive Top 5
Upcoming Events

From the Desk of the PSA President

I gave my first prominent talk at the PSA 1994 meeting in New Orleans. Nervous, I mentally composed a list of eminent philosophers that I hoped would not show up. When I stood to speak — gulp — most were present. Somehow I survived. In retrospect, I was probably roughed up a bit by the English, but I was too naive to know. Anyway, unexpectedly, those terrifying thinkers turned out to be kind and supportive. So were peers from all over the globe. Many of the people
I met would become interlocutors and even friends for life. I had found my intellectual home.

Each PSA reinforced this impression. Next up was PSA Cleveland 1996, and for complicated
reasons I did my PhD defense in one of the drab hotel rooms. Because everyone wanted to get
to the Alan Sokal talk (of “Sokal Hoax” fame), my committee brought the inquisition to a
premature close. So I partly owe my doctorate to the PSA’s attractive programming. Later that
meeting, the legendary Adolf Grunbaum forced an offprint of his “Meaning of Time” upon me in
the restroom. Even if subsequent PSAs didn’t deliver more degrees or restroom offprints, every
two years - Milwaukee, Kansas City, and so on — they guaranteed a mix of memorable events,
seeds for future research, and meaningful social and intellectual interactions.

Returning to New Orleans thirty years later for PSA 2024, I saw packs of younger scholars
embarking on what I hope will be as satisfying a path through the field as I’m enjoying. I
witnessed a PSA the same in positive respects to that of 1994 but also very different. Thanks to
Jim Weatherall and his team, we still run the best philosophy of science journal, and we still
benefit from an enthusiastic and talented membership. Now, however, we are huge (over 1200
members), have an office at the University of Cincinnati (arranged by Angela Potochnik and led
by the unflappable Max Cormendy), and run APA-sized conferences. To me the most striking
difference between then and now is that we run so many thriving initiatives, e.g., PSA Around
the World, many awards, Sponsor-a-Scholar, the Giere Society.

With its massive positive impact on the field — and in my life and career, personally — I’m
deeply honored to become PSA President. It’s a privilege to be able to give back to this
organization that I love. My goals are to preserve all of this goodness and to expand our
influence.

On the first, Michela Massimi was an inspiring president and left us in a great position. Moves
are already underway to secure the future of the Journal and the office into the next decade.

On the second, I think we all feel that philosophy of science’s relevance to society couldn’t be
higher, but also that our voice could and should be better heard. So efforts have begun to
connect the PSA more directly to some international science and science policy governing
organizations, which is a start on expanding our reach. We’ll also be aggressively nominating
philosophers for positions that look ripe for input from philosophy of science.

As I write, science is being rocked by attacks on diversity, funding, open data, international
partnerships, and expertise more generally. Although much of this originates in the U.S., the
effects will be felt worldwide due to the global nature of academia. Because much of this affects
philosophy of science, the PSA is a signatory to a major forthcoming letter organized by the
Union of Concerned Scientists to Congress about these attacks. And we’re in discussions with
other societies to help pool resources for those needing specialist help.

I’m not sure how this will all play out, but on diversity I can say the following. I’m the first in my
family to go to university, so I appreciate how hard it is to overcome barriers to entry and success in our field. Speaking for President-Elect Alan Love and Michela Massimi, membership
can remain confident that PSA leadership has unwavering support for increasing diversity in and expanding access to our field.

In fact, now is a good time to redouble our efforts, so please consider donating to UPSS , the
DEI Caucus , or any of our other exciting initiatives . Some activities are very large in scale, even
if many members aren’t aware of them. For example, UPSS brings together established
philosophers and early career scholars from underrepresented backgrounds. At last count the
UPSS committee led by Alisa Bokulich has paired approximately 160 mentees with 160
mentors. That’s 320 people involved in UPPS! It’s an impressive achievement, just one of the
things UPSS does, and UPSS is only one of a dozen programs led by our many volunteers.

Many thanks to all who donate their time to the PSA. The sum of all these generous actions has
created an organization of which we can all be proud. I look forward to working with you.

- Craig Callender
PSA President

Postdoc Working Group

Back in November at PSA in New Orleans, a small group convened to begin discussing the possibility of implementing a formal subdivision within PSA devoted to postdoctoral scholars and their distinctive needs. These discussions are continuing intermittently online with the aim of having this subdivision in place by PSA 2026. All interested PSA members are welcome to join the conversation. Please reach out to Alan Love (aclove@umn.edu) if you would like to be included in the email updates and receive Zoom link information for the meetings.

PSA Office Hours

The newest round of PSA Office Hours have been posted to the website - check out the details and sign up for some excellent sessions here - https://www.philsci.org/psa_office_hour.php

March: Epistemology of Scientific Communities / Social Epistemology
Cailin O'Connor - Wednesday March 5th 2025, 12pm EST

Cailin O'Connor

Cailin is a philosopher of biology and behavioral science, philosopher of science, and evolutionary game theorist. She is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UC Irvine. She just finished co- administering the NSF grant “Consensus, Democracy, and the Public Understanding of Science” with philosopher of physics James Owen Weatherall (previous NSF grant Social Dynamics and Diversity in Epistemic Communities). Their co-authored trade book The Misinformation Age was published with Yale University Press. Her monograph The Origins of Unfairness was published in July 2019 by Oxford University Press. Her books Games in the Philosophy of Biology and Modeling Scientific Communities were published in the CUP elements series. She also writes public philosophy.

April Panel Discussion (4/4/25 - 12p (EST))

Philosophers of Science in Industry: Biotechnology, Medical Affairs, and AI

Philosophers of science who have successfully transitioned into industry share insights and strategies for securing roles outside of academia, offering practical advice for leveraging philosophical and scientific expertise in diverse professional settings.

Participants:

Mikio Akagi, PhD in History and Philosophy of Science (Philosophy of Cognitive Science), University of Pittsburgh, now Senior Research Analyst at Trilateral Research

Suzanne Kawamleh, PhD in Philosophy (Philosophy and Ethics of Technology & AI), Indiana University Bloomington, now AI Strategy Manager at Cummins, Inc.

Nick Zautra, PhD in Cognitive Science/Master's in History and Philosophy of Science (Philosophy of Psychiatry), Indiana University Bloomington, now Medical Science Liaison at AbbVie

Michael Thornton, PhD in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (Philosophy of Technology), University of Cambridge, now Head of Product at BIOS Health Ltd

Cheryl Lancaster, PhD in Philosophy (History and Philosophy of Biology), Durham University, now Senior Medical Information Lead at ProPharma

Grace Field, PhD in History and Philosophy of Science (Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Modelling/Simulation, Philosophy of Analogy), University of Cambridge, now Senior Consultant at ICF

Mahi Hardalupas, PhD in History and Philosophy of Science (Philosophy of AI), University of Pittsburgh, now Senior Policy Advisor at The Royal Society

PSA Around the World 2025 - Call for Abstracts

In 2023, the Philosophy of Science Association launched a new initiative called PSA Around the World. The aim of the initiative is to reach out to the global community of philosophers of science and spotlight the rich diversity of practices and traditions in the field of philosophy of science via fully online conferences with a dedicated regional focus, running in the years when the Biennial Meeting of the PSA does not take place.

The second PSA Around the World conference spotlights Eastern and Central Europe and is organized by the East European Network for Philosophy of Science (https://eenps.weebly.com/).

The conference is open to all PSA members worldwide. Contributed papers may be on any topic in philosophy of science. Scholars working in Eastern and Central Europe are particularly encouraged to submit papers, and papers exploring the philosophy of science in Eastern and Central European contexts are most welcome.

The PSA Around the World 2025 Committee is committed to assembling a program with high-quality papers on a variety of topics and diverse presenters that reflect the full range of current work in the philosophy of science. Given the time zones constraints, and with an eye to increasing diversity of topics, there is no call for symposia for this conference.

The conference will run fully online for three days and different time slots to accommodate a global audience in various time zones: Thursday, November 6; Friday, November 14; Saturday, November 22 (precise timing for each day TBA). The conference fee is $50 and is able to be waived.

Submissions should consist of a 1000-word abstract and be prepared for anonymous review with no information identifying the author in the body of the abstract. For co-authored papers, the presenting author should submit the abstract. Abstracts should be submitted using the SciencesConf link: http://psaatw25.sciencesconf.org. Users will need to register for a SciencesConf account before submitting an abstract. The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2025, 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time. All presenters should be members of the Philosophy of Science Association, but if this represents an unreasonable burden, please reach out to director@philsci.org.

More information and submission link can be found on the PhilSci site - https://www.philsci.org/psa_around_the_world_2025.php