Table of Contents:
- PSA Around the World 2025
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Call for Proposals - PSA Around the World 2027
- PSA Office Hours
- Postdoc Message and Survey (Postdoc Appreciation Week)
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Short Reads by Grads
PhilSci Archive - Top 5 Downloads - Upcoming Events
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PSA Around the World 2025 |
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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/).
We are excited to announce that registration is now open for PSA Around the World 2025. The conference will take place Thursday, November 6 (3pm - 6:15pm, Central European Time), Friday, November 14 (3pm - 6:15pm, Central European Time), and Saturday, November 22 (3pm - 6:30pm Central European Time).
Following the format of previous PSA Around the Worlds, each day will begin with a 75-minute plenary panel, followed by contributed paper talks.
Panel #1 (Nov.6) - "Central and East European Philosophy of Science Across Borders"
Organized by Marcin Milkowski, feat. Marta Sznajder, Angela Potochnik, Frederique Janssen Lauret and Artur Koterski
Panel #2 (Nov.14) - "Showcasing Excellent Current Work in the CEE Region"
Organized by Magdalena Malecka, feat. Olesya Bondarenko, Joanna Malinowska, Endla Lõhkivi and Stathis Psillos
Panel #3 (Nov. 22) - "On Scientific Understanding"
Organized by Lilia Gurova, feat. Henk W. de Regt, Borut Trpin, Daniel Kostic, Andrei Marasoiu and Lilia Gurova
We look forward to a great conference, for more information and to register, please visit https://www.philsci.org/psa_around_the_world_2025.php |
Call for Proposals - PSA Around the World 2027 |
Due Date: December 1, 2025
In 2023, the Philosophy of Science Association launched a new initiative called PSA Around the World. The aim of the initiative is to engage with the global community of philosophers of science and spotlight the rich diversity of practices and traditions in the field of philosophy of science. The conferences are fully online with a dedicated regional focus, running in the years when the Biennial Meeting of the PSA does not take place. The PSA office will provide all necessary logistical support in setting up the conference website, advertising calls for paper submissions, and hosting the conference via Zoom (or other appropriate online platform).
The initial PSAAW in 2023 focused on philosophy of science in Asia and the current one in 2025, organized by the East European Network for Philosophy of Science, highlights Eastern and Central Europe. The conferences are open to all PSA members worldwide. PSA is now soliciting proposals for PSA Around the World 2027.
Applicants should familiarize themselves with the format of past and present conferences. Applications consist of a letter to the President of the PSA, Craig Callender, Chair of the International Relations Committee, Manuela Fernández Pinto, and Executive Director, Max Cormendy. The letter should contain information about why this region is an attractive one to highlight now, the local community, and the capacity of the potential organizers to run a successful conference.
In particular, please briefly address the motivation for choosing the proposed geographical region, who would be the Program Committee Chair or Chairs and why their research, experience with running conferences, and local connections make them a good fit, the region’s philosophy of science activity and any networks that may exist, formal or informal, and your ability to put together (with help from PSA) a Program Committee and handle paper submissions and selection.
Submissions can be sent to director@philsci.org. A successful proposal will be announced in January 2026.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email director@philsci.org. |
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October: Political Philosophy of Science S. Andrew Schroeder - Thursday October 9th 2025, 12pm EST |
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| S. Andrew Schroeder
My research and teaching cover a range of topics in ethics, political philosophy, bioethics, the philosophy of disability, and the philosophy of science. Right now, I'm especially focused on promoting work in what I call the political philosophy of science: using concepts, tools, and methods drawn from political philosophy to shed light on the value-laden decisions scientists must make. These decisions - concerning, for example, how scientists should define contested terms like 'employment' or 'sexual assault'; how they should manage uncertainty; how they should set parameters like the economic discount rate; or how they should choose among statistical representations of their results - are commonly discussed by philosophers and other scholars of science using the concepts, tools, and methods characteristic of ethics. But, in many cases, the right thing to do in a substantive ethical sense can diverge from what is politically legitimate.
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October: Philosophy of Physics
David Wallace - Wednesday October 22nd 2025, 12pm EST |
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David Wallace
My research interests are mostly in the philosophy of physics. I've been particularly active in trying to develop and defend the Everett interpretation of quantum theory (often called the "Many-Worlds Interpretation"); my book on the Everett interpretation, "The Emergent Multiverse", was published in June 2012. But I also have philosophical and conceptual interests in quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, general relativity, symmetry and gauge theory, and basically pretty much all of contemporary philosophy of physics. Outside philosophy of physics, I'm interested in emergence and reductionism, in structural realism, and in decision theory.
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November: New Approaches to Realism Michela Massimi and Mazviita Chirimuuta - Monday November 24th 2025, 12pm EST |
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Mazviita Chirimuuta
I currently do research on the history and philosophy of the mind/brain sciences, and foundational topics in philosophy of cognitive science. I am the author of 'Outside Color' (2015) and 'The Brain Abstracted' (2024), both published with MIT Press. |
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December: Philosophy of AI
Atoosa Kasirzadeh and William D’Alessandro - Thursday December 4th 2025, 12pm EST |
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| Atoosa Kasirzadeh
Atoosa is a philosopher and AI researcher with a track record of publications on philosophy, ethics, and governance of AI and computational sciences. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University with joint affiliations in the Philosophy and Software & Societal Systems departments, a core member of the Institute for Complex Social Dynamics, and a part-time Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. During 2025-2027, Atoosa is the council member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Artificial General Intelligence. Atoosa is also a 2024 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Early Career Fellow, a Steering Committee Member for the ACM FAccT conference, and a program cho-chair for 2025 and 2026 conferences of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEAI). Previously, she was a visiting faculty at Google Research, a Chancellor’s Fellow and Research Lead at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Technomoral Futures, a Group Research Lead at the Alan Turing Institute, a DCMS/UKRI Senior Policy Fellow, and a Governance of AI Fellow at Oxford. Atoosa holds two doctoral degrees: a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science and Technology from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Mathematics (Operations Research) from the École Polytechnique de Montréal. She holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Systems Engineering. Her research combines quantitative, qualitative, and philosophical methods to explore questions about the societal impacts, governance, and future of AI and humanity.
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William D’Alessandro
William D'Alessandro received a PhD in philosophy and MS in mathematics from the University of Illinois Chicago. His primary research interests are in philosophy of science and math, epistemology, aesthetics and philosophy of artificial intelligence. One major strand of his work focuses on explanation, understanding, models, proofs, and what we can learn about these things from studying scientific practice. Another strand focuses on the impacts of increasingly powerful AI systems on our lives and institutions. His papers have appeared in journals like Philosophers' Imprint, Philosophical Studies, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Episteme and The British Journal of Aesthetics; they've received a BJPS Editor's Choice Award, the APA's Routledge, Taylor & Francis article prize and other honors.
For more information or to sign up, visit: https://www.philsci.org/psa_office_hour.php |
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Postdoc Appreciation Week
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This week is National Postdoc Appreciation Week! The PSA is in the process of implementing a formal subdivision devoted to postdoctoral scholars and their distinctive needs. A working group is meeting intermittently online to shape this subdivision and establish its priorities. As a part of this process, PSA members are invited to take a short (5 minute) informational survey to help us in this endeavor (https://ucincinnati.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8olkHqpCT6xj8Vw).
Thank you in advance for taking the time to do it. All interested PSA members are welcome to join this ongoing 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 future meetings. |
Aaron David Lugo-Palacios is a Doctorate candidate in Agricultural and Forestry Sciences at the Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango. He is working on an integrated system about sustainable agriculture and remote sensing for dissertation project, the objective is to involve multispectral images, agroecology and halophytes as comprehensive management of natural resources. His interest in the philosophy of science lies in the desire to understand in depth the process of generating knowledge. He recognizes that this branch of philosophy is the guiding axis in the way of producing knowledge in all areas of science.
Book Review: Information & Experimental Knowledge (2021), James Mattingly By Aaron David Lugo-Palacios
Information and experimental knowledge is a required reading for every scientist. This book offers a broader picture of how humans create science; we use models to construct our reality in order to answer our own questions. Once we comprehend the process behind the different systems that shape and drive knowledge, we conceive in a better way the nature of experimentation. The scientist comprehension helps shape the future of society, as guided by science. The book is a tool for the above mentioned; it is completely structured with the apparent objective of demonstrating the correct way to achieve an adequate understanding of the whole human experience.
The reader's interest lies in James Mattingly's vision, which is structured in three parts. In the first, he talks about the ways of generating knowledge. Besides that, calibration is the key concept of this part. The production of knowledge is explored in depth; the act of replication and its applicability are addressed. Intervention is highlighted and we discover why it is necessary in some aspects, but it is not the only way. Mere observation is sometimes sufficient to establish information about the nature of things; we could deduce something just by analyzing it with our senses. Furthermore, the author clarifies how humans establish causality and gives importance to statistics. However, we need explanations to associate a cause-effect phenomenon with certainty.
In the second part, Mattingly explains his theory of experimental knowledge. The writer bases his idea on some models already proposed by other authors. He used the model of information communication developed by Shannon & Weaver (1949). Furthermore, he supports his proposal in information-theoretic account of knowledge by Dretske (1981), as well as in the extension of the previous model made by Barwise & Seligman (1997). Consequently, in a few words the main idea of the proposed thesis is that knowledge is generated through a channel that transmits information. Once scientists learn this, they begin to guide knowledge production like an irrigation canal guides water. The information transmitted through the channel provides data that subsequently characterizes the proximal system, this is the complex where we can do an experiment because our resources (e.g. instruments) allow it, then, we digest the knowledge according to analogy of Sterret (2017) considering the similarities with the distal system, which is the opposite of proximal. In that way, we determine connections between both systems. This is how science impacts society and functions as a tool in the art of responding to our uncertainty.
Finally, in the last part of the book, different examples of experiments are analyzed, in relation to the dynamic flow through the information channel and how authors transform data into knowledge. They always make inferences about distal systems from proximal systems; the author shows some inconsistencies in essential areas of science such as biology and cosmology e.g. incorrect inference between humans and mice in inflammatory response due to different metabolic pathways. Furthermore, he demonstrates what a direct experiment is and indicates the difference with respect to indirect experiments, the former occurs when the experimenter characterizes the system through straight observations, while the latter materialize in an analogical manner, that is, scientists look for similarities between systems to assign properties.
Based on the above, humans can currently experiment things that appeared impossible in previous eras, such as space exploration and a subsequently observation of mars. Nevertheless, we still have areas of opportunity to cover in the name of knowledge. This book guides towards a superior practice of science from foundations, the reader should understand the entire process of information flow proposed by the author to make better observations, and consequently to generate knowledge of quality and utility.
Bibliographic references Barwise, J., & Seligman, J. (1997). Information flow: the logic of distributed systems. Cambridge University Press.
Dretske, F. I. (1981). Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). Mathematical theory of communication. Chicago: University of Illinois.
Sterrett, S. G. (2017). “Experimentation on Analogue Models.” In Springer Handbook of Model Based Science, edited bt Lorenzo Magnani and Tommasso Bertolotti, 857-878. Dordrecht: Springer. |
PhilSci Archive - Top 5 Downloads |
PhilSci-Archive is the official preprint repository for the PSA and the best place to host your philosophy of science preprints. It offers a free, stable, and openly accessible archive for scholarly articles and monographs. With PhilSci-Archive, researchers can search the open-access repository and get curated alerts about new work delivered to their inboxes. Many journals encourage authors to post preprints on archives like the PhilSci-Archive in order to increase readership, and historical data suggests that posting to the archive increases a published paper's citation rates (see https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/20778/). Visit philsci-archive.pitt.edu today to create a free account and post your preprints.
The most downloaded preprints for the last 6 months of articles deposited in the previous 2 years are:
Potiron, Aline (2025) Beyond the Microscope: Rethinking Microbial Diversity Measurement with the Model-Based Account.
Bravo, Pedro (2025) Grouping approaches to PFAS and industry funding: a case study on the findings of a recent panel of experts.
Gnoli, Claudio (2025) Is an all-purpose classification possible? Insights from Farradane's approach to knowledge organization.
McConwell, Alison and Bogacz, Magdalena and Brecevic, Char and Haber, Matthew H. and Wu, Jingyi and Roe, Sarah (2025) Changing Working Environments in Philosophy: Reflections from a Case Study. de Lima Prestes, José Augusto (2025) Simulated Selfhood in LLMs: A Behavioral Analysis of Introspective Coherence. |
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