Table of Contents: - PSA Annual Fund Drive
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PSA Around the World 2025 (Registration Reminder)
- Call for Proposals - PSA Around the World 2027
- PSA Office Hours
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Postdoc Survey
- Karl Jaspers Award
- Short Reads by Grads
PhilSci Archive - Top 5 Downloads - Upcoming Events
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The Philosophy of Science Association is a vibrant and growing professional organization. Although we continue our distinctive tradition of bringing together the world's leading philosophers, scientists, and thinkers at our biennial meeting and through our journal to explore fundamental questions that shape how we investigate and understand the world, Over the past ten years, the passion and vision of our members have influenced PSA functioning to create important initiatives and augment its reach (e.g., Under-Represented Philosophy of Science Scholars, the DEI Caucus, and PSA Around the World). As science and other institutions come under unprecedented fire, the strategic importance of PSA as a scholarly professional organization engaged in a wide variety of activities becomes even more salient.
For many years, PSA was funded almost completely by journal publishing income and member dues. Although PSA is currently fiscally healthy, our publishing income has decreased and we can’t increase member dues to cover all our expenses, especially rising costs that directly impact biennial meeting expenses. Additionally, funding from longstanding partners, such as the National Science Foundation is no longer reliable. In today’s world, there is strength in having diverse funding streams so that we can not only continue our signature efforts but continue to develop new initiatives that benefit our membership and give us a voice in broader societal conversations.
Building the capacity of our PSA community includes offering opportunities for all our members and partners to contribute. As current Chair of the Fundraising Committee for PSA, I am excited to announce our first ever Annual Fund Campaign. In conjunction with the upcoming launch of our new website and new membership platform and levels, we’re inviting all PSA members to participate. Your contribution will help us maintain and enhance the vital work of our society. Gifts at every level make a difference:
$35 supports the infrastructure for PSA Around the World $75 advances our initiatives for graduate students and early career scholars $150 defrays registration costs for a student to attend our biennial conference
$300 contributes to our conference travel fund
Join with me today and help us achieve our goal of $15,000. You can see where we stand currently with our fundraising “thermometer” on our donation page. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
With Thanks,
Alan C. Love PSA President-Elect
PSA Fundraising Committee Chair | |
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PSA Around the World 2025 - Remember to Register! |
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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 the program, 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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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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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. |
The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) holds an annual competition for students and trainees. Eligibility includes undergraduate students, graduate students in philosophy, psychology and related fields, medical students, and residents and fellows in psychiatry. Entrants must meet eligibility requirements as of the dates of authorship and submission. More information regarding both the award and the submission process can be found here: https://aapp.press.jhu.edu/jaspers
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True Gibson is a PhD candidate in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. His research investigates the evolution of human cognition, with a special focus on moral psychology, causal cognition, and philosophical intuition. He also has active research projects on the history of evolutionary thought and on methodological issues regarding philosophical naturalism. Review of Free Agents by Kevin J. Mitchell (Princeton University Press, 2023) By True Gibson
This book is a laudable attempt to naturalize free will. Mitchell’s thesis is that although our physical constitution, evolutionary history, genetic makeup, and psychological profile constrain our predispositions to act in various ways, they do not determine our actions. Quite the opposite: these constraints are what make possible a “self”—that very self which must be the cause of its own actions in order for free will to exist. Mitchell defends a commonsense notion of free will which tells the difference between an alcoholic who reaches for the bottle with a self-directed grimace and a working stiff who decides on a beer after work because it strikes them as a nice idea. One might say, at least in a colloquial sense, that the alcoholic is suffering a ‘weakness of will,’ while the working stiff ‘chose freely.’ This notion of free will, stripped of its millennia of accumulated philosophical baggage, is Mitchell’s explanatory target.
Through chapters 2-6, Mitchell uses an empirical pigment to paint a picture of the evolution of behavioral flexibility in response to different environmental conditions. Early on, single-celled organisms developed the ability to detect substances in their environment, recognize them as good or bad (relative to themselves), and correspondingly move toward or away from them. Much later came nerve nets: hierarchical systems that integrate many such inputs and select among several possible actions in response. Leaping forward in time, we see the elaborated modern forms of these neural structures in mammals, including humans’ cognitive mechanisms of inhibitory control, action selection, and metacognition. These mechanisms, Mitchell argues, endow us with the capacity for agent causation. Despite places where I felt uneasy about Mitchell’s evolutionary reconstruction—spots where the discussion has an adaptationist, even orthogenetic, flavor to it—Mitchell’s evolutionary narrative is lucid, approachable, and eminently plausible.
Chapters 7-10 develop Mitchell’s notion of agent causation. Whereas my grievances about Mitchell’s evolutionary narrative were relatively minor, I was unfortunately unable to see how Mitchell's arguments in these later chapters are meant to coalesce into a serviceable view of agent causation. After some preliminaries on hard determinism and quantum indeterminacy, Mitchell launches into a defense of what he calls “cognitive realism,” which holds that causation in the brain cannot be reduced to molecular or biological causal processes because neural processes have causal power only because of what they mean—a concept he calls “semantic causation.” It is only in the final chapter that we gain purchase on the nature of agent causation, which Mitchell frames as holistic, diachronic self-causation: an agent’s past actions, genetic makeup, evolutionary history, etc., constitute the comprehensive cause of their present action, just as their present action will be a contributing cause of their future actions through reinforcement.
It is not entirely clear to me how Mitchell’s view of causation can be so permissive while remaining coherent. It is possible that meaning-based neural causation and diachronic agential self-causation are causal concepts that could be made to work in philosophical harmony, but at present, I do not see compelling reasons to think so. I do, however, think Mitchell has fashioned a solid neuroscientific basis for the term “free will” as it is usually employed in common parlance. His expert discussion of the brain structures which regulate behavior really does explain the difference between the actions of the alcoholic and of the working stiff, both of whom drink a beer, but only one of whom does so “freely.” It is ultimately for the reader to decide whether this achievement, praiseworthy as it is, constitutes a naturalization of free will.
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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.
Scerri, Eric (2024) The Born-Oppenheimer approximation and its role in the reduction of chemistry.
Gnoli, Claudio (2025) Is an all-purpose classification possible? Insights from Farradane's approach to knowledge organization.
François, Jordan and Ravera, Lucrezia (2024) On the Meaning of Local Symmetries: Epistemic-Ontological Dialectics.
March, Eleanor and Weatherall, James Owen (2024) A Puzzle About General Covariance and Gauge. |
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