The fourth Philosophy in Biology and Medicine (PhilInBioMed) Network Meeting will take place in-person in Cambridge, U.K., on May 5-6, 2023. The program committee invites abstracts from those wishing to present at the conference.      

The PhilInBioMed Network is an international group of philosophers and scientists advancing philosophy in biology and medicine. Information about the details of the conference will be made available soon on the PhilInBioMed Network website: https://www.philinbiomed.org/

The program committee welcomes abstracts for contributed full-length talks (30 min, including 10 min Q&A) as well as flash talks (15 min, including 5 min Q&A) by scientists and philosophers, on work which combines biological or medical science with a conceptual or philosophical approach. Relevance for the scientific community will be an asset, and talks that result from collaboration among philosophers and scientists are particularly welcome. We welcome submissions from individuals identifying with historically underrepresented groups within philosophy of science and medicine.

CFP: the Society for the Metaphysics of Science (SMS) will host its 8th Annual Conference, 10-12 August 2023, at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

LTT: John Michael

February 28 @ 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm EST

Title: The Sense of Commitment in Joint Action: Towards a Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Recent research provides evidence that, in the context of joint action, individuals’ sense of commitment sustains their motivation to persist in performing actions which their joint action partners are expecting and may be relying on them to perform. I will provide an overview of this research and discuss its implications for philosophical discussions about the normativity of joint action. I will also present a new line of research investigating individual and cultural differences with respect to the sense of commitment and offer some reflections about what we can infer from these differences.

This talk will also be available live streamed on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.

The Committee for Integrated History and Philosophy of Science, together with the Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology, and Society, will host “&HPS9”, the 9th conference in the series Integrated History and Philosophy of Science. We seek contributions that genuinely integrate the historical and philosophical analysis of science (i.e., the physical sciences, life sciences, cognitive sciences, and social sciences), or discuss methodological issues surrounding the prospects and challenges of integrating history and philosophy of science.

For information about Integrated History and Philosophy of Science and previous conferences, see http://integratedhps.org/en/

Please note that &HPS9 does not run parallel sessions. Hence, given the number of slots available, we regret that we cannot accept symposium submissions.

&HPS9 will feature a Poster Forum as a place to share work that fits in a poster format. Poster presenters will be invited to give a short (5-minute) flash talk on their topic. Authors may submit a poster and a paper abstract, but only one may appear on the final program.

Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable

March 17-18, 2023

University of Memphis

Papers in all areas of philosophy and social science are encouraged.

Our keynote speaker will be Sandra González-Bailón (PhD Sociology, Oxford) who is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, and affiliated faculty at the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences. Her research lies at the intersection of network science, computational tools, and political communication. She is the author of Decoding the Social World (MIT Press, 2017) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Networked Communication (OUP, 2020)

Annual Lecture Series - Holly Andersen

Title: Starting Points in Ohio: A pragmatist account of the asymmetry of explanation

Abstract: Recent discussions around explanation have concerned the issue of asymmetry, an issue dating back at least to the well-known example of the shadow of a flagpole. What is the source of the directionality in explanation such that it should go one direction, and not the other? One common approach is to locate the directedness of explanation in the relation(s) that figure in an explanation: in causal explanations, for example, the direction of the causal arrow yields the asymmetry of the explanation in which the causal relation figures. I will first criticize this outsourcing of the directedness of explanation to bits of the world being directed, illustrated with the Quinean point about starting points in Ohio. I then offer an alternative, pragmatist, account of explanation on which explanation is itself already directed, regardless of the relation(s) that figure in any explanation. We don’t need the parts of the world highlighted in an explanation to be intrinsically directed for explanation to nevertheless be directed. I illustrate how this accommodates the plurality of explanations in the sciences that don’t involve straightforwardly asymmetric relationships, distinguishing ways in which explanans and explanandum can be connected that are not fully asymmetric in at least some sense, such as undirected relations, bidirectional relations, or pairs of unidirected relations. Only reflexive loops fail to be explanatory on this account.