John Wilkins on National Radio

John Wilkins will be doing the 'Ockham's Razor' talk on National Radio this week, on the concept of species:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2011/3089886.htm

Ken Wharton: A Constructive Principle for Interpreting Quantum Phenomena

SCFS Visiting Fellow Ken Wharton is giving a 'current projects' talk at USyd today (Nov 22) at 1pm in the Philosophy Common Room.
"The ongoing efforts to interpret quantum mechanics typically ignore the Feynman path-integral approach, despite the fact that this mathematics most naturally extends to relativistic quantum field theory. While literally interpreting the path-integral mathematics seems untenable, it is notable that this mathematics implies strong symmetries between experiments that are typically assumed to be unrelated. If one adopts the principle that any underlying ontology must respect these same symmetries (the "action duality"), it turns out that quantum interpretations are strongly constrained. Furthermore, one can use this principle to construct new interpretations by considering pairs of experiments related by this symmetry, particularly cases where interpreting one experiment appears straightforward and the other problematic. The results generally support time-symmetric and retrocausal interpretations. (Joint work with Huw Price, David Miller, and Peter Evans.)"

Charles Wolfe public lecture on La Mettrie

LA METTRIE: MAN A MACHINE
Dr Charles Wolfe, History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Science

KEY THINKERS SERIES – 15TH SEPTEMBER 2010

Julien Offray de La Mettrie, a medical doctor and philosopher was born in Saint-Malo (Brittany) in 1709, and died in 1751 in Berlin, where he was an intellectual-in-residence at Frederick II’s court ... of indigestion, food poisoning, or acute peritonitis after having consumed a whole pheasant pasty with truffles. He had been forced to flee from France and then even from Holland because of his writings, and was one of the most scandalous figures of the Enlightenment. I will focus especially on his best-known work, L’Homme-Machine or Man a Machine (1748), one of the greatest examples of materialist philosophy ever written - in which mind and body are explained as belonging to one material substance, which medical and physiological knowledge sheds light on. How is it that a philosopher admired today by all manner of ‘brain scientists’ was also the hero of the Marquis de Sade? Addressing this sort of question gets us to the heart of Enlightenment materialism.

All are welcome to attend this free series.

Venue: Lecture Theatre 101, Sydney Law School Building, Eastern Avenue, Camperdown Campus
Time: 6.00pm to 7.30 (includes Q & A)
Bookings: Free events, no registration or booking required

Evolving the Future: An exploration of how evolutionary thinking can inform public policy

Tuesday 28 September 2010, University of Sydney

Evolution is an essential theory for understanding the living world–including our own species. With understanding comes the capacity for improvement. This workshop examines three fields in which the understanding offered by contemporary evolutionary theory may offer practical guidance: conservation, public health, and the urban environment.

The workshop will be led by evolutionary biologist Prof. David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. Prof. Wilson’s recent books include: Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society and Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives

Attendance at the workshop is limited to 50, to ensure that all participants are able to participate in a meaningful way in our discussions. Amongst the key questions to be addressed are:
• Is evolutionary theory genuinely mature enough to guide practical policy formulation on any or all of these three topics?
• What are the steps that evolutionary scientists can take to get their ideas onto the policy agenda?
• What are the potential pitfalls facing evolutionary scientists as they begin to take their ideas out of the academy and into the policy arena?

To lead the discussion alongside Prof Wilson we have four distinguished Australasian scientists, each with expertise on one of our focal topics:
• Rick Shine, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and ARC Federation Fellow, University of Sydney
• Sir Peter Gluckman, Head, Centre for Human Evolution, Adaptation and Disease, Liggins Institute, University of Auckland and New Zealand Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor
• Stephen Simpson, Professor of Biology and ARC Laureate Fellow, University of Sydney
• Roland Fletcher, Professor of Theoretical and World Archaeology, University of Sydney

For more information and to register, visit the conference website.

Organised by the Centre on the Human Aspects of Science and Technology & the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science, University of Sydney

Whitehead lecture at Sydney Ideas

25 August
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD: FROM CAMBRIDGE MATHEMATICIAN TO HARVARD PHILOSOPHER
Peter Farleigh, Physiology, and Centre for Human Aspects of Science and Technology

Venue: Lecture Theatre 101, Sydney Law School Building, Eastern Avenue, Camperdown Campus
Time: 6.00pm to 7.30 (includes Q & A)

What would the consequences be, if rather than substances and structures, we took events and processes to be the primary entities that make up the universe? And what if instead of the traditional mechanistic model we used the concept of the organism, as the key metaphor in our understanding of the world? These are two central questions that Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) wrestled with in his later years. Whitehead of course, was famous for his early collaboration with Bertrand Russell on one of the most important works of mathematics in history—the three volumes of Principia Mathematica. While the two equally shared the work of this heroic attempt to establish a logical foundation for mathematics, it is not commonly known that there had been a fourth volume planned, which Whitehead alone began working on. But what became of the unfinished volume and why was it important for his philosophical development?

Joint Colloquium, USYD-UNSW, Prof Jim Franklin, "Data-free Statistics"

Date: Friday, 20 August, 2010

Time: 2:30 pm

Venue: Room 175 Carslaw Building, University of Sydney

Abstract: Extreme risks must be evaluated in such contexts as quarantine, terrorism and banking. Unfortunately, an extreme risk is one that hasn't happened yet, so directly relevant data is non-existent. The talk surveys what is done in the Basel II compliance regime in banking and in Australian quarantine risk analysis, where there are formal processes for using small data sets to keep expert opinion honest. The usefulness of Extreme Value Theory is considered. Extreme risks raise in acute form the "reference class problem", of how to decide what is the right class in which to take statistics to bear on an individual case. The views of philosophers and legal theorists on the reference class problem are canvassed.

Enquires to Thomas Britz.

All welcome.

Current Projects seminar: Carlo Martini

Carlo Martini, who is visiting the SCFS from its partner institution, TiLPS, The Netherlands, will be giving a paper on the problem of disagreement and consensus: "A Puzzle About Belief Updating."

Philosophy Common Room (USYD)
Monday 2 Aug, 1-2.30pm