Neuroscience, Responsibility, and the Law
Lecture
The law makes assumptions about how people think—how we reason, why we act, and what it takes for us to be responsible. Advances in neuroscience constantly challenge these assumptions. How should advances in our understanding of the brain and mind affect classic legal questions? Join us for a…
Evolvability: A Bridge Between the Proximate and Ultimate?
Lecture
Whilst scientists sometimes attribute the differential diversification, adaptedness, and disparity of lineages to their "evolvability", the exact nature of evolvability is debated. Moreover, the role that evolvability, and appeals to it, should play in our evolutionary science is unclear. This…
Medical Microbiome Research and Its Parallels with Galenic Medicine
Lecture
Associate Professor Maureen O’Malley (School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney) will examine some of the problematic concepts in microbiome research from a novel angle. Human microbiomes (the microbial communities in human bodies) have been linked to every bodily and mental…
Australia-New Zealand Philosophy of Biology Workshop
Conference
The A-NZ PhilBio Workshop is a new, regular, mid-year workshop for the philosophy of biology community across Australia and New Zealand, with a focus on highlighting work by postgraduate students, early career researchers and visiting scholars. In 2023 it is hosted by the Centre for Philosophy of…
Global Climate Policy for Philosophers
Conference
This presentation is an overview of the Global Climate Regime: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and various bilateral, sub-national, and private sector agreements that together constitute global climate…
From Causal Reasoning to Scientific Thinking
Seminar
Young children have remarkable capacities for causal reasoning, which are part of the foundation of their scientific thinking abilities. In Constructing Science, Deena Weisberg and David Sobel trace the ways that young children's sophisticated causal reasoning abilities combine with other…
Truth or Fiction in Historical Research: Finding a Middle Ground
Workshop
Historical explanations require the interpretation of incomplete traces of the past. We generally conceive of history as a truth-telling practice, while recognising that the degree of interpretative work that is required means that the truthfulness of a given history is often uncertain. This …