Workshop: Foundations of Computation
Workshop
The ANU School of Philosophy will be hosting a workshop on the Foundations of Computation on 20 and 21 July, 2023. This two-day workshop will explore questions about what makes something a computation, whether computational identity depends on the intentions of interpreters, the role of…
Is language still the ultimate artefact? - Zoe Drayson
Seminar
Speaker: Zoe Drayson Clark and Chalmers (1998) characterize language as “a central means by which cognitive processes are extended into the world”. Language plays this role in virtue of being an external tool which supplements the brain’s…
TBC - Barabra Vetter
Seminar
Speaker: Barabra Vetter Abstract TBC. Please note that these seminars are open to the public and in person only.
Jun 28 - Making Fair Comparisons in Political Theory
Seminar
Normative political theorists frequently compare hypothetical scenarios for the purpose of identifying reasons to prefer one kind of institution to alternatives. We examine three types of "unfair" comparisons and the reasoning errors associated with each. We then show how a modeling mindset…
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…
Center Indifference and Skepticism - David Builes (Princeton)
Seminar
Speaker: David Builes Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different…
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…