The current system of rewards for academic work, which connects funding assignments to metric performances, and these in turns on the capacity to attract funding, reinforces multiple Matthew effects and increases gaps across universities and scholars, both geographically (widening the North-South and West-East divides), and institutionally (expanding the distance between high ranked universities and those down in the ladder), as well as disciplinary: favouring applied fields of research over theoretical ones, and the hard sciences over “soft” sciences and humanities. The epistemic dimensions of such state of affair is to date a relatively underexplored area of research. This roundtable presents current debates around science policies, research funding allocation and the future of the university, from diverse epistemological perspectives, not only in view of improving fairness towards the underprivileged, and the efficiency of the system, but also in order to foster a new role for science and research institutions in society. 

Speakers: Sabina Leonelli (Exeter), Richard Pettigrew (Bristol), Barbara Osimani (Marche Polytechnic University), Marco Ottaviani (Milan), Andrea Saltelli (Barcelona).

Discussants: Angela Liberatore (ERC), Jean-Pierre Bourguignon (ERC), Ferruccio Resta (CRUI).

https://lse.zoom.us/j/88024601292; Meeting ID: 880 2460 1292

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Abstract: In this talk, I will present a case for scientific realism about free will. I will begin by summarizing some of the main scientifically motivated challenges for free will and will then respond to them by presenting a naturalistic indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental laws of nature are deterministic.

The programme is available here. The poster session will start with 3-minute oral presentations from all poster presenters. Breakout rooms will then be enabled for discussion with online poster presenters. Meanwhile, in-person poster presenters will be able to have discussions in front of their posters.

Public engagement is one of the fundamental pillars of the European programme for research and innovation /Horizon 2020/. The programme encourages engagement that not only fosters science education and dissemination, but also promotes two-way dialogues between scientists and the public in various stages of research.  Creating a dialogue between different groups of societal actors is seen as crucial to attain both epistemic and social desiderata in science. However, whether this dialogue can actually help with the attainment of these desiderata is far from being a trivial matter. This paper discusses the costs, risks, and benefits of dialogical public engagement practices and proposes a strategy to analyse these argumentative practices, based on a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange. As a case study, we discuss the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, a clear case of failure of public engagement, and show how the proposed model can shed new light on the problem.

We invite junior scholars to join us and discuss the process of publishing journal articles (from paper submission to peer-review, to the editorial handling of submissions, etc.).

BSPS Open publishes Open Access philosophy of science monographs on the basis of merit alone, and not on an author’s ability to pay a fee. Find out about how to submit and get your manuscripts published. For more information check http://www.thebsps.org/bsps-open/

This session is an opportunity to meet the editorial team of EJPS. Our speakers are Federica Russo, Phyllis Illari, Mathias Frisch and Dunja Šešelja. Federica and Phyllis, who have been the Editors-in-Chief of EJPS for the last four years, will reflect on their editorial experience. Mathias and Dunja, the new Editors-in-Chief, will introduce the new editorial team and their vision for the journal in the coming years.

Do the extensions and revisions suggested by the advocates of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) – a current developmentally-oriented version of evolutionary theory that challenges the neo-Darwinian version that has been dominant since the 1950s – amount to progress in evolutionary biology? What, if anything, is the nature of this progress? I consider these questions within a framework that combines the systems biology approach of Conrad Waddington for investigating embryological development with the sociological approach of Ludwik Fleck for analyzing the development of scientific systems. I focus on the contribution of studies of epigenetic inheritance because the results stemming from this research program are seen as unimportant by followers of the neo-Darwinian version of evolutionary theory, while the same results are seen as crucial and progressive by biologists advocating the ESS. This case therefore highlights the context-sensitive nature of assessments of scientific progress during periods of theory change and suggests that progress is relative to the delineation of the theoretical boundaries of the scientific system and the time scale that is chosen.

In There Are No Such Things As Theories (OUP 2020) I argued for a form of theory eliminativism: theories should not be regarded as abstract entities in some ‘World Three’, say, or as possessing well-defined identity conditions or, indeed, as ‘things’ in any sense whatsoever. Nevertheless, I claimed, statements such as ‘quantum theory is elegant’ can still be taken to be either true or false by adopting a framework in which the relevant scientific practices act as truth-makers. In my talk I want to push this account along a little further by exploring some possible implications for our understanding of the history of science, its relationship with the philosophy of science and of what we, as philosophers of science, are doing in our own practices.