cancelled!

 Unfortunately Kristie had to cancel. the first slot only will now take place online

Students these days

 Yesterday I read Steven Hales' thought-provoking post about how students have changed (with thanks to Daily Nous for flagging it). Hales has noticed his students becoming significantly worse at reading, writing and basic maths over the course of his 30-year career. And he puts it down largely to smart-phone addiction.

"Nothing was wrong with his mind"

Blown away by these moving words on mental illness from philosopher justin_garson. Great article. I hope the abyss is kind. 

https://aeon.co/essays/evidence-grows-that-mental-illness-is-more-than-dysfunction 

One day I'll write about my own brushes with mental illness, and the services that were supposed to help. But not today.

The P-Value Podcast

I don't normally get on that well with podcasts, annoyingly. They rarely seem to hold my attention adequately, and my mind starts wandering onto something else while it fades into background noise, then i realise i've missed a bit, but im not sure how much. It's really hard work to keep attending to it properly.

But i've nevertheless been meaning to listen to this one for a while, because it features my close friend and awesome philosopher Rachael Brown, and I had a feeling it would be something special. I was unprepared for quite how *cool* and engaging it is though! 

I love the series on the role of values in science, and I think my students will love it too. I know many people are different from me, and find podcasts easier to attend to than text, so its great when i'm able to offer further resources in a variety of different modalities. 

Rachael is based in Australia, but in the UK at least, academics get little to no formal recognition for creating this sort of resource, which I think is a great shame, because it is hard to carve out time for anything that isn't essential to one's career. All the more reason then to thank Rachael for making this freely available!

Listen here!

https://thep-value.buzzsprout.com/ 

Paradox in Washington

 I’m travelling to this on Sunday http://www.paradoxoftheorganism.com/

Looking forward to it!

Philosophy for physicists

I teamed up with some colleagues last week to produce a short video promoting philosophy of science to physics undergraduates. All credit to Ben Hanson and Tim Moorsom for the smooth editing!

Facepalm moment for suggesting Descrates was a Medieval Philosopher though. This is why I don't do hps...........

Conference season!

 Last week I had a blast at How the Light Gets in, a Philosophy festival in Hay, where I spoke on a panel about scientific expertise and whether we should defer to authorities. I argued that, because of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, the folk do have reason to be skeptical of scientific claims when they can see that the people generating those claims fail to represent them or their values.

This week I'm off to give a talk about the evolution of morality at a conference about science-engaged theology Then at Leeds we've got Frenchfest and in July it's the annual meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science in Exeter.

I'll have to find some gaps to squeeze in some writing somewhere. But damn it's good to be travelling again!!

Tribal social instincts in Edinburgh

For anyone interested, I'm giving a talk to the Philosophy, Psychology and Informatics Group at the University of Edinburgh tomorrow. 

My title is 'The Evolution of Human Morality'

Abstract:

I will describe the ‘received view’ of how human morality evolved, and especially the influential ‘tribal social instincts hypothesis’. This idea, propounded in 2001 by cultural evolutionists Peter Richerson and Rob Boyd, posits that human morality evolved as an adaptive response to intense conflict between different human social groups. I review the evidence and articulate several criticisms of the hypothesis, as well as discussing possible rivals.  

It will take place Wed. 9 March, 17:10 – 18:30 and you can join remotely using the following zoom link:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/88438665889

 

Meeting ID: 884 3866 5889

Passcode: BNVahZN5

Extinction Studies at Boggle Hole

 

Last week was the inaugural field trip of the Leverhulme Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Program at Leeds. Students and supervisors headed to Boggle Hole, a beautiful cove just south of Robin Hood's Bay on the Yorkshire coast.

Workshop: Metaphysics of biological individuality

 Dear All,

 

There will be an online workshop (Zoom) on Metaphysics of Biological Individuality on Monday 20th and Tuesday 21st of September 2021, from 13:30 to 16h30 each afternoon (UK time). This workshop is hosted by the Sorbonne University and the CNRS. All are welcome to attend, and no registration is required. 

 

Monday 20th September (UK time)

13:30 – 15:00: Samir Okasha (University of Bristol): "On the very idea of biological individuality"
15:00 – 15:05: (Short break)
15:05 – 16:35: Will Morgan (University of Sheffield) "Biological individuality and the foetus problem"

Tuesday 21st September (UK time)

13:30 – 15:00: Ellen Clarke (University of Leeds) "On the need to keep hold of biological individuals"
15:00 – 15:05: (Short break)
15:05 – 16:35: James DiFrisco (KU Leuven) "The individuation of biological characters"

 For the zoom links, please email  martens.johannes@free.fr

HPS in 20: Essay competition winners

In November 2020 we announced an essay competition, in which year 12 and 13 A-Level students were invited to send us 800-word essays telling us which of our 20 objects is the most important, and why.

We received a wonderful array of impressively scholarly essays on different topics, and I am now delighted to announce our winners!

In first place, Aarushi Malik, from King Edward VI Camp Hill School in Birmingham, sent us a stylishly written case for the Stethoscope. She showed an excellent grasp of the complex materials of the lecture while going beyond them to draw an optimistic and timely lesson about the progress of science and medicine. Aarushi nets £100.

Sara Hamdani, from Xaverian College in Manchester, and Ruby Cline, from Chiswick School in West London, are our two prize-winning runners-up, and will be awarded £50 each. Sara wrote an imaginative, well researched, and wonderfully written essay on how, from Plato to Freud, the horse-and-rider figurine has symbolized human attempts to use reason to understand the often irrational human mind. Ruby submitted a very thoughtful and well researched essay on the Biblical herbarium as a clue to major themes in the sociology of religion and of popular science in Victorian Britain.

You can read all three essays on the centre's blog!

Congratulations to all our winners, and many thanks to everyone who submitted an essay. We were delighted by the level of enthusiasm on display, and feel confident that HPS has a very rosy future and will be in good hands.

HPS Matters

 The Leeds Centre for History and Philosophy of Science has a sensational spring seminar schedule.

HPS Matters

Shining a spotlight on research that showcases how history and philosophy of science can illuminate issues of current and real-world importance in our everyday lives.

Wednesdays, 3.15-5 GMT

All talks will be live streamed over TEAMS. Email the centre director at e.clarke@leeds.ac.uk to get the link and join the debate!

 27 January 2021: Laura Franklin-Hall (NYU): Genders as Historical Explanatory Kinds

10 February 2021: Alexander Franklin (KCL): Social Construction, Physical Construction, and Emergence

24 February 2021: Edward Jones-Imhotep (UToronto): Birth of a Notation: Charting Human and Machine Failure at the Dawn of the Jazz Age

10 March 2021: Jill Kirby (Sussex): Stress – the plague of modern life?

24 March 2021: Liz Chatterjee (Chicago): Late Acceleration: Indian Electricity and Planetary History

28 April 2021: Steven Shapin (Harvard): Hard vs soft science: What is at stake?

12 May 2021: Michael Stuart (Geneva): NASA's Minipublics: How NASA Uses Imagination to Shape the American Space Imaginary.

19 May 2021: Haixin Dang (Leeds): Social Epistemology of Science

Leverhulme 'Extinction Studies' DTP

Good news: Leverhulme Doctoral Training Programme in Extinction Studies funded at University of Leeds.

I am delighted to announce that I am part of a new Leverhulme-funded Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) in Extinction Studies that will commence with a first intake of graduate students in September/October 2021.

The cross-disciplinary programme headed up by Graham Huggan and Stefan Skrimshire spans 4 faculties at the University of Leeds and will focus on all aspects of extinction, from social/humanitarian problems, to the decline of biodiversity (past and present) and cultural extinction.

The Leverhulme Trust have provided funds of £1.35 million to fund 15 PhD studentships across 3 years with a further 4 studentships being funded by each faculty involved (total 19 studentships). These are fully funded at home student rates for fees, research allowance and stipend (i.e. salary costs).

The programme along with applications details and deadlines will be announced very soon.

I am keen to hear from students who wish to work at the interface of philosophy and ecology, to think about the meanings of core concepts such as 'human', 'ecosystem', 'nature', 'species', and what implications our understanding of these concepts have for conservation work and for environmental ethics. 

If this is an area you are interested in and you have ideas about potential projects, please contact me at e.clarke@leeds.ac.uk 

HPS in 20 objects: Essay competition!

Calling all year 13 science students (and those who teach them):

The Leeds Centre for History and Philosophy of Science is excited to announce an essay competition, open to UK 6th form students. The winning essay will score a £100 prize. 

To enter, just visit our online exhibition 'HPS in 20 objects' and tell us, in 800 words, 'Which of our '20 objects' is the most important, and why?'

All entrants will receive a certificate and the chance to have their work featured on our website. The deadline is 5pm on monday 21st December, and winners will be announced in early January, before the UCAS deadline. More details can be found in the exhibition itself.

Please share the news!

Come study with me!

Did you ever think about taking a masters degree, or studying for a doctorate? I'd love to supervise your project in philosophy of evolution, feminist metaphysics, or conservation ontology.


Leeds' Post Graduate Open Day is next Friday 7th Feb. You can come in a have a chat about what the application process is like, what programs we offer, what scholarships are available.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/info/101060/postgraduate_open_day?utm_source=Internal&utm_medium=FWebBan_AHC&utm_campaign=PGOD2020

We're a large, varied and youthful department in a cool city. Get in touch!

Ker ching: Putting the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to the test

Congratulations to Kevin Laland and Tobias Uller have just been awarded a stonking £5.7 million grant for an international, multi-disciplinary, project "to put the predictions of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to the test". It is one of the biggest awards the Templeton Foundation have ever made and it promises to be an exciting three years!

Conference announcement: Philosophy of Biology in the UK

Philosophy of Biology in the UK

Bristol, 8th-9th June 2016

The University of Bristol is hosting the 2016 meeting of Philosophy of Biology in the UK (PBUK), on the 8th-9th of June. This is the third meeting of PBUK, first hosted at All Souls College, Oxford in 2012 and then at Christ's College, Cambridge in 2014.  The conference seeks to bring together philosophers, philosophically-inclined biologists, and other researchers with an interest in foundational and conceptual issues in the biological sciences.  

Plenary speakers:

• Alexander Rosenberg (Philosophy, Duke University)
• Carolyn Price (Philosophy, Open University)
• Sabina Leonelli (Philosophy, Exeter)
• Innes Cuthill (Biology, University of Bristol)
• Tudor Baetu (Philosophy, University of Bristol)

Submissions:

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted through EasyChair, using the link below, by 15th March 2016. Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by the 10th of April.

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pbuk2016

Details for registration and payment for attending the conference will follow.

Contact information:

For any inquiries, please contact pbuk-2016@bristol.ac.uk.

Conference webpage: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/events/2016/june/philosophy-of-biology-uk.html

Inheritance and cooperation program

All talks take place in LR23 at Balliol College, Oxford

 Thursday 25^th June

 

09.45am – 10.15am	Welcome coffee
10.15am – 11.00am	Dr Ellen Clarke (Philosophy, Oxford): Introduction to inheritance and cooperation.
11.00am – 12.30pm	Prof. Heikki Helanterä (Zoology, Helsinki): ‘Superorganisms as model systems.’
	Dr Tobias Uller (Zoology, Oxford/Lund): Response
12.30pm – 2.00pm	Lunch (Hall)
2.00pm - 3.30pm	Dr Francesca Merlin (Philosophy, Paris):  ‘Limited extended inheritance.’
	Matthew Clarke (BPhil Philosophy, Oxford): Response
3.30pm – 4.00pm	Coffee
4.00pm – 5.30pm	Dr Simon Powers (Zoology, Lausanne): ‘What drove the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies?’
	Jessica Laimann (BPhil Philosophy, Oxford): Response

Friday 26^th June

9.00am – 10.30am	Dr Rachael Brown (Philosophy, Macquarie): ‘Generating benefit: Social learning and the other cooperation problem.’
	Prof. Cecilia Heyes (Psychology, Oxford): Response
10.30am - 11.00am	Coffee
11.00am -12.30pm	Dr Jonathan Birch (Philosophy, LSE): ‘Time and relatedness in microbes and humans.’
	Michael Bentley (DPhil Zoology, Oxford): Response
12.30pm – 2.00pm	Lunch (Hall)
2.00pm – 3.30pm	Prof. Peter J Richerson (Biology, UC Davis):
	Dr John Odling-Smee (Anthropology, Oxford): Response
3.30pm - 4.30pm	Roundtable discussion with coffee

Conference Announcement

Inheritance and Cooperation

June 25^th & 26^th, Balliol College Oxford

Heredity is understood to be a core ingredient of evolution by natural selection, and is standardly thought of as mediated by the passing of genes from parents to their offspring. Genetic inheritance underpins the theory of kin selection, which stands as a leading explanation for the evolution of cooperation. Organisms can be selected to help their relatives, because those relatives inherited some of the same genes from the common ancestor. We say that helping relatives then boosts the organism's indirect fitness. However, cooperation takes place in many scenarios in which there is no recourse to explanation in terms of indirect fitness benefits, because the participants lack a common genetic inheritance: between species; between unrelated humans; between genes; to name a few.

We are becomingly increasingly aware of the action of systems of inheritance that are not genetic. Organisms inherit, for example, epigenetic marks, niches, symbionts, culture. We are learning more and more about non-standard genetic inheritance systems such as lateral gene transfer, meiotic driver genes and transposable elements.

What happens to our ability to explain the occurrence of cooperation if we expand our conception of inheritance? Might we throw light on the possibility of cooperation between partners that fail to share a common genetic inheritance? Can other inheritance systems play an analogous explanatory role to that played by genes in kin selection theory? Are all inheritance systems equal, in this sense, or do they vary in ways that systematically affect their influence upon cooperation?

The aim of this conference is to pull together people who research different sorts of inheritance systems, or explore the impact of those systems on cooperation, to see if anything general can be extracted about the ways in which inheritance influences cooperation.

Confirmed speakers: 

Francesca Merlin (Philosophy, Paris)

Heikki Helanterä (Biology, Helsinki)

Rachael Brown (Philosophy, Macquarie)

Simon Powers (Biology, Lausanne)

Maria Kronfeldner (Philosophy, Bielefeld)

Tobias Uller (Biology, Lund/Oxford)

Jonathan Birch (Philosophy, LSE)

Sad news

 

It is with much sadness that I note the passing of Prof. Werner Callebaut (1952-2014). He was the jovial stalwart of my former workplace, the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Editor-in-chief of Biological Theory, Philosopher of Biology, Riedl scholar and also rather a lot of fun. He worked tirelessly, but he also gave me a taste for slivovitz that I'll never forget and often had a mischeivous glint in his eye as he regaled an audience with tales of philosophical punch-ups.

He will be widely missed by all the young academics whose early careers he helped to shelter and by the international philosophy of biology community in general.

http://www.kli.ac.at/callebaut