[PhilPhys] Upcoming Talks at the Center for Philosophy of Science

[Center for Phil Sci]

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh
invites you to join us for our upcoming Lunch Time Talks and our
Featured Former Fellows Talk.  All lectures will be live streamed on
YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg>


LTT – David Wallace
Tuesday, September 9th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning

Title: The local quantum vacuum as the Past Hypothesis
Abstract:
The `Past Hypothesis’, as advocated by David Albert and Barry Loewer, is
the hypothesis that the world came into being in whatever particular
low-entropy highly-condensed big-bang sort of macrocondition it is that the
normal inferential procedures of cosmology will eventually present to us. I
consider some hypotheseses about that that macrocondition is likely to be
given what cosmology has already presented to us, and explore the
consequences of these hypotheses for the broader (`Mentaculus’) project of
grounding physics and the special sciences in the Past Hypothesis. My main
conclusion is that current cosmology suggests a unique, pure quantum state
(the local quantum vacuum, or `Bunch-Davies vacuum’) for the initial state
of the Universe, in which case statistical-mechanical probabilities emerge
from quantum probabilities without any need for an intervening statistical
postulate.

Can’t make it in-person? This talk will be available online through Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92309860754



LTT– Nina Atanasova

Friday, September 12th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning
*Title: The Surreality of Pain*
Abstract:
Throughout the reductionist debates of the twentieth-century philosophy of
mind and science, non-reductionists often referred to pain as irreducible
mental state par excellence. Notwithstanding, reductionists have remained
unmoved in their conviction that mental states are exhaustively physical in
nature. Pain eliminativism, arguably the most radical form of reductionism,
has recently seen a revival in popularity (Baetu 2020, Corns 2020, Coninx
2021, Hardcastle 2024, Gligorov 2025). According to pain eliminativism, the
commonsense notion of pain as an irreducible subjective experience is
deeply flawed. Thus, it is to be eliminated from our vocabulary and
replaced with the terms of a mature science of pain.
The claim of eliminativism can be interpreted descriptively as a
*prediction* of what happens when the science of pain matures. However, it
can also be interpreted normatively as a *prescription* of what should
happen when the science of pain matures. Considering that the science of
pain has matured significantly since the early days of pain eliminativism
(Dennett 1978), the renewed interest in the topic is not surprising.
However, the verdicts on pain eliminativism delivered by different
philosophers are often contradictory and inconclusive. I attribute much of
the disagreement to the equivocation between predictive and prescriptive
interpretations of eliminativism.
In this talk, I aim to show that pain eliminativism has been successful
*predictively* in the case of neuroscience pain education (NPE). NPE is an
approach to chronic pain management that allows patients to reconceptualize
pain from a sign of tissue damage to a functional/dysfunctional state of
the nervous system. I argue that the success of this method suggests that
pain eliminativism can be justified *prescriptively* in other contexts
beyond the scope of science.
This talk will be available online through Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/91293273230


Featured Former Fellow* – Wayne Myrvold*

Tuesday, September 16th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST
*ONLINE ONLY:*  Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92946226719

*Title: **No only to anti-realism”: Some skeptical thoughts on scientific
realism*

*Abstract:* Debates about scientific realism and anti-realism have been a
prominent part of the landscape of philosophy of science for the past few
decades, which have seen a proliferation scientific realisms and
anti-realisms. Thirty-five years ago Howard Stein, from whom I borrow my
title, added a skeptical voice to these discussions, arguing that the issue
between scientific realists and its opponents had not been clearly drawn.
This talk takes up that skeptical thread. I will argue, first, for the
modest conclusion that we should believe whatever we have sufficiently good
evidence for. As this includes the existence of some things (including
atoms) that are not directly observable, this modest conclusion involves
rejection of any form of anti-realism that involves a prohibition against
accepting the existence of unobservable entities. A mere absence of a
prohibition, however, hardly deserves to be elevated into a philosophical
position, hence I don’t consider my view to be adding to the menagerie of
versions of “scientific realism.” I doubt that there is any defensible
position worthy of that name.


LTT – *Aydin Mohseni*

Friday, September 19th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning

Title:  *A Bayesian Reduction of Causation in Causal Models*
*Abstract:*
The ontological status and explanatory role of causation has been a
perennial puzzle. In recent work, Pearl and Mackenzie (2018) advance the
thesis of a causal hierarchy (PCH) and posit the irreducibility of causal
claims to purely probabilistic ones. Bareinboim et al. (2022) claim to have
proven this irreducibility in the context of structural causal models
(SCMs). We challenge this claim and demonstrate a general reduction of
interventional propositions to probabilistic ones within the same context
of SCMs and proffer a de Finetti-style representation theorem for causal
learning and reasoning.

This talk will be available online through Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/98127984221
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