[PhilPhys] The Center for Philosophy of Science's End of the Semester Hybrid Talks

Mon Mar 23 17:55:05 CET 2026

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh
invites you to join us for the last presentations of the semester. All of
the lectures will be live streamed on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.

*Lunch Time Talk - Laurenz Casser* -
https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/fellows/casser-laurenz/

Meet Laurenz Casser, Visiting Fellow at The Center for Philosophy of
Science. Laurenz's  5 Minute Video:  https://youtu.be/gC8MF64cOUE

*Tuesday, March 24th @ Noo*n
Join us in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of
Learning.

*Title:    Hot to the Touch and Chilled to the Bone*

Abstract:
In 1896, the Swedish physiologist Torsten Thunberg reported a curious
discovery: when he touched a grid of alternating warm and cold brass pipes,
the sensations of warmth and cold on his hand somehow ‘fused together’ into
a ‘special sensation of heat’ — a sensation that many experimental subjects
since then have described as painful. Since the 1990s, this so-called
‘thermal grill illusion’ (TGI) has become the conventional method of
investigating ‘illusory pain’, and is said to hold important insights for
our understanding of the bodily senses and clinical pain pathologies.
However, what exactly these insights are meant to be remains largely
unclear: indeed, after more than a century of scientific interest in
Thunberg’s discovery, the sensory fusion he described is about as puzzling
as ever. In this talk, I aim to articulate why the thermal grill illusion
is a puzzle worth caring about, why it has been so difficult to solve, and
what, if anything, we can learn from putting our hand on a grill.

*This talk will be available online:  Zoom:
 https://pitt.zoom.us/j/99040150880 <https://pitt.zoom.us/j/99040150880>*

*Featured Former Fellow – Deepanwita Dasgupta  *

Friday, March 27th @ 12:00pm EST

*Online Only  -  https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92652920133
<https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92652920133>*

*Title:  Introducing A Wisdom Framework for Science in the 21st-century:
The Idea of a Two-Track Scientific Community*

Abstract:
In this talk, my task will be to show how wisdom, which is an integrated
form of multi-level skills, could be incorporated into the research/
teaching practices of contemporary science with some good effects.
Additionally, such wisdom can allow us to use our intellectual
breakthroughs to serve our existential ends. Our science today is built on
the idea of developing expertise in multiple narrow domains, which then
would be scaled up to yield quick flows of innovations. While a science
based on this kind of narrow expertise can bring us rapid flows of novel
things, it can also lead us to a crisis of sustainability, commodification
of research, and a slide towards inequality. To improve matters, I suggest
that our narrow practices be scaffolded by a wider and more expansive
practice that could function as scaffolds to our current sets of expertise.
This combination of a faster and a slower track will allow us to address
the blind spots that often lie embedded in our expertise and later gives
rise to evidence-in-use problems. Setting up a link between these two
tracks may be called wisdom, which we badly need today to engage with our
current exponential technologies and their effects on us. This of course
needs the inclusion of some new members into the peer community.
Adding a wisdom track in this way to our system can help us develop new
sets of research questions, training procedures, or research protocols. It
can thus allow us to explore our areas of ignorance. While there is much
discussion about the Freudian kind of ignorance that makes us blind to
various things, there is also a Socratic form of ignorance that can be used
as a springboard for new ways of thinking.  In true Socratic spirit then, I
claim that this wisdom approach might help us in three specific areas – in
gatekeeping decisions, building trust in science, and in setting up
consiliences with other knowledge communities and their traditions.

*This talk will be available online through  Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92652920133 <https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92652920133>*

*Lunch Time Talk - Ken Aizawa* - https://sasn.rutgers.edu/kenneth-aizawa

*Tuesday, March 31st @ Noon*

Attend in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of
Learning.

*Title:  Zetetic Philosophy of Science*

*Abstract: *

A significant portion of philosophy of science might be thought of as the
epistemology of science. It is epistemology with scientific examples.  In
this talk, I wish to focus on another part of the philosophy of science. I
want to begin to think more concretely and explicitly about inquiry in
science. Zetetic philosophy of science is, in the first instance, a shift
from a focus on knowledge to a focus on inquiry, leaving aside whether
scientific inquiry leads to knowledge. A key element here is a shift from
focusing on the pairing of scientific realism and inference to the best
explanation—which I take to be parts of the epistemology of science—to a
focus on the pairing of zetetic scientific realism and abduction. This
involves a shift from focusing on knowing that P to focusing on a different
propositional attitude, namely, taking one’s self to have reasons to
believe that P.

*This talk will be available online:  Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97559112250 <https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97559112250>*

*Featured Former Fellow – Sherrilyn Roush *-
https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/fellows/roush-sherrilyn/

Friday, April 3rd @ 12:00pm EST

*Online Only  - https://pitt.zoom.us/j/94358264552
<https://pitt.zoom.us/j/94358264552>*

*Title: Should Newton’s Principia be retracted? “Good Science” and the
Epistemology of Retraction*

Abstract:
There is an epidemic of retractions of scientific journal articles; often,
though not always, it is for fraud or misconduct. This obviously erodes
public trust in our institutions of knowledge production. Inductive
reasoning is non-monotonic, and, accordingly, good science is often
legitimately overturned. These phenomena have a similar feel, so sharpening
the distinction between them is imperative for the survival of trust in
science. We can start with the observations that good science isn’t
retracted, even when its conclusions are overturned – e.g., Newton’s
Principia – and that falsehood of conclusions is neither necessary nor
sufficient to justify retraction of a publication. I sketch an epistemic
distinction between “good science” that is overturned and publications that
should be retracted. Secondly, I provide some guidelines about when
counting retractions in the track records of authors, reviewers, journals,
publishers, and universities gives us evidence about how much to trust
those vehicles in their future publications.

*This talk will be available online through  Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/94358264552 <https://pitt.zoom.us/j/94358264552>*

*Lunch Time Talk -  Sven Neth *-
https://www.philosophy.pitt.edu/people/ant-74

*Tuesday, April 7th @ Noon*
Join us in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of
Learning.

*Title:   Induction and Indifference*

 Abstract:
The principle of indifference says that if you don’t know which possibility
obtains, you should assign equal credences to all possibilities. There are
different ways to make this precise, but even sophisticated versions of the
principle of indifference fail to vindicate inductive reasoning. I
illustrate this point by discussing Carnap’s work on the foundations of
inductive logic and the No Free Lunch theorem from machine learning and
draw some philosophical lessons.

*This talk will be available online:  Zoom:
https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92589572462 <https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92589572462>*

*Lunch Time Talk -  Simon DeDeo - *
https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/people/faculty/simon-dedeo.html

Friday April 10th @ Noon
Join us in person in room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of
Learning.

Title:   TBA

 Abstract:
TBA
*This talk will be available online:  Zoom:
 https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97095624890 <https://pitt.zoom.us/j/97095624890>*
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