Conferences and Workshops in 2020-21

Department research seminar

The department research seminar is our central weekly event covering topics across the discipline. 

• Adina Covaci (University of Warwick) - Testimony, Deference and Practical Deliberation
• Alisa Mandrigin (University of Stirling) - The Puzzle of Proprioception
• Ana-Maria Cretu (University of Bristol) - Perspectival Instruments
• Arthur Van Camp (University of Bristol) - Choice Functions as a Tool to Model Uncertainty
• Ben Kotzee (University of Birmingham) - Assertion, Bullshit, and Lying
• Bryan Pickel (University of Glasgow) - Susan Stebbing's Intellectualism
• Chris Bennett (University of Sheffield) - Desert and Dissociation
• Chris Burr (Alan Turing Institute) - Responsible and Trustworthy Machine Learning
• Havi Carel (University of Bristol) - ‘Isn’t Everyone a Little OCD?’ The Epistemic Harms of Wrongful Depathologization
• Jade Fletcher (New College of the Humanities) - Social structures, ideology, and bad sex
• Jessie Munton (University of Cambridge) - Search Engines, Salience and Inquiry
• Ji-Young Lee & Andrea Bidoli (University of Copenhagen) - Ectogenesis: A tool for liberation or oppression?
• Joe Dewhurst (University of Munich) - Novel information-theoretic measures of causation in cognitive science
• John Divers (University of Leeds) - Three Grades, Two Dogmas, One Love! - Quine Regained
• Josh Habgood-Coote - Knowledge is the Norm of Scientific Assertion
• Lucy Allais (University of Witwatersrand)
• Léa Salje (University of Leeds) - Depression, Ataraxia, and the Puzzle of the Pig
• Macarena Marey (University of Buenos Aires) - Join Zoom Meeting
• Martin Sticker (University of Bristol) - Is Merely National "Universal" Basic Income Unjust?
• Michail Peramatzis (Oxford University) - Would Plato ever Define Knowledge as True Belief plus Logos: the Theaetetus case'
• Nilanjan Das (UCL) - Belief as Practical Certainty
• Poppy Mankowitz (University of Bristol) - True Gradability
• Richard Arthur (McMaster University) - Leibniz's analysis of change: vague states, physical continuity and the calculus
• Thomas Schindler (University of Bristol) - Deflationary theories of properties and the problem of inexpressible properties
• Toby Friend (University of Bristol) - A Defence of Megaran Actualism
• Vanessa Seifert (University of Bristol) - The Chemical Bond is a Real Pattern

Specialised research seminars 

We had various seminar series on specialised topics. These are open to everyone, but can be more focused than our general departmental research seminar. 

Philosophy of Physics:

• Aboutorab Yaghmaie - Putting OSR to the Test: From Mathematical Solutions to Metaphysical Resolutions
• Joshua Rosaler (RWTH Aachen) - “The Straw Men of Anti-Reductionism: A Case Study in Quantum-Classical Relations”
• Baris Bagci - Is average work equal to kT ln2 in Szilard engine?
• Benjamin Feitzeig - Is the classical limit "singular"? (with Jeremy Steeger)
• Clara Bradley - Partial Observables and Kinds of Redundancy -
• Megan Penney - The Phase Transition Analogy
• Patricia Palacios - The Paradox of Infinite Limits: A Realist Response
• Sam Fletcher - Emergence, Explanation, and (Infinite) Idealization
• Samuel Schindler - Theoretical virtues: do scientists think what philosophers think they ought to think?
• Tushar Menon (Cambridge) -  In defence of deference
• James Fraser and Peter Vickers - Can a Scientific Realist be Neutral about Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
• Milena Ivanova - Towards an Aesthetics of Experiments

Logic (FSB)

• Adam Bjorndahl (CMU) - Generic Logic
• Thomas Schindler and Simone Picenni - A Russell-Gödel theory of concepts
• Matteo Zicchetti - Internal Categoricity, Truth and Determinateness
• Johannes Stern - Truth and Subjunctive Theories of Knowledge: No Luck?
• Sean Walsh (UCLA) - Algorithmic Randomness and Lévy's Upward Theorem
• Andrew Bacon (USC) - Counterfactuals in Thought

The Formal Rationality Forum:

A collaboration between the Universities of Bristol, Michigan, Irvine and LSE to run monthly joint virtual talks.

• Francesca Zaffora Blando (CMU) - Weak merging of opinions for computationally limited agents
• Johanna Thorma (LSE) - Time for Caution
• Melissa Fusco (Columbia) - Ratifiability in Modal Semantics
• Jason Konek (Bristol) - Accuracy for Sets of Almost Desirable Gambles
• Richard Bradley (LSE) - Chance as the Guide to Life
• Richard Pettigrew (Bristol) - On the pragmatic and epistemic virtues of inference to the best explanation
• Simon Huttegger (Irvine) - Rethinking Convergence to the Truth 

Other Formal Epistemology:

• Boris Babic - Resolute and Correlated Bayesians
• Catrin Campbell-Moore - Probability Filters

Metaphysics of Science reading group sessions with speakers:

• Steven French - Ontic Structural Realism
• James Ladyman - An Apology for Naturalised Metaphysics
• Stathis Psillos et al - Relations in the Metaphysics of Science
• Michels et al. - The modal status of the laws of nature. Tahko'shybrid view and the kinematical/dynamical distinction.
• James Ladyman - Structure and Real Patterns
• Francesca Bellazi - Biochemical Functions
• Sam Kimpton-Nye - The Possibility Bias is not Justified

Regular reading groups 

• Truth and Semantics (associated with the corresponding ERC project)
• Epistemology and decision theory of imprecise probabilities reading group  (associated with the corresponding ERC project)
• The Metaphysics of Science (associated with the corresponding ERC project)
• Evil and Vice Reading Group
• Feminism and Philosophy Reading Group 

Work in Progress sessions

General departmental work in progress:

• Alan Wilson - Moral Evil as Extreme Moral Vice
• Aviram Rosochotsky
• James Ladyman - If quantum states represent do they have to be either psi-ontic or psi-epistemic?
• James Ladyman - "Empiricism"
• Jason Konek - Epistemic Value, Imprecision, and the Principal Principle
• Jonathan Grose - Disease. Sex, senescence and pregnancy: who's normal?
• Josh Habgood-Coote - Group Inquiry and Instrumentisation
• Karim Thebault - Henri Poincaré, Dark Energy, and the Deadly Robots of Krikiit
• Lucy James - Partial Observables and Ontology
• Max Jones - Beyond Brain Circuitry
• Richard Pettigrew - What We Together Risk: Three Vignettes in Search of a Theory.
• Robert Chapman - Should Applied Behaviour Analysis be Abolished?
• Samir Okasha - Scepticism, Evidential Holism, and the Logic of Demonic Deception

Postgraduate Work in Progress seminar

• Eduardo Quirino - Epistemic Fallibility and the Knowledge Argument.
• Eduardo Quirino - Physicalism for the taking: taking stock over the physicalist dispute in the philosophy of mind
• Giacomo Molinari - Accuracy arguments in non-classical settings.
• Jonathan Fay - Anti-EPR: Quantum Mechanics is the Only Complete Theory of Physics.
• João Pinheiro - Towards a Truth-Tropic Evolutionary Epistemology
• Leia Hopf - Distributing Education according to Equality of Opportunity or Educational Adequacy
• Adam Coffee - The Meaning of Built Environments
• Eduardo Quirino - On Maturity, Relationships and your idiot Ex.
• Francesca Bellazzi - Biochemical functions
• João Pinheiro - Lineage Persistence through Time and Human Fitness Interdependence
• Lucienne Spencer - Is ‘non-coercive’ population engineering an appropriate approach for tackling the climate crisis?
• Maria Lopez Rios - Kant´s and Freud´s view on the “soul”: a comparative account. Part II (work on process)
• Shaun Stanley - Developing Scientistic Pragmatism: A Case Study of “Memes” and Evolutionary Economics

Other events

Oxford-Bristol Philosophy of Physics Graduate Lunch Seminar

The Philosophy of Physics Graduate Lunch Seminar (POP-Grunch) is held weekly as an informal space for students from the Universities of Oxford and Bristol working on the Philosophy of Physics to share what they have been working on and receive feedback from their peers. 

Women in Philosophy sessions

Informal discussion meetings with visiting philosophers to discuss anything surrounding the topic of women in philosophy. Reduced due to covid. 

• Léa Salje