LLC - Science & More Seminars

Below you find a calendar of the Science & More seminars, a description of the next upcoming meeting, and a list of past and future events. Everybody is welcome to join! All times are local Turin time. The seminars usually take place at Palazzo Nuovo, Via Sant'Ottavio 20, 10124 Torino.

Next Seminars

Eugenio Petrovich (University of Turin): Mapping the social structure of philosophy of science with SOPHIS (Social Observatory of PHIlosophy of Science)

Wednesday 16 April, 11:00-12:00 (!), Aula di Antica, Palazzo Nuovo

This talk is based on joint work with Edoardo Fazzini and Lorenzo Gandolfi.

The analysis of the scholarly field of philosophy through advanced quantitative methods has gained increasing traction over the past decade. Existing studies leverage major databases (e.g., Scopus) and digital text archives (e.g., JSTOR) to scan philosophy using methods such as topic modeling, citation analysis, text mining, network analysis, and more (Petrovich, 2024).

However, the expansion of these Quantitative Studies of Philosophy has also revealed significant limitations in current databases and digital resources, particularly in terms of geographical and linguistic coverage, temporal scope, and data quality (Petrovich et al., 2024).

In this talk, we will present SOPHIS (Social Observatory of PHIlosophy of Science), a new database designed to offer a unique perspective on philosophy of science, a subfield of philosophy that has attracted considerable attention in Quantitative Studies of Philosophy (see e.g., Khelfaoui et al., 2021; McLevey et al., 2018; Petrovich & Viola, 2024). SOPHIS enables, for the first time, large-scale investigation of the social dimension of this field, shedding light on the complex web of actors involved in its development. The database includes metadata for 6,826 research articles published in eight leading philosophy of science journals between 2005 and 2019. These articles are linked to two key groups: (i) the authors of the articles (n = 4,395) and (ii) all the scholars that are mentioned in the acknowledgement sections of the articles (n = 9,029). Incorporating this second group of actors is crucial for uncovering informal collaborations and social relationships that remain invisible in standard social analysis based on formal authorship (Petrovich, 2022).

All actors in SOPHIS have been systematically associated with their full academic affiliations (university, city, and country), citation and publication metrics, gender, philosophy of science awards, and roles within major philosophy of science associations. In this way, SOPHIS allows multidimensional analysis of the social structure of philosophy of science, allowing to investigate topics such as prestige flow, community sub-structure, geographical distribution, and gender composition of the field at an unprecedented level of scale and precision.

In the first part of my talk, we will detail the methodology used to construct SOPHIS, while, in the second part, we will then demonstrate the kinds of analyses that it makes possible, including the creation of a co-acknowledgment network map (available at https://tinyurl.com/288wkbxt), which provides novel insights into the social communities within philosophy of science. Lastly, we will present the next steps in the development of SOPHIS, such as the collection of funding data via a dedicated web-app.

References

Khelfaoui, M., Gingras, Y., Lemoine, M., & Pradeu, T. (2021). The visibility of philosophy of science in the sciences, 1980–2018. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03067-x

McLevey, J., Graham, A. V., McIlroy-Young, R., Browne, P., & Plaisance, K. S. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and insularity in the diffusion of knowledge: An analysis of disciplinary boundaries between philosophy of science and the sciences. Scientometrics, 117(1), 331–349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2866-8

Petrovich, E. (2022). Acknowledgments-based networks for mapping the social structure of research fields. A case study on recent analytic philosophy. Synthese, 200(3), 204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03515-2

Petrovich, E. (2024). Quantitative Metaphilosophy. In E. Petrovich, A Quantitative Portrait of Analytic Philosophy (pp. 243–282). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53200-9_8

Petrovich, E., Verhaegh, S., Bös, G., Cristalli, C., Dewulf, F., Van Gemert, T., & IJdens, N. (2024). Bibliometrics beyond citations: Introducing mention extraction and analysis. Scientometrics, 129(9), 5731–5768. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05116-x

Petrovich, E., & Viola, M. (2024). Mapping the philosophy and neuroscience nexus through citation analysis. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 14(4), 60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-024-00621-5

Dan Lassiter (University of Edinburgh): TBA

Friday 16 May, 12:00-13:00, Aula 14, Palazzo Nuovo

Thomas Krödel (University of Hamburg): TBA

Thursday 19 June, 16:00-18:00, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo

Past Seminars

Luca Guzzardi (University of Milan): Towards an operational approach to the joint commitment model for scientific communities

Wednesday 2 April, 12:00--13:00, Aula di Antica, Palazzo Nuovo

The joint commitment model has been introduced by Margaret Gilbert to describe key aspects of social reality, emphasizing how groups commit to decisions as unified, indivisible entities. Unlike personal commitments, which individuals can rescind at will, joint commitments, formed by plural subjects, are not easily dissolved and typically require collective agreement to be revoked.

Gilbert extended this framework to scientific communities, arguing that here joint commitments primarily concern the shared beliefs of the plural subjects involved, thus reinforcing epistemic cohesion and enabling research programs to advance. This model explains both the stability of scientific consensus and the role of dissenters in driving change. Scientists who deviate from group beliefs — “free riders” — navigate strategic risks, balancing potential gains, career implications, and the influence of competing groups against the costs of nonconformity. In this way, the model captures the tension between conformity and the disruptive potential of individual actors.

In this talk, I argue that, contrary to Gilbert’s account, the joint commitment model is insufficient as a general explanation of scientific change. However, I suggest that it remains useful for analyzing smaller scientific communities, such as research collaborations, if its focus is reframed. Specifically, I challenge the emphasis on shared beliefs in Gilbert’s model and propose an operationalization using social network analysis. Drawing on the early development of the European nuclear fusion research community, I outline a method for making joint commitments within research groups measurable, providing a concrete framework for understanding key dynamics of scientific collaboration.

Malvina Ongaro (Polytechnic University of Milan): Inductive risk as risk. Mitigating the impacts of inductive errors

Wednesday 19 March, 12:00--13:00, Aula 25, Palazzo Nuovo

In the last seventy years, the debate on inductive risk in philosophy of science has grown extensively, with contributions focusing particularly on the implications that inductive risk has for the role of non-epistemic values in science. However, the fact that inductive risk is a risk has mostly been overlooked. In this paper, we develop a framework to understand inductive risk according to recent analyses of the concept of risk: doing so shows that the implications of the existence of inductive risk go beyond the role of values in science. Specifically, we focus on the responsibility of inductive risk mitigation. In light of our framework, we argue that this responsibility lies not only with the scientists, who can try to increase the strength of knowledge in support of their judgements and (possibly) also set responsible evidential thresholds; it also lies with society and policymakers, who should support systems of checks in science and foster an adequate understanding of data and uncertainty to properly interpret scientific results. (The talk is based on joint work with Terje Aven.)

Matteo Michelini (University of Bochum): Can Scientific Communities Profit from Evaluative Diversity?

Wednesday 26 February, 12:00-13:00, Philosophy Library, Meeting Room 1

Science is a highly collaborative endeavour, with scientists frequently interacting, sharing knowledge, and learning from one another. However, even within the same community, researchers often hold different scientific standards and prioritise different values. This raises an important question: should scientists primarily engage with scientists holding similar standards, or should they seek out more diverse communities? More broadly, what kind of epistemic environment fosters the most effective scientific progress—one with uniform evaluative criteria or a more pluralist one? This talk explores these questions through an agent-based model based on the NK framework, commonly used in biology, economics, and philosophy.

The findings reveal that groups with moderate diversity in evaluative criteria tend to be more successful than homogeneous ones. Diverse communities explore a wider range of solutions, increasing the likelihood of finding optimal ones, especially for complex problems. Moreover, while homogeneous groups benefit from limited information exchange, heterogeneous groups thrive with continuous communication, as members gain valuable insights from differing perspectives. I discuss the implications of these results for debates about scientific pluralism and the incentive structure of science. (The talk is based on joint work with Javier Osorio.)

Maciej Tarnowski (University of Warsaw): Belief as an epistemic possibility of knowledge

Tuesday 10 December, 12:00--13:00, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo

In this talk, I will revisit the idea first championed by Wolfgang Lenzen (1979), according to which belief can be defined in knowledge terms as “an epistemic possibility of knowledge”. Though this approach has been in recent years supported e.g. by Robert Stalnaker (2006) and Sven Rosenkranz (2021), it did not receive widespread support among many epistemologists due to strong commitments such equivalence seems to entail, such as upholding the KK thesis or related "strong belief" thesis (according to which believing that p entails believing that one knows p). I will investigate these commitments by analyzing the minimal epistemic modal logic that allows for defining belief along the lines of this thesis. I will demonstrate that such a logic does not lead to strong commitments the thesis is thought to imply, and is useful in dealing with traditional Moorean/anti-expertise epistemic paradoxes and expressing epistemic externalist intuitions in cases of skeptical pressure.

Michal Sikorski (Marche Polytechnic University): A Consensus-based Checklist for Assessing Scientific Objectivity

Wednesday 27 November 2024, 12:00-13:00, Aula 18, Palazzo Nuovo

We will present a newly developed consensus-based checklist for assessing the objectivity of scientific procedures. We begin by discussing why until now a philosophical study of objectivity remained purely theoretical and had a negligible impact on scientific practice. Then we will motivate our project, describing how scientific objectivity relates to other well-understood notions such as reliability and methodological quality, and why it is worth studying separately. Next, we introduce and motivate the conceptualization of objectivity that served as the basis for our checklist: ``a procedure becomes more objective when it is demonstrably more resilient to actions and decisions that have the potential to influence its outcome'' (van Dongen and Sikorski 2021). We then describe the latest development in our project: a consensus-based study using Delphi methodology. In the study, we utilize the expertise of the participating scientists to translate the conceptualization into a practicable checklist for assessing the objectivity of scientific procedures (e.g., experiments) based on the corresponding paper. We will describe the methodology of the study and the features of the developed checklist. Finally, we will explain how the checklist can be used in scientific practice and how it complements the tools currently available to psychologists and other scientists, and present our plans to validate the checklist in future studies. The talk is based on joint work with Noah van Dongen.

Matteo Baggio (University of Turin): Knowledge from falsehoods: afterthoughts and new perspectives

Tuesday 26 November 2024, 12:00-13:00, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo

This paper explores the widely accepted Counter-Closure Principle (CC), which posits that, necessarily, if an agent (S) believes a conclusion (q) solely based on a competent inference from a premise (p), and S knows q, then S must also know p. While the principle seems intuitively uncontroversial, recent critiques have challenged its plausibility, particularly with regard to whether p must meet all the conditions required for knowledge. Focusing on cases where p is false—so-called "knowledge from falsehoods" (KFF)—this paper thoroughly examines the issue. Existing explanations for why KFF cases may still count as knowledge often rely on internalist theories of warrant. However, I argue that a new counterexample undermines these internalist approaches. In response, I suggest adopting an externalist perspective on warrant, as it offers a more compelling explanation for why CC fails.

Jan Sprenger (University of Turin): Conditionals between Logical and Semantic Theorizing

Wednesday 13 November 2024, 12:00-13:00, Palazzo Nuovo, Aula 18

Are semantic theories essentially a theory of how the human mind operates, or do they have a normative component? This talk uses theories of conditionals as a case study for a methodological reflection on this question. Traditionally, conditionals have been studied primarily by logicians and philosophers of language, but currently, they are also investigated by formal epistemologists, computer scientists, linguists and psychologists of reasoning. These groups approach conditionals in different ways, they have different ideas of what counts as data in favor of a specific theory, etc. I will highlight these differences and analyze whether semantic theories can and should give weight to normative considerations about valid hypothetical reasoning.

Jaakko Kuorikoski (University of Helsinki): Abduction without Explanation

Thursday 7 November 2024, 16-18h, Aula di Antica, Palazzo Nuovo, second floor

This paper reviews recent, broadly Bayesian attempts at vindicating inference to the best explanation and critically discusses proposed Bayesian measures of explanatory power and the experimental evidence presented in their favor. The key argument aims to establish that evidential and explanatory are nevertheless distinct and that while especially the simulation-based Bayesian reconstructions of IBE succeed in highlighting interesting and effective inductive methods, they do not utilize specifically explanatory measures. Finally, it is argued that the distinction between explanatory and evidential virtues is not purely a terminological matter, as this has important implications to the proper domain of apparent IBE, as shown by recent arguments for the incoherence of IBE.