Visiting Speaker Series

The Distinguished Speaker Series invites distinguished scholars to present their work in the history and philosophy of science. The Allan Franklin New Ideas Speaker Series invites scholars to present their new and exciting work in the history and philosophy of science. It is named in honor of Allan Franklin, for his decades of unparalleled contributions to the history and philosophy of science. Dr. Franklin is best known for his work on the methods of physics.

Upcoming Schedule for AY 24/25:

• Friday, March 14, 1:30pm MDT: New Ideas Speaker, Siska De Baerdemaeker (Stockholm University), "Dark Matter Realism Reconsidered" ONLINE ONLY (link: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/98952617078)
  • Abstract: Several authors have recently argued against realism about dark matter due to it being empirically unconfirmed or too conceptually thin. In response, Vaynberg (2024) has convincingly argued in favor of dark matter realism based on Bullet Cluster observations. However, anti-realist concerns about conceptual thinness or future empirical detection may linger. I argue that these can be diffused by distinguishing between two different dark matter concepts, which I call astrophysical dark matter and fundamental dark matter. I submit that anti-realist concerns about future dark matter detection conflate empirical confirmation for fundamental dark matter with empirical confirmation for astrophysical dark matter. I further argue that the resulting realist commitment to astrophysical dark matter is more substantive than dark matter anti-realists recognize: it organizes a structured space of possibilities for fundamental dark matter, and it guides further research.
• Thursday, April 10, 3:30pm, MUEN E113: Distinguished Speaker: Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Edinburgh), "Structuralism and Structural Representation"
  • Abstract: Availability of the notion that the brain or mind represents the world by instantiating structures similar to (i.e. homomorphic with) relations amongst external items is crucial to the idea than an AI could represent the world in the same way that a human being does. This is because structural representation is possible using only the formal, symbolic systems of a computer (i.e. without consciousness or any qualitative or embodied engagement with things). This paper looks at the historical emergence of this notion with the structuralist movement in science, mathematics and philosophy seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Cassirer’s philosophy is a crystallisation of some these tendencies, and Heidegger’s disagreement with Cassirer over the role of intuition in Kant’s epistemology forms the basis for a Heideggerian critique of AI different from the generalised anti-representationalism of Dreyfus and other proponents of embodied cognition.