Rotman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy of Physics, Science and Theoretical Physics, Keizo Matsubara was published in Synthese for his article titled Realism, Underdetermination and String Theory Dualities earlier this year. String theory promises to be able to provide us with a working theory of quantum gravity and a unified description of all fundamental forces. [...]
by Wayne Myrvold Rotman Institute Post-doctoral Fellow in Philosophy of Science Kerry McKenzie has published a review of Colin McGinn's book, Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics in Mind. To my mind, the review is of interest not only for what it says about the book in question, but for the larger questions it [...]
by Yann Benétreau-Dupin and Chris Smeenk Contemporary cosmology raises a number of philosophical questions, such as the limits of scientific explanations of the origin of the universe and the status of “dark energy” or the “multiverse.” Philosophers have recently turned to these topics, due to their intrinsic interest and the influx of new ideas [...]
By Wayne Myrvold Monday, September 23. Today, in Stockholm, members of Working Group I of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are meeting to work out, and approve, the group’s contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. Working Group I (one of three such groups) is the group tasked with reporting on the physical [...]
“In a modern world where we can travel the globe in hours, connect with one another from wherever we are, achieve remarkable advances in healthcare and physically explore our universe, it is easy to take science for granted,” said Carl Hoefer, the new Director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy. “But it is essential that [...]
By Martin Vezér Since 2001, the Institute Vienna Circle (IVC), the University of Vienna, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research have held a summer university program focusing on topics in the philosophy of natural and social sciences. This past July, I attended the Vienna International Summer University (VISU)—a program that brought together an international group of professors [...]
By Jessey Wright On June 15th and 16th, 2013 the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario hosted a symposium, the seeds for which were sown at the signing of a research agreement between the Royal Society of Canada and the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities less than a year ago. [...]
By Frédéric-Ismaël Banville During the recent PhilMiLCog conference – Western’s graduate conference in philosophy of mind, language and cognitive science, the university welcomed eight graduate student speakers and three keynote speakers: Prof. Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh), Prof. Jacqueline Sullivan (Western- Philosophy) and Prof. Jody Culham (Western- Brain and Mind Institute). As a member of the organizing [...]
We are beginning to realize that weare more lost than we previously thought. -Harry Martinson, Aniara 13. It is somewhat surprising that two of my favorite books, one being von Wright’s Vetenskapen och förnuftet and the other the Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s Aniara, both have a very negative view of the future of humankind. Aniara [...]
On Friday, April 5th, 2013 Dr. Wendy Parker from Ohio University visited the Rotman Institute. Dr. Parker’s main research interests include models and computer simulation in science (especially climate modeling), science and public policy, and the history of atmospheric science and meteorology. In her Rotman Speaker Series lecture, “Beyond Prediction: The Computer as ‘Inductive Device’ [...]
