During this past month, Rotman members have organised, and taken part in many conferences. Those that included participation by more than one member are listed chronologically below:

  • The Rotman Institute was a co-sponsor of the fifteenth annual Philosophy of Logic, Math and Physics (LMP) graduate student conference, held on June 9-10, here at Western University. This year’s keynote speaker was James Ladyman (University of Bristol), and the winner of the 2016 Clifton Memorial book prize was Neil Dewar (Oxford University). Conference organizers included Adam Koberinski (chair), Melissa Jacquart, Nathan Moore, Tom De Saegher, Philippos Papagiannopoulos, Marie Gueguen, Yousuf Hasan, and Peter Verveniotis (from Western’s Department of Philosophy). Congratulations to all of the organisers on a wonderful conference!
  • Information-Theoretic Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, the 20th annual UWO philosophy of physics conference, was held in conjunction with LMP, on June 11-12. The workshop was inspired by Jeffrey Bub’s recently published book Bananaworld: Quantum Mechanics for Primates (Oxford University Press); it brought together diverse views on issues raised by and related to Professor Bub’s work on developing an information-theoretic interpretation of quantum theory. Conference organizers included Markus Müller, Lucas Dunlap, Michael Cuffaro, and Wayne Myrvold (from Western’s Department of Philosophy).
  • The International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) held the FAB 2016 World Congress in Edinburgh on June 13-15. Two Rotman members, and one alumna gave talks at the conference:

    Nicole Fice Health Care Inequalities Faced by Indigenous Canadians.

    Carolyn McLeod Conscientious refusals: a feminist fiduciary analysis.

    Angel Petropanagos The care conundrum: a personal support worker’s reflections on caring for persons with dementia and Frozen hope: understanding the role of hope in fertility preservation.

  • Three Rotman members, and two alumni, participated in the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) 2016 Conference, held June 17-19 in Glassboro, New Jersey.

    Spencer Hey and James Overton Disease and Diagnosis in Psychiatry and Medicine Explanatory Agnosticism In Translational Medicine

    Jamie Shaw Grappling with History The Search For Kuhn-loss: A New Strategy For HPS

    Jessey Wright Meta-analyses In Neuroimaging: Integrating Data To Achieve Construct Stability

    Derek Oswick Ensuring Objective Validity: Functional Triangulation In Neuroscience And The Effects Of Social Biases

  • HOPOS 2016, the eleventh biennial meeting of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, was held in Minneapolis on June 22-25. It included talks from seven members of the Rotman Institute: Justin Bzovy, Michael Cuffaro, Craig Fox, Yousuf Hasan, Benjamin Hill, Henrik Lagerlund, and Jamie Shaw. (Further details about their talks can be found here.)

In addition to these conferences, we have announcements of publications and other activities of individual Rotman members, listed alphabetically below.

  • Jacqueline Sullivan was a keynote speaker at the Causality and the Mind-Brain Sciences conference held on June 27-29 at Aarhus University in Denmark. She delivered a talk titled “Experimentation and Explanation in the Mind-Brain Sciences“.

Pictured above (clockwise): Lion statue in Vadstena, Sweden taken by Samantha Brennan, reception at the LMP conference, ITIQM swag, Rotman members at HOPOS 2016 (left to right: Justin Bzovy, Jamie Shaw, Henrik Lagerlund, Benjamin Hill) , Stathis Psillos at EENPS 2016, Jackie Sullivan at CitS.