Congratulations to the 2016 Rotman PhD Graduates

With the conclusion of 2016, the Rotman Institute would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the hard work and achievements of some of our graduate student members. This year a total of seven students successfully defended their doctoral theses. Their names, and the titles of their dissertations are listed below. Top row (left to [...]

2021-12-20T15:07:53-05:00December 21st, 2016|Graduate Students, Rotman News|

Putting Environmental Philosophy to Work: Interview with Justin Donhauser

Justin Donhauser joined the Rotman Institute as postdoctoral fellow this fall. He specializes in socially-relevant philosophy of science — focusing on clarifying how model-based ecological and climate-science methods can aid in political, ethical, and resource management decisions. Justin trained as a PhD fellow of the National Science Foundation endowed Ecosystem Restoration through Interdisciplinary Exchange (ERIE-IGERT) [...]

November Member News & Updates

The 2016 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association took place at the start of November. Over 20 Rotman members took part in the meeting -- presenting papers, chairing sessions, and taking part in the poster forum. A detailed list of member involvement at the 2016 PSA was previously published on our blog. The [...]

2021-06-24T14:20:51-04:00December 1st, 2016|Members|

Video Posting — Catherine Stinson: The Body in ‘Mental Illness’

The theme of this year's library lecture series was The Brain Boom: How Neuroscience is Changing How We Understand Ourselves. Co-sponsored by the London Public Library and the Department of Philosophy at Western University, a series of four public lectures addressing the theme were given at the Landon Branch public library. The inaugural lecture, given [...]

2016-11-29T11:22:12-05:00November 29th, 2016|Brain Boom, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Neuroscience|

Navigating ethical dilemmas in healthcare: Interview with Kyoko Wada

by Cory E. Goldstein and Austin R. Horn Kyoko Wada joined the Rotman Institue this year as a postdoctoral fellow. She is a trained anesthesiologist with an MA in bioethics from Monash University, Australia and a PhD from Western University. She completed a bioethics research fellowship in the Departments of Psychiatry and Anesthesia & Perioperative [...]

Zika: An Epidemic or an Issue of Reproductive Justice?

by Nicole L. Fice, Cory E. Goldstein, and Austin R. Horn The media response to the recent Zika virus outbreak has been sensationalized and, as a result, governmental responses have been largely misplaced. Zika is a virus that has been around for decades, with relatively mild symptoms. However, a recent outbreak in Brazil that coincided [...]

Rotman Institute Philosophical Photography Contest

What would ethical dilemmas look like, if you tried to depict them? How would you attempt to catch the relation between cause and effect on camera? Can the categorical imperative, an Aristotelian ‘tode ti’, or even mathematical intuition itself be photographed? Since the Rotman Institute was founded in 2008, we've collected an array of photos. [...]

2018-03-27T13:49:57-04:00November 17th, 2016|Rotman News|

What did Gödel show with his first incompleteness theorem?

By Philippos Papayannopoulos It's very common to read and hear people talking about Kurt Gödel's famous (first) incompleteness theorem, in popular media, books, discussions, etc. Which is a very good thing I think, given how wonderful and ingenious the ideas and the reasoning behind this theorem are. But even though it's more than almost 85 [...]

2016-11-16T10:03:38-05:00November 16th, 2016|Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics, Popular science|

“A new upgrade of your universe is now available!” – A post about the simulation universe hypothesis, computing systems, and the Isaac Asimov debate.

By Philippos Papayannopoulos This year’s (2016) Isaac Asimov memorial debate was dedicated to the question “Is the Universe a Simulation?”. A recent article in The Guardian (Oct 11, 2016) also was about the exact same question. In this post I discuss this hypothesis, but with an eye on how the question was pursued during the [...]

2016-11-20T01:19:56-05:00November 15th, 2016|Philosophy of Computation, Popular science|

Where physics meets computation: Interview with Michael Cuffaro

Interview by Philippos Papayannopoulos   Michael Cuffaro is a philosopher of science who thinks about philosophical issues in quantum mechanics, about the nature of computing, about the interplay between them, about the notion of explanation in science, about complexity of algorithms, about Solomonoff Induction (I don’t know what this is either, but we’ll soon find [...]

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