We'd like to begin this month's post by congratulating Marie Gueguen (supervised by Chris Smeenk) who successfully defended her doctoral thesis, "On Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: Surplus Structure and Artifacts in Scientific Theories”, on July 23. This September Marie will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University [...]
We'd like to begin this bi-monthly post with news of an exciting addition to the Institute: please join us in welcoming Francesca Vidotto, chosen for the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Foundations of Physics, a joint position between philosophy and applied mathematics. Francesca's recent research has focused in part on clarifying the phenomenology of [...]
The Rotman Institute of Philosophy is currently inviting graduate students to apply for either resident or non-resident membership. The Institute's mission is to catalyze and lead the production of interdisciplinary research by uniting philosophers with scientists, policy makers and the general public. Our open-concept, collaborative work space is housed in the Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, along with [...]
We're very pleased to make the official announcement that Anthony Skelton will be serving as Acting Director of the Institute (effective July 1, 2019) during the next academic year. Anthony previously served as Associate Director of the Institute from 2014-18, and as a member of the steering committee during that time. Please join us in [...]
The Institute hosted three visitors in March: Stathis Psillos, Anjan Chakravartty, and Lisa Feldman Barrett. During his stay, Stathis Psillos taught a graduate seminar titled, "What is a Law of Nature?". He also gave commentary during a Rotman Dialogue with Anjan Chakravartty, based on his book, "Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology”. Chakravartty [...]
It's been another year, and we've had another round of fantastic entries to our annual Philosophical Photography Contest. As in years past, people were invited to submit photos that managed to capture an abstract philosophical concept in a creative way. Once again, our judges had a very difficult time choosing a winner. Photos were judged [...]
During the first week of February, the Institute hosted Erik Angner, who delivered the final lecture of the library series on well-being, in addition to a second talk on campus. Science journalist Kayt Sukel also joined us during that week, and hosted a workshop on science writing for a general audience. Kayt also was the [...]
This month the Institute's annual public lecture series, prepared in partnership with the London Public Library and Western's department of philosophy, began. This year's series, Happiness and Well-Being: Philosophical Perspectives, has been exceptionally successful. Talks by Samantha Brennan, Anthony Skelton, and Rachel Margolis all took place in January. The final talk of the series, by [...]
The purpose of this competition is to promote new work in the emerging interdisciplinary field of philosophy of cosmology, in particular by encouraging scholars at all career stages to consider the central questions in this area. We solicit papers on any topic concerning the philosophy of cosmology. We are particularly (but not exclusively) interested [...]
Rotman members finished off 2018 with a busy December. One exciting piece of news came from Adrian Owen, who has been named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) as part of the 2019 New Year’s Honours list recognising “the achievements of a wide range of extraordinary people” across the [...]
