Registration Open for 2017 BSPS Conference in Edinburgh

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Registration is now open for the BSPS conference in Edinburgh:

Join the BSPS
 
2017 Conference Registration

The Early Bird (discounted) registration deadline is 2 June 2017, and the final registration deadline is 30 June 2017. More information is available on the Conference Webpage. We look forward to seeing you there.

2016-2017 Upcoming Lectures

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We are pleased to announce the new lecture series for 2016-2017 associated with the Ordinary Meetings of the BSPS. Lectures take place from 5:15-6:45pm in Room 2.06 of the Lakatos Building at LSE in central London. Each lecture is preceded by tea at 5pm. This year’s speakers are:

10 October 2016, Wendy Parker
“Scientific Modelling and Limits to the Value-Free Ideal”
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21 November 2016, Luke Fenton-Glynn
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16 January 2017, Marta Halina
“The role of values in animal cognition research”
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13 March 2017, Karim Thébault
“Cosmic Singularity Resolution via Quantum Evolution”
More Information >>

12 June 2017, Heather Dyke
“Experience of Passage in a Static World”
More Information >>

We hope to see you there!

Cardiff Conference Registration

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Conference registration is available for the 2016 BSPS annual conference, which will take place at Cardiff University. Members of the BSPS are invited to register and/or purchase inexpensive accommodation for the conference at the host university website.

BSPS doctoral scholarship open for applications

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The British Society for the Philosophy of Science is offering a scholarship for doctoral work in the philosophy of science at a UK university, subject to a candidate of sufficient merit presenting themselves. The competition is open to both UK/EU and international students.

More About This Scholarship

In order to be considered, applications must be received by the deadline of 7 March 2016.

Talk Cancellation

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Unfortunately Liz Irvine’s talk, scheduled for Monday 18 January, has had to be cancelled.

2015 Popper Prize Winner: Matthew H. Slater

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The decision of the Co-Editors of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science is that the Sir Karl Popper Prize for 2015 should be awarded to Matthew H. Slater for his article ‘Natural Kindness’, Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 66 (2015), 375–411. (Journal Article / PhilSci-Archive Preprint).

Dr. Matthew H. Slater How we understand natural kind phenomena is one of the central issues in the philosophy of science. It has been brought into particular focus within the so-called special sciences where traditional accounts of natural kinds typically run aground. Boyd’s ‘homeostatic property cluster’ approach is widely regarded as having broad applicability but in this paper, which casts new light on this issue, Slater argues that we should drop this approach’s reliance on causal homeostatic mechanisms and instead focus on the underlying cohesiveness in general that such mechanisms offer. This yields a more flexible account that, Slater suggests, can accommodate the diversity of kinds actually found in the world.

Here he articulates and defends his ‘stable property cluster’ account and, in particular, notes that under this conception, kinds are domain- and context- relative. This introduces, as he puts it, a ‘hefty dose’ of pragmatism but, Slater insists, his approach can still accommodate core realist intuitions. Nevertheless, ‘natural kindness’ should be thought of as a status conferred on pluralities of things, albeit one that is objective in a certain sense.

This is a work that builds on but goes beyond extant conceptions of natural kinds and opens up potentially fruitful new avenues of philosophical exploration, while also remaining grounded in scientific practice. Hence, we feel, Slater is a well-deserved winner of this year’s Popper Prize in the philosophy of science.

Steven French and Michela Massimi
Co-Editors-in-Chief, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

Introducing the 2015 Ordinary Meeting Lectures

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The BSPS is pleased to announce the 2015 lecture series associated with our Ordinary Meetings. Lectures occur on Monday Evenings at 5:15pm in the Lakatos Building at LSE room 2.06, and are preceded by a welcome tea at 4:45pm in LSE Common Room G.01.

Jonathan Birch (LSE)

Jonathan Birch

Monday, 12 October 2015

“Kin selection, group selection and cultural change” Find out more…

 

Eran Tal (Cambridge)

Eran Tal

Monday, 23 November 2015

“The Shifting Economies of Measurement Uncertainty” Find out more…

 

Elizabeth Irvine (Cardiff)

Liz Irvine

Monday, 18 January 2016

“Introspection: Decisive Data or Muddled Measurement?” Find out more…

 

Anna Mahtani (LSE)

Anna Mahtani

Monday, 14 March 2016

“Knowledge and the Sure Thing Principle” Find out more…

 

James Ladyman (Bristol)

James Ladyman

Monday, 16 May 2016

“The Hole Argument and Homotopy Type Theory” Find out more…

Reports from the BSPS 2015 Annual Conference in Manchester

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It was a successful and memorable annual meeting for the BSPS this year in Manchester. Here is a snapshot of what people were saying about it on Twitter.