Insa Lawler (Pryor)

Herzlichen Glückwunsch! 🥳

Congratulations!

At LSE Philosophy we have two assistant prof vacancies - one for sustainability-related areas, the other for AI-related areas - and for neither of these will you need a $100,000 visa.

Tenure track philosophy job in Canada

Western University’s Department of Philosophy seeks to hire a Asst Professor with an area of specialization in one or more of metaphysics,
epistemology, and logic, broadly construed). The anticipated start date is July 1,
2026

www.uwo.ca/facultyrelat...

Screenshot of account deletion process on academia.edu

Just deleted my academia.edu account after 17 (!) years -- the company's exploitative new terms of use are outrageous, and it's a shame such a blatant commercial sell-out is able to operate under the .edu top-level domain. If you are still on academia.edu, please consider deleting your account too.

A weirdly underappreciated problem about Inference to the Best Explanation is how it can handle uncertain evidence. This new paper, now forthcoming in Philosophy of Science, proposes a strategy for doing that (and argues that Einstein may have used it). #philsky #philsci

doi.org/10.1017/psa....

How annoying!

Joachim Horvath, Steffen Koch & Michael G. Titelbaum (eds.), Methods in Analytic Philosophy: A Primer and Guide - PhilPapers Forthcoming guide with brief introductions on methods in analytic philosophy by experts on the relevant topics. With sections on: formal methods, argumentation, inferential methods, thought experiment...

Check out this open access volume on Methods in Analytic Philosophy!

I contributed a paper on philosophical progress and disagreement with Finnur Dellsén @dellsen.bsky.social and James Norton.
philpapers.org/rec/HORAPA-2

Inclusive inquiry What is the point of inquiry? Some say that the aim of inquiring into some question is to come to know its answer; others, that the aim is to attain justified belief, epistemic improvement, or some o...

New paper now forthcoming in PPR, co-authored with Bob Beddor.

Argues that inquiry, especially in science, needs to be construed as a more social/egalitarian endeavor: the point of inquiring is often to confer epistemic benefits on others. #philsky #philsci

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Catharine Saint-Croix, Greco (2023) _Idealization in Epistemology_ and McKenna (2023) _Non-Ideal Epistemology_ - PhilPapers Epistemology is rife with idealization. And, although concern about particular idealizations—logical omniscience, infinite iterations of common knowledge, and so on—is long-standing, systematic metaep...

Haven't had a chance to read this double review-essay from @catsaintcroix.bsky.social on Greco and @rbnmckenna.bsky.social's books on idealisation in epistemology yet, but it looks really interesting

Can we perceive modal properties? Can we see only how things actually are, or are we also able to see how things could be? Much work in philosophy of perception assumes that our visual perceptual experience is restricted to the actua....

Such a readable and fascinating argument by @jessiemunton.bsky.social of @cambridgephilos.bsky.social To see a visual object is to see how it could be, not just how it is. #openaccess #philsky

Welcome!

Two permanent Lecturer posts at Birkbeck (equivalent of Assistant Professor). Area of specialisation is open but with teaching needs in ethics & phil of AI, ethics and poli phil, ancient, gender, continental, engaged. Closing date August 28th, start in Jan 2026 'a significant advantage' #philsky

A statement of Descartes' fourth rule of motion, which states that a smaller body can never move a stationary larger body, no matter its speed

Tell me you've never cared for a toddler without telling me you've never cared for a toddler. (Descartes' fourth rule governing collisions, from Principles of Philosophy [1644].)

Philosophy of Biology Welcome to Cambridge Core

Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for FREE during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. You can find all of these Elements free to download and read here: cup.org/4kEgivL

2 tenure-track Asst or Assoc professor jobs in History/Anthropology of Science, Technology & Medicine at
Carnegie Mellon U to begin in August 2026. Tech & social change or environmental & social impacts of STM; time period & geographic specialization open.
#HPS #HistSTM #STS
Deadline: Sep 15, 2025

ABSTRACT In the face of today’s statistical crisis of science, it is often recommended that statistical significance tests be replaced with Bayes factor tests. In this article, I examine this recommendation. Bayes factor tests, unlike statistical significance tests, only depend on the probability of the data under H0 and a competitor H1. They are insensitive to a method’s error probabilities such as significance levels, type 1 and type 2 errors, and confidence levels. It might be thought that if a method is insensitive to error probabilities that it escapes the inferential consequences of inflated error rates at the heart of obstacles to replication. I will argue that this is not the case, and that Bayes factor tests can accord strong evidence to a claim H, even though little has been done to rule out H’s flaws. There are two reasons: their insensitivity to biasing selection effects, and the fact that H and its competitor need not exhaust the space of relevant possibilities. I will show how this results in a disconnect between Bayes factor tests and error control protocols that are being called for by replication reforms. To solve the problem, I propose that commonly used Bayes factor tests be supplemented with a post-data severity concept in the frequentist error statistical sense. The question is not whether ‘severity’ can be redefined Bayesianly—of course it can—the question is whether the resulting concept can address today’s concerns behind obstacles to replication. I will also respond to criticisms of the severity reformulation of statistical significance tests, and show how it enables avoiding fallacies of statistical tests.

Just accepted:

‘Severe Testing: Error Statistics versus Bayes Factor Tests’
– Deborah Mayo

Abstract in alt text or read the full paper here (open access): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#philsci #philsky

As usual, an impressively thorough, philosophically cautious, yet thought-provoking talk by Emily Sullivan as keynote and recipient of IACAP’s Herbert Simon Award.

#philsci #philtech

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa Understanding data uncertainty Alisa Bokulich", Wendy S. Parker b," " Department of Philosophy, Boston University, United States › Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, United States ABSTRACT Scientific data without uncertainty estimates are increasingly seen as incomplete. Recent discussions in the philosophy of data, however, have given little attention to the nature of uncertainty estimation. We begin to redress this gap by, first, discussing the concepts and practices of uncertainty estimation in metrology and showing how they can be adapted for scientific data more broadly; and second, advancing five philosophical theses about uncertainty estimates for data: they are substantive adequacy-for-purpose view of uncertainty estimation, addresses a weakness in a recent philosophical account of data, and provides a new perspective on the "safety" versus "precision" debate in metrology. 1. Introduction Uncertainty is an inescapable part of science. Yet while much has been written in recent years on uncertainty in computational modeling contexts (especially related to climate modeling; see, e.g., Parker, 2010; Frigg, Thompson, & Werndl, 2015; Knutti et al., 2019), comparatively little philosophical attention has been given to uncertainty associated with scientific data collected via observation, measurement, and experiment. Important preliminary work on this topic examines the evaluation of systematic uncertainty in measurement (Staley, 2020), changing conceptions of uncertainty in metrology (de Courtenay & Grégis, 2017; Grégis, 2019b), and the representation of uncertainty when measurements are discordant (Grégis, 2019a). Overall, however, when it comes to uncertainty associated with scientific data obtained via observation, measurement, and experiment—what we will call "data uncertainty"-the territory remains largely unexplored from a philosophical point of view. Conception…

⏰ Free access to read & download thru August 20 the final published version of Wendy Parker & my paper "Understanding Data Uncertainty" at this link ⬇️
authors.elsevier.com/c/1lMUI8yuR6...

#philsci #metasci 🧪 ⚒️

Spread the word! The Philosophical Quarterly is celebrating the philosopher philosophers love: 'Themes from David Lewis's Metaphysics' will be our next Special Issue, call for papers here:

academic.oup.com/pq/pages/cal...

@oupphilosophy.bsky.social @standrewsphil.bsky.social

Congratulations!

For one year only, the 8th Chapel Hill Normativity Workshop will (paradoxically) be in Montreal! Keynote by Jane Friedman plus 7 talks selected via open CFA. As usual, accepted papers eligible for special issue of Phil Studies. Submissions due Oct 15th; more info at normativity.web.unc.edu

Researchers Uncover Hidden Ingredients Behind AI Creativity | Quanta Magazine Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture.

A new paper shows that the “creativity” of certain AI may actually be a direct, inevitable consequence of how they are built. Webb Wright reports:
www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Yale Philosophy offers a course on “Formal Philosophical Methods” — a broad introduction to probability, logic, formal semantics, etc.

Instructor Calum McNamara has now made all materials for the course (78 pages) freely available

static1.squarespace.com/static/6255f...

I'm very honoured with the awarding of the 2025 Stevin prize for my research. And I'm particularly pleased that this prize goes to a philosopher, as it recognizes that we not only do blue sky research, but also analyses that can make a difference to the world.
www.nwo.nl/en/prof-dr-i...

Mazviita Chirimuuta wins the 2025 Lakatos Award! The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the 2025 Lakatos Award winner Mazviita Chirimuuta, who receives the award for her book “The Brain Abstracted:…

🏆 We are pleased to announce the 2025 Lakatos Award winner Mazviita Chirimuuta, who receives the award for her book “The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience”

Congratulations! 👏

👉More about the award: www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/b...

Gabriele Contessa, Science Denial: Post-Truth or Post-Trust? - PhilPapers Over the last couple of decades, there has been increasing concern about the alleged rise of various forms of science denial. But what exactly is science denial? Is it really on ...

Excited to share that this is forthcoming as part of the Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Science series! (Preprint downloadable through the link) philpapers.org/rec/CONSDP-2

Dear all,

Helen passed away at 13:21 local time. Helen would not have wanted us to be sad for a long time. All they wanted was to be remembered. They looked forward to being rid of pain and to being at rest. Helen took great comfort in you, their friends and readers.

pt. 1/2

I blogged with some #rstats simulations about the topical question of whether changes in the proportion of p values that fall between 0.01 and 0.05 tells us much about the replication crisis. I conclude 'probably not'. (1/n) freerangestats.info/blog/2025/06...

A Social History of Analytic Philosophy Analytic philosophy is the leading form of philosophy in the English-speaking world. What explains its continued success? Christoph Schuringa argues that its enduring power can only be understood by e...

A Social History of Analytic Philosophy is out today! Available from Verso via the link below, or from your favourite bookseller

www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...