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Past Seminars 2024

Wednesday 8 May

Beyond Dichotomies: Embracing an Integrated Approach to Social Relationships
Lucia Neco (Philosophy, University of Western Australia))

If there is any hope to build a unified account of sociality that is able to describe the fundamental components of social systems—whether involving humans, non-human entities, or a combination thereof, as suggested by recent work on multispecies interactions—we need a clear concept of social relationships. For many social scientists and philosophers, social relationships are essentially mind-dependent, subjective, and restricted to human beings. They are part of a realm that is not relevantly dependent on or constrained by physical or biological properties; they are not part of the “fabric of the world.” As a consequence, they cannot be compared to the interactions of “objectively defined individuals”, such as animals, that are described as inflexible, programmed, and completely constrained by these properties. In this paper, I challenge this false dichotomy that contrasts subjectivity and objectivity, humans and nonhuman entities, and the corresponding sciences that study them—namely, the social sciences and natural sciences. I shall defend the claims that (a) social relationships are essentially constituted by (interdependent) objective and subjective components and (b) that they are not restricted to human beings. My approach avoids extreme positions by recognizing that social relationships are both facilitated and constrained by biological properties, subject to evolutionary pressures. However, they cannot be reduced to these properties as they require an active individual, an agent, who is able not only to interact but to track and respond flexibly to their interactions. By embracing an interdisciplinary and nonreductive approach to social relationships, we pave the way for a unified account of sociality that has the potential to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of social behavior.

Lucia is a philosopher and biologist fascinated by the philosophical underpinnings of the biological, cognitive, and social sciences, especially in the realms of social behavior and culture. She is currently the Project Coordinator and a Research Associate for the "Keeping Kinship in Mind" Project, coordinated by Prof. Rob Wilson at the University of Western Australia. Additionally, she actively contributes to the Philosophical Engagement in Public Life (PEiPL) network and engages in initiatives related to Philosophy for Children (p4c) in Perth, Australia.

Wednesday 1 May

After Haraway: Re-examining Feminism & Primatology in 1970s USA

Samara Greenwood (HPS, University of Melbourne)
A longstanding concern for philosophers, historians and sociologists of science is to assess the ways in which broad contextual changes, such as the rise of social and political movements, come to impact science. One well-known study is Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions (1989), which in part examined interactions between feminism and primatology in 20th Century USA . One of Haraway’s key claims was that second wave feminism played a pivotal role in destabilising established narratives around female primates and gender within the discipline. However, Haraway’s explicit aim was not to provide a disinterested or objective account of events but rather to playfully blend multiple genre’s, including science fiction, cultural studies, and political activism to further challenge conventional Western accounts of primates, science, and gender.

In re-examining this case, my purpose and approach differ. My aim is to more systematically assess the impact of second wave feminism on both the practices and products of primate science. I specifically focus on the first phase of engagement, spanning 1970 to 1975. In analysing this initial phase, I first outline primatology’s ‘research repertoire’ before the influence of feminism. I then examine interventions produced by four central feminist-scientists, reviewing the motivation, production, and reception of their work. I also demonstrate how, over time, the outcomes of their interventions lost connection to their feminist roots as they became normalised into the revised repertoire of the discipline. From this analysis, I make two key claims. First, I argue that, despite being primarily considered a social and political movement, second wave feminism’s intellectual, epistemic, and cognitive dimensions must be fully appreciated to understand its impact on primatology. Second, I contend that, contrary to expectation, there is strong empirical support for Haraway’s most controversial claim - that second wave feminism impacted primate science in more profound ways than even its central actors have claimed.

Samara Greenwood is a PhD Candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. Samara’s thesis explores the impact of changing social contexts on the practices and products of science, drawing on a range of historical case studies. Samara also co-hosts The HPS Podcast where she interviews leading scholars from around the world.

Wednesday 25 April

Trust, explanation and AI
Samuel Baron (Philosophy, University of Melbourne)

The use of AI systems for decision-making is widespread. Many of these systems are opaque: no one understands how they work. This has led to a call for explainable AI. One of the reasons cited in favour of explainability is trust: explainability is thought to be necessary for trust in AI. I argue against this claim: for a range of different types of trust, either explanation is not necessary or, if it is, the type of trust that calls for explainability is not appropriate for AI.

Sam Baron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. His research lies within metaphysics and philosophy of science. He has particular interests in the metaphysics of quantum gravity, in explanation within mathematics and in explanainability in artificial intelligence. He has held positions at the University of Sydney (2013-2014), the University of Western Australia (2014-2019) and the Australian Catholic University (2020-2023). He is the recipient of two large grants from the Australian Research Council to study the nature of time in philosophy and physics, and currently holds a grant with the Icelandic Research Fund to study the nature of philosophical progress (with Finnur Dellsen, Insa Lawler and James Norton). He is an executive member of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and a member of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney.

Wednesday 17 April

Using Large Language Models to identify genetic essentialist biases

Ritsaart Reimann, (Macquarie University & University of Sydney)

Philosophers, Social Scientists and Psychologists have converged on the idea that genetic information is interpreted and communicated through a particular conceptual lens. When traits are thought to be caused by genes, people tend to succumb to essentialist and deterministic thinking, which does not occur when traits are thought to be caused by environmental factors like lifestyle and diet. Using corpus analysis and machine learning classification we investigated whether Australian print media outlets were communicating about genetics in an essentialist and deterministic way. Here, I present some preliminary findings from our study.

Ritsaart is currently completing his Doctorate at Macquarie University. He’s primarily interested the epistemic dynamics and implications of digital information spaces, with an emphasis on the downstream consequences of misplaced trust.

Wednesday 10 April

Indigenous Astronomy as Complementary Science

Gerhard Wiesenfeldt (HPS, University of Melbourne)

In recent years, indigenous natural knowledge has been studied by a fair amount of academic research in various disciplines both within science and outside. While indigenous knowledge as an object of academic research seems to be well established, the status of indigenous knowledge within academia is less clear. Is it supposed to be treated as a different kind of knowledge system with comparable validity to scientific knowledge, possibly even to the point that research expands on that knowledge? Or should it remain purely an object of study, research should thus be confined to reconstructing and interpreting indigenous ways of knowing? Or should the status of indigenous knowledge be different?

The presentation will look at these questions and discuss whether it might be useful to use Hasok Chang’s notion of ‘complementary science’ to understand the role of indigenous knowledge in scientific research. The presentation will focus on astronomical knowledge, I will argue that there are two reasons why astronomy is particularly suited to explore the relation between indigenous knowledge and modern science. One reason is that astronomy is exceptional among the sciences with never having received a fundamental epistemic rupture in its practice, the other lies in the well established notion of cultural astronomy, which can serve both as a stepping stone and as a stumbling block when trying to understand indigenous astronomy.

Wednesday 27 March

How an agential account of biological individuality can come apart from concepts of the organism

Rebecca Mann (HPS, University of Sydney)

The central aim of this paper is to connect the problem of biological individuality with the increasing interest in minimal accounts of agency This paper develops two main claims.

(1) We should have an agential account of biological individuality in addition to an evolutionary and organismal one.

(2) This account of agential individuality comes apart from concepts of the organism (and evolutionary individual), as motivated by the case of eusocial insects, specifically looking at the European Honey bee Apis mellifera.

Rebecca Mann is a PhD Candidate in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at The University of Sydney. Rebecca’s thesis explores the intricacies of the concept of biological individuality and its use across disciplines, including biology, philosophy of biology, and metaphysics. Rebecca also has a Bachelor of Genetics with Honours from the Australian National University and a Diploma of Arts (Philosophy) from The University of Sydney. Rebecca has a keen interest in odd biological entities, with a particular fascination for social insects like the honey bee.

Wednesday 20 March

VY-Bayes: A robust Bayesian approach to statistical hypothesis testing

Geoffrey Robinson (CSIRO, retired)

I believe that the foundations of statistical inference have been in what Kuhn (1970) would call a "crisis" for approximately 100 years. I believe that current approaches to statistical hypothesis testing are unsatisfactory in most situations, even the most mundane. My suggested way forward is first to argue that Bayes factors are not a reliable measure of strength of evidence, particularly when we have little prior information. Instead, we should use what I call "VY-Bayes factors". These can be regarded as an answer to the question "What is the expected strength of evidence contributed by the current data in the context of other likely data?" I consider that this new method of assessing strength of evidence is better than the methods advocated by the classical school of inference, is better than relying on interval estimation, and would be useful as a standard method for assessing what has been called "statistical significance" (although this term is becoming unfashionable). I have only recently become confident that I know where I am going.

Two situations will be discussed in detail. The first is where a single random variable with unit variance is observed and we wish to test whether the population mean might be zero. The second is a large longitudinal study of the effects of hormone replacement therapy where we are interested in testing whether hormone replacement therapy might increase the rate of coronary heart disease.

Wednesday 13 March

The Two Truths: "Harmonizing" Catholicism and Science

Sarah Walsh (History, University of Melbourne)

This paper examines the interconnections and relationship between Catholicism and eugenics in early-twentieth-century Chile. Specifically, it demonstrates that the popularity of eugenic science was not diminished by the influence of Catholicism there. In fact, both eugenics and Catholicism worked together to construct the concept of a unique Chilean race, la raza chilena. It will argue that a major factor that facilitated this conceptual overlap was a generalized belief among historical actors that male and female gender roles were biologically determined and therefore essential to a properly functioning society.

Dr Sarah Walsh is Lecturer in History in the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She received her PhD in Latin American history from the University of Maryland, College Park. She specializes in the history of the human sciences in Latin America with an emphasis on race/ethnicity and gender. Dr Walsh has held positions at the University of Sydney, the Universidade de Lisboa, and Washington State University and her book The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.

Wednesday 6 March

Robert Lee and his Undisciplined Medical Self: Life Writing and Technologies of Self in the Early Victorian Medical Profession

James Bradley (HPS, University of Melbourne)

Robert Lee, anatomical discoverer and early obstetrician, was a divisive figure who, for much of his professional life, mismanaged his reputation. This article explores the connections between Lee’s life, one of his diaries and the subject-making and ethical uses of life writing. Lee used the diary to record his reading of the lives of fellow professionals, copying out passages from biographies, memoirs and obituaries, which he augmented with personal knowledge. Thus, as well as developing a critique of the medical profession’s failure to accommodate research and consultation, life writing allowed him to make sense of his own professional suffering by describing the struggles of others. But reading biographies combined with writing a diary laid bare a series of character flaws. Despite the moral self-auditing that was fundamental to the diary’s purpose, an unruly rather than a disciplined professional subject emerged, illustrating the limitations of his diary as a ‘technology of self’.

James is a senior lecturer in the history of medicine at the University of Melbourne. He started his career at the Wellcome Unit, University of Glasgow, but for the last two decades has been teaching and researching in Australia. Recent publications have included work on Darwin, ECT, and pedagogy. He is currently writing a biography of Charles Bell, while also musing about the nature of identity and its relationship to the self.

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