GWU Philosophy Events

These talks are informal presentations of works-in-progress, usually followed by a substantial discussion period.  Interested guests from other departments or institutions are welcome unless otherwise noted, and of course, you are encouraged to bring your lunch.  Unless otherwise noted, talks are held in the Philosophy Department seminar room, Phillips 510.  Sessions officially break up after one hour, although the room will usually be available for those who wish to continue the discussion.

 

2006
Friday, September 22, 11:30: Dr. David DeGrazia, "The Case for Single-Payer National Health Insurance" (held in Romance Languages Conference Room, Phillips Hall 509)
Friday, October 6, 12:00: Dr. Peter Caws (discussing an upcoming lecture, "Reason and Hope: Knowledge, Belief and the Future of Humanity," that he will deliver to the general public)
Friday, October 27, 12:00: Mr. Zed Adams: "Moral Supervenience"
Friday, November 3, 11:30 [new time]: Dr. Jeffrey Brand-Ballard, "Are Judges Morally Bound by the Law?" (held in Romance Languages Conference Room, Phillips Hall 509)

2007
Friday, March 30, 12:00: Dr. John Bickle, Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Cincinnati:

"An Alternative to Intertheoretic and Functional Reduction"

Two accounts of scientific reduction dominated late-20^th century philosophical discussions. The first, which traces back more than four decades, conceives reduction as first and foremost a relationship between scientific theories. One dominant account in this tradition, stemming principally from Ernest Nagel, treats intertheoretic reduction as logical deduction—of the reduced theory from the reducing (although subsequent developments in this tradition advocated weaker relations). Over the past fifteen years, however, a new model of reduction became the orthodox view, at least in the philosophy of cognitive science. This model can be dubbed “functional reduction” because its first step involves characterizing the concept targeted for reduction exhaustively in terms of its causes and effects. (The second stage involves the normal empirical procedures of the natural sciences to find the mechanisms in the world that actually display this set of causes and effects.) This view has been advocated by Joseph Levine, David Chalmers, and most recently, Jaegwon Kim.

It is useful to consider the scientific examples that proponents of these two approaches appeal to in their defense, for they illustrate a general weakness shared by both accounts. Namely, neither account is applicable to the actual methodologies and practices of current reductionistic science. Both general accounts impart significant philosophical assumptions about “what reduction has to be” that are not part of current  reductionistic scientific practice. I’ll illustrate this by describing some recent results from ‘molecular and cellular cognition,’ a decade-old field of current neuroscience that seeks the cellular and molecular bases of cognitive functions. I’ll then present a new account of scientific reductionism, derived directly from a metascientific analysis of the practices of this field of neuroscience—an analysis that I have been developing in collaboration with neurobiologist Alcino Silva, one of the most prominent scientists in this new field. I’ll contrast this new account of reduction with both intertheoretic and functional reduction. One upshot is that on this new account, none of the popular philosophical thought experiments about qualia block their potential reduction to neurobiological processes.

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