J. Brian Pitts (Cambridge) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (6 February, 2013) titled "How Almost Everything in Space-time Theory Is Illuminated by Simple Particle Physics: The Neglected Case of Massive Scalar Gravity". Abstract: Both particle physics from the 1920s-30s and the 1890s Seeliger-Neumann modification of Newtonian gravity suggest considering a “mass term,” an additional algebraic term in the gravitational potential. The “graviton mass” gives gravity a finite range. The smooth...

Luc Bovens (LSE) gives a talk at the 6th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Conference on "Models and Decisions" (10-12 April, 2013) titled "Evaluating Risky Prospects: The Distribution View". Abstract: Policy Analysts need to rank policies with risky outcomes. Such policies can be thought off as prospects. A prospect is a matrix of utilities. On the rows we list the people who are affected by the policy. In the columns we list alternative states of the world and specify a probability distribution over...

Daniel Wohlfarth (Bonn) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (30 January, 2013) titled "On the Conception of Fundamentality of Time-Asymmetries in Physics". Abstract: The goal of my talk is to argue for two connected proposals: Firstly: I shall show that a new conceptual understanding of the term ‘fundamentality’ - in the context of time-asymmetries - is applicable to cosmology and in fact shows that classical and semi-classical cosmology should be understood as time-asymmetric theories. ...

Luigi Scorzato (Roskilde) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (16 January, 2013) titled "Simplicity and Measurability in Science". Abstract: Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. Moreover, according to a common...

Holger Andreas (MCMP/LMU) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Descriptivism about Theoretical Concepts Implies Ramsification or (Poincarean) Conventionalism".

Hannes Leitgeb (LMU/MCMP) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Theoretical Terms and Induction".

C. Ulises Moulines (LMU) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Causality and Theoretical Terms in Physics".

Xavier de Donato (USC) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Theoretical Terms, Ideal Objects and Zalta's Abstract Objects Theory".

Stathis Psillos (Athens) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Causal-descriptivism Revisited".

Michele Ginammi (Pisa) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Avoiding Reification".

Jeffrey Ketland (Oxford) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Leibniz Equivalence".

Demetra Christopoulou (Patras) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Implicitly defining mathematical terms".

Gauvain Leconte (Paris) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Definition, elimination and introduction of theoretical terms".

John Worrall (LSE) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Theoretical Terms, Ramsey Sentences and Structural Realism".

Charlotte Werndl (LSE) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "Typicality in Statistical Physics and Dynamical Systems Theory".

Georg Schiemer (LMU/MCMP) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "The epsilon-reconstruction of theories and scientific structuralism".

Sebastian Lutz (LMU/MCMP) gives a talk at the conference on "The Analysis of Theoretical Terms" (3-5 April, 2013) titled "The Criteria for the Empirical Significance of Terms".

Julian Nida-Rümelin (LMU) gives a talk at the 6th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Conference on "Models and Decisions" (10-12 April, 2013) titled "Cooperation and (structural) Rationality". Abstract:Cooperation remains a challenge for the theory of rationality, rational agents should not cooperate in one shot prisoner's dilemmas. But they do, it seems. There is a reason why mainstream rational choice theory is at odds with cooperative agency: rational action is thought to be consequentialist, but this...

Michael Strevens (NYU) gives a talk at the 6th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Conference on "Models and Decisions" (10-12 April, 2013) titled "Idealization, Prediction, Difference-Making". Abstract: Every model leaves out or distorts some factors that are causally connected to its target phenomena – the phenomena that it seeks to predict or explain. If we want to make predictions, and we want to base decisions on those predictions, what is it safe to omit or to simplify, and what ought a causal model...

Itzhak Gilboa (HEC) gives a talk at the 6th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Conference on "Models and Decisions" (10-12 April, 2013) titled "Rationality and the Bayesian Paradigm". Abstract: It is claimed that rationality does not imply Bayesianism. We first define what is meant by the two terms, so that the statement is not tautologically false. Two notions of rationality are discussed, and related to two main approaches to statistical inference. It is followed by a brief survey of the arguments...

Omri Tal (CPNSS/LSE) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (17 April, 2013) titled "From Shannon's Axiomatic Approach to a New Sense of Biological Information". Abstract: Shannon famously remarked that a single concept of information could not satisfactorily account for the numerous possible applications of the general field of communication theory. Recent interest in assessing the ‘population signal’ from genetic samples has mainly focused on empirical results. I employ some basic principles...

Eran Tal (Bielefeld) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (12 June, 2013) titled "A Model-Based Epistemology of Measurement". Abstract: The epistemology of measurement is an interdisciplinary area of research concerned with the conditions under which measurement and standardization methods produce knowledge, the nature, scope, and limits of this knowledge and the sources of its reliability. A primary goal of such studies is to better understand the ways in which theoretical and statistical...

Paul Teller (UC Davis) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (18 April, 2013) titled "Separating Truth from Its Idealization". Abstract: Science never succeeds in providing representations that are both perfectly precise and completely accurate. Instead science constructs models that are always in some ways inexact – imprecise, not perfectly accurate, or both. If this goes for the results of science, how much more should we expect it to hold for human knowledge generally! I explore this...

Claudia Tebaldi (Climate Central & NCAR) gives a talk at the 6th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Conference on "Models and Decisions" (10-12 April, 2013) titled "Making sense of multiple climate models' projections". Abstract: In the last decade or so the climate change research community has adopted multi-model ensemble projections as the standard paradigm for the characterization of future climate changes. Why multiple models, and how we reconcile and synthesize -- or fail to -- their different...