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Thursday 23

15:00 - 16:30 — Tomasz Placek "On testimony in scenarios with Wigner and Friend”

16:45 - 18:15 —  Mathias Frisch "Representing and communicating deep uncertainty: The treatment of equilibrium climate sensitivity in AR6”

 

Friday 24

09:30 - 11:00 — Mauro Dorato "The desirability of scientific objectivity"

 11:30 - 13:00 — Aida Roigé "Structural causes of research misconduct in contemporary science"

15:00 - 16:30 — Alfonso García “Modal Modelling”

16:45 - 18:15 — Roman Frigg "Models, Understanding, and Trust"

Abstracts:

M. Dorato "The desirability of scientific objectivity"

In this paper, I discuss three different senses of objectivity, namely 

(i) mind-independent (referred to non-directly observable entities like quarks and Higgs boson)

(ii) intersubjectively valid (referred to scientific hypotheses)

(iii) independent of non-epistemic values (like religious, political, economic values...), 

Finally, I defend the desirability of the value of scientific objectivity ('objective' is itself a normative term) by rejecting arguments against the validity of the fact-value distinction based on cases of inductive risks.



R. Frigg "Models, Understanding, and Trust"
 
Models play an important role in many scientific contexts. Typically, models represent their respective target systems and are crucial in deriving predictions about the target. But models are often taken to be of more than instrumental value in that they are also seen as providing scientists with an understanding of the target. Understanding is epistemically crucial not only because it satisfies scientists’ curiosity, but also because it increases trust in the model. In what way do models do this and what sort of understanding do models provide? This is the question that the paper explores.  



M. Frisch "Representing and communicating deep uncertainty: The treatment of equilibrium climate sensitivity in AR6”

In this talk I argue that the so-called “storyline approach” provides an important tool for properly taking into account tail-risks in climate policy decisions. First, probability distributions are not an appropriate framework for representing uncertainties in climate projections. Second, in the case of qualitatively improbable yet catastrophic risks it is for pragmatic reasons important to supplement any such framework with an explicit representation of high impact scenarios. Third, process-understanding, which is an integral part of storyline approaches, can go some way towards addressing the challenge of delineating which possibilities are serious enough to be considered in policy decisions.


A. García “Modal Modelling”

Several recent accounts of modeling have focused on a presumably modal dimension of scien­tific inquiry. The general account rests on three claims: (1) there are two kinds of models, representational models and models that lack world-linking conditions or relations of similarity to a target (MM); (2) MM provide knowledge about the world and this knowledge is modal, about possibilities; (3) there is a distinction between objective and epistemic possibility, and MM mainly provide knowledge about objective possibilities. In this talk I critically assess these claims and defend that if MM provide modal knowledge, they do so by virtue of being "externally coherent".


T. Placek "On testimony in scenarios with Wigner and Friend"

It is hard to imagine science without a well-functioning system of transmission of justified beliefs: scientists do rely on results, experimental or theoretical,  reported by other scientists. A recently rekindled interest in Wigner's Friend scenarios (Frauchiger and Renner, 2018, Nature Communications, 9(1):3711 and  Brukner, 2018, Entropy, 20) points to a problematic consequence of quantum mechanics: allegedly its inability to secure the transmission of beliefs (testimony) about measurement results. We argue that testimony is not licensed by quantum mechanical formalism; we discuss some recent attempts to save the cogency of testimony in the context of quantum measurements.


A. Roigé "Structural causes of research misconduct in contemporary science”

Research misconduct stands in the way of scientific objectivity, and its prevalence has apparently increased: for instance, retractions have risen sharply in the last two decades at a pace that far outpaces the increase in volume of papers being published, and surveys to scientists indicate that a significant portion of them know some colleague engaging in scientific misconduct. Is this perceived increase in scientific misconduct a product of structural changes in science, and if so, how? In this talk I will introduce and examine a few how-plausibly mechanisms relating systematic factors in scientific organization with questionable research practices, including misconduct.