Friedrich Pukelsheim
The calculus of proportional representation systems.
Summary: For electing a national or international parliament or for representing various groups in other political bodies, a central step is the translation of vote counts into seat numbers. When votes are aggregated along a political scale to parties, or along a geographical scale to States, the seats allocated should achieve a high degree of proportionality. The apportionment methods at the heart of these systems are in the focus of the present research project. On the empirical side, we will explore such events as the 2009 European Parliament election and others. On the mathematical side, the methods used will be classified and their structural properties further lucidated.
Anja Müller-Wood
Rethinking Reader Reception: Cognitive and Evolutionary Challenges to the Study of Literature
Anja Müller-Wood, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
My project revisits an aspect of literary scholarship which has intermittently received critical attention in the past, but ultimately remains underresearched: the question of how readers contribute to the production of literary meaning. Drawing on the cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology, I investigate familiar literary phenomena – from free indirect discourse (and indirect speech in general), dramatic irony and other forms of information management, to the related issues of narrative (un)reliability and “secrecy” – in order to illuminate their basis in the readers’ cognitive/emotional make-up. Far from leading to the disenchantment of (literary) art, such a perspective may help illuminate some of its secrets: from the nature of narrative and the subtle intricacies of style to the enduring appeal and meaningfulness of literature across cultural boundaries and divides.
Sally Riordan
The kilogram was originally conceived in the midst of the French Revolution as the mass of one litre of icy, pure water. For over two hundred years it has been defined by the mass of a piece of platinum. It will shortly be defined by fixing Planck’s constant. I’ve been looking at the scientific experiments and technological advances that have brought changes to the kilogram, in order to address questions in the foundations of measurement. My time at the Centre is being spent writing a history-and-philosophy of the kilogram.
Hykel Hosni
The goal of this project is to construct formal models of uncertain reasoning which extend the expressive power of classical bayesianism while retaining its unifying foundations. As a central step towards achieving this I seek to provide a suitable characterisation of the bayesian Choice norm, i.e. the basic consistency constraint which idealised agents are normatively required to satisfy when facing suitably defined choice problems. It is expected that distinct classes of choice problems will yield distinct reframings of classical bayesianism, each supporting more general norms of rational belief and decision than classical subjective probability and the maximisation of expected utility.
Visitor of The Choice Group: February - December 2012
Contact details: H.Hosni@lse.ac.uk
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Stephan Guettinger
Background:
Stephan received a PhD in Biochemistry from the ETH Zürich in 2006 and an MSc in Philosophy of Science from the LSE in October 2010. In March 2011, he joined the now closed BIOS centre at LSE as a visiting research fellow. Since January 2012, Stephan is a visiting research fellow at the CPNSS.
Funding:
Stephan’s project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Project details: "From promise to production: the role of functional modules in synthetic biology.“
A goal pursued by many synthetic biologists is to make biology ‘easier to engineer’: new biological systems with specific characteristics should be developed by forward-engineering using defined genetic ‘parts’. The generation of these standardised biological parts (that should behave in a predictable manner in a multitude of combinations and contexts) is key to the success of this engineering approach to biology.
During the next two years, Stephan will study how biological parts are defined and constructed through experimental practices in synthetic biology laboratories. This work will be performed in close collaboration with synthetic biologists and social scientists at the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSynBI) at Imperial and King’s College, London. This analysis will reveal how scientists are trying to make a reductionist approach to biology work and uncover details about knowledge generation in the modern life sciences.
Besides his work on synthetic biology, Stephan is also interested in the philosophy of experimentation. He is particularly interested in the epistemic significance of the different forms of experimental practices that can be found in the life sciences.
Conal Duddy
My project attempts a reconstruction of the formal theory of social choice to accommodate ideas about deliberative democracy. It asks: can deliberation be incorporated into the mathematical structure of social choice theory? What consequences and applications arise from any such reconciliation?
My research is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences with co-funding from the European Commission.
Visitor of The Choice Group until September 2013.
Contact details: c.duddy@lse.ac.uk
David W. Chambers
I am working with ethics as multi-agent choice (game theory). I have developed several Markov repelicator simulations which suggest that communities where choice is in equilibrium flourish, but those with cheating flourish better than where cheating is not possible. It also appears that all communities have some level of cheating, determined in part by those who do not cheat. I am also running several empirical choice studies involving contribution to and use of the common good. Most of my time at CPNSS will be devoted to a book on morality as game theory, especially focusing on how choices are framed.
Visiting: 23 April - 29 June 2012
Roberto Fumagalli
The Neuroscience Case in Favour of Paternalism: a Philosophical Critique
In the recent literature at the interface between economics, psychology and neuroscience, several authors manifest the ambition to evaluate people’s decisions according to a normative perspective. In particular, they aim to identify not just how to achieve a given objective, but also what objectives agents should pursue in specific situations. The idea is that satisfying people’s preferences does not necessarily make them better off and that neuro-psychological findings enable us to help people choose what promotes their well-being. During my visit at the CPNSS, I plan to investigate the normative significance of neuro-psychological research concerning decision making for economic welfare analyses and policy evaluations. In particular, I shall assess some potential uses of neuro-psychological evidence for public health considerations.
Visiting: 13 Febuary - 20 March 2012
Flavia Padovani
(PhD in Philosophy, University of Geneva)
I am a Swiss NSF Research Fellow. While at the CPNSS, I will focus on the problem of measurement (broadly construed) in the epistemology and methodology of the physical science. I am interested in exploring the constitutive role of measurement procedures in the determination of the parameters that appear in physical laws. My aim is to discuss Michael Friedman's proposal of a "relativized a priori", and to suggest a different reading by using the notion of constitutivity along a vertical axis, so as to account for the function of measurement within that approach.
Visiting from February to December 2011, and Summer terms 2012 and 2013.
Contact Details: F.Padovani@lse.ac.uk| Room LAK G.01 (Lakatos Building)
Elena Paduretu
Cross-cultural influence upon evolutions in global economic changes
The main objective of my research project is understanding economic culture in the light of globalization and determinate areas like US, Europe and Islamic world to adopt social, cultural politics to expand international economic exchanges. The practical delimitation of the domain is related to the international economic trade, namely migration, commerce and globalization. I am planning to examine the cultural identity of the international economic trades through an econometric examination which will result the degree of influence and the factors that produce changes as well as what measures can be applied for those that have a negative influence.
Contact Details: LAK G.01
Wendy Parker
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Ohio University
Data Assimilation, Reanalysis & the Construction of Weather and Climate
My project focuses on data assimilation – the process by which information from disparate sources is combined to produce a representation of the state of the atmosphere at a particular (past) time. Today, these sources include not only traditional meteorological instruments but also computer simulation models. The hybrid observation-simulation products of data assimilation are often used in the roles of traditional observational data, and they raise interesting questions for philosophers of science. My project has two main parts. The first part explores the extent to which data assimilation and its products can be reconciled with core concepts in the philosophy of science, including measurement, observing instrument, and data model. The second part evaluates current uses of data assimilation products (in the roles of traditional observational data) from a methodological point of view. Funding for this project is provided by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Contact Details: LAK G.01
Christophe Schinckus
Assistant Professor in Finance at the School of Management, University of Leicester
Epistemology of econophysics
My project will offer an epistemological analysis of an emerging field in economics: econophysics. This project will have two parts:
- The scientific justification (implicitly inspired by the neopositivism) given by econophysicists claiming that their field is more scientific than economics.
- The study what would be the conditions to have a transdisciplinary econophysics.
This kind of project will deal with a lot of themes usually studied in philosophy of science: importation of theoretical concepts from statistical physics into economics, the matter of physical metaphor of economic systems and the creation of a new field of knowledge (interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity) etc.
Visiting academic year 2011/2012 (Fridays only)
Contact Details: LAK G.01