K. Gediz Akdeniz
During my recent stay in the CPNSS from 4-25 July 2008 I presented a talk titled "A Simulation Theory: The Role of Complexity in Cyborg Science". I communicated with Centre people on my recent works, especially on my simulation theory. As usual on my visits to the CPNSS, I attended the current activities of LSE and the Centre and I benefited from the richness of the LSE Library.
Publications 2008-09
1) Akdeniz K.G.; "A Simulation Theory Critique On The Fate of Schopenhauer of Cyborg" (In Turkish), to be published in Festschriftin Honor of Philosopher Şafak URAL, Istanbul (2009).
2) Gonul T. and Akdeniz K.G.; " Düzenden Kaosa ZUHUR" (From Order to Chaos, EMERGENCE), Chaos Publications (in Turkish), November-2008
Lectures and Invited Talks
1) Akdeniz K.G.; "History of Modern Physics" Lectures in Turkish were given in Philosophy Department of Istanbul University, Spring Term 2008.
2) Akdeniz K.G.; "The New Project of Western Knowledge: Cyborg Science" (Invited talk in Turkish), Sakarya University Sociology Club, Sakarya, Turkey, 14 April 2008.
3) Akdeniz K.G.; "A Simulation Theory: The Role of Complexity in Cyborg Science"The London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre fort he Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences, 1 London-UK 4-25 July 2008.
4) Akdeniz K.G.; "A Simulation Theory Critique on the Behavior of Cyborg" (Invited talk),Turkish Disorder Systems Working Group "VIII International Disorder Systems Theory and Its Applications" Symposium 1-9 September 2008, Karaburun, İzmir, Turkey. (Also Scientific Committee member)
5) Akdeniz K.G.; "Quantum Awareness" (Invited talk in Turkish), Turkish National Disorder systems Working Group Symposium, 20-27 September 2008, Bodrum, Turkey. (Also Scientific Committee member)
6) Akdeniz K.G.; "Chaos Theory and Middle East" (Invited talk in Turkish), Karakedi Young Centre, Istanbul, Turkey, 07 February 2009.
7) Akdeniz K.G.; "Emergence and Simulacra" (Invited talk in Turkish), Engineering Chamber, Istanbul, Turkey. 13 February 2009.
8) Akdeniz K.G.; "Post-Physicists: Emergence in Cyborg Science", (Invited talk in Turkish), Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, Turkey, 6 March 2009.
9) Akdeniz K.G.; "On Unpredictable behaviours of Cyborg", International IUGEN Conference, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey 8 March 2009.
TV Interviews
"On CERN LHC Experiment" ARTV, Ankara, Turkey. 12 September 2008 (Live. For video: www.gedizakdeniz.com|).
"On Rector Elections In Turkish Universities" Hayat TV, Istanbul, Turkey. 26 January 2009 (Live. For video; www.gedizakdeniz.com|).
"On CERN LHC Experiments" TV 8, Istanbul, Turkey. 08 December 2008 (Live; For video; www.gedizakdeniz.com|)
Franz Dietrich
While coming from a mathematical background, Franz Dietrich has interdisciplinary research interests that lie in the overlap of theoretical economics, philosophy and mathematics. He primarily works on various aspects of decision theory, including collective decision theory (especially judgment aggregation) and individual decision theory (especially the change of someone's beliefs and preferences). He also works on welfare economics and on mathematical models of terrorism prevention.
Publications 2008-09 and forthcoming publications
1) "The possibility of judgment aggregation on agendas with subjunctive implications", Journal of Economic Theory, forthcoming
2) "The aggregation of propositional attitudes: towards a general theory" (with C. List), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, forthcoming
3) "The premises of Condorcet's jury theorem are not simultaneously justified", Episteme – a Journal of Social Epistemology 5(1): 56-73, 2008
4) "A liberal paradox for judgment aggregation" (with C. List), Social Choice and Welfare 31(1): 59-78, 2008
5) "Judgment aggregation without full rationality" (with C. List), Social Choice and Welfare 31(1): 15-39, 2008
6) "Judgment aggregation under constraints" (with C. List), in Economics, Rational Choice and Normative Philosophy, T. Boylan and R. Gekker (eds.), London (Routledge), 2008
Selected Talks
Feb '09 "How a better understanding alone can change preferences", atLSE-Groningen Workshop: Models of Value and Opinion, London School of Economics, UK
Feb '09 "Change in preference and motivation",at the Philosophy Department of Boðaziçi University, Istanbul
Jan '09 "Non-Informational preference change", atChoice Group Seminar, London School of Economics, UK
Dec '08 "Propositional attitude aggregation: towards a unified theory",at The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective (ESF / PSE 2008), Vienna University, Austria
Nov '08 "Preference change in terrorists", atChoice Group Seminar, London School of Economics, UK
Sep '08 "A model of individual change", at Logic of Change, Change of Logic, Prague, Czech Republic
July '08 "Terrorism policies: the trade-off between provocation and deterrence", at Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory (LOFT) 2008, Amsterdam University, Netherlands
July '08 "The premises of Condorcet's Jury Theorem are not jointly justified", at Decision, Games and Logic '08, Amsterdam, Netherlands
July '08 "The premise-based approach to judgment aggregation", at Theory of Logical Aggregation, HEC & University Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France
June '08 "Majority voting on restricted domains", at Workshop Social Choice, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
June '08 "Opinion pooling on general agendas", at 9th International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare, Montréal, Canada
Academic award
4th Social Choice and Welfare Prize of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare, awarded jointly to F. Dietrich and C. List at the Society's next international meeting in Moscow, July 2010
Conference organisation
"Preference Change", May 2009, London School of Economics, UK, organized with Conrad Heilmann and Christian List (see www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/projects/ChoiceGroup/PreferenceChange.htm|)
Matthias Greiff
Matthias Greiff visited the CPNSS from February 10th to March 20th and participated in the activities of the Choice Group.
During his stay he finished a paper on formal modeling in social epistemology. The paper presents a descriptive model of epistemically interacting agents who rely on each others' testimony. It starts from Philip Kitcher's influential work on the division of cognitive labour and the resulting discrepancy between specialisation and diversity. If scientists were all to pursue the same path, namely that which is best supported by the available evidence, then there is no diversity and the social optimum is unlikely to be reached. Individual scientists do not react to an objective world but to the available evidence produced by others. The individual scientist's decision - specialise or diversify - is influenced by the available evidence generated by his or her colleagues, which results in a positive feedback effect. Through the introduction of increasing returns to adoption the model allows for emergence as well as dissolution of consensus and thus replicates certain periods in the history of science.
As part of an ongoing project, Matthias Greiff worked on an agent-based computational model. The model relies on locally interacting heterogeneous agents in four markets and aims at understanding the generation of power law-type distributions of income and firm size in advanced societies. A macroeconomy with national accounts is generated from the interactions of agents (workers, capitalists, bankers, and the government) in time through product, labour, bond, and money markets. The model shows that, without any restrictions on the type of interaction agents can make, and with asymmetric information on the part of capitalists and workers in this economy, power-law dynamics with respect to firm size and income can emerge from simple multiplicative processes originating in the labour market. Preliminary results of this project were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economic Association, New York City, Feb. 27th to March 1st 2009.
Conrad Heilmann
Conrad Heilmann continued to work on his PhD project "Rationality and Time" which develops a multiple-self model of personal identity over time to give representations of discounting, imperfect memory and preference change in decisions and games. In July and August 2008, he was a visitor at the Philosophy Programme at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra and the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science. Conrad continued to co-organize the LSE Choice Group seminars. In the context of the LSE Choice Group, he also co-organized the first part of the "LSE-Groningen Workshop on Models of Value and Opinion". The co-organized DGL workshop series in "Decisions, Games and Logic" continued with DGL08 at the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) in Amsterdam and preparations for DGL09 at the HEC Lausanne are well underway. At CPNSS, Conrad co-organized the graduate conference "Philosophy of Probability" in June 2008.
Individual Projects
Conrad Heilmann closely collaborated with CPNSS and LSE Choice Group visitor Christian W. Bach on the paper "Agent Connectedness and Backward Induction" which was also presented to the LSE Choice Group. Together with Professor Richard Bradley and Christian W. Bach, he organized a reading group on "Conditionals in Game Theory".
Presentations, Workshops etc.
Intrapersonal Connectedness and Backward Induction (jointly with Christian W. Bach)
LSE, Choice Group, March 2009.
DGL08: Second Workshop in Decisions, Games & Logic, Institute of Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), Amsterdam, July 2008.
A Representation of Time Discounting
Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Philosophy Society, August 2008.
University of Sydney, Centre for Time, Departmental Seminar, August 2008.
LOFT08: Conference on Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory, Institute of Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), Amsterdam, July 2008.
LSE, Choice Group, June 2008
A Defence of Time Discounting in Economics
BSPS08: British Society for the Philosophy of Science conference, University of St Andrews, July 2008.
Preference Change in the Multiple-Self
LOCCOL08: Logic of change, change of logic, Prague International Colloquium, Prague, Villa Lanna, September 2008.
Self-Censorship (jointly with Philip Cook)
University of Warwick, Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs Seminar, April 2009
Publications 2008-09
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Heilmann, C. (2008), 'A Representation of Time Discounting Induction', LSE Choice Group Working Paper Series 4(6), London School of Economics.
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Bach, C.W. and Heilmann, C. (forthcoming), 'Agent Connectedness and Backward Induction', LSE Choice Group Working Paper Series, London School of Economics.
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Heilmann, C. (forthcoming), "Logic and Games", in: Jon Williamson and Federica Russo (eds.) (forthcoming): Key Terms in Logic, Continuum
Hayo Krombach
I initiated the invitation by Nancy Cartwright and Luc Bovens to Professor Masaki Ichinose from the Department of Philosophy (University of Tokyo). Professor Ichinose visited the LSE in November 2008 while on leave in the UK and gave a talk in Luv Bovens' seminar. He was also my host professor while I was doing research this spring in Japan.
Individual projects
a. Historical Interculturalism East-West: Phenomenology and the Nonduality of Self and Other
This is a long-term intellectual history project which juxtaposes rather than compares Eastern and Western traditions of thought in poetry and philosophy from the epistemological point of view of reality apperception. The objective is twofold: (1) to ascertain the experiential nature of congruence and difference in the languages of phenomenology (intentionality) and nonduality (no intentionality) and (2) to discuss against the background of planetary concerns in the nuclear and ecological age the merits of either approach in the attempt to speak meaningfully about the intellectual conditions of understanding the relationship between the genus humankind and its intercultural differentiae specificae.
b. Research and writing of one chapter in the Phenomenology and Non-duality in Indian Buddhism project continued and was completed as a draft early in 2009. Thematically this text deals with a range of epistemological issues about the thought patterns in early Theravada Buddhism and its further development into Mahayana Buddhism.
c. In connection with the overall research programme, I have spent the month of April 2009 in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tokyo to conduct preparatory work for a future chapter on the Japanese writer Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) and his reception in his travelogues of traditional Japanese and Chinese poetico-philosophical holistic modes of thinking. April was the first out of three months of research in Japan (April, May, June 2009). Funding contributions for this three month period were offered by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (£800) and the LSE Research and Project Development Division (£850).
Publications 2008-09
There have been no publications, public talks, or media appearances during the period in question. Concerning publications, and depending on advice after all draft chapters have been completed, two volumes are envisaged in the future.
Fernando Morett
Individual projects
I conducted research on experimental and engineering methods in economics and social science with an interest in policy making. My aim is to write a philosophical account of these methods looking mainly at their epistemic and metaphysical foundations from a naturalistic viewpoint.
Publications 2008-09
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'Experimental Parameter Variation as Performative Knowledge. The Fixed-Pitch Air Propeller and the FCC Simultaneous Auction Designs', forthcoming in the Discussion Paper Series of the Contingency and Dissent in Science project (submitted for publication)
Presentations, Workshops etc.
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'Evidence in Economic Engineering. The Case of the Simultaneous Ascending Auctions', History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Graduate Student Union 5th Annual Conference, University of Toronto, Canada, May 2009.
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'Engineering Methods and Policy Making', Fourth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. University of Athens, Greece, July 2009.
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'What's wrong with Warrant Methods in Economics', Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics 21st Annual Meeting, SciencePo, Paris, July 2009.
Ivan Moscati
Activities
During my stay at the Centre I've been engaged in two main research projects. The first is a joint project with Paola Tubaro (CNRS, Paris) and is entitled "Random behavior and the as-if defence of rational choice theory in demand experiments". We examine a series of experiments that compare rational choice theory and the random-choice model as alternative explanations of consumer demand, and investigate how these experiments contribute to clarifying the actual scope of rational choice theory and the shortcomings of the standard as-if defence of it.
The second project is a methodological appraisal of the so-called money pump argument, which was introduced into economics in the 1950s to defend the assumption that individual preferences are transitive. The money pump argument rests on a number of tacit suppositions, which I analyze and appraise. My conclusion is that the argument provides a weak defence of transitivity.
Presentations, Workshops etc.
The paper on "Random behavior and the as-if defence of rational choice theory in demand experiments" has been presented in the following conferences and seminars:
Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) Meeting, San Francisco, January 4, 2009;
Choice Group Seminar, London School of Economics, March 4, 2009;
Economic Theory and Philosophy Seminar, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, March 24, 2009.
The paper will be also presented in the following conferences:
Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Economia Politica (STOREP) Conference, Firenze, June 3-4, Firenze;
History of Economics Society (HES) Meeting, Denver, June 26-29, 2009.
The paper will be submitted to an international scientific journal after the HES conference.
Publications during the stay at the Centre
"Random behavior and the as-if defense of rational choice theory in demand experiments" (with P. Tubaro), LSE-Choice Group Working Paper, vol. 5, n. 4, 2009
"Interactive and common knowledge in the state-space model", University of Torino-CESMEP Working Paper Series 03/2009
David Tiera
Activities
During my stay at the CPNSS, between November 2007 and August 2008, I worked on the design and interpretation of clinical trials, from different statistical perspectives. I studied under which conditions regulatory agencies should accept Bayesian trials as a proof of the efficiency of a drug, emphasising the warrants of impartiality in each experimental design.
Publications 2008-09
TEIRA, D., A review of A. Stinchcombe, The Logic of Social Research, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38.2 (2008), 296-298
TEIRA, D., A review of Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera. How Financial Models Shape the Markets, Journal of Economic Methodology, 15:4 (2008), 429-433
TEIRA, D., "Why Friedman's methodology did not bring economists to agree?", Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 30 (2009) forthcoming
J. REISS, D. TEIRA, J. ZAMORA, eds, "New Philosophy of the Social Sciences", Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38.3 (2008), 311-78
D. TEIRA, ed., Review Symposium on J. Reiss, Error in Economics, Economics and Philosophy, 25 (2009), forthcoming
Presentations, Workshops etc.
"The Public Understanding of the Design of Clinical Trials", 4S+EASST conference, Erasmus University Rotterdam, August 2008.
"On the Public Understanding of Clinical Trials". Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable, University of Alabama at Birmingham, March 2008.
"Evidence in medicine", Graduate School, University College London, May 2008.
"Facts, norms and expected utility functions", Third Annual Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Workshop: "Styles and Ways of Knowing", UCL, June 2008.
"The pharmaceutical industry and the distortion of the medical practice". Barcelona Euroscience OpenForum (European Science Foundation), July 2008