Logic and Philosophy of Science Group Talk (Kevin Zollman, Carnegie Mellon)

EVENT POSTPONED TO NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR

Please note that the talk with Kevin Zollman has been postponed to the coming academic year. We will update our events page with the exact date as son as possible.

The Logic and Philosophy of Science Group is pleased to welcome guest speaker Kevin Zollman, game theorist and associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. With Paul Raeburn, he is the author of The Game Theorist’s Guide to Parenting. Professor Zollman specializes in mathematical models, social behaviour, biology, and the evolution of languages.

Talk Title

Epistemic Governance

Talk Abstract

In economics, cases where an unregulated market will fail to achieve good outcomes for the participants are well known, and there is substantial debate about how to handle these situations. This debate goes by the name of “market failure.” In this talk, I will show that analogous problems arise in epistemic contexts. Science, as well as other epistemic enterprises, may regularly confront problems analogous to unregulated markets. Groups of inquirers (like scientists) can each attempt to learn the truth, but collectively they fail to do so optimally. I will discuss how these problems arise and what we might do about them.

About the Logic and Philosophy of Science Group

One of five departmental Research Interest Groups, the Logic and Philosophy of Science Group hosts talks on logic, general philosophy of science, and philosophy of the particular sciences, as well as talks in allied areas such as formal epistemology, decision theory, and the metaphysics of science.