CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) is a network of academics and students working in the philosophy of science in various parts of the University of Cambridge, including the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Faculty of Philosophy. The Wednesday afternoon seminar series features current research by CamPoS members as well as visitors to Cambridge and scholars based in nearby institutions.
Seminars are held on Wednesdays, 1.00–2.30pm in Seminar Room 2. Organised by Matt Farr.
Lent Term 2026
28 January
Miriam Solomon (Temple University)
The philosophical significance of pivotal cases
We are all familiar with 'paradigmatic' cases that anchor and communicate the core meanings of concepts. I would like to introduce the idea of 'pivotal cases', which are cases that lead to a change in the meaning of a concept. Such cases, which are often difficult at first and require creativity to resolve, shape the development of concepts and the direction of research in contingent ways. I will use examples from physics, medicine and psychiatry.
4 February
Ahmad Elabbar (HPS, Cambridge)
Trusting scientific advisors as epistemic curators: from error to attention
The literature on epistemic trust in science is flourishing. Despite its richness, however, work in this area remains 'error-centric': accounts of epistemic trust in science are motivated by the fallibility of scientific inquiry. In this talk, I argue that we need more expansive accounts of epistemic trust in science that shift away from a concern with the stakes of error towards attention. Building on a view of scientific advice as 'epistemic curation', and a case study on the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet, I show that trusting scientific advisors in their full capacities as epistemic curators requires more than what error-centric accounts of trust can provide. In particular, it requires that we look beyond questions of reliability towards the distribution of attention.
11 February
Suilin Lavelle (University of Edinburgh)
The epistemic necessity of Majority World psychology
Psychologists based in Majority World countries (countries which hold the majority of the world's population) have long lamented Western biases in how cognition is studied. In this talk, I suggest that recent pluralist movements in philosophy of science have the potential to realise the diversity sought by these researchers. I will use a case study of Joint Attention in infancy to demonstrate how pluralism in how we operationalise psychological concepts brings forth new understanding of this phenomenon.
18 February
Miguel Ohnesorge (Boston University)
Lessons for human science measurement from the quantification of earthquake size
There are longstanding debates about whether the human sciences can quantify the attributes they study. We identify a basic problem within these debates: success standards and expectations are modelled almost exclusively on experimental physics. As a result, researchers in measurement theory, psychology, and philosophy, have (i) misidentified experimental control as a necessary condition for quantification and (ii) overlooked central methodological lessons on how quantification without experimental control might succeed. To remedy this situation, we present novel historical research on how twentieth-century seismologists quantified 'earthquake size'. The study serves to (i) refute the idea that experimental control is a necessary condition for quantification and (ii) provide an alternative methodology for quantifying without high degrees of experimental control. We contrast this methodology to an ongoing effort at quantifying reading comprehension to show that it helps us to better understand the achievements and persistent problems of quantification in the human sciences.
This is joint work with Cristian Larroulet Philippi (University of Melbourne).
4 March
Milena Ivanova (Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge)
AI revolution! At whose cost? Towards environmental AI ethics
The environmental cost of AI is becoming progressively concerning with rocketing energy demands, mineral extraction and water demands. In this talk I draw lessons from ecofeminism to explore what values ought to shape our relationship with technology and the environment.
11 March
Book symposium on Matteo Vagelli's Reconsidering Historical Epistemology: French and Anglophone Styles in History and Philosophy of Science
Speakers: Matteo Vagelli (University of Venice); Nick Jardine (HPS, Cambridge); Cristina Chimisso (Open University)
18 March
Sebastian Rodriguez Duque (HPS, Cambridge)
'Measure once, cut twice': values and validity in youth mental health measurement
Psychometric validation can appear very specific and context sensitive. For the case of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), I argue that it falls short of securing the rigorous interpretation of scores, in part due to the different values of respondents and administrators in a new clinical context. I argue that validation practice is overly rigid. The lack of robust theories of constructs and response behaviour makes the standardized interpretation of scores unwarranted. Instead, attention to user values requires that validation practice remain dynamic, where the interpretation of scores must be collaborative. While some theories of psychometric validation attend to the ethics of measurement and the role of values, these are often addressed as bias. I discuss how values are an essential ingredient of validity evidence to secure the clinical interpretation of scores in the case of mental health. I substantiate my claims through my ongoing collaboration with a youth mental health service in British Columbia. There, the requirements of measurement-based care (MBC) and values like patient-centredness are in tension with the need to build and evaluate a learning health system and values like standardization. If the interpretation of scores can only be fixed in a clinical situation, it is not clear how such data can be collected and aggregated to support system level inferences. Different values must be traded off in a measurement practice, which in turn affects the quality of the inferences that different measurements may support for different purposes.