Category: Epistemology

Call: “Do Experiments Replicate?”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From September 22 to 23, 2026, the workshop “Do Experiments Replicate? Philosophical Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Statistics and Econometrics” will take place at the Jagiellonian University, Poland.

Abstract submissions are possible until June 1, 2026. The call reads:

The workshop “Do experiments replicate? Philosophical Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Statistics and Econometrics” aims to provide a forum for exchanging ideas on the replicability of randomized experiments, such as randomized field experiments in economics, randomized controlled trials and preclinical studies in medicine, and psychological experiments.

The workshop promotes philosophical and methodological discussions of conceptual and methodological issues in statistical analysis, econometric modeling, and the methodology of experimentation.

Keynote Speakers:

  • Barbara Osimani
  • Samuel Fletcher

Experimental results are considered reliable because, under comparable conditions, they are expected to yield similar outcomes. However, this assumption has recently been challenged by numerous replication efforts that report results differing from those of the original studies in psychology, medicine, biology, the social sciences, and economics. A surprisingly large fraction of published findings have been found to be non-replicable. Replicability rates range from 11% for in vitro and in vivo preclinical research to 60–90% for clinical trials. Experimental economists fall within this range and, like psychological experimenters, achieve around 60% replicability.

The replication crisis has called into question the credibility of published findings and undermined trust in science. However, the replication crisis, with few exceptions, has received only limited attention from philosophy of science. Despite the efforts of several pioneers, the philosophical and conceptual problems in randomized controlled trials, randomized field experiments, laboratory experiments, econometric modeling, and the statistical analysis of experimental data remain largely uncharted territory in the philosophy of science. The workshop aims to establish a forum for exchanging ideas among philosophers of medicine and economics, philosophers of statistics, and methodologically inclined researchers interested in the conceptual problems of the replication crisis.

The Workshop “Do experiments replicate? Philosophical Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Statistics and Econometrics” invites contributions that focus on experimentation and statistical analysis in economics and medicine, as well as problems that trouble statistical inference from experiments, broadly construed.

Some exemplary topics of talks:

  • The design of randomized experiments in medicine and economics.
  • Statistical hypothesis testing.
  • Non-frequentist approaches to comparing treatment and control group outcomes.
  • Comparisons of design-based and model-based inference.
  • Estimating statistical models.
  • Measuring replication success and replicability rates.
  • Assessing the quality of empirical evidence.
  • Making inferences from the literature review with conflicting results.
  • Other problems in philosophy of statistics related to the replication crisis.

Abstracts no longer than 500 words (including references) should be submitted in an attachment, not including author details, by email with the subject ‘replication workshop’ sent to: mariusz.maziarz@uj.edu.pl.

Deadline for submission: June 1st, 2026

Decisions will be announced by June 15th, 2026.

This activity was supported by a grant funded by the Strategic Program Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University.

Talk: “Justified True Belief Revisited” (Helen Fischer)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On May 26 from 15:30–17:30 (UTC+2), Helen Fischer will talk about “Justified True Belief Revisited – A Psychological Perspective on ‘Knowledge’” at Heidelberg University. The talk can be accessed via Zoom. The abstract reads:

Modern societies rely fundamentally on the production, circulation, and recognition of reliable knowledge. Yet despite the normative and institutional prominence of knowledge, we know surprisingly little about what citizens themselves count as knowledge, to whom they attribute it, and on what grounds. A dominant philosophical account defines knowledge as Justified True Belief, requiring that a proposition be true, believed, and adequately justified. In this talk, I present a large-scale empirical test whether ordinary knowledge ascriptions adhere to this normative standard. In a preregistered conjoint experiment with a nationally quota-matched U.S. sample (N = 1,295), participants judged whether an agent “knows” propositions across a politically contested domain (climate change) and an uncontested domain (astrophysics). We fully crossed Justification (six levels varying strength and source), Truth (true vs. false), and Belief (strong vs. weak). Knowledge ascriptions systematically diverged from Justified True Belief across both domains. Belief exerted the strongest causal influence (Average causal effects: AMCE ≈ −0.42 for weak vs. strong belief), Truth was helpful but not necessary (AMCE ≈ 0.18 for true vs. false), and Justification contributed little or not at all (AMCE range across levels ≈ 0.00–0.05). This asymmetry had striking consequences: more than half of participants attributed knowledge even to false propositions when belief was strong, whereas only about one quarter attributed knowledge to true, strongly justified propositions when belief was weak. Across both domains, participants thus heavily prioritized conviction over truth and justification when judging whether others “know.” By showing that ordinary knowledge ascriptions more closely follow a model of “Strong Belief with optional Truth” than the normative account of Justified True Belief, these results help explain why low-justification and even false propositions can be treated as knowledge in public discourse.

Call: “Group Agency and Metaethics”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From September 9 to 11, 2026, the workshop “Group Agency and Metaethics” will take place at the University of Vienna.

Abstract submissions are possible until May 31, 2026. The call reads:

We invite submissions for the workshop Group Agency and Metaethics. Metaethics concerns the study of the metaphysical, epistemological, semantic and psychological presuppositions and commitments of moral thought, talk and practice. However, the answers to these various questions are typically developed with a focus on individuals. The possibility that groups are normative or moral agents in their own right is rarely considered within metaethics. The aim of this workshop is to explore the significance of the possibility of group agency for debates in metaethics, and vice versa. The workshop will focus on group agency in connection to topics such as naturalism/non-naturalism; realism/anti-realism; cognitivism/non-cognitivism; the nature of normativity and norms; normative reasons; rationality; and experimental metaethics. We further welcome submissions on related issues that may be significant for these topics. By exploring groundbreaking topics at the intersection of metaethics and social ontology, the workshop hopefully will set the stage for future debates.

The workshop will feature four keynote speakers:

  • Prof. Carla Bagnoli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)
  • Prof. Bart Streumer (University of Groningen)
  • Asst. Prof. Asya Passinsky (Central European University)
  • Prof. Hans Bernhard Schmid (University of Vienna)

The workshop will take place at the University of Vienna from 9 to 11 September 2026. If you are interested in presenting at the workshop, please send your anonymized abstract to niels.de.haan@univie.ac.at with the subject line: Abstract Group Agency and Metaethics. The anonymized abstract should be approximately 500 words. Each speaker will be allotted 1 hour (incl. Q&A). The deadline for submissions is 31 May, 2026. We aim to send out the notifications of acceptance around 15 June, 2026.

There are bursaries available for students or precariously employed participants with a lack of available funding to (partially) cover accommodation and flights. If you would like to be considered for one of the bursaries, please indicate this in the email. If your submission is successful, you will be asked to provide a short description of your funding situation to ensure we can distribute the bursaries fairly.

The workshop is sponsored by the International Social Ontology Society (https://isosonline.org/) and the University of Vienna.

Workshop: “Epistemologies of Places”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From June 9 to 10, 2026, the fourth workshop of the Empirical Epistemology Network will be held at the University of Stirling, UK.

The announcement reads:

This event considers how place-knowledge – especially in relation to cities – comes to be formed through sensory engagements, lived experiences, and interactions with environments through physical immersion, memory and imagination, and the role these play in giving rise to place(s). Combining academic papers with interactive activities such as storytelling, mapping, walking and artistic interventions, together we will explore the challenges and opportunities for place-based imagining and to reflect on how ways of knowing shape, and are shaped by, engagements with place.

Speakers:

  • Pablo Fernandez Velasco (Stirling)
  • Paola Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco (Durham, in-person only)
  • Rebecca Noone (Glasgow)
  • Christina Anderson (UCL)
  • Sofya Shahab (Stirling, in-person only)
  • Quill R. Kukla (Georgetown)

The overarching goal of the network is to build bridges between epistemologists and empirical researchers from various disciplines. Epistemologists will reflect about the practical relevance of their theoretical research on the nature of knowledge, and empirical researchers will consider whether some of the sharp conceptual tools of epistemologists are helpful for their own work. Participants will be drawn to identify the implicit or explicit assumptions of their work and field of research, assess whether those assumptions are warranted, and think about the consequences of challenging those assumptions. Remote participation, where feasible, is welcome. For more details about the network, up to date information about speakers and links to register, please visit https://empiricalepistemology.stir.ac.uk/index.php/events/.

Small travel and child-care bursaries available. Please note that in-person attendance is limited to 30. If you register and then realise you can’t attend, please let us know asap so that we can free the space for someone else. The Empirical Epistemology Network is run by Giacomo Melis (Stilring), Kirsten Blakey (Toronto), Jack Lyons (Glasgow) and Peter Graham (UC Riverside), and is supported by the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network (award PF 024).

The overarching goal of the network is to build bridges between epistemologists and empirical researchers from various disciplines. Epistemologists will reflect about the practical relevance of their theoretical research on the nature of knowledge, and empirical researchers will consider whether some of the sharp conceptual tools of epistemologists are helpful for their own work. Participants will be drawn to identify the implicit or explicit assumptions of their work and field of research, assess whether those assumptions are warranted, and think about the consequences of challenging those assumptions.

For more information please contact: giacomo.melis1@stir.ac.uk

Call: “Artificial Life as Experimental Philosophy”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Ben Gaskin and Simon McGregor organize a special session of The 2026 Artificial Life Conference titled “Artificial Life as Experimental Philosophy,” which will take place in Waterloo, Canada, from August 17 to 21, 2026.

Papers can be submitted until March 30, 2026. The call reads:

ALife has always had a markedly philosophical character – a fact not unnoticed by some philosophers. Daniel Dennett, for instance, saw in ALife the creation of testable thought experiments – in simulating a thing, you render explicit your assumptions. Despite this clear affinity, however, the engagement he foresaw has not materialised.

This is not for ALife’s lack of interest in or relevance to traditionally philosophical content, but perhaps rather for its practicing an alternate philosophy in which the reflexive relationship between pragmatic and theoretical is constitutive. Here philosophy and science are united, with thought in turn structuring and being structured by experimental practice. In this respect, ALife may be closer to the original tradition of natural philosophy than philosophy in its more modern disciplinary forms.

This session invites broad reflection on the nature of this relationship between philosophy and artificial life. What role do computational experiments play in philosophical inquiry – and what role should they? How does ALife address questions that philosophy also claims – agency, autonomy, emergence, individuality – and how does its treatment differ? The conference theme itself poses one such question: what is life, and what does it mean to be life-like?

Call for Papers

We welcome both experimental work whose philosophical motivations or implications are brought to the fore, and philosophical or theoretical work that engages directly with ALife methods and results. We are as interested in what can be said in principle as in what your work specifically reveals – and especially in work that does not sit neatly in either of these.

Questions of Interest

Questions we are interested in include:

  • What are we doing when we simulate a thing?
  • Where is emergence when it happens in a machine – how do silicon and simulations reshape the question of emergence?
  • What is the relationship in simulations between form, function, parameters, and dynamics?
  • If the rules are made up, what do they teach us – how do we reconcile tunability with the language of findings?
  • What are the laws of motion of living matter, and how does ALife relate to theoretical biology?
  • Is life just physics, or is there something more – what can ALife tell us about the relationship between vitalism and mechanism?
  • What is ALife’s precedent, what does it inherit, and how does it differ – from the automata of Hero to the gavra of Rava to Jābir’s takwīn?
  • Could artificial life ever really be alive – and if so, what are the implications?
  • How does wet ALife relate to these questions – does it change what counts as artificial, as alive, or both?

These are examples, not boundaries – we welcome any work that engages with the philosophical dimensions of artificial life. Contributions from across ALife, philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and related fields are encouraged.

Submissions

Papers should be 3–8 pages in ALIFE format. We welcome experimental, theoretical, and position papers. Accepted papers will be published in the ALIFE 2026 proceedings (MIT Press). The conference is hybrid – presentations can be given in person or online. Please select the “Artificial Life as Experimental Philosophy” special session when submitting. For full formatting guidelines, see the ALIFE 2026 Call for Papers.

Conference: “Social Ontology and Empirical Inquiry”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From April 11 to 12, 2026, the conference “Social Ontology and Empirical Inquiry – Conflicts and Connections” will take place at the University of Pittsburgh. The conference page reads:

We are pleased to announce a two-day interdisciplinary workshop hosted by the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on the intersection of social metaphysics and empirical research in the social sciences.

The workshop aims to foster dialogue between philosophers and social scientists who are interested in the nature of social reality and in how conceptual and empirical approaches to understanding it can be fruitfully integrated.

Social scientists and philosophers have long sought to clarify what it means for entities such as races, genders, institutions, and social structures to exist and to act. Meanwhile, empirically-oriented social scientists have developed increasingly sophisticated methods for measuring, modeling, and explaining such phenomena. This workshop will bring these conversations together to explore the conflicts and connections between conceptual–theoretical frameworks and empirical–methodological practices in the study of the social world.

Organizing Committee

Confirmed Keynotes

The program will include keynote talks and panels by both philosophers and social scientists, including scholars such as:

Guiding Questions

  • What kinds of things are social entities – individuals, groups, institutions, norms, and categories such as race and gender?
  • How can such entities be both socially constructed and real?
  • What is the relationship between social ontology and social measurement?
  • How should metaphysical theories about the nature of the social world inform, or be informed by, empirical research designs?
  • Do social explanations involve forms of causation, mechanism, or structure that differ from those in the natural sciences?
  • How can philosophical analysis of social kinds enrich empirical debates about classification, comparability, and operationalization?

Format

The workshop will include:

  • 30-minute contributed presentations (20 minutes presentation + 10 minutes Q&A)
  • Keynote lectures by invited speakers
  • A roundtable discussion on future directions in social ontology and empirical research

Talk: “Cognitive Foundations of Geometry” (Véronique Izard)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

As part of the IHPST’s Séminaire PhilSciCog at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Véronique Izard will talk about “Cognitive Foundations of Geometry” on March 26, 2026, from 15:00–16:30 (UTC+1). The hybrid session can be accessed via Zoom (Meeting ID: 950 6108 6376, Code: 535047). The abstract reads:

From the first months of life, young children can perceive numeric quantities and perform additive or multiplicative operations on quantities. These abilities support the acquisition of number concepts later in life, and have been proposed to enable humans’ arithmetic cognition. What about geometry, another major branch of mathematics? In this talk, I will present two recent studies assessing the scope and the limits of human geometric intuition. The first study focused on Euclidean geometry, and found that children and adults encode a rich repertoire of geometric properties, at several levels of abstraction. The second study probed intuitions for non-Euclidean geometry and revealed the existence of a pervasive Euclidean bias in adults, identifying limits to the flexibility of human geometric intuition.

Call: “Folk Epistemology and Science Skepticism”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From August 10 to 14, 2026, the Cologne Summer School will take place at the University of Cologne. This year’s topic will be “Folk Epistemology and Science Skepticism,” with special guest Mikkel Gerken.

Proposals for brief presentations on Gerken’s work can be submitted until April 15, 2026. The call reads:

The Cologne Summer School is an annual, week-long, event at which leading epistemologists present their current work in a series of lectures, defend their views against critical comments, and discuss their work with participants. The Summer School mainly aims at professional philosophers and graduate students, but anyone is welcome to apply. In 2026 our special guest will be Mikkel Gerken (University of Southern Denmark).

Gerken works in epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. In Epistemic Reasoning and the Mental (Palgrave 2013), Gerken considers how externalism in philosophy of mind bears on the nature of the epistemology of inference. In On Folk Epistemology (OUP 2017), he argues that folk epistemological heuristics explain patterns of intuitive judgments that have mistakenly been taken to motivate epistemic contextualism, pragmatic encroachment, and knowledge-first epistemology. Doing so involves engagement with cognitive psychology as well as methodological considerations about the relationship between folk epistemological intuitions and epistemological theorizing. In Scientific Testimony (OUP 2022), Gerken argues that testimony is a vital part of science and articulates epistemic norms governing it. Furthermore, he considers scientific testimony to the lay public and empirically informed science communication strategies for addressing science skepticism. In addition to the monographs, Gerken has published on epistemic injustice, epistemic norms of action and assertion, transcendental arguments, the necessary a posteriori, philosophical skepticism, philosophical methodology etc.

Cologne Summer School Themes: The 2026 Summer School will address a range of issues from foundational to applied social epistemology. Many of the discussions will revolve around an important real-life problem – namely, science skepticism. For example, we will examine how science skepticism is related to varieties of philosophical skepticism. Furthermore, we will consider how folk epistemological heuristics and conversational norms may fuel public skepticism about science. We will also consider ways in which epistemologists and philosophers of science may play a role in combating science skepticism. Thus, some of the discussions overlap with issues in philosophy of science. Throughout, there will be an emphasis on philosophical methodology and epistemology’s relationship to empirical research in the social and cognitive sciences.

Topics will include

  • Philosophical skepticism and real-life (science) skepticism
  • Folk epistemology and its relation to epistemology
  • Epistemic norms of assertion and science communication
  • Internalism and externalism in epistemology and mind
  • Intuitive judgments and philosophical methodology
  • The epistemic roles of science in society

The Summer School is free but limited to 50 participants. Online application is possible through April 15. Please supply a short letter that sketches your academic background and main motivation for participating in the Summer School. If you are interested in giving a brief presentation (approx. 20 minutes) related to Gerken’s work, please also send an abstract of no more than 1,000 words.

Apply via email to:
summerschoolphilosophy@uni-koeln.de

Call: “Theory and Practice After the Practice Turn”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On April 17, 2026, the Research Center Normative Orders at Goethe University Frankfurt will host an online workshop titled “Theory and Practice After the Practice Turn – Where Social Theory and Empirical Philosophy Meet.”

Proposals for contributions can be submitted until February 14. The call reads:

Sociology and philosophy have always shared a close relationship. Critical Theory famously tied the two disciplines together to unravel societal phenomena, and feminist philosophers regularly borrow sociological concepts to understand domination and power asymmetries. Similarly, sociologists often draw on philosophical concepts to sharpen their analyses. In recent years, this dialogue has gained new momentum through the so-called “practice turn” in epistemology and philosophy of science. Contemporary philosophy of science and applied epistemology increasingly incorporate empirical methods originally developed within the social sciences such as interviews and ethnographic studies. But while empirical approaches from sociology are frequently adopted, social-theoretical concepts remain rarely integrated within epistemology and philosophy of science.

It is the goal of this workshop to explore the potential of social theory for empirical approaches in philosophy of science and epistemology. What are instances of fruitful applications of social theory to philosophy of science and epistemological scholarship? How does social theory transform when it is resituated in a different disciplinary setting? What are caveats and best practices when using social theory as a philosopher of science/epistemologist?

We are looking for workshop contributions that are focused on but not limited to:

  • Examples of using social theory along with empirical methods in philosophy of science and
    epistemology.
  • Reflections on methodological and conceptual challenges when transferring social-theoretical
    concepts into philosophical work.

Workshop contributions will also be considered for publication in a special issue (target journal: Synthese) on social theory in empirical philosophy of science & epistemology.

Send submissions to: sophie.juliane.veigl@univie.ac.at; riegler@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Hot Off The Press: “Health and Disease”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

With “Health and Disease,” Somogy Varga, Andrew James Latham, and Edouard Machery deliver a deep dive into Experimental Philosophy of Medicine. The summary reads:

The concepts of health and disease are fundamental to medical research, healthcare, and public health, and philosophers have long sought to clarify their meaning and implications. Increasingly, it is suggested that progress in this area could be advanced by integrating empirical methods with philosophical reflection. This Element explores the emerging field of experimental philosophy of medicine (XPhiMed), which takes this approach by applying empirical methods to longstanding philosophical debates. It begins with an overview of the philosophical debates and their methodological challenges, followed by an exploration of experimental findings on health, disease, and disorder, along with their implications for philosophy and other fields.