lgBIG

The Lake Geneva Biological Interest Group is a forum for discussing biology from a multitude of perspectives, including philosophical, scientific and historical, and was founded in 2012 at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Geneva. Our standing members are based in different institutions at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, and Milan. We consider ourselves to be part of a BIG international movement that includes kindred groups at the University of Minnesota and the University of Exeter.

• William Bausman
• Luis Bordo Garcia
• Silvia de Cesare
• Christine Clavien
• Lucie Cauwet
• Michaela Egli
• Benjamin Genta
• Michal Hladky
• Anatolii Kozlov
• Kyryll Khromov
• Nadine Marachly
• Christian Sachse
• Raphael Scholl
• Marcel Weber

Our meetings take place on Wednesdays from 12:15 to 14:00 in Bâtiment de l'IFAGE in the room IF 401 (19 place des Augustins). We discuss our own research as well as other contemporary philosophical, scientific and historical work that addresses interesting biological issues.

Everyone is welcome!

lgBIG hosts the international conference on 7-8 December.

03.09.2024 "Scenario Modeling, Epistemology, Practice, and Values", Espace Colladon, Rue Jean-Daniel-Colladon 2.

Description

Scientific policy advice is often based on scenarios produced by elaborate computational models. In recent years, such models have been particularly visible in climate science and infectious disease epidemiology. The practice of scenario modeling raises a range of philosophical and practical issues that are closely related to each other. First, how should we think about the epistemology of scenarios and of the models on which they are based? Consider that we cannot easily judge the empirical credentials of these models by their predictive success, since many of their most useful predictions (such as those about worst-case scenarios) are typically counterfactual. So what is the appropriate relationship between scenario models and their real-world target systems? Second, how do practitioners approach scenario modeling? What are the challenges of developing and exploring scenarios, and of conveying their significance to policy experts or the broader public? What is the role of scenario-based scientific advice in public policy debates, and what should its role be? Third, how do non-epistemic values enter into the production or interpretation of model-based scenarios? Do scenarios offer value-neutral guidance on which we can base our decisions, or are scenarios inherently value-laden? This workshop will bring together both philosophers and empirical scientists in order to discuss these and related questions from a range of different but complementary perspectives.

Speakers

Igor Douven
Rawad El Skaf 
Janne Estill 
Julie Jebeile 
Ylwa Sjöling Wirling

• 27.02.24 Affective basis of reasoning and cognition in non-human Animals, Sanja Srećković Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 05.03.24 Rational Animals, Nadine Marachly
  Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 12.03.24 Teleological Explanations and the Falsifiability of Biology José Perez Escobar Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 19.03.24 Silvia De Cesare on Organic Progress
  Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 26.03.24 Is there Something It is Like to Be an Octopus Arm? Sidney Carls-Diamante Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 09.04.24 Are Qualia Intrinsic? Lucie Cauwet Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 16.04.24 Ryan Miller on Levels in Biology Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 23.04.24 Kyryll Khromov on Values in Science
  Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 30.04.24 No Cause for Concern: Even Indefinitely Many Unknown Confounders Do Not Threaten Randomized Controlled Experiments Raphael Scholl
  Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 07.05.24 Luis Bordo García on Causal Reasoning in Sociology, Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
• 14.05.24, Anna Garoflid-Oprescu on Idealization, Truth and Understanding Phil 102 (Boulevard des Philosophes 22) 12:15 - 14:00
   
   
   
   

• 26 Sep Luis Bordo Garcia on Piaget’s philosophy of science
• 3 Oct Marcel Weber, “Mechanisms as complex occurrents”
• 10 Oct Ben Genta on analogies
• 17 Oct Nadine Marachly, “Organisms making choices”
• 24 Oct Caterina Pellò on Pre-Aristotelian theories of sleep
• 31 Oct Kyryll Khromov on trust in science
• 14 Nov Luis Bordo Garcia on causality in social network models
• 21 Nov Jacob Stegenga (Cambridge) on justification and progress
• 28 Nov Caleb Hazelwood (Duke) on TBA
• 5 Dec Ben Genta (UC Irvine) on performative models
• 12 Dec Raphael Scholl on modeling pandemics
• 19 Dec Pierre-Olivier Méthot (Laval) on infectious disease epidemiology