Pittsburgh Announces Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy

Details courtesy of Soul Physics.

From the press release:

Eminent, esteemed, wide-ranging, prolific-these are adjectives that have been aptly used to describe Nicholas Rescher and his contributions to the field of philosophy in a career that spans six decades, with nearly a half century of those years devoted to teaching and research at the University of Pittsburgh. In acknowledgement of his decades-long career at Pitt, Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, is donating his massive collection of materials on philosophy to the University's Hillman Library. In turn, the University is honoring Rescher for his lifetime of achievement and devotion to the University with the establishment of the Dr. Nicholas Rescher Fund for the Advancement of the Department of Philosophy, which will include a prestigious biennial award, the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy.

[...]

Income from the Rescher Fund will be used to achieve key initiatives of the Department of Philosophy and to establish the Nicholas Rescher Prize. Awarded biennially, the prize will recognize an individual “for distinguished contributions to philosophical systematization” and include a gold medal, a $25,000 award, and an invitation to the University to deliver a lecture. Currently there is no major recognition in the field of philosophy, says Rescher, that is even remotely akin to the Field Medal in mathematics; the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, letters, and the arts; or the Nobel Prize in the sciences, medicine, economics, and literature.

The prize-to be awarded for the first time in the fall of 2010-reflects the seriousness of Pitt's commitment to philosophy. “It is our aspiration that the new Rescher Prize will become recognized as the most prestigious award in the field of philosophy, emphasizing the life's work and contributions to philosophy by a preeminent, world-renowned figure,” Maher said.

The Disunity of Climate Science

While there has been a lot of misleading coverage of the stolen e-mails from East Anglia, the Guardian offers an intriguing look inside the fallout from the more significant retraction of the 2007 IPCC report claims about the Himalayan icepack:

Speaking on condition of anonymity, several lead authors of the working group one (WG1) report, which produced the high-profile scientific conclusions that global warming was unequivocal and very likely down to human activity, told the Guardian they were dismayed by the actions of their colleagues.

"Naturally the public and policy makers link all three reports together," one said. "And the blunder over the glaciers detracts from the very carefully peer-reviewed science used exclusively in the WG1 report."

Another author said: "There is no doubt that the inclusion of the glacier statement was sloppy. I find it embarrassing that working group two (WG2) would have the Himalaya statement referred to in the way it was."

Another said: "I am annoyed about this and I do think that WG1, the physical basis for climate change, should be distinguished from WG2 and WG3. The latter deal with impacts, mitigation and socioeconomics and it seems to me they might be better placed in another arm of the United Nations, or another organisation altogether."

The scientists were particularly unhappy that the flawed glacier prediction contradicted statements already published in their own report. "WG1 made a proper assessment of the state of glaciers and this should have been the source cited by the impacts people in WG2," one said. "In the final stages of finishing our own report, we as WG1 authors simply had no time to also start double-checking WG2 draft chapters."

Another said the mistake was made "not by climate scientists, but rather the social and biological scientists in WG2 ... Clearly that WWF report was an inappropriate source, [as] any glaciologist would have stumbled over that number."

As I understand the science, the climate models used to support the central claims of the report are unequivocal. But they don't always give information relevant to policy makers such as exactly how much hotter it is going to get in Indiana or what year the Himalayan icepack will melt. This creates a temptation to leap in and provide more precise predictions than the models support. What is interesting here is that the "hard scientists" are blaming the "social and biological scientists" for giving in to this temptation.

New Book: Nasim, Bertrand Russell and the Edwardian Philosophers: Constructing the World

NDPR has an instructive review by Bernard Linsky of Omar Nasim's 2008 book on Russell and his 'Edwardian' philosophical contemporaries like Stout, Nunn and Alexander. I haven't read this book yet, but it seems to mark a new level of scholarship on Russell's external world program and its relationship to Russell's intellectual context. As Linsky summarizes things,

Nasim argues that Russell took ideas that were being debated and made them precise to formulate his own views on sense data and matter. Most importantly, Russell replaced what Nasim describes as a "socio-psychological" notion of construction with the precise method of "logical construction" modeled on the construction of numbers as equivalence classes, which he brought to the "Controversy" from his work on logic and the foundations of mathematics. Both the origins of some of the unusual aspects of Russell's theory of sense data as being non-mental, but also not material, are found in the Edwardian controversy. We also learn what new ideas Russell brought to the debate to make it his own and to come up with his distinctive project of constructing matter from sense data.

This is a very helpful contribution to our understanding of the history. Linsky raises some points about the amount of detail which Nasim is able to go into about the philosophers he discusses. For example, Linsky explains how Alexander influenced the distinctive form of realism which later flourished in Australia.

A larger question about Nasim's project concerns the extent to which we can reconstruct Russell's views by focusing on philosophers alone. It seems that we may need to look beyond the philosophical context to the scientific debates, especially in psychology and physics, concerning space and our representation of space. Gary Hatfield has made some progress in this direction and my understanding is that Alexander Klein is also pursuing some research into the links between Russell's constructions and the psychology of his day. This sort of work will hopefully complement Nasim's story by expanding what counts as Russell's intellectual context.

Eastern APA Session: New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics

On the first night of the APA in New York City I will be participating in a session designed to unveil the book New Waves in the Philosophy of Mathematics. We are scheduled for Sunday, December 27 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm (GI-8: Society for Realist/Antirealist Discussion). Perhaps not the ideal time, but we will have papers by Otavio Bueno, Oystein Linnebo, Roy Cook, Agustin Rayo and me. Come by to hear about this great volume!

Note: This marks the 100th post on this blog. Thanks to everyone who checks in or links to Honest Toil!

Dark Matter Rumors (cont.)

The results that prompted the rumors noted in an earlier post have now been unveiled. They involve the detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) which are predicted by some theories of dark matter. The group has provided a helpful two-page summary, with the key paragraph:

In this new data set there are indeed 2 events seen with characteristics consistent with those expected from WIMPs. However, there is also a chance that both events could be due to background particles. Scientists have a strict set of criteria for determining whether a new discovery has been made, in essence that the ratio of signal to background events must be large enough that there is no reasonable doubt. Typically there must be less than one chance in a thousand of the signal being due to background. In this case, a signal of about 5 events would have met those criteria. We estimate that there is about a one in four chance to have seen two backgrounds events, so we can make no claim to have discovered WIMPs. Instead we say that the rate of WIMP interactions with nuclei must be less than a particular value that depends on the mass of the WIMP. The numerical values obtained for these interaction rates from this data set are more stringent than those obtained from previous data for most WIMP masses predicted by theories. Such upper limits are still quite valuable in eliminating a number of theories that might explain dark matter. (emphasis added)

So, Bryan's prediction was correct! Now if only the scientists would tell us what "reasonable doubt" amounts to ...

A Universal Pattern for Insurgents?

From this week's Nature:

The researchers collected data on the timing of attacks and number of casualties from more than 54,000 events across nine insurgent wars, including those fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 and in Sierra Leone between 1994 and 2003. By plotting the distribution of the frequency and size of events, the team found that insurgent wars follow an approximate power law, in which the frequency of attacks decreases with increasing attack size to the power of 2.5. That means that for any insurgent war, an attack with 10 casualties is 316 times more likely to occur than one with 100 casualties (316 is 10 to the power of 2.5).

[...]

To explain what was driving this common pattern, the researchers created a mathematical model that assumes that insurgent groups form and fragment when they sense danger, and strike in well-timed bursts to maximize their media exposure. The model gave results that resembled the power-law distribution of actual attacks.

This all seems a bit too easy, although I must admit I have not delved into the details of the actual model. I'm also a bit wary of the predictive power of the model, as with "He is now working to predict how the insurgency in Afghanistan might respond to the influx of foreign troops recently announced by US President Barack Obama". But at least this is yet one more case of a purported mathematical explanation in science.

Dark Matter Rumors Persist

Philosophers interested in tracking how scientists argue for the existence of novel entities might want to stay tuned this week. Rumors of a big announcement, centered largely around the blog Resonances and this post, continue.