Reading Groups

Philosophy of Physics

This term, the philosophy of physics group will read Kian Salimkhani's book on 'The Non-Fundamentality of Spacetime'. The group will meet Thursdays 18:00-19:00 on Zoom.

For further information and a link to the Zoom meeting room, please contact Laurie Letertre at Laurie.letertre@gmail.com.

Philosophy of Machine Learning

We meet (online) every two-three weeks to discuss a (recent) paper in the philosophy of machine learning, with a focus, but not an exclusive focus, on epistemological themes. The timeslot for the winter semester 2024/25 is Friday 3-4 PM.

If you like to join us, please contact Tom Sterkenburg (tom.sterkenburg@lmu.de) or Timo Freiesleben (timo.freiesleben@web.de). You can also find the schedule on http://tomster.userweb.mwn.de/mlregr/.

 Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language (the modified English translation in 1937)

Introduction: This semester we continue to read Carnap's book Logical Syntax of Language (LSS). We will meet weekly to discuss roughly 20 pages of the book. The reading process will focus on the main questions: What role do Carnap's terminology settings play in achieving his epistemological goal? And how does Carnap understand the relation between metalanguage and object-language? We may also bring sections from Carnap's other books such as Meaning and Necessity and the relevant secondary literature into the discussion, but the focus will be on the original text of LSS. (No prior knowledge of Carnap’s work is required.)

The group will meet online on Fridays, 4-6 pm. If you would like to join, please contact Nata (yangzhwy@outlook.com) or Andreas (Andreas.Frenzel@campus.lmu.de).

Reading Group on Rheinberger's Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation

organized by Alice Murphy with colleagues from LMU, Cambridge, Exeter, and UCL.

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo192229451.html

The plan is to meet fortnightly on Zoom on Wednesdays, 10.00 – 11.30 Munich time (9.00 - 10.30 UK time), starting 16th October. We will read a couple of chapters per session.

Please email Alice at alice.murphy@lrz.uni-muenchen.de if you're interested in joining.

The Classics Reading Group

We will read and discuss various classic texts of (mid-)twentieth century philosophers of science. A common theme in these texts concerns how different brands of anti-foundationalism can be combined with some moderate form of empiricism.

PhD students and faculty members interested in joining are invited to contact John Dougherty (John.Dougherty@lrz.uni-muenchen.de) and/or Alexander Reutlinger (Alexander.Reutlinger@lmu.de) for further information.