Reading Groups

Philosophy of Physics

This term, the philosophy of physics group will read The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism (2020) by Alastair Wilson.

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 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 summer semester 2025 is Friday 4-5 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)

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.

MAP Reading Group: How Stereotypes Deceive Us

The MAP reading group meets every two weeks on Friday, from 13:00-14:30 in room 028. This term, we're reading Katherine Puddifoot's book 'How Stereotypes Deceive Us' in combination with relevant journal articles.

For further information or a Zoom link to join the discussion online, please contact Sophie Kikkert at s.kikkert@lmu.de.

Inductive Logic: A Bayesian Approach

We are going through a book manucript on Objective Bayesian Inductive Logic by Jürgen Landes, Soroush Rafiee Rad and Jon Williamson.

Our world is complex, but we can often describe some of this complexity by means of the sentences of a first-order logical language and represent evidence about the world by means of constraints on the probabilities of those sentences. In this book, we develop a logic that allows us to draw inferences in such a framework: objective Bayesian inductive logic (OBIL). The book collects the main results to date.

If you like to join us, please contact Juergen Landes juergen_landes@yahoo.de.