Dr. Lennart Ackermans

I received my PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2023. After a short hiatus, I started in September 2024 at the MCMP on a Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. My PhD research was about measuring causation in economics and social science, as well as some topics in Bayesian epistemology. Before that, I obtained a Research MA in Philosophy and Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam and a BSc in Mathematics from Leiden University.

Research Interests

My research interests are on the intersection between philosophy of science and formal ethics. In particular, I am interested in causal concepts that are used and measured in the social sciences, which raise questions relating to causal methodology, the metaphysics of causation and ethics. I am currently working on the concept of discrimination, which I argue should be defined causally. There are many open challenges about the correct way to define discrimination (causally or otherwise) and the right (causal) methods to measure discrimination. I am also interested in Bayesian epistemology.

Selected Publications

• Ackermans, L.B. 2023. “Reflections on the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize Awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido W. Imbens.” Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 16 (1): 77–96. https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v16i1.763

• Ackermans, L.B. 2022. “Causal Bias in Measures of Inequality of Opportunity.” Synthese 200: 6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03899-1

• Ackermans, L.B. 2022. “Infinite Frequency Principles of Direct Inference.” Synthese 200: 164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03642-w