Category: Yleinen

In the Perspectives on Science seminar on 6 May, 2024, Mattia Gallotti (London Interdisciplinary School) will give a talk titled “Towards a Framework for Interdisciplinary Integrative Research”

Perspectives on Science is a research seminar which brings together experts from the philosophy of science and several fields of science studies. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar can be found on the TINT web page https://tint.helsinki.fi.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo room 10 and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 6th of May 2024. To join the seminar, please contact samuli.reijula@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.

Abstract

Despite widespread recognition, interdisciplinarity still lacks a consistent system of research evaluation. At a time when ever more research is recognized and classed as being interdisciplinary, the need for clear and shared evaluative standards is now seen as a pressing concern in the academic and policy world. Calls have been made for better theoretically founded, more sophisticated, and dynamic approaches to accurately capture the ethos of interdisciplinary research. In recent years, important systematic work has been done to distill general criteria for cross-disciplinary integration from successful cases of local research activity and design. However, increasing knowledge of the processes and techniques through which interdisciplinary outputs can be generated through integration has not yet led to an agreed upon framework. This paper seeks to address this issue in the context of the broader debate on integration as the guiding method of interdisciplinarity, thus contributing to current efforts towards a philosophy of science of interdisciplinarity.

Author Bio:

Mattia Gallotti is a founding Faculty member and currently the Head of Research & Development at the new London Interdisciplinary School (LIS). A trained philosopher of social science, he has researched concepts of collective intentionality across several disciplines spanning from cognitive science to literary criticism. His current research focuses on the methodology of interdisciplinary research and teaching.

www.linkedin.com/in/mattiagallotti

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Kármen Kovács (University of Pécs) will give a talk titled “Is early novelty switching beneficial for consumers? The impact of impatience on the consumer utility derived from innovation from a behavioural economic perspective”

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo room 10 and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 29th of April 2024. To join the seminar, please contact samuli.reijula@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.

Perspectives on Science is a research seminar which brings together experts from the philosophy of science and several fields of science studies. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar can be found on the TINT web page https://tint.helsinki.fi.

Abstract

This research investigates from a behavioural economic perspective the reasons, the manifestations and the consequences of the early purchase of various innovations when consumers have present-biased preferences. The present study aims to analyse how consumers’ impatience influences their utility stream when various innovations are launched with increasing frequency. A simple theoretical model is presented that proceeds on the general form of the hyperbolic discounting utility function. Its purpose is to analyse how consumers’ impatience influences their utility stream derived from purchasing various types of innovations and a potential early novelty switching. The findings show why impatient consumers tend to finance the desired innovation by borrowing. The results indicate how the level of impatience, price level, and added value of innovations influence consumers’ utility stream.

Bio

Kármen Kovács graduated from the University of Pécs, Faculty of Business and Economics in 2002. She defended her PhD dissertation with summa cum laude in 2007; then she habilitated successfully in 2015. She was an assistant professor from September 2008 at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Business and Economics. She has been an associate professor since July 2016 at the Faculty. She has taught academic research and writing, research methods, basic mathematics, innovation management, business economics and behavioural economics. Her major research interest is behavioural economics. For the academic year 2016/17, she received a postdoctoral scholarship from the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities. She received the János Bolyai Research Fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences between 2017 and 2020. She has won the Hungarian State Eötvös Scholarship for the academic year 2023/24. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Marketing Intelligence and Planning.

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Charlie Kurth (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies; Western Michigan University) will give a talk titled “What is the Place of Emotion AI in Moral Education?”

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 8th of April 2024. To join the seminar, please contact samuli.reijula@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.

Perspectives on Science is a research seminar which brings together experts from the philosophy of science and several fields of science studies. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar can be found on the TINT web page https://tint.helsinki.fi.

Abstract

Cultivating one’s emotions—learning to feel anger, say, at the right time and in the right way—has long been viewed as central to moral education. Recently, educators, philosophers, and entrepreneurs have pointed to “emotion nudges” and other forms of emotion-focused AI (EAI) as powerful, but under-utilized tools for emotion cultivation. The initial results are intriguing: merely placing “watching-eye” icons in online chatrooms can prompt feelings of anxiety that help curb vicious posting, and virtual reality (VR) simulations can engage stereotype-challenging empathy. But while there’s a growing body of research examining the use of AI for education as well as emotion-focused AI in general, there is little that looks specifically at the science and ethics of using EAI for moral education. 

In an effort to start filling this gap, my paper has two aims. First, I identify a trio of issues that must be addressed if EAI is to live up to its promise. More specifically, as it stands, we (i) lack answers to basic questions about how EAI will identify, assess, and educate emotions, (ii) have not considered (much less addressed) very real concerns about how EAI could lead to the deskilling of crucial meta-emotional capacities, and (iii) have done little to tackle problematic political and financial influences that threaten to distort the development of EAI educational tools. While these considerations should leave us very worried about the continued use of EAI, the second part of the paper attempts to find reasons for optimism. To do this, I examine emerging VR technologies in order to explore what scientifically and pedagogically responsible uses of EAI for moral education might look like. 

Bio

Charlie Kurth is a Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Western Michigan University. His research focuses on issues at the intersection of ethical theory, moral psychology, and the philosophy of emotion; methodologically, he takes philosophical questions about the nature of value and the mind to be productively informed by empirical inquiry in the cognitive and social sciences. Recently, his work has examined the role that emotions play in shaping moral thought and agency.

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Sam White (University of Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Rabbits, Ducks, and Conceptual Problems in the Environmental History of Late Antiquity.”

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 11th of March 2024. To join the seminar, please contact samuli.reijula@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.

Perspectives on Science is a research seminar which brings together experts from the philosophy of science and several fields of science studies. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar can be found on the TINT web page https://tint.helsinki.fi.

Abstract

Investigations in the historical sciences often confront persistent (contrastive) under-determination of theory by evidence. In some cases, rival theories may persist indefinitely in a state of uncertainty or indifference. Yet in most cases the hope is that new evidence and methods will bring at least partial and provisional resolution. Unfortunately, there can be cases when new evidence and methods appear to aggravate problems of under-determination rather than resolve them, producing sharply divided and apparently irreconcilable positions on historical questions. One such case is the environmental history of the Late Antique Mediterranean (e.g., early Byzantine Empire): once a quaint and obscure branch of study that has now drawn a disproportionate share of research attention and scholarly polemics. Teams of historians, archaeologists, paleoclimatologists, and geneticists have clashed over “maximalist” and “minimalist” positions regarding environmental disasters, plague mortality, and political collapse in the 3^rd-6^th centuries CE; and in numerous cases, have attacked each other’s methods, epistemology, and reasoning. Using the familiar rabbit-duck illusion as a metaphor, I argue that debates in the field have been derailed by feedbacks between divergent historical interpretations, on the one hand, and divergent approaches to historical analysis and interdisciplinary consilience, on the other. The paper proposes some modest solutions grounded in Bayesian reasoning. Problems in the environmental history of Late Antiquity analyzed in my paper may also represent wider problems in historical epistemology.

Author bio

Sam White joined the University of Helsinki as professor of political history in October 2022. He teaches on environmental history, historiography, and the uses and politics of history. His research specializes in reconstructing past climates and extreme weather and understanding their roles in human history. His publications include narrative monographs, scientific collaborations, and works on theory and methods. He currently leads the Past Global Changes (PAGES) working group on Climate Reconstruction and Impacts from the Archives of Societies. 

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