In our first event of the year 2026, the Perspectives on Science Seminar will be organized together with the Helsinki Philosophy Colloquium, where Philippe Huneman (Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS/ Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne)) will give a talk titled “The concept of organism in the emergence of biology and its relationship to Kantian philosophy”.

The seminar will take place in Metsätalo (room 9) from 16:15 to 17:45 on Thursday, January 15, 2026. Please note the unusual time, room, and that this event is in-person only!

Perspectives on Science is a research seminar that 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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “The concept of organism in the emergence of biology and its relationship to Kantian philosophy” by Philippe Huneman

When: Thursday 15.01.2026, from 4 to 6 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 9). This event is in-person only and will not be recorded!

Abstract:

Evolutionary biologists nowadays discuss a « return of the organism » (Bateson 2005) that was arguably forgotten in the major theoretical frameworks available for life sciences, namely molecular biology and evolutionary biology. The main field in which this is argued is evolutionary developmental biology (or Evo-Devo); one argument is that the developing organism has to be taken into account to understand adaptation and even evolution, and focusing on genes dynamics as the classical evolutionary biology does – based on population genetics – is not enough.

         Several authors refer to Kant’s idea of organized beings as teleological and self-organising to articulate the metaphysical options of developmental biology (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). And indeed, Kant in the Critique of the Power of Judgement was the first to mention self-organisation, and he constantly referred to modern embryology, as developed by Caspar Wolff and Friedrich Blumenbach at the same time. 

         In this talk, I will explain Kant’s claim about organisms as self-organizing systems, and the concept of teleology it requires, by explicating the original idea of ‘purpose’ he offers us, namely the “lawfulness of the contingent as such“. Then I will show how it makes sense of several scientific advances of his time, especially in embryology and physiology, focusing on the shift in the concept of ‘purpose’ that he suggests – namely, privileging a parts-whole relation over a means-ends relation. 

         By explaining why this concept, for Kant, requires a transcendental viewpoint according to which purpose is merely a “regulative“ principle for judgment rather than a “constitutive“ part of reality, I will finally assess the claim that developmental biology is Kantian, and argue that, when naturalized, Kant’s notion of organisms as self-organized loses the theoretical unity it had, and splits into two directions, one mostly functional, and the other, mostly structural (Huneman 2017, 2026). Finally, I will draw some general consequences for philosophers of science.

Bio:

Philippe Huneman is Research Director at the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS) at the Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. He mainly works on the philosophy of evolutionary biology and ecology, as well as the theory of scientific explanations, and the politics of prediction.

Authored about 180 journal papers and chapters, and 8 edited books on these topics. Most of his papers are available at http://philippehuneman.wordpress.com.  He recently authored Why? The philosophy behind the question (Stanford University Press, 2023) and Death: Perspectives from the Philosophy of Biology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) – this year he publishes When Metaphysics meets Biology. Kantian Approaches to the Concept of Organism (Routledge, 2025) and Profiling : How Predictive Algorithms Shape Identity and the Social Fabric (Stanford University Press, 2026).

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

All are warmly welcome!

In the next Perspectives on Science Seminar, Siska De Baerdemaeker (Stockholm University) will give a talk titled “The pursuitworthiness of Big Science experiments”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 15^th of December 2025. Please note, that the speaker is present only online through Zoom.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “The pursuitworthiness of Big Science experiments” by Siska De Baerdemaeker

When: Monday 15.12.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10), and Zoom. Speaker is present only through Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

“The pursuitworthiness of Big Science experiments”

Since the second World War, we have entered the era of ‘Big Science’. Research is now often conducted at a scale well beyond of what one individual, or even one research lab can manage. Such large experiments tend to require financial support from one or more government agencies over extended periods of time—often even several decades. Because of this increase in costs, scientists have had to change how they decide what experiments to pursue, since only a small number of large-scale experiments will be funded at any given time, and what experiments are pursued can determine the future of scientific research. 

In this talk, I want to give a start at investigating what makes an experiment more worthy to pursue compared to other experiments, especially in the era of Big Science. Tentatively, my theory of pursuit will be developed in three steps. First, I will draw the distinction between the pursuitworthiness of an individual experiment and that of a disciplinary matrix of experiments. I will argue that the primary determination of pursuitworthiness happens at the level of the disciplinary matrix. Second, I will develop a theory of pursuitworthiness of a disciplinary matrix in terms of a balancing exercise between different epistemic values. Third, I will argue that non-epistemic values function as external constraints.

Bio:

Siska De Baerdemaeker is a researcher at Stockholm University, working on history and philosophy of cosmology and astrophysics. Siska’s current research focuses on the epistemology of dark matter experiments, as well as on the early history of relativistic cosmology. She is the Principal Investigator of ERC Starting Grant project “Deciding about Future Science: How Scientists Can Collectively Set Research Priorities in the Era of Big Science (DECIDE)”, scheduled to start in July 2026. Siska received her PhD in history and philosophy of science in 2020 from the University of Pittsburgh. 

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If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

All are warmly welcome!

In the next Perspectives on Science Seminar, Gilles Campagnolo (Panthéon-Sorbonne University) will give a talk titled “Need, Time, and Ignorance: Carl Menger and His Successors”. 

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 8th of December 2025.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “Need, Time, and Ignorance: Carl Menger and His Successors” by Gilles Campagnolo.

When: Monday 08.12.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10) and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

(One of) Austrian economic teachings is that agents constantly face uncertainty. This elementary fact is partly due to their changing environment and partly to their finite nature, which implies a limited understanding of how to overcome hurdles regarding the satisfaction of individually self-felt needs (Bedürfnisbefriedigung in the jargon). Ignorance thus plays a key-role which none of them, yet observers (like economists and social scientists) may in turn ignore. Although perfect competition idealized schemes may make sense as benchmarks in some theoretical frames, the Austrians, first of all the founder of the school Carl Menger, presented reflective tools to acknowledge and incorporate the issues of availability of means to ends (Verfügbarkeit) and ability to sale (Absatzfähigkeit). The status of ignorance and these three notions (in the German original) are the topic of the presentation by Full Research Professor Gilles Campagnolo from Sorbonne University and the French National Center for Scientific Research, PI of the International Research Network Responsibility, Choice and Coordination (ReCCord) of which Helsinki University Philosophy Department and TINT research unit is part.

Bio:

Educated at Paris École Normale Supérieure., Harvard University (as an Augustus Clifford Tower Fellow) and the University of Tokyo, Gilles Campagnolo is a Full Research Professor at the Sorbonne for the French Center for Scientific Research (The Center for Contemporary Philosophy of the Institute for Law and Philosophy at the Sorbonne). He previously worked at Aix-Marseilles School of Economics and at the French Institute for Japanese Studies at the Maison franco-japonaise in Tokyo (Ebisu). Gilles Campagnolo explores economic philosophy and the sources of liberalism in a comparatist perspective between Europe and East Asia. He is a specialist of the sources of liberal thought and capitalistic developments in an interdisciplinary perspective between early classical thought and contemporary theories. He is particularly known as a specialist of the Austrian school of economic thought in particular its founder, Carl Menger (1840-1921), whose archives he explored in the US (Duke University, NC) and Japan (Hitotsubashi University). Campagnolo translated Menger for the first time in French from the German and edited the Investigations into the Method of 1883 in 2011 (Paris, Editions of the Higher School in Social Sciences EHESS) and the Principles of Economics of 1871 in 2020 (Paris, Le Seuil).

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If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

All are warmly welcome!

The next Perspectives on Science Seminar is organized together with the Helsinki Philosophy Colloquium, where Jan-Willem Romeijn (University of Groningen) will give a talk titled “Overfitting in statistics and machine learning”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Thursday the 27^th of November 2025. Please note, that this talk is exceptionally on Thursday!

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “Overfitting in statistics and machine learning” by Jan-Willem Romeijn

When: Thursday 27.10.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

“Overfitting in statistics and machine learning”

Machine learning (ML) methods seem to defy statistical lore on the risks of overfitting. They often have many more adjustable parameters than are needed for fitting the data perfectly but, after showing predictive loss in the realm of normal overfitting, highly overparameterized ML models show surprisingly good predictive performance. In my talk I will review several attempts by statisticians and computer scientists to explain this so-called “double descent phenomenon” and distill three philosophical lessons from them that each derive from seeking continuity between statistics and ML. One is that our conception of model capacity needs an update, as it harbors a variety of ideas about complexity. A further lesson is that we have to flip the script on the problem of underdetermination: the use of unidentified statistical models offers predictive advantages, and this invites a fresh look at our empiricist ideals. A final lesson relies on De Finetti’s representation theorem and on basic insights into the problem of induction: understanding the success of machine learning requires that we delve into processes of model and data construction.

This talk is based on joint work with Daniel Herrmann (UNC Chapel Hill) and Tom Sterkenburg (LMU Munich).

Bio:

Jan-Willem Romeijn is professor of philosophy of science in the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen. His research focuses on statistical methods, social epistemology, and the philosophy of psychiatry. Together with two PhD students and two postdocs, Romeijn currently investigates the philosophical foundations of machine learning methods, and the uses of these methods in psychiatry and the psychiatric clinic.

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

All are warmly welcome!

In the next Perspectives on Science Seminar, Anna Mudde (Campion College, University of Regina) will give a talk titled “’Neglected Things:’ Rethinking Intellectual Work”. 

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 3rd of November 2025.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “’Neglected Things:’ Rethinking Intellectual Work” by Anna Mudde

When: Monday 03.11.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

Many forms of marginalized knowledge are eschewed from philosophical consideration, particularly those associated with making. This includes parts of the labour of philosophy. Drawing on approaches from philosophy of science, STS, and feminist epistemologies, in this talk, I offer a philosophical engagement with craft (rooted in technê) as a way of thinking through the implications of many assumed distinctions between theory and practice, mental and manual, knowing and doing, pure and applied knowledge. I ask how attending to lo-tech craft practices and knowledges might make many forms of ontological knowledge show up as philosophically relevant and might reveal much of our philosophical labour as forms of craft work.

Bio:

Anna Mudde is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Campion College, University of Regina, on Treaty 4 Lands in current Canada. She specializes in using feminist epistemologies, Science and Technology Studies, existential philosophies, and metaphilosophical methods to theorize critical objectivity and subjectivity, self-knowledge, and responsible, embodied knowing and being. She often draws on philosophies of technology, literature, science, and care, and has abiding interests in mirrors, in the limits of philosophical practices of “reflection,” and in theorizing responsibility and privilege. Her current projects are focused on technê as craft, and consider marginalized knowledges and metaphysical practices as they are expressed through human engagements with objects, bodies, and technologies, like knitting and sound. She has recently been experimenting with academic podcasting with Kristin Rodier on thinking bodies: a feminist philosophy podcast. In Fall 2025, she is a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki.

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If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

All are warmly welcome!

In next week’s Perspectives on Science Seminar, Abigail Nieves Delgado (Utrecht University) will give a talk titled “Beyond Race: Rethinking Population Descriptors in Microbiome Research”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and  online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 27^th of October 2025.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “Beyond Race: Rethinking Population Descriptors in Microbiome Research” by Abigail Nieves Delgado

When: Monday 27.10.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

Population descriptors like race, ethnicity, nation, or genetic ancestry are commonly used in biomedicine. They aim to convey relevant information about populations and their relation to one another. In this context, several authors have discussed the problems of using race and ethnicity interchangeably (Panofsky and Bliss 2017), using race as proxy (Gravlee 2009; Lin and Kesley 2000), and assuming that genetic ancestry is a neutral descriptor (Gannett 2014; Haddad 2025). In the field of human microbiome research (investigating differences in the microbiome depending on genetic and/or cultural contexts) these population descriptors are yet more problematic and imprecise. Given that microbiome composition changes depending on many organismal and environmental factors, the epistemic role of racial differences, ethnic characteristics, nation specific traits, or genetic ancestry percentages in distinguishing microbial patterns remains to be clarified. In this presentation we argue that population descriptors suffer especially from two problems: They introduce explanations with low proportionality that fail to grasp relevant causal relations; and their usage is motivated by an overly strong focus on global instead of local health issues. Both problems together amount to what we call the ‘missing locality challenge’ of descriptors. Not addressing it leads to epistemic biases and stereotypes against local communities. By drawing on a case study on human microbiome research, we introduce a new framework to meet this challenge. It ranks population descriptors from ‘global’ to ‘local’ contexts of application, which helps selecting appropriate descriptors for different kinds of disease causalities and groups without stereotyping them.

Bio:

Abigail Nieves Delgado is associate professor at the Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University. She works on the history and philosophy of the life sciences, especially on racialization practices in the history of science as well as in contemporary biomedical research (e.g., in microbiome research and epigenetics) and in biometric technologies (e.g., facial recognition). She also investigates the politics of transdisciplinary knowledge production and the history of ethnobiology in Latin America. She is the principal investigator of the project “Microbiome research and race in the ‘Local South’” funded by the NWO. This project aims to develop epistemically fruitful, non-discriminatory, and locally relevant classification criteria of human diversity to be used in human microbiome research instead of pernicious and ambiguous categories of race.  

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

In next week’s Perspectives on Science Seminar, Jan Sprenger (University of Turin) will give a talk titled “The Productive Model of Explanation in Psychology and Beyond”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and  online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 13^th of October 2025.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: ”The Productive Model of Explanation in Psychology and Beyond” by Jan Sprenger

When: Monday 13.10.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

In their influential 1988 paper “Saving the Phenomena”, Bogen and 
Woodward argued that scientific theories do not, in the first place, 
predict and explain facts about observables. Rather, theories account 
for phenomena, which are placed at an intermediate level between data 
and theory. This work tries to take Bogen and Woodward’s thesis 
seriously: it develops a model of explanation based on a tri-partition 
between theory, phenomena and data. The model squares well with 
explanatory practices in  experimental psychology and the use of formal 
models and statistical analysis. Finally I show how classical 
philosophical models of explanation—the deductive-nomological model, 
the mechanistic model and the interventionist model—can be obtained as 
limiting cases of this more general account.

Bio:

Jan Sprenger obtained his PhD in 2008 from the University of Bonn in 
Germany with a thesis on confirmation and statistical inference. 
Subsequently he worked at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, from 
2014 onwards as Full Professor and Director of the research center 
TiLPS. In 2017 he moved to the University of Turin in Italy, his current 
affiliation. He directed numerous national and international research 
projects, among which an ERC Starting Grant on scientific objectivity 
(2015-2021). In 2019 Oxford University Press  published his monograph 
“Bayesian Philosophy of Science” (jointly with Stephan Hartmann). His 
current research interests focus on themes in semantics, formal 
epistemology and philosophy of science, such as indicative conditionals, 
counterfactuals and scientific explanation.

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Katherine Furman (University of Liverpool) will give a talk titled ““Doing your own research” and the Curious Case of Thabo Mbeki: Making implicit cases in philosophical reasoning explicit”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10) and  online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Friday the 10^thof October 2025. Please note, that this talk is exceptionally on Friday!

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “”Doing your own research” and the Curious Case of Thabo Mbeki: Making implicit cases in philosophical reasoning explicit”” by Katherine Furman

When: Friday 10.10.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time)

Where: Metsätalo room 10, and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

Plenty has been written philosophically about the phenomenon of “doing your research”. That is, when individuals distrust the experts and try to rely on their own competencies to figure out scientific issues for themselves. Typically, the agents are non-specific – they are a philosophical construct for the purposes of theory development. However, what happens when we fill in the details? 

This talk offers a deep dive into Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialist policies in South Africa in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That is, the health policies that prevented access to HIV/AIDS treatment via the public health system. This was based on beliefs that HIV does not cause AIDS and that the prescribed medications are toxic. These beliefs were the result of Mbeki’s own distrust of mainstream HIV/AIDS science at the time and his resulting independent evidence gathering. Detailed analysis of this case suggest that it substantially deviates from the standard accounts of “doing your own research” in the philosophical literature. Overall, this talk argues that we need to be careful of who our hypothetical agents are in our theorising, because changing the cases can change the theory. 

Bio:

Katherine Furman is a senior lecturer of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Liverpool. She predominantly works on philosophy and public policy, with a special interest in health policy development in contexts of distrust, especially in African countries. 

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

This Thursday TINT will organize a joint session together with Helsinki Philosophy Colloquium, where Lorenzo Casini (University of Bologna) will give a talk on his joint work with Alexander Gebharter titled “Realization Independence and the Epiphenomenalist Revenge“. The session opens up University of Helsinki spring festival.

The session takes place live in Metsätalo sali 2 and via Zoom from 12:15 to 13:45 on Thursday the 5thof June 2025.

Please note the unusual room and time!

What: ”Realization Independence and the Epiphenomenalist Revenge” by Lorenzo Casini

When: Thursday 05.06.2025 from 12 to 2 pm (EEST, Helsinki time)

Where: Metsätalo (sali 2), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

For the last two decades, James Woodward has been attempting to defend mental causation against ephiphenomenalism by drawing on his interventionist theory of causation. Recently, he has imposed a “realization independence” condition, aiming to address a charge of underdetermination levelled by Michael Baumgartner. If sound, Woodward’s proposal promises to solve an age-old metaphysical debate based on ideal experimental evidence. 

Here, we argue that the proposal runs into a dilemma: Either it contradicts the core tenet of interventionism and leads to absurd consequences or it cannot escape the underdetermination charge. This renders it vulnerable to what we call the epiphenomenalist revenge: the most plausible way out of the dilemma is to give up mental causation altogether. More generally, our argument undermines the claim that the mental causation problem can be solved on evidence-based grounds.

Bio:

Lorenzo Casini is a philosopher of science specializing in causal inference, and working on conceptual and methodological issues in the special sciences, more generally. After obtaining his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Kent in 2013, Casini held positions at Konstanz, LMU Munich, Geneva, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, and the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca. Currently, he is Assistant Professor in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Bologna.

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.