Abstracts

Abstracts

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Brett Calcott
Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber
Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller		Stewart Saunders

	Adam La Caze
	University of Queensland
	What are the epistemic limits of Evidence-based medicine?
	I will present an overview of my recently initiated research on the epistemological questions raised by Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). EBM has been defined as the “conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” . Central to the practice of EBM is it’s hierarchy of evidence, which explicitly links the rigour of study methodology with the strength of recommendation for action. I shall discuss two areas of my proposed research with a view to exploring possible links with questions which may arise within philosophy of biology, broadly construed: (i) how might the statistical inferences made within EBM be understood – what are the possible weaknesses of the way statistical inferences are currently being made, and how may these weaknesses be overcome? And (ii) how does EBM and information gained from the basic sciences inter-relate? Does EBM and it’s hierarchy of evidence “black box” the causal stories central to the basic biological sciences? Sackett DL, et al. BMJ 1996;312 (7023): 71-72.
	alacaze 'at' pharmacy.uq.edu.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Brett Calcott	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Alan Poole
	Victoria University of Wellington
	Increased sociality and social worlds: Do humans really have to be that smart to be social?
	The social competition model (SCM) claims the following: Social worlds can be more unpredictable and variable than non-social worlds, because any agent is dealing with their peers. Interactions with peers produces complex tracking, prediction, and behavioural control problems which require more intelligence to solve. This is compounded when deception is brought into the mix. I shall dispute this claim in my talk. Social creatures work better when they can stabilise and control their social world, and this is obviously better served by making social worlds more predictable, and interactions more stereotyped. Some support for this might come from studies on norms and their role in human societies. However, I will argue that norms do not require complex cognition to use, and allow for interactions to be more stable and stereotyped. Deception, considered to be one of the main disruptive factors in social living (and which typifies many of the social problems claimed by the SCM), can be countered by the use of norms, and the problems that the SCM claims hominins and humans faced may not have been faced much at all.
	k_alanpoole 'at' yahoo.com.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Brett Calcott	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller
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	Ben Jeffares
	Australian National University
	Standard Processes and Unique Events
	There has been a great deal of discussion over the years about the species of various hominin fossil finds. This debate has become polarised between the multi-regional "lumpers," who see human evolution as a single lineage evolving anagenetically, and the "splitters," those that see the hominin clade as a series of speciation events. The lumpers got it wrong. Molecular clock data, increasing data sets and recent finds such as Homo Florensis demonstrate that pretty clearly. This paper explores these two positions from the point of view of a distinction between processes and events. I argue that the "lumpers" got it wrong because they see human evolution as a unique case that doesn't fit standard explanatory patterns. The splitters on the other hand got it right, because they see human evolution as being subject to standard evolutionary processes.
	benjeffares 'at' yahoo.co.nz

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Brett Calcott	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Brett Calcott
	Australian National University
	How to pull a rabbit out of a hat: what evo-devo explains
	Understanding evolutionary innovations is a key research program in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). I argue that, in explaining these innovations, proponents of evo-devo provide a very different type of explanation than is typically supplied in either experimental or evolutionary biology. This is particularly evident when attempts are made to unify some of details in these evo-devo explanations, with such concepts as modularity and evolvability. These concepts are relatively new, still undergoing clarification, and, for the most part, distinct to this field. I draw some interesting comparisons with changes that have taken place in software development methodology in the last 20 years.
	brett 'at' coombs.anu.edu.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Brett Calcott	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Dennis Poole
	Victoria University of Wellington
	Evaluating Functional Approaches to Landscape Aesthetics: The Debate Between Environmental Psychology and Environmental Sociology.
	The sociobiology/sociology debate about how much developmental plasticity the mind possesses can be applied to functional analyses of Landscape Aesthetics, where I will argue that our landscape evaluation mechanisms (LEMs) are built up from a particular mix of genetically coded capacities and biases on the one hand, and socially and culturally constructed capacities on the other. I shall argue for this view on the following basis: LEMs are comprised of two elements; a) evaluating a landscape on the basis of one's needs and aspirations, and b) on the basis of a generalisable framework for understanding features of the landscape that aid navigation and exploration. I shall argue that, overall, sociobiological explanations fit b) best, while sociological explanations best account for most of a).
	hidekipoole 'at' yahoo.co.nz

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Brett Calcott	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	John Matthewson
	Australian National University
	A Puzzle about Generality in Modelling
	Generality in model-based science refers to how many target systems a model or family of models applies to. I have two competing intuitions about this generality. On one hand, the more tightly we make our models resemble a given target system, the less they seem to apply to other targets. On the other hand, the way we usually improve resemblance is through the introduction of parameters to a model’s description, and doing this will increase its flexibility. This presumably makes the description pick out more models, not less. How can I reconcile these two intuitions? I think the answer lies in being clear about the two-step relationship inherent in model-based science. We need to be sure which of these relations we are considering, especially since sometimes they seem to be present covertly.
	john 'at' coombs.anu.edu.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Katie Steele
	University of Queensland
	Right decisions or happy decision-makers: how a group of experts should determine the facts.
	I characterize “expert decisions” as group decisions that involve a closer relationship to appropriate facts about the world than do other types of group decision such as parliamentary elections. However, this requirement for objectivity does not mean that experts should expect to uncover the “right” decision parameters (probability and/or utility functions) in a decision-making situation. Given the fallibility of any singular expert judgment, “expert decisions” should be conceived as group decisions involving individual members with their own subjective probability/utility estimates. The difference with standard voting schemes is that we can assume there is some agreement about what aspect of the world the probability/utility functions are supposed to measure, and thus we can make some extra assumptions, like there being meaningful interpersonal comparison of utility. Here I suggest a particular formal model that facilitates a group of experts to reach consensus on a particular decision parameter, such as a probability or utility function. The model has some nice mathematical features — under reasonable circumstances, it gives a convergent or consensus parameter result for the group. The challenge is to determine what circumstances make the use of the model most reasonable, and thus when expert decision-makers should be happy with its results.
	katiesiobhansteele 'at' yahoo.com

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Patrick Forber
	Standford University
	Revealing the traces of times long past: an optimistic take
	In evolutionary biology the in-practice available data outstrips the in-principle evidential demands. This creates an epistemological problem: available data may fail to discriminate between alternative hypotheses. A proper test of an evolutionary hypothesis may require data that are inaccessible. Much like the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost, biologists may persist in looking for answers "where the light is" when they lack access to the necessary data. I take the situation of biologists to be much different than that of the unfortunate drunk, and will examine some strategies for overcoming this evidential problem of contrast failure.
	pforber 'at' stanford.edu

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Sandy Boucher
	Melbourne University
	Pragmatism and Anti-Realism about the Units of Selection
	The epistemological dimension of the units of selection controversy has been discussed by a number of people in recent years but the discussion has been muddied by some confusions, which I aim to clear up in this paper. In particular, I urge that we distinguish between two positions that have often been conflated: Pragmatism about the units of selection, the view that our choice of which level(s) to model selection processes from is subject only to pragmatic (rather than epistemically rational) constraints; and anti-realism, the view that there is no fact of the matter about which levels of selection are metaphysically real.
	a.boucher 'at' pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Scott Fuller
	Australian National University
	Considering the Connection between Biology and Ethics
	There has been quite a large body of work in both philosophy and biology examining the nature of the relationship between biology and ethics. More generally, the exploration of this question constitutes a sub-category of the discussion surrounding the nature of ethical or moral prescription, the link between questions of fact and questions of value, and what role any historical explanation of an activity may have on the current practice of that activity. In my paper, I will trace out one strand of this general discussion and attempt to highlight some potentially useful areas that can be explored by philosophers regarding what insight can be gained from considering ethics from a biological perspective. The hope is that consideration of this issue may be of some philosophical use in providing some prescriptive answers to environmental questions.
	Scott.Fuller 'at' anu.edu.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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	Stewart Saunders
	Australian National University
	Skyrms on Meaning: realist or antirealist?
	Brian Skyrms has offered a sophisticated account of communication based on evolutionary dynamics. According to me, Skyrms' has shown how successful communication can occur without words having meaning. That is, Skyrms has provided an explanation of communication that is antirealist with respect to meaning. This is not what Skyrms thinks. He takes himself to be offering a thoroughly realist account, one that will put an end to Quinian and Kripkensteinian skepticism concerning meaning. My argument is as follows: (1) Skyrms' account of the practise of fair division is antirealist with respect to morality (2) His account of the practise of fair division and his account of communication are of the same kind, i.e. they are either both realist or both antirealist Therefore, (3) Skyrms' account of communication is antirealist. Unless there's a symmetry breaker that undermines 2, the success of my argument will rest on establishing 1. This is going to take some doing.
	ssaunders 'at' coombs.anu.edu.au

Adam La Caze	Alan Poole	Ben Jeffares	Dennis Poole	John Matthewson	Katie Steele	Patrick Forber	Sandy Boucher	Scott Fuller	Stewart Saunders
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