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SCI PHI is a weekly philosophy of science podcast featuring interviews with prominent and up-and-coming philosophers of science who engage with scientists in interesting ways.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Philosophy of science interviews • Scientific methodology, rationality, induction, Bayesianism, causation • Models, idealization, explanation • Science–values, ethics, policy, public trust • Case studies: medicine/psychiatry, AI, neuroscience, evolution, physics/astronomy, chemistry, deep pastThis podcast is a weekly interview show in philosophy of science, focusing on how philosophical analysis and scientific practice inform one another. Conversations typically center on what counts as good evidence, explanation, and methodology across different sciences, and how scientific knowledge is produced under real-world constraints such as limited data, imperfect models, and human cognitive bounds.
Across episodes, guests discuss core topics in contemporary philosophy of science: rationality and decision-making for bounded agents; probabilistic and Bayesian approaches to inference; causation, causal explanation, and causal modeling; and questions about scientific progress and demarcation (how to distinguish science from non-science or pseudoscience). A recurring thread is close attention to scientific practice—how experiments, models, idealizations, and statistical tools actually function in research—and how philosophical frameworks can clarify their strengths and limitations.
The show ranges widely across scientific domains. Listeners encounter philosophy of physics and cosmology (including spacetime and large-scale astrophysical experiments), philosophy of biology and evolutionary theory (including the role of chance and causal structure in selection), philosophy of chemistry (such as the periodic table and reduction to quantum mechanics), and topics in neuroscience and cognitive science (including abstraction, explanation of mind and consciousness, and concepts like memory traces). Episodes also engage philosophy of medicine, psychiatry, and public health, addressing diagnostic methods, first-person perspectives and lived experience in research, and conceptual issues that arise in clinical and population-health contexts.
Another prominent theme is science in society: values in science, commercially driven research and the production of ignorance, public trust and expertise (including vaccine controversies), and the ethics of socially engaged and policy-relevant research. Several discussions emphasize collaboration—how philosophers, scientists, and other stakeholders (engineers, policymakers, and publics) can work together, and what responsible scientific inquiry requires both epistemically and ethically.
