Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Mathematical philosophy of science • formal models in epistemology, causation, probability • belief revision, induction, Bayesian updating • scientific explanation, understanding, confirmation • physics foundations: relativity, quantum theory, statistical mechanics, symmetries, quantum gravity • emergence, reduction, modeling in social/neuro sciences
This podcast presents research talks from the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy and related workshops, emphasizing the use of formal tools—logic, probability theory, decision theory, game theory, and mathematical modeling—to address questions in philosophy of science and neighboring areas. Across the episodes, speakers examine how scientific theories are structured, evaluated, and connected to evidence, often by proposing or refining precise frameworks that make assumptions and consequences explicit.
A recurring focus is scientific explanation and understanding: what it means to explain in physics, biology, neuroscience, and the social sciences; whether explanation must be causal or can be mathematical; and how different explanatory styles (mechanistic, dynamical, statistical, model-based, unificationist) function in actual research programs. Several contributions explore causation itself, comparing competing formal approaches and asking how causal claims are supported in settings ranging from traditional experiments to data-intensive “big data” methods and simulations.
Another major theme is uncertainty, inference, and rational belief. The podcast includes discussions of Bayesian and non-Bayesian updating, convergence and reliability of learning procedures, inductive logic (including analogical and exchangeability-based approaches), and classic puzzles about induction and simplicity (such as Goodman’s grue and the status of Occam’s razor in algorithmic information theory). Related work addresses methodological questions about confirmation, model selection, calibration, and when predictive success should count more than accommodation of known data.
Many episodes engage directly with foundational issues in physics, including relativity, quantum theory, statistical mechanics, symmetries, and quantum gravity, often through the lenses of reduction, emergence, effective theories, and inter-theoretic relations. Social-science and applied topics also appear, such as voting and collective choice models, agent-based simulations, the organization of scientific communities, decision-making from experience, and attempts to integrate indigenous and scientific knowledge. Overall, the podcast is oriented toward analytically rigorous philosophy closely informed by contemporary scientific practice.
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Episodes:
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Context, Conversation, and Fragmentation
2015-Jul-08
47 minutes
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Fifteen Dimensions of Evaluating Theories of Causation. A Case Study of the Structural Model and the Ranking Theoretic Approach to Causation
2015-Jul-10
57 minutes
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On the Role of the Light Postulate in Relativity
2015-Jun-30
57 minutes
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Explaining Macroscopic Systems from Microscopic Principles
2015-Jun-30
42 minutes
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Convergence of Iterated Belief Updates
2015-Jun-30
54 minutes
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The Causual Nature of Modeling in Data-Intensive Science
2015-Jun-30
61 minutes
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Against Grue Mysteries
2015-Jun-30
45 minutes
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On Einstein's Reality Criterion
2015-Jun-30
42 minutes
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Predicting Outcomes in Five Person Spatial Games: An Aspiration Model Approach
2015-May-28
80 minutes
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Modeling Cognitive Representations with Evolutionary Game Theory
2015-May-12
35 minutes
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Structures, Mechanisms and Dynamics in Theoretical Neuroscience
2015-May-12
50 minutes
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The Mathematical Route to Causal Understanding
2015-May-11
47 minutes
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Philosophy of Statistical Mechanics from an Emergentist Viewpoint
2015-May-12
63 minutes
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Occam's Razor in Algorithmic Information Theory
2015-Feb-20
36 minutes
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Vindicating Methodological Triangulation
2015-Jan-16
19 minutes
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Mathematical Explanations of Non-Mathematical Facts?
2015-Jan-16
44 minutes
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Science, Metaphysics, and Understanding
2014-Dec-31
49 minutes
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Navigating the Twilight of Uncertainty: Decisions from Experience
2015-Jul-08
54 minutes
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Use-novelty and double-counting: new insights from model selection theory
2014-Dec-18
55 minutes
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On de Finetti's Instrumentalist Philosophy of Probability
2014-Dec-18
57 minutes
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Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge. A Model of Knowledge Integration and its Limitations.
2015-Jul-08
43 minutes
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The Varieties of Explanations in the Higgs Sector
2014-Dec-18
57 minutes
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Propensities, Chance Distributions, and Experimental Statistics
2019-Apr-18
55 minutes
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Unifying Causal and Non-Causal Knowledge
2014-Oct-06
56 minutes
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On the Distinction between Internal and External Symmetries
2019-Apr-18
43 minutes
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Model Tuning and Predictivism
2019-Apr-18
40 minutes
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Rational Routines
2019-Apr-18
36 minutes
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Agent-based simulations in empirical sociological research
2019-Apr-18
47 minutes
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Persistence of the lifeworld? On the relation of lifeworld and science
2019-Apr-18
33 minutes
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An Analogical Inductive Logic for Partially Exchangeable Families of Attributes
2019-Apr-18
74 minutes
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Computational Model as Generic Mechanisms
2019-Apr-18
48 minutes
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On the Justification of Deduction and Induction
2019-Apr-18
69 minutes
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On Bell's local causality in local classical and quantum theory
2019-Apr-18
58 minutes
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On Mathematical Explanation of Physical Facts
2014-May-02
47 minutes
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The epistemic division of labour revisited
2014-May-02
47 minutes
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Theory convergence in approaches to quantum gravity?
2014-Feb-21
62 minutes
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Chaos beyond the Butterfly Effect: The Poison Pill of Structural Model Error
2014-Feb-21
55 minutes
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Inductive logic for rich languages
2014-Feb-18
60 minutes
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String Theory and the Scientific Method
2014-Feb-21
54 minutes
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Cross-Level Linkages in Neurobiology
2014-Jan-28
49 minutes
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Emergence and Explanation
2014-Jan-28
28 minutes
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Scarecrow’s Brain and Homunculi: Neurobiological Reductionism as Ensoulment-Objectification Process Seen Through Anthropological Lenses
2014-Jan-28
33 minutes
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The Completion of Logical Empiricism: Hempel's Pragmatic Turn
2019-Apr-18
36 minutes
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Heterogeneity and Emergence in the Social Sciences
2014-Jan-28
30 minutes
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How Can One and the Same Thing be Subject to Different Theories? On the Proper Logic for Non-Reductive Monism
2014-Jan-28
39 minutes
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Technical Aspects of Reduction and Multiple Realizability
2014-Jan-28
30 minutes
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"Reversed Reduction" in Gibbsian Statistical Mechanics
2014-Jan-28
32 minutes
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Holography and the Emergence of Gravity
2014-Jan-28
40 minutes
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Novelty and autonomy as bases for, or alternatives to, a conception of emergence in physics
2014-Jan-28
26 minutes
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Theory Reduction in Physics: A Model-Based, Dynamical Systems Approach
2014-Jan-28
33 minutes
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The Topology of Intertheoretic Reduction
2014-Jan-28
28 minutes
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Inter-theoretic relations: The Brønsted Lowry theory of acids and microphysics
2014-Jan-28
32 minutes
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An Explication of Emergence
2014-Jan-28
27 minutes
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Reduction in Economics: Causality and Intentionality in the Microfoundations of Macroeconomics
2014-Jan-28
57 minutes
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Agent-based models as mixed-level: lessons from E.coli
2014-Jan-28
27 minutes
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From Dressed Electrons to Quasiparticles: The Emergence of Emergent Entities in Quantum Field Theory
2014-Jan-28
32 minutes
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The Physics of Ontological Emergence
2014-Jan-28
51 minutes
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Reduction and Emergence in Physics
2014-Feb-21
41 minutes
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To map or not to map: or, how to represent auditory space
2014-Mar-05
50 minutes
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Completeness, Categoricity, and Dismissal
2013-Nov-03
62 minutes
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Evolving Perceptual Categories
2013-Nov-03
44 minutes
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Reason-based rationalization
2013-Oct-10
70 minutes
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A Model-Based Epistemology of Measurement
2019-Apr-18
49 minutes
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Separating Truth from Its Idealization
2019-Apr-18
47 minutes
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From Shannon's Axiomatic Approach to a New Sense of Biological Information
2019-Apr-18
52 minutes
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Making sense of multiple climate models' projections
2019-Apr-18
38 minutes
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Rationality and the Bayesian Paradigm
2019-Apr-18
46 minutes
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Cooperation and (structural) Rationality
2019-Apr-18
51 minutes
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Idealization, Prediction, Difference-Making
2019-Apr-18
41 minutes
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Evaluating Risky Prospects: The Distribution View
2019-Apr-18
63 minutes
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Theoretical Terms, Ramsey Sentences and Structural Realism
2019-Apr-18
49 minutes
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The Criteria for the Empirical Significance of Terms
2019-Apr-18
35 minutes
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Typicality in Statistical Physics and Dynamical Systems Theory
2019-Apr-18
37 minutes
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Causal-descriptivism Revisited
2019-Apr-18
54 minutes
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Leibniz Equivalence
2019-Apr-18
53 minutes
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Theoretical Terms and Induction
2019-Apr-18
58 minutes
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The epsilon-reconstruction of theories and scientific structuralism
2019-Apr-18
30 minutes
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Definition, elimination and introduction of theoretical terms
2019-Apr-18
30 minutes
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Implicitly defining mathematical terms
2019-Apr-18
35 minutes
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Causality and Theoretical Terms in Physics
2019-Apr-18
50 minutes
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Theoretical Terms, Ideal Objects and Zalta's Abstract Objects Theory
2019-Apr-18
33 minutes
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Avoiding Reification
2019-Apr-18
29 minutes
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Descriptivism about Theoretical Concepts Implies Ramsification or (Poincarean) Conventionalism
2019-Apr-18
47 minutes
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How Almost Everything in Space-time Theory Is Illuminated by Simple Particle Physics: The Neglected Case of Massive Scalar Gravity
2019-Apr-18
59 minutes
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On the Conception of Fundamentality of Time-Asymmetries in Physics
2019-Apr-18
50 minutes
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Simplicity and Measurability in Science
2019-Apr-18
42 minutes
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