时间：2018年11月15日（周四）下午15：00-17：00

地点：科学史系系厅（蒙民伟科技大楼212）

主讲人：Daniel Kostic (University Bordeaux-Montaigne & IHPST/CNRS/ University Paris 1 Pantheon- Sorbonne, France)

讲题：Topological Controllability of the Brain & Non-causal Explanatory Asymmetries

内容简介：

Any good and successful explanation has to be asymmetric, otherwise, it’s circular. In causal explanations, the explanatory asymmetry simply follows the direction of causation, i.e. we generally tend to think that causes explain their effects, and not the other way around. For example, if we say that the changes in the air temperature cause the mercury to expand and thus to climb up the glass column in a thermometer, it seems absurd to say that expanding of the mercury causes the changes in air temperature. If the changes in air temperature are true causes of the expending of the mercury in the thermometer, then this kind of asymmetry will have to be preserved across all the counterfactuals related to that explanation. That is why the counterfactual information and explanatory asymmetries are central in distinguishing good from bad explanations.

But in topological explanations in neuroscience it is not immediately obvious what can ground the explanatory asymmetry.

Kostic 教授自我简介：

I’m a philosopher of science and philosopher of mind. In May 2016 I was an EPSA (European Philosophy of Science Association) Fellow at Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques (IHPST), University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. And from June 2016 l continued as a Marie Sk？odowska-Curie Intra-European Fellow at the IHPST.

I’m also a guest editor in Synthese for a Special Issue on “Mechanistic and Topological Explanations”. I’m also preparing a book on topological explanations in sciences together with Philippe Huneman. Apart from Philippe Huneman, I collaborate closely with Carl F. Craver on the explanatory novelty of network analysis (we had a symposium on that topic at the PSA2014 in Chicago, and now working on our papers for a special issue in Philosophy of Science). I’m also developing collaboration with Raphael van Riel on explanatory power of scientific models, Jacob Busch on minimal explanations, Liz Schier and Glenn Carruthers on the hard problem of consciousness.

My main research interest lies in the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of neuroscience. I work on a topological account of explanation. In my view, topological explanations are non-causal, they are akin to minimal model explanations (Batterman and Rice 2014), but are not restricted to minimal models, i.e. some topological models are not minimal models, but they provide explanations that are independent of their representational accuracy.

I received my undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Belgrade. In July 2011 I received my PhD degree in philosophy from Humboldt University in Berlin. I was a non-award research PhD student at King’s College London where I worked with Professor David Papineau who was also one of my PhD examiners.