Responsibility in the Face of Uncertainty

A research seminar with Prof Roman Frigg (LSE)

This is an in-person only public event that is free of charge, but booking is essential.

Event Description:

Many important decisions are based on models that offer representations of complex physical systems. However, these models often face uncertainty. We present an approach to decision-making involving multiple models in situations of severe uncertainty and show how this approach can be employed to develop a confidence-sensitive decision support tool for anticipatory humanitarian action. We apply the tool to the case of Cyclone Kenneth, which made landfall in Mozambique in April 2019. Comparing the level and timing of the alerts that were actually triggered with the alerts recommended by the tool shows that even a moderately an uncertainty-intolerant decision-maker would have acted earlier had they used the tool, thereby considerably reducing the cyclone's impact. The approach therefore has the potential to contribute to a sustainable management of environmental risks, and it suggests institutional structures to do so.

About the Speaker:

Roman Frigg is Professor of Philosophy and Head of Department at LSE's Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method. He is the winner of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is a permanent visiting professor in the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and he held visiting appointments in the Rotman Institute of Philosophy of the University of Western Ontario, the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Utrecht, the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science of the University of Sydney, and the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Barcelona. He was associate editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and member of the steering committee of the European Philosophy of Science Association. He currently serves on a number of editorial and advisory boards. Roman holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of London and masters degrees both in theoretical physics and philosophy from the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research interests lie in general philosophy of science and philosophy of physics, and he has published papers on climate change, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, randomness, chaos, complexity, probability, scientific realism, computer simulations, modelling, scientific representation, reductionism, confirmation, and the relation between art and science. His current work focuses on predictability and climate change, the foundation of statistical mechanics, and the nature of scientific models and theories.