STS Inaugural Lecture Series: Professor Phyllis Illari

The Department of Science & Technology Studies (STS) at UCL welcomes Professor Phyllis Illari for her inaugural lectures as Professor of Philosophy of Science.

In celebration we invite you to attend Professor Illari's inaugural lecture, followed by a drinks reception, as part of the STS inaugural lecture series. Lectures in our inaugural series are free to attend, booking is essential to secure your space. We look forward to seeing you there.

Abstract

Causality is special because so much of the work of the sciences and other academic disciplines is in thinking about what causes what, about evidence for causal claims, about what data should be collected or what should be measured (and how) to find out about causes, about how to reason about known causes, and about what should be done on the basis of causal knowledge – and uncertainty about causal knowledge. Causality is also special because it’s been a focus of philosophical work for over 2000 years, and it’s not sorted out yet. I’ve worked on causality for 25 years. And I think I’ve finally got somewhere.

In this talk I intend to take you on a tour of my research, which spans understanding the virtues of theories of causality, how mechanistic explanation is the same and also differs across the sciences, and arguing for greater evidential pluralism in medicine given the myriad of different purposes different medical people have. I’ve also worked on disciplines as diverse as medicine, astrophysics, information security, neuroscience, ecology, and science education, although I promise I won’t try to cover all of these.

I will present my (and Federica Russo’s) causal mosaic approach to causality, which is a radical conceptual pluralism arguing that there are advantages – and disadvantages – of all of the causal concepts that have been developed, and what we need is to learn to use them to put together causal mosaics using multiple concepts suited to address particular questions and problems. This is a philosophical view, but it is also a vision for philosophy of science as a collaborative enterprise that can sit at the heart of a swathe of different problems in the academy and in public life. I will also present that vision for what philosophy of science can do, particularly philosophy of science in STS.

Live Streaming

This will be an in-person event and open to the public. If you are unable to attend the UCL campus, please register to watch the Live Stream via the link below:

Sing up to the Live Stream here!

Should you have any accessibility requirements to access our event, please let us know as soon as possible via email: sts@ucl.ac.uk.