Romanian-Polish Workshop in Causation, Understanding, and Knowledge: New Perspectives and Challenges

The Romanian-Polish Workshop in Causation, Understanding, and Knowledge: New Perspectives and Challenges is hosted by the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. The event is scheduled to take place November 20th, 2023, as a face-to-face conference, but online participation (via Zoom) will be available. Registration is possible via PhilEvents up until the day prior to the event.

The conference is organized in partnership between: (a) the Polish Academy through its Institute of Philosophy and Sociology; (b) the Romanian Academy through its "Constantin Rădulescu-Motru" Institute of Philosophy and Psychology and its "Francisc Rainer" Institute of Anthropology; (c) the University of Bucharest through its Center for Logic, Philosophy and History of Science (CELFIS).

The research project that made the event possible is titled "Inquiries into model-based explanation and understanding".

The tentative programme, with times for Bucharest, Romania, is as follows: 

Panel 1 (Room 3, ground floor in Splaiul Independenței nr. 204, București 060024)

9.45 Conference opening 

10.00 Paula Tomi (National University of Science and Technology "Politehnica" Bucharest & University of Bucharest), "Pinocchio's paradox and Kripke" 

10.40 Krystian Bogucki (Polish Academy of Sciences), "Wittgenstein on the riddle of understanding nonsense"

11.20 Zakrzewska Natalia (Polish Academy of Sciences), TBA    

12.00 coffee break

12.15 keynote, Marcin Milkowski (Polish Academy of Sciences), "Empirical evidence in conceptual engineering"

13.15 keynote, Mircea Dumitru (Romanian Academy & University of Bucharest), "Explaining phenomenal consciousness: Is introspection a reliable source of knowledge?"

14.00 lunch break

Panel 2 ("Mircea Florian" hall, first floor in Splaiul Independenței nr. 204, București 060024)

16.20 Alexandru Dragomir (University of Bucharest, ICUB & CCEA) & Mihai Rusu (Babeș-Bolyai University), "Are philosophers modal experts?"

16.50 Elena Popa (Jagiellonian University, online), "Mechanisms, Activities and Biopsychosocial Causation"

18.00 Szymon Miłkoś (Polish Academy of Sciences), "Causal what? Theoretical dependence and methodological entanglement of causal discovery methods" 

18.50 Sandra-Cătălina Brânzaru (University of Bucharest, CELFIS), “Causation in VR: between realism and fictionalism” 

19.25 Richard David-Rus (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität & Romanian Academy), "Understanding in multispecies anthropology"

19.55 Andrei Mărăşoiu (University of Bucharest, CELFIS), “What the Lotka-Volterra model can teach us about links between explanation and understanding”

For those of you who would like to join some of the talks but have overlapping commitments, we will do our best to record the meetings whenever everyone in attendance consents to it, and to then upload the recordings on the Department's YouTube channel. Previous talks are available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgUq3dN8CXI4L6DhZT1f_Q

The event enjoys the logistic assistance of students in the "Mind the Brain" Master's programme in cognitive science and of final year Bachelor of Arts' students within the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest undergoing their practical curricular practice. More details about the MA programme are available here: https://filosofie.unibuc.ro/master-of-arts-in-cognitive-science-mind-the-brain/ 

Event details will also be available, in due course, on the Facebook page: "Seminarul Departamentului de Filosofie Teoretica UniBuc". In the aftermath of the conference, we would enjoy jointly exploring the possibility of publishing its proceedings. More details will be forthcoming at the time.