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Roland Poellinger (LMU/MCMP) gives a talk at the Workshop on Five Years MCMP: Quo Vadis, Mathematical Philosophy? (2-4 June, 2016) titled "Five Years MCMP: Looking Back". Abstract: In this presentation I will speak about the MCMP's outreach and line up some of the center's achievements in the last five years. I will put special emphasis on our media output since many of our activities are mirrored in our media-related efforts such as our video channels on iTunes U, our Coursera online courses, and our publication database on the MCMP's web portal. [LMUcast ID: t2vemWbpy7]

Michael Strevens (NYU) meets Roland Poellinger (MCMP/LMU) in a joint session on "Unifying Causal and Non-Causal Knowledge" at the MCMP workshop "Bridges 2014" (2 and 3 Sept, 2014, German House, New York City). The 2-day trans-continental meeting in mathematical philosophy focused on inter-theoretical relations thereby connecting form and content of this philosophical exchange. Idea and motivation: We use theories to explain, to predict and to instruct, to talk about our world and order the objects therein. Different theories deliberately emphasize different aspects of an object, purposefully utilize different formal methods, and necessarily confine their attention to a distinct field of interest. The desire to enlarge knowledge by combining two theories presents a research community with the task of building bridges between the structures and theoretical entities on both sides. Especially if no background theory is available as yet, this becomes a question of principle and of philosophical groundwork: If there are any – what are the inter-theoretical relations to look like? Will a unified theory possibly adjudicate between monist and dualist positions? Under what circumstances will partial translations suffice? Can the ontological status of inter-theoretical relations inform us about inter-object relations in the world? Find more about the meeting at www.lmu.de/bridges2014. [LMUcast ID: C4LmFgjK0o]

Michael Strevens (NYU) meets Roland Poellinger (MCMP/LMU) in a joint session on "Unifying Causal and Non-Causal Knowledge" at the MCMP workshop "Bridges 2014" (2 and 3 Sept, 2014, German House, New York City). The 2-day trans-continental meeting in mathematical philosophy focused on inter-theoretical relations thereby connecting form and content of this philosophical exchange. Idea and motivation: We use theories to explain, to predict and to instruct, to talk about our world and order the objects therein. Different theories deliberately emphasize different aspects of an object, purposefully utilize different formal methods, and necessarily confine their attention to a distinct field of interest. The desire to enlarge knowledge by combining two theories presents a research community with the task of building bridges between the structures and theoretical entities on both sides. Especially if no background theory is available as yet, this becomes a question of principle and of philosophical groundwork: If there are any – what are the inter-theoretical relations to look like? Will a unified theory possibly adjudicate between monist and dualist positions? Under what circumstances will partial translations suffice? Can the ontological status of inter-theoretical relations inform us about inter-object relations in the world? Find more about the meeting at www.lmu.de/bridges2014. [LMUcast ID: jWPObb0ZNb]

Roland Poellinger (MCMP/LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (14 May, 2014) titled "The Mind-Brain Entanglement". Abstract: Listing "The Nonreductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation" (1993) Jaegwon Kim suggested that the only remaining alternatives are the eliminativist’s standpoint or plain denial of the mind’s causal powers if we want to uphold the closure of the physical and reject causal overdetermination at the same time. Nevertheless, explaining stock market trends by referring to investors’ fear of loss is a very familiar example of attributing reality to both domains and acknowledging the mind’s interaction with the world: "if you pick a physical event and trace its causal ancestry or posterity, you may run into mental events" (Kim 1993). In this talk I will use the formal framework of Bayes net causal models in an interventionist understanding (as devised, e.g., by Judea Pearl in "Causality", 2000) to make the concept of causal influence precise. Investigating structurally similar cases of conflicting causal intuitions will motivate a natural extension of the interventionist Bayes net framework, Causal Knowledge Patterns, in which our intuition that the mind makes a difference finds an expression. [LMUcast ID: 6plzUJE9vW]

Roland Poellinger (MCMP/LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (14 May, 2014) titled "The Mind-Brain Entanglement". Abstract: Listing "The Nonreductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation" (1993) Jaegwon Kim suggested that the only remaining alternatives are the eliminativist’s standpoint or plain denial of the mind’s causal powers if we want to uphold the closure of the physical and reject causal overdetermination at the same time. Nevertheless, explaining stock market trends by referring to investors’ fear of loss is a very familiar example of attributing reality to both domains and acknowledging the mind’s interaction with the world: "if you pick a physical event and trace its causal ancestry or posterity, you may run into mental events" (Kim 1993). In this talk I will use the formal framework of Bayes net causal models in an interventionist understanding (as devised, e.g., by Judea Pearl in "Causality", 2000) to make the concept of causal influence precise. Investigating structurally similar cases of conflicting causal intuitions will motivate a natural extension of the interventionist Bayes net framework, Causal Knowledge Patterns, in which our intuition that the mind makes a difference finds an expression. [LMUcast ID: sICag50m41]

Members of the MCMP (Roland Poellinger, Florian Steinberger, Thomas Meier, Vincenzo Crupi and Olivier Roy) present their current research. [LMUcast ID: GtqLfDnvH3]

As part of the MCMP group presentation at the DGPhil XXII Workshop on Mathematical Philosophy Roland Poellinger (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy/LMU Munich) gives a mini presentation titled "Disentangling Nets for Causal Inference", in which he motivates an extension of standard Bayes net causal models to also allow for the embedding of non-causal knowledge. A longer introduction to the framework of Causal Knowledge Patterns (CKPs) can be found in the recording of the talk "Computing Non-Causal Knowledge for Causal Reasoning". The video "The Mind-Brain Entanglement" contains an application of CKPs in the philosophy of mind. [LMUcast ID: xyyZtEo4VV]

Roland Poellinger (MCMP/LMU Munich) gives a talk at the MCMP Workshop on Computational Metaphysics titled "Computing Non-Causal Knowledge for Causal Reasoning". Abstract: We use logical and mathematical knowledge to generate causal claims. Inter-definitions or semantic overlap cannot be consistently embedded in standard Bayes net causal models since in many cases the Markov requirement will be violated. These considerations motivate an extension of Bayes net causal models to also allow for the embedding of Epistemic Contours (ECs). Such non-causal functions are consistently computable in Causal Knowledge Patterns (CKPs). An application of the framework can be found, e.g., in the recording of the talk "The Mind-Brain Entanglement". [LMUcast ID: MUJFXvvWQE]

Roland Poellinger (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy/LMU Munich) gives a talk at the MCMP Workshop on Computational Metaphysics titled "Computing Non-Causal Knowledge for Causal Reasoning". Abstract: We use logical and mathematical knowledge to generate causal claims. Inter-definitions or semantic overlap cannot be consistently embedded in standard Bayes net causal models since in many cases the Markov requirement will be violated. These considerations motivate an extension of Bayes net causal models to also allow for the embedding of Epistemic Contours (ECs). Such non-causal functions are consistently computable in Causal Knowledge Patterns (CKPs). An application of the framework can be found, e.g., in the recording of the talk "The Mind-Brain Entanglement". [LMUcast ID: jUIQYvUhdq]

In this talk Roland Poellinger (Munich) gives an outline of Judea Pearl's deterministic approach towards causation (workshop "Concrete Causation", 9 July, 2010). The title of the talk is taken from the programmatic section 2.2 of Pearl's paper "Causal Diagrams for Empirical Research" (Biometrika, Vol. 82, No. 4, 669-709, 1995) which is briefly sketched and commented on as an introduction to Pearl's interventionist account of causal analysis. Further topics: The problems of simple causal networks, interventions as variables, Humphreys' paradox, and causal decision making. [LMUcast ID: zU4EITUiHz]