Dear ISHers,
Here are a few of announcements:
(1) Call for Post-doctoral position on the microbiome and the immune system - Deadline Feb 14th
(2) The Center for Philosophy of Science's Annual Lecture Series Schedule- Spring 2025
Have a good day,
Lucie
(1) Call for application for a Postdoctoral position at ImmunoConcEpT, CNRS & the University of Bordeaux, France
Project’s title: How does the immune system see the microbiome?
Please circulate this call for application to anyone who may be interested.
Detailed information:
Duration: 22 months
Start date: April 2025
Application deadline: February 14th, 2025
The project ‘Advancing Symbiosis Theory’ funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (PI: Thomas Pradeu) aims at exploring microbiome-centered issues by combining theoretical biology with conceptual exploration and critical thinking typical of philosophy of science. The host institution is the Conceptual Biology and Medicine team in Bordeaux, France, which is embedded in ImmunoConcept, a leading immunology lab, and practices ‘philosophy in science’ – the use of philosophical tools to contribute to scientific advancement (Laplane et al., 2019; Pradeu et al., 2024).
This postdoctoral position belongs to the first part of the project, devoted to the question ‘How does the immune system see the microbiome?’
Expected candidates for this position will be either conceptually and theoretically inclined biologists with a strong background in evolutionary biology, theoretical ecology, and/or immunology, or scientifically informed philosophers with a very good knowledge of evolution, ecology, and immunology.
Overview of the project
Every organism is best seen as a multispecies collective made of heterogeneous elements, including a huge number of microbes, which, far from being rejected by the immune system, are immunologically integrated into a cohesive whole (Belkaid and Harrison, 2017; Bosch, 2014; Pradeu, 2010). The challenge here is to determine how this dual process of immunological recognition and immunological integration works and, crucially, how it is built via host-microbe interactions in ontogeny. The question we will address in this project is: To what extent can current immunological and ecological theoretical frameworks account for the idea that the immune system is continuously co-constructed by its interactions with the microbiome throughout the organism’s life? If existing theories turn out to be inappropriate for accommodating these ideas, can we suggest new avenues for a more adequate and more powerful theory of immunological recognition?
The specific goals of this part of the project will be to:
- Develop a comparative approach to this question by examining immune-microbiome interactions across a variety of species, especially in invertebrates;
- Assess the extent to which existing concepts and theories in ecology may shed a new light on immune-microbiome interactions.
In practice:
- If you are interested, please contact Thomas Pradeu.
- Application: please send to Thomas Pradeu:
- A CV
- A letter of motivation, where you explain why you apply and what specific project you would conduct
Sincerely,
Thomas.
(2) The Center for Philosophy of Science's Annual Lecture Series Schedule- Spring 2025
The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our 65th Annual Lecture Series Talks. All lectures will be held in room 1008 in the Cathedral of Learning (10th Floor) at 3:30pm EDT. If you can't join us in person please visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg. The Annual Lecture Series, the Center’s oldest program, was established in 1960, the year when Adolf Grünbaum founded the Center. Each year the series consists of six lectures, about three quarters of which are given by philosophers, historians, and scientists from other universities.
Maureen Lichtveld
University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health
Friday, January 31 @ 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm EDT
Title: Risk Benefit Analyses in Public Health: Whose risk? Whose benefit?
Abstract: Risk benefit analyses (RBA) are conducted to inform policy decisions and public health advice. Approaches to conduct an RBA include a multistep process, such as how to assess quality and uncertainty, evaluate confidence in the potential conclusions of an RBA, identify relevant factors that are additive to the findings of an RBA, and discuss any implications or applications that may inform policy decision making. Given the complexities of an RBA, it can be difficult to know when or when not to conduct and RBA relative to risk-benefit factors.
This presentation will highlight a stepwise framework assessing four key areas when evaluating when or when not to conduct a formal risk-benefit analysis including 1) summarizing the existing evidence via a systematic review of existing literature, 2) reviewing the validated approaches, metrics, and frameworks within the literature,3) reviewing sufficiency of contextual factors (i.e. geography, access, and community capital) to contribute to the confidence of a RBA and 4) assessing the quality and confidence of the overall RBA evaluation to inform policy decisions. This RBA feasibility assessment framework can serve as a decision-making tool to characterize individual and community risks and benefits. The presentation will also highlight ethical and equity factors informing the final decision making.
Alyssa Ney
UC Davis
Friday, February 21 @ 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm EDT
Title: Local Branching in Everettian Quantum Mechanics.
Abstract: In contemporary philosophy, the fundamentality of physics and physicalism are typically understood as ontological completeness claims of some sort. For example, physics is taken to provide a complete supervenience or realization basis, or a complete set of grounds for all facts or entities. However, since no formulated physical theory provides a complete ontological basis for all facts or entities, one must seek an alternative interpretation if one wants a realistic understanding of the sense in which our current physical theories are fundamental. The aim of this paper is to develop such an interpretation, one that bases the fundamentality of our current physical theories in a claim about their ontological depth and comprehensiveness. It is argued that this interpretation of the metaphysical fundamentality of physics is more in line with the way that physicists regard certain theories as fundamental than standard philosophical conceptions.
Samir Okasha
University of Bristol, U.K.
Friday, March 21 @ 3:30 pm - 6:00 pm EDT
Title: The “Philosophy of Fitness” revisited
Abstract: The "philosophy of fitness'' was a disparaging name given to the philosophy of biology in the 1970s by critics who felt that practitioners of this emerging sub-discipline spent too much time analyzing the concept of fitness, to the exclusion of other topics. Despite the critics, the philosophical discussion of fitness has burgeoned since then. Oddly, though, this discussion makes little contact with the technical literature on fitness in evolutionary theory itself, where there are ongoing disagreements over what the "right" definition of fitness and / or the "right" mathematical measure of fitness is, in different contexts, and why. The existence of parallel literatures on a single topic is not uncommon in philosophy of science but is rarely ideal. Better integration is needed.
This talk is part of a broader project that re-visits the concept of fitness, tries to make sense of the controversies surrounding it, and to integrate the philosophical and biological discussions. The basic idea is to regard "fitness" as a theoretical term in science, and then to use the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis technique to define it via its theoretical role. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that there is arguably more than one "fitness role". Moreover, in any particular evolutionary model, a given quantity, definable from the model parameters, may realize one of these fitness roles but not others. Taken together, this explains why the fitness concept has caused so much confusion, why the term "fitness" is polysemic in evolutionary biology, and why theorists can disagree about the "right" fitness measure despite the underlying science not being in dispute.
A reception with light refreshments will follow each Talk in The Center on the 11th floor from 5-6pm