Interdisciplinary reading group

Introduction

This is a website to document attempts at sustaining a reading group on topics that cut across fields. In this group, we try to look at bigger picture questions which would then condense to some potential research direction or misdirection (use at your own risk). Some research questions and thoughts may be posted here for future work or to prevent future work. You are welcome to join us, please send an email to andrewypua at outlook dot com.

The current organizers are:

  • Andrew Adrian Pua (AAP)

    • Affiliation: Xiamen University
    • Research field(s): statistics and econometrics

  • Mark Kevin Cabural (MKC)

    • Affiliation: Xiamen University
    • Research field(s): Chinese philosophy

If you used some of the ideas here, please let us know as we would like to get to know your work.

If you want to use materials from this reading group, take note of:

Creative Commons License
Discussion Materials by Interdisciplinary Reading Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

To cite our discussion materials, please use (and fill in)

Interdisciplinary Reading Group (Year, Month Day). Name of Material. https://reading-group.neocities.org/

Reading group – incarnation 01 (Feb 2023 to ?)

Meeting 03: Apr 28, 2023 at 10 am

  • Papers: “The political economy of AI: Towards democratic control of the means of prediction” and “Fairness, Equality, and Power in Algorithmic Decision-Making”

  • Authors: Maximilian Kasy / Maximilian Kasy and Rediet Abebe

  • Year: 2021

  • Link: ungated access to reading 1, reading 2

  • Venue:

  • Participants:

  • Questions prepared:

  • Additional questions arising from discussion:

Meeting 02: Mar 24, 2023 at 10 am

  • Paper: What are socially disruptive technologies?

  • Authors: Jeroen Hopster

  • Year: 2021

  • Link: freely available at PhilPapers

  • Venue: Economics Building, B405

  • Participants: AAP, MKC

  • Questions prepared (still needs to be updated):

    • (MKC) Hopster notes that Christensen developed a decidedly positive connotation. What is the connotation of Hopster’s discussion of Socially Disruptive Technologies (SDT)?
    • (MKC) Does disruptive innovation theory in business escape the question of morality? Is this not a problem?
    • (MKC) What is the theoretical underpinning of the insufficiency of ethics and laws or regulations? Is it possible to interpret it from the point of view of Psychoanalysis?
    • (AAP) Is the motivation outlined by the author sufficient or even strong enough to justify new vocabulary?
    • (AAP) Can we think of examples of SDTs in more historical settings, as the paper feastures relatively modern examples.
    • (AAP) Based on the criteria listed by Hopster, can we treat the pill as a socially disruptive technology? How about the granting and the eventual repeal of abortion rights in the US?

  • Additional questions arising from discussion:

    • (AAP and MKC, more of a remark) The paper feels a bit introductory and the arguments feel more like an extension.
    • (AAP) Are there connections to Frank Knight’s conceptions of risk and uncertainty when it comes to differentiating disruptive technologies from non-disruptive technologies?
    • (MKC, more of a remark) The paper is part of a long-running project on ethics in technology.

Meeting 01: Feb 10, 2023 at 10 am

  • Paper: Statistical significance and its critics: practicing damaging science, or damaging scientific practice?

  • Authors: Deborah Mayo and David Hand

  • Year: 2022

  • Link: open access

  • Venue: Economics Building, B405

  • Participants: AAP, MKC

  • Questions and remarks prepared:

    • (MKC) On page 2, it mentions crisis of replication in some fields. Does this problem occur most in natural sciences and medical sciences, not in social sciences including economics and business studies? (Note: examples found in the paper pertain mostly in medicine, COVID, health issues)
    • (MKC) On page 28, it states that “it is the essence of statistical inference that it does not provide certainty,” then what does it provide? What is the more appropriate term to replace certainty in this context? If the issue of the paper pertains to science and its validity, and science claims certainty, how does statistical inference play a role or what is the place of statistics in science?
    • (MKC) Results as good results: this may also add pressure to researchers? Are bad results not as good or valid as good results? (Note: Perhaps, reporting bad results may mitigate or lessen data-dredging. This is also connected to the reward structure.)
    • (AAP) Popper was used as the philosophy of science concept underlying significance tests. Are there other concepts in more recent philosophy of science literature which can also rationalize these tests but from a different angle other than falsification?
    • (AAP) Are there philosophy of science developments which can be used to provide direction to make sense and provide guidance for the replication crisis?
    • (AAP) Significance tests are tools for discovery, yet some use it for confirmation purposes. The paper does not discuss this aspect and whether it is also partially responsible for the replication crisis.
    • (AAP) Can there be an empirical analysis to determine whether “the”no threshold” view does not diminish but exacerbates data-dredging and biasing selection effects”?

  • Additional questions and digressions arising from discussion:

    • (AAP & MKC) Where is the anti-quantitative bias of philosophy coming from? Can this anecdotal evidence be more documented somehow?
    • (AAP & MKC) Discussed what replication could mean in medicine, psychology, even philosophy! Is philosophy a science (it is the queen!) or a method?
    • (MKC) Despite being more scientifically advanced than other countries, why did the industrial/scientific revolution not happen in China? MKC points to a book by Joseph Needham, a British historian of ancient science in China.
    • (AAP) The phrase “probative” was used to describe an important function of significance tests. In law, a similar term “probative value” is used to judge whether a piece of evidence which could be prejudicial should be introduced in a trial. Discuss the distinctions and similarities.
    • (AAP) If a mathematical structure is shared by competing ideas yet come from different philosophies about the nature of probability, does it mean that the underlying motivations of competing ideas are less of an issue? From a utilitarian perspective, if a tool does a job for the greatest set of purposes, do the foundations of such tools even matter?
    • (AAP) How do we resolve conflicting evidence for the same phenomenon, especially in scientific contexts? How do philosophers deal with the concept of consensus?