08 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in Uncategorized
Read the new article published in The Philosopher’s Magazine by Dr. Vanessa Brassey, Lecturer in Philosophy at KCL and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art (CPA): https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/265-how-do-monet-s-water-lillies-convey-regret
04 Friday Feb 2022
Posted in Uncategorized
11th Feb at The National Gallery (zoom event)
Please join us for our new collaboration between The Centre for Philosophy and Art, King’s College London and the National Gallery London
Regrets may be painful or bittersweet. They can be ethically loaded or merely a question of ‘what if?’. But above all they can be understood as a mix of reminiscence and grief over things that we have done or have failed to do.
However, regrets may also determine our future actions and could even be perceived as pleasurable or productive. What might this mean for artists and how we experience and interpret their work? And how might art help us to understand the regrets of others? Join philosophers, writers and artists to debate these questions by reserving a free zoom seat today.
Speakers include Vanessa Brassey, lecturer and co-director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art, Andy West, author of ‘The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy’, author and arts journalist Chloë Ashby, and Sacha Golob, Reader in Philosophy, King’s College London.
03 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in Uncategorized
Colette Olive, PhD Candidate and Administrator for the centre for Philosophy and Art . (And occasional ‘ClapperBoarder’.)
Getting to visit the National Gallery after hours felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity. I felt like I was having a more personal encounter with the paintings. As a member of staff accompanying us put it, the paintings felt more present. The motion sensor lights would periodically go off and we needed to do a lot of dancing to keep them on! The inconsistent lighting made the paintings feel more dynamic. Watching Vanessa and Sacha bring out elements in the paintings I’ve never noticed before gave me a new perspective on the works. join us at our upcoming event ‘The Pleasures of Regret‘ learn more about these paintings too!
01 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in Announcements, Events, Ideas, Public engagements
(And how I spent mine)
Mathilde Victoria Prietzel Nielsen (she/her)President of King’s College London Philosophy Society
Undergraduate at King’s College London Department of Philosophy
We were summoned at the Prêt across the National Gallery to meet each other, get fuel, a run-through of the plan, and role assignments. I was to be the checker, that is, to keep track of which shots we had done and which we hadn’t (this was not done sequentially!). Other roles included clapper (the wooden board, not hands), extra set of ears, extra set of eyes, prompter/stylist, equipment gather-carrier-set-upper. Once the roles had been assigned we went to the gallery to be let into the gloriously silent halls to get our badges (so as to not get hand-cuffed for wandering the halls at night) before going through the galleries to our first shot, and I must say: Monet, Picasso, and the rest of the gang makes a whole other experience when not diffused by the usual museum buzz.
Though not required, you intuitively lower your eyes, widen your gaze, and raise eyebrows to communicate to and agree with the others that this is not the usual museum experience – it is of course far better.
That is, it is better when you are together with your crew or for the first 150 meters walking alone.
Around 160 you start wondering whether you’re lost and, if so, whom to call on. Cézanne? Raphael? As a team, our main job turned out to be how to keep the lights on whilst keeping the sound off: light sensors required us to keep walking about when filming in order to keep the light on, but it happens that wooden floors may squeak, so we caught ourselves in quite the dilemma (a suitable environment for philosophers, sure). The dilemma we solved with a fusion of modern dance and loss of shoes. The night we rounded off with a communal, laugh, stretch, and yawn.
To appreciate our efforts, please sign up to the online event.!
Would you like to get involved on projects for the centre of Philosophy and Arts? Click here to find out about our events and get in touch
31 Monday Jan 2022
Posted in Announcements, Events, Ideas, Public engagements, Public talks, Uncategorized
The centre for Philosophy and Arts (KCL) are delighted to announce a new series of events exploring the relationship between art and our emotions. The series launches at The National Gallery with a film, panel discussion, and Q&A on regret. Reserve your free zoom seat here and join Vanessa Brassey from King’s College London, Andy West, author of ‘The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy’, and author and arts journalist Chloë Ashby. The event will be chaired by Sacha Golob, King’s College London.
So, what will we be discussing?
Regrets may be painful or bittersweet. They can be ethically loaded or merely a plaintive ‘perhaps’. Perhaps you could’ve been a contender; loved more kindly; been more philanthropic; or sold your bitcoin before December?
This means that regret is an aromatic concoction of nostalgia, reminiscing and grief with gentle top notes of longing. We will be thinking about the ways it can also be intensely and weirdly pleasurable. And how pictures help us to understand this, on their own special way.
The Art & Emotion series. Free (but pre-registration required). Make sure you get your seat.
In collaboration with and hosted by The National Gallery London.
27 Tuesday Jul 2021
Posted in Uncategorized
The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law, The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare and the Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Project are very pleased to announce our jointly organized Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion on Stereotyping & Medical AI, which will form the 5th instalment of the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s Stereotyping & Medical AI online summer colloquium series!
UPDATE: We are delighted to announce that chairing our talk will be Robin Carpenter, who is the Senior Research Data Governance Manager at the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare!
Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion on Stereotyping and Medical AI
Jointly Organized by the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law, The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare & the Philosophy & Medicine Project
Panellists:
Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL)
Lecturer in the Philosophy of Law at theYeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law
Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford)
Associate Professor of Human Centred Computing
Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee)
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Prof. David Papineau (KCL)
Professor of Philosophy of Science
Chair:
Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare)
Senior Research Data Governance Manager
When: Thursday 29th of July, 5pm BST
REGISTER and find out more about the event here
Understanding “statistical stereotyping” as forming beliefs about individuals on the basis of statistical generalizations about the groups to which the individuals belong, can it be legally problematic to statistically stereotype patients in medicine, either when these beliefs are formed by medical AI/artificial agents or by medical professionals? In this Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion, we’ll hear from relevant experts in law, computer science, and philosophy on this and related questions around the legal aspects of stereotyping in medicine, by both human and artificial agents.
* For those unable to attend these colloquia, please feel free to register for our events in order to be notified once recordings of previous colloquia become available! You can also subscribe to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Follow the YTL Centre at King’s on Twitter here and the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare here. Previous colloquia will also be posted to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s YouTube channel.
About the Stereotyping and Medical AI Summer Colloquium Series
The aim of this fortnightly colloquium series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals.
Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:
We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King’s College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are very welcome.
Our working line-up for the remainder of this summer series is as follows, with a few additional speakers and details to be confirmed:
June 17 Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping”
July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let’s Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI” (recording linked)
July 15 Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), “ “Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI”
July 22 Dr. William McNeill (Southampton), “Neural Networks and Explanatory Opacity” (recording linked)
July 29 Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), Prof. David Papineau (KCL), Chair: Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare) (link to register)
August 12 Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic (Toronto), “Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment”
August 26 Speakers TBC
September 2 Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google)
September 9 Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna)
All best wishes, and we very much hope you can join us!
The Organizers (Dr. Jonathan Gingerich, Robin Carpenter, Professor Elselijn Kingma, Dr. Winnie Ma, and Eveliina Ilola)
26 Monday Jul 2021
Posted in Events, Public talks, Uncategorized
Stereotyping and Medical AI
Online Summer Colloquium Series
by the Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Project
The aim of this fortnightly colloquium series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals.
Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:
We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King’s College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are welcome.
To find out more about this series, please visit the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website: https://www.philosophyandmedicine.org/summer-series. Our next colloquium in the series will be a Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion chaired by a member of the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare, and featuring our very own Professor David Papineau and Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (which you can register for here)!
Our working line-up for the summer series is as follows, with a few additional speakers and details to be confirmed:
June 17 Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping”
July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let’s Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI” (recording linked)
July 15 Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), “ “Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI”
July 22 Dr. William McNeill (Southampton), “Neural Networks and Explanatory Opacity” (recording linked)
July 29 Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), Prof. David Papineau (KCL), Chair: Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare) (link to register)
August 12 Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic (Toronto), “Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment”
August 26 Speakers TBC
September 2 Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google)
September 9 Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna)
To be notified about upcoming colloquia in the series and other Project events, you can subscribe to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Previous colloquia will also be posted to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website and YouTube channel. (And for those unable to attend these colloquia, please feel free to register for our events in order to be notified once recordings of previous colloquia become available!)
22 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Uncategorized
The Philosophy Department at King’s College London is seeking an excellent philosopher with outstanding research expertise and teaching experience in one or more of the areas where it currently has teaching needs: Political Philosophy, Epistemology and Logic. This a fixed term one year contract.
Closing date for applications: 3rd Aug 2021
Further details here
Start date: 1st September 2021
19 Monday Jul 2021
Dr Eliot Michaelson has recently been published in Pubic Ethics with a piece titled ‘What Fake News Is and Why that Matters’. As Michaelson puts it, there is a difference between a false story and fake news. The former can arise from accidents or sloppy preparation. The latter however has a pernicious or moral tang that we would do well to articulate and be wary of. What do you think?
Read the full and very engaging article here. We think it’s so clear and bright that you can even read it in the sunshine.
17 Saturday Jul 2021
Posted in Announcements, Ideas, Public talks
Epidemiologist Julian Peto is advocating mass testing as the key part of a plan to stop the virus spreading. Studies where everyone has been tested have picked up asymptomatic cases. With the addition of isolation and contact tracing this method of testing has been able to massively reduce the spread of the virus. The hope is such a coordinated scheme implemented nationally could help bring the numbers down. There’s a question over which type of test is best to use for mass testing. At the moment many of us do lateral flow tests at home. Although they give instant results their accuracy has been shown to be strongly linked to how well the tests are conducted – hence the need to back up any positive findings with the more accurate PCR test.
PCR takes longer and needs sophisticated lab equipment. However a compromise could be to use RT Lamp tests, they are accurate, give results in around 20 minutes, do require a very basic lab, but without the expensive equipment of PCR. A number of RT lamp tests have now been developed for SARS-Cov2. Kevin Fong has been to see the developers of one of them, the OxLAMP test.
And with the lifting of restrictions how are you going to judge your own personal risk from Covid?
It’s a question that interests philosopher of science Eleanor Knox. She says government mandates on mask wearing and social distancing have allowed us to avoid tricky questions around our own potential risk from the virus and risks our own behaviour might pose to loved ones. Now there’s a lot more to think about in terms of balancing our desires to return to some semblance of normality while levels of Covid infection continue to rise.
Listen to this broadcast from BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000xtb6
King's Philosophy 