For many years, CEFISES has hosted a weekly seminar series. Each year, our members organize a number of seminar topics, which bring together speakers from both our local community and across the world. The format encourages both long presentations and extensive discussion (one hour of talk and one hour of question-and-answer period).
If the speakers agree and there aren’t any technical glitches, we broadcast all of our talks online via YouTube Live! Links to YouTube will appear on the pages for each talk on our event calendar.
Seminar Topics and Talks, 2025–26
This list is updated regularly with links to video recordings of past talks, if available. For the most up-to-date information on upcoming sessions, please check the calendar.
OLOFOS — Ontological Frameworks of Science (groupe de contact FNRS)
Organized by Blandine De Becker, Victoria Van Gheem, and Peter Verdée.
- Peter Verdee, “Multiperspectival supervaluationism and deep indeterminacy.” https://youtu.be/XqZpCG0h7tE (abstract).
- Alexandre Francq, “The Haunting Specter of Complexity; the Pluralist Metaphysical Crutch.” https://youtu.be/pDKGNFWKo7w (abstract).
- Kristine Grigoryan, “The concept of knowability: historical approaches.” (abstract).
- Pilar Terrés Villalonga, “Concept possession for inconsistent concepts.” https://youtu.be/3s4giMEFne4 (abstract).
- Doan Vu Duc, “An interactionist account of the problem of demarcation. How to conceive an empirically informed framework of scientific rationality?” https://youtu.be/kDY50nwDn6g (abstract).
- Jan Heylen, “‘The president’ and ‘that woman’: Partial free logic and its rivals.” (abstract).
- Vincent Grandjean, “Indeterminate Personal Identity.” https://youtu.be/P9zFMhw0yPc (abstract).
- Lorenzo Rossi, “Supervaluational truth and quantifiers.” (abstract)
Doing History and Philosophy of Science (HPS)
Organized by Max Bautista-Perpinyà and Azat Garaev.
- Charles T. Wolfe, “Vitalism, organicism and ‘biological philosophy’ in Canguilhem: the state of affairs in 1947 and now.” https://youtu.be/4WNU_YmB_f0 (abstract).
- Jana De Kockere, “Nature’s 17th century decay: A history of the controversy between Godfrey Goodman and George Hakewill.” https://youtu.be/UcDEwJSMj9c (abstract).
- Charles Pence, “The HPS ‘Long View’ and the Case of the Journal Article.” https://youtu.be/i7naz6Biu7E (abstract).
- Jan Potters, “Thomas Kuhn and the history of quantum physics, 1961-1984.” https://youtu.be/3ET4nXiVIqM (abstract).
- Abigail Nieves Delgado, “Racializing Health: Politics of Well-being in Human Microbiome Research.” https://youtu.be/SEOf8H3XHUI (abstract).
- Caterina Schürch, “The art of cherry-picking: Why integrating historical and philosophical analyses helps us to understand science.” (abstract).
- Florian van der Zee (abstract TBA).
MEPHISTO — MEtaphysics and PHIlosophy of Science: Transcendental Orientations
Organized by Danielle Pizzocaro, Julien Tricard, and Kévin Chalas.
- Sami Pihlström, “Putnamian Transcendental Arguments.” https://youtu.be/LbseG3XKKDo (abstract).
- Michel Bitbol, “Transcendental epistemologies and probabilism.” https://youtu.be/5STUEjQrhJU (abstract).
- Harald Wiltsche, “Phenomenology and Wave Function realism.” https://youtu.be/qqcfUHrLXPA (abstract).
- Kristina Engelhard, “Powers BSAs and Cognitive Capacities. A Powerful Capacitist Theory of Laws of Nature.” https://youtu.be/OsbrC1GoG3g (abstract).
- Samuel Descarreaux, “Neo-Kantian Epistemology and Pragmatic Naturalization: The Case of Hermann von Helmholtz.” https://youtu.be/2IzOrLvz85E (abstract)
- Brigitte Falkenbourg, “The German Copenhagen School: From Heisenberg to Mittelstaedt and Scheibe.” https://youtu.be/TES_fBD7OLQ (abstract).
- Olivier Darrigol, “Relativity: a line that can be traced through centuries?” (abstract).
- Eran Tal (abstract TBA).
Work-in-Progress Talks
Organized by Alexandre Guay.
- Florian Marion, “Special Relativity from a Meta-Ontological Point of View: A Defence of External Relativism.” https://youtu.be/e3DQlF1RfqQ (abstract).
- Victoria Van Gheem, “Formalizing Medical Reasoning: Can Fuzzy Logic Account for Normativity?” https://youtu.be/JVPmbqriNVs (abstract).
- Blandine De Becker, “Epistemology of models and Supervaluationism.” https://youtu.be/M4ckKTe4HCw (abstract).
- Azat Garaev, “Reductionism in contemporary developmental biology.” https://youtu.be/GTgiHBdTBEk (abstract).
- Wen Shichao, “Types, Populations and Variance Decomposition: The Case of Johannsen’s Pure Line Experiments.” (abstract).
- Pierre Walckiers, “Reconstructing International Biodiversity Law for Socially Just Futures: Insights from Decolonial and Feminist Approaches.” (abstract).
- Alexandre Guay, “The emergence of consciousness.” (abstract).
- Philemon Kongo (abstract TBA).