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BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//TYPO3/NONSGML Calendar Base (cal) V1.11.1//EN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT UID:www.hhu.de_248_25517 DTSTAMP:20210407T082600 DTSTART:20210608T163000Z DTEND:20210608T181500Z CATEGORIES:Research Seminar Theoretical Philosophy, Forschungsseminar SUMMARY:Dr. Alexander Gebharter (MCMP, LMU Munich): Unification and Explanation: A Causal Perspective DESCRIPTION:Abstract:\r\n\r\nWe discuss two influential views of unification: mutual information unification (MIU) and common origin unification (COU). We propose a simple probabilistic measure for COU and compare it with Myrvold’s (2003\, 2017) probabilistic measure for MIU. We then take a causal perspective and investigate how the two measures perform in different causal structures and shed new light on the relation between unification and explanation. The upshot of this will be that causal structure is crucial for how the measures perform and relate to explanatory power. To account for these findings we finally add a causal constraint to our measure for COU and compare it to a measure for MIU that has been modified similarly.\r\n\r\nSpeaker: \r\n\r\nAlexander is principal investigator of the DFG funded research project Interventions and Mechanistic Hierarchies (441311834) at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Before\, he was a postdoc at the Department of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Groningen\, Netherlands and at the Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. His research interests lie in philosophy of science and its intersection with metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He is especially interested in causation and related topics. For more information\, see Alexander's personal website:\r\n\r\nwww.alexandergebharter.com END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR