The 'Whys' and 'Hows' of Our Society

In this talk, I will explore why people across the world perceive cat vocalizations as the word “meow.” I describe how we investigated this question by building a computer model of a real cat’s vocal tract. I also discuss why it is so easy for people to perceive these sounds as speech-like, and whether cats may have evolved vocal behaviors uniquely well-suited to grab our attention.

In this talk, I will show how the measurement of psychological properties was deployed to legitimize a project that sought to direct human evolution but which in practice led to the curtailment and forced sterilization of people deemed “unfit”. I will examine the characters that straddled both psychology and Eugenics, figures such as Charles Galton, Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman, who also happened to invent many of the statistical techniques that continue to be used in psychology and beyond. What assumptions were embedded in these techniques? And in what ways might the values and assumptions of these early figures be present in psychology today?

In the Covid-19 pandemic many of us were exposed to serious scientific disagreement for the first time. To non-scientists, disagreement and debate within science can be confusing and worrying. Should we have trusted Swedish epidemiologists on masks or gone with the advice of their colleagues abroad? Disagreement can be exploited and exaggerated, as in the climate sceptic movement. But disagreement is a healthy part of science and is encouraged--for good reason--by scientific institutions. This short talk will give a philosophy of science perspective on why disagreement is healthy, and offer some ideas for how to "manage" it when communicating science to non-experts, such as the public and policymakers.