Tackling philosophical topics that matter to the real world is the focus of a new University of California, Irvine research center. The Center for Socially Engaged Philosophy, located in the Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science within the School of Social Sciences, is a hub for 25 faculty representing seven departments whose work encompasses misinformation, science skepticism, transformative changes in AI, justice, fairness, equity, social polarization and more.

“Ideal philosophy has often been thought of as pure, detached, objective, focused on rational reasoning, and, relatedly, unsullied by empirical methods,” says Cailin O’Connor (pictured), philosopher of science and founding director of the new center. “Increasingly, though, philosophers are abandoning pure reasoning and intellectual puzzles to study the mess and confusion of the real world. This movement is driven - at least in part - by young philosophers who want to do work that matters to human thriving.”

Pressing issues facing modern democratic societies are top of mind for the center’s faculty affiliates; research within the center will bring together philosophers and scientists on socially engaged projects and connect the academics with journalists and policy makers working on the same sorts of problems.

“Philosophers have recently been involved in work using social media data sets to investigate misinformation spread, in arguments for reforms in metascience, in analyses of social polarization and its impacts on democracy, in efforts to characterize the harms of deepfake technology, in attempts to improve retraction in science, and more,” says O’Connor. “The center will aim to continue promoting and facilitating this sort of work and contact between interdisciplinary academics and stakeholders outside academia.”

The Department of Logic & Philosophy of Science - renowned for bridging philosophical and scientific inquiry - provides an ideal environment for advancing this work. Philosophers within the department and affiliates of the new center are experts in using social modeling, data science and experimental methods drawn from many disciplines in the service of socially engaged philosophy, says O’Connor. The center will promote this work, including through events that bring philosophers into contact with new methods from the sciences.

Planned activities include a quarterly public colloquium series; graduate colloquium workshops; an annual workshop related to socially engaged philosophy; a monthly public philosophy group that will engage graduate students and others interested in learning to write public facing work on philosophy, science, or policy; graduate student training; and grant writing assistance.

“As social problems arise, socially engaged philosophy tends to respond appropriately,” says O’Connor.  “It is not possible to predict where socially engaged philosophy will go, but the center will support and promote such work as it emerges.”

-headshot courtesy of Steve Zylius/UC Irvine