What is truth? How do we know what we know? How do values shape decision-making? Learn critical thinking skills for interpreting information, drawing valid inferences, and navigating difficult decisions using tools from philosophy, history, economics, and data science.
What is truth? How do we know what we know? How do values shape decision-making? Learn critical thinking skills for interpreting information, drawing valid inferences, and navigating difficult decisions using tools from philosophy, history, economics, and data science.
As humans, what do we value (and why)? What do we know (and how do we know it)? These are some essential parts of life that every one of us must grapple with, whether we work with data or just use it to make decisions in our everyday lives. And because we as individuals live with and depend on one another, we must know how to think, have conversations, and make decisions together.
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Lily Tsai, Ford Professor of Political Science, is a scholar of governance, accountability, and political behavior and is engrossed by the strategies that ordinary people use to influence government authorities even in the absence of strong democratic institutions, how authorities and elites seek to influence and control the behavior of their constituents, and how to create public trust and trustworthiness that lead to constructive engagement and cooperation between citizens and government. At its core, Lily’s research seeks to understand when authorities provide what people need and want, and why they often fail to do so. In particular, her work looks closely at what can be done to improve trust and cooperation, and how to increase the motivation of authorities to respond to citizen needs. Lily founded the MIT Governance Lab (MIT OV/LAB) in 2016 to respond to students who seek an active role in solving public problems and engaging in civic life, while also producing rigorous scientific research. Outside of social science and governance innovation, Lily enjoys running (though her knees now require her to run shorter distances), practicing the piano, and hiking. Big Sur and the Aletsch Glacier are two of her favorite places to visit. Learn more about Lily here.
Alex Byrne is Professor of Philosophy in MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He has written widely in philosophy of mind and epistemology, and recently co-edited The Norton Introduction to Philosophy.
Anne McCants is Ann F. Friedlaender Professor of History and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, where she directs the Concourse Program for the integration of humanistic study with the science core. Her research and teaching interests lie in the economic and social history of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe, as well as in the application of social science research methods across the disciplines. Anne’s research projects span multiple centuries of European economic development but are all grounded in a common concern to better understand the standard of living in the past and those features of economic and social life that contribute to human welfare. Learn more about Anne here.
Robin Wolfe Scheffler is an Associate Professor in the Science, Technology, and Society Program and historian of the modern biological and biomedical sciences and their intersections with developments in American history. He is currently working on a project that follows the history of cancer virus research in the twentieth century from legislature to laboratory, documenting its origins and impact on the modern biological sciences. His other projects include the history of the biotechnology industry and a chemical biography of dioxins. The common goal of Robin’s projects is to understand the mutual influence of science on society and of society on science. Learn more about Robin here.
Sally Haslanger is Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT. She has published in metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Broadly speaking, her work links issues of social justice with contemporary work in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Recently, Sally has been working on social practices, social structure, structural explanation with an emphasis on the materiality of social practices and the role of ideology. In addition to her research on social justice, Sally is deeply committed to promoting diversity in philosophy and beyond. Learn more about Sally here.
Tristan G. Brown is the S.C. Fang Chinese Language and Culture Career Development Professor and a historian of late imperial (“early modern”) China at MIT. His research focuses on the ways in which law, science, environment, and religion interacted in China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Learn more about Tristan here.
William Deringer is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society. His research examines the history of those techniques and technologies of calculation that organize modern economic, financial, and political life. His work ranges widely across time, from early compound-interest tables and changing social relations in the English countryside in the early 1600s, to the place of computer spreadsheets in the culture of Wall Street in the “go-go” 1980s. Before graduate school, Will was an investment banking analyst at the Blackstone Group in New York. Learn more about Will here.