Honorary Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University
Recent and Forthcoming Presentations
24 September 2025: 'The Role of Mathematics in Empirical Science', invited presentation at the Indian National Workshop on Philosophy of Science: Foundational Issues Across Sciences, Mumbai, India (via Zoom).
6 August 2025: 'Probability and Law: Beyond the Toy Models', presented to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
5 August 2025: 'Biodiversity and Triage: Making Tough Conservation Decisions', invited presentation of the annual Barry Taylor and David Lewis Lecture, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
18 July 2025: 'Some Counterpossibles are (Non-trivially) True', invited presentation at the "Conditionals Workshop", Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
20 March 2025: 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness Problem', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (joint presentation with Christian Alafaci).
7 February 2025: 'Bubbles, Silos, and Echo Chambers', presented at the Society for Risk Analysis (ANZ) Annual Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
14 August 2024: 'Epistemic Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Violating Epistemic Norms', presented to the Epistemic Accountability Workshop, Notre Dame University, Sydney, Australia.
17 July 2024: 'Comments on "How effect sizes may fail rational decision
makers"', presented to Formal Epistemology Workshop at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
26 February 2024: 'Conspiracy Theories and Evidence', presented to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, USA.
14 December 2023: 'Why Mathematical Explanation is Not All in the Head', presented at the "From Metaphysics to Aesthetics Workshop", University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
5 July 2023: 'Explanatory and Non-explanatory Proofs in Mathematics', presented at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
15 May 2023: 'Toy Statistical Models and Legal Reasoning', presented in the Mind, Epistemology, Neuroscience, Thought, and Language Seminar, University of California, Davis, USA.
10 May 2023: 'Explanatory and Non-explanatory Proofs in Mathematics', presented in the Logic and Metaphysics Seminar, City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, USA.
28 April 2023: 'Explanatory and Non-explanatory Proofs in Mathematics', presented in the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine Seminar, Washington University, St Louis, USA.
17 February 2023: 'Mathematical Assumptions in Representation Theorems', presented at the workshop "Indispensability of Mathematics to Philosophy", Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany, online.
21 November 2022: 'What's So Bad About Epistemic Bubbles?', presented to the Formal Epistemology Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
7 October 2022: 'Explanatory and Non-Explanatory Proofs in Mathematics', presented to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, online.
4 October 2022: 'Statistics in the Courtroom', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
6 July 2022: 'Explanatory and Non-Explanatory Proofs in Mathematics', presented to the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, USA.
4–8 July 2022: 'Crime, Punishment, and Statistical Evidence', keynote presentation at "Current Debates in Forensic Statistics", Lorentz Center in Leiden, The Netherlands. [Cancelled due to COVID-19]
30 June 2022: 'Explanatory and Non-Explanatory Proofs in Mathematics', presented to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami, USA.
17 June 2022: 'Analogical Reasoning with Toy Models', presented at the "Mathematics and Analogical Reasoning Workshop" at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany, online.
10 March 2022: 'Desert Island Theorems', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
23 June 2021: 'Toy Statistical Models and Legal Reasoning', presented to the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, online.
19 May 2021: 'Legal Evidence', presented to the University of Sydney Philosophy Society and University of Sydney Law Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, (joint presentation with David Hamer from Law).
30 April 2021: 'Where There's Smoke There are Conspiracy Theorists', presented to the Sydney-Utrecht Conspiracy Theory Workshop, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, online (joint presentation with Hannah Tierney and Tim Smartt).
18 March 2021: 'Where There's Smoke There are Conspiracy Theorists', presented to the Tahoe Environmental Research Center, University of California, Davis, USA, online (joint presentation with Hannah Tierney and Tim Smartt).
11 March 2021: 'Who's Afraid of Inconsistent Mathematics?', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
26 November 2020: 'The Philosophy and Mathematics of Rational Decisions', plenary lecture at New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate Conference, New Zealand, online.
9 November 2020: 'The Role of Toy Statistical Models in Legal Reasoning', invited presentation at Princeton-Rutgers Foundations of Probability Seminar, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA, online.
5 November 2020: 'The Explanatory Turn in the Philosophy of Mathematics', invited symposium presentation in "Science Without Numbers: 40 years Later", online.
1–11 September 2020: 'TBA', invited presenter at "Rationality Summer Institute" in Bensheim, Germany. [Postponed due to COVID-19]
31 August – 4 September 2020: 'Crime, Punishment, and Statistical Evidence', keynote presentation at "Current Debates in Forensic Statistics", Lorentz Center in Leiden, The Netherlands. [Postponed due to COVID-19]
6 May 2020: 'Biodiversity and Triage', presented to the Gradient Institute, Sydney, Australia, online.
9 April 2020: 'The Explanatory Turn in the Philosophy of Mathematics', invited symposium presentation in "Science Without Numbers: 40 years Later" (with Hartry Field) in the Pacific American Philosophical Association meeting, San Francisco, USA. [Postponed due to COVID-19]
6–7 April 2020: 'Pluralism about Mathematical Explanation', keynote presentation at the conference "Explanation in Mathematics" at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA. [Postponed due to COVID-19]
2 April 2020: 'From Fine Tuning to Improbability', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, online.
12 December 2019: 'The Role of Toy Statistical Models in Legal Reasoning', presented to the Philosophy Department, Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA.
9 December 2019: 'Logic in Fiction', presented in the Logic and Metaphysics Seminar, City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, USA.
6 December 2019: 'Musical and Mathematical Notations', presented in the Philosophy of Mathematics Seminar, Princeton University, Princeton, USA.
2 December 2019: 'Explanatory and Non-Explanatory Proofs', presented to the Department of Mathematics, University of Memphis, Memphis, USA.
31 October 2019: 'Logic in Fiction', presented to the School of Philosophy
at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
17 October 2019: 'From Disagreement to Consensus', presented at the Effective Altruism Group at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
5 September 2019: 'Logic in Fiction', presented to the Philosophy Current Projects Seminar Series, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
29 August 2019: 'Legal Probabilism', presented in the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence seminar in the Law School of the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (joint presentation with Brian Hedden).
29 August 2019: 'For and Against Platonism', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (joint presentation with Kristie Miller).
9 August 2019: 'Crime, Punishment, and Statistical Evidence', presented at the Legal Epistemology Workshop at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (joint presentation with Katie Steele).
3 July 2019: 'The Role of Toy Statistical Models in Legal Reasoning', presented at the Munich-Sydney-Turin Philosophy of Science Conference "Statistical Reasoning and Scientific Error" at Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany.
28 June 2019: 'Environmental Triage', presented in the Philosophy of Science Seminar at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
26 June 2019: 'Crime, Punishment, and Statistical Evidence', invited lecture in the Utrecht Philosophy Lectures series and masterclass on formal epistemology in the Department of Philosophy at The University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
13 June 2019: 'If 13 were Not Prime: Mathematics and Counterpossibles', invited paper at conference "Explanatory and Heuristic Power of Mathematics" at Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
7 March 2019: 'The Game of Love', presented to the Sydney University Mathematics Society, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
7 February 2019: 'Crime, Punishment, and Statistical Evidence', presented at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
A list of all Mark's research presentations can be found here.