Speaker: Renaud BarbarasVenue: 4-311, Chengjun Court, Zijingang Campus

Speaker: Georg StengerVenue: 4-311, Chengjun Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: This presentation analyzes the development of phenomenology resulting from its engagement with East Asian thought, with a specific focus on Japanese philosophy. It charts the self-reflexive progression of the discipline from Husserl's 'horizon consciousness' and Heidegger's 'being-in-the-world' to pivotal concepts introduced by thinkers like Nishida ('world turn') and Rombach ('ontological identity' of situations). The core of the analysis demonstrates how this intercultural dialogue fosters a 'new turn' in phenomenology, which pluralizes the 'world' concept and incorporates broader dimensions of 'world experience'—including artistic, religious, ethical, and social domains. This process marks a significant move beyond the discipline's original Western-European provenance and points toward its future intercultural potential.

Speaker: ZHEN XiaoyongVenue: 9-301, Chenjun Court, Zijingang Campus Abstract: This paper examines the causal impact of Berkeley’s sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax on beer purchases and prices using scanner data from 2014–2015. Employing both synthetic control and difference-in-differences (DID) methods, we find that the tax led to an 11% decrease in beer purchases, with no significant change in beer prices. These results are robust across multiple specifications. Medium-run analysis shows that the decline in beer purchases intensified over time, reaching 21.4% by 2019, suggesting habit formation. These results demonstrate that SSB taxes can generate unintended spillover effects on other consumption behaviors with meaningful public health implications.

Speaker: Richard JardineVenue: Kunhe Multi-function Hall, Anzhong Building, Zijingang CampusAbstract: The talk describes how the ALPACA and ALPACA Plus Joint Industry projects, led by Imperial College London and Oxford University ran from 2017 to 2022 to investigate the behaviour of piles driven in chalk, a very weak limestone. The main driver was an urgent need to better support foundation design for the large offshore windfarms being developed at northern European chalk sites, and also inform other port and bridge projects that employ large open steel piles driven in chalk strata. The talk describes how the research led to more rational, representative and reliable design procedures than were available previously, based on secure knowledge regarding pile driving at chalk sites, the piles’ subsequent ageing behaviour and their responses to monotonic-and-cyclic, axial-and-lateral, loading. The research included intensive characterisation of the chalk at the St Nicholas at Wade (SNW) onshore test site in Kent, in the UK. This work progressed in parallel with advanced field testing on over 40 piles driven at SNW. Close analysis of these experiments led to new design methods which are now being applied in developing offshore wind farms and other onshore works. The ALPACA JIPs advanced in parallel with analytical and database studies, including the ALPHA 3D-FE lateral loading analysis project reported by Pedone et al (2023), the analysis of independent driven pile in chalk testing conducted at other sites, as reported by Jardine (2023) and Vinck et al (2023) and the axial load-displacement analyses described by Wen et al (2023). The work has been published extensively in Geotechnique and elsewhere; many of the researchers involved have subsequently taken up academic posts at a range of well-known universities. 

Speaker: WEI ZhiwuVenue: 7-426, Chenjun Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Does political polarisation influence actual economic behaviours? Using British nationally representative surveys and administrative data, we document how the Brexit referendum triggered stark divergences in individual micro and macro expectations between Leave and Remain supporters. Compared to existing research, we show how these polarising effects were mostly unrelated to traditional partisan identities. We also show how these diverging beliefs influenced major real financial decisions. Leavers became more likely to purchase durables and engage in housing transactions, and areas with higher proportions of Leave voters experienced increased housing transaction volumes and rising prices. Our findings highlight the heterogeneous response of households to the Brexit vote, offering a potential explanation for why many economists' pessimistic forecasts regarding Brexit’s short- and medium-term economic con sequences have not fully materialized.

Speaker: Søren Harnow KlausenVenue: Meeting Room 311, Building 4, Chengjun Yuan, Zijingang CampusAbstract: The report will explore how phenomenology can be most effectively applied and which topics are most worthy of phenomenological intervention. Currently, the academic community tends to apply phenomenology almost exclusively to the study of lived experience, thereby reducing it essentially to a branch of the philosophy of mind—or even subsuming it under the "case-based" research approaches of anthropology or the humanities. In contrast, I will adopt a classical phenomenological understanding, treating phenomenology as the study of how "things" manifest themselves, and as an effort to clarify their meaning and ontological status by describing their typical modes of givenness.  I will further examine how "eidetic variation" can be developed under contemporary epistemological and methodological standards—for instance, through empirical or practical constraints, or by incorporating experiential descriptions from different individuals to supplement the phenomenologist’s own imagination. These descriptions can then be synthesized to form a kind of "phenomenological reflective equilibrium."  Additionally, I will briefly illustrate my understanding of "applied phenomenology" and its potential by examining several phenomena closely related to contemporary society, such as aging, health and illness, and war. This will demonstrate how phenomenology can offer insights into our understanding of these issues.

Speaker: Sebastian Sunday GrèveVenue: 4-311, Chengjun Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: This paper presents an argument to the conclusion that machines can acquire human mindedness, that is, they can be intelligent, conscious, sentient, etc. in precisely the way that a human being typically is. Machines are defined here as digital computers—i.e., the same type of engineered and programmed artefact as the vast majority of our modern-day computing devices—with the additional condition that these artefacts must be primarily made from non-organic materials such as silicon or plastic. Following a brief review of the history of the type of argument advanced here, a thought experiment is presented and analysed, culminating in the aforementioned conclusion. That conclusion is then defended against a number of objections.

Speaker: Marilyn B RenfreeVenue: Zijingang Hall, Alumni Building, Zijingang CampusAbstract: Viviparity is widespread among animals, with many species nurturing their offspring in the uterus via a placenta. This process requires adaptive modifications to ensure the embryo’s development within the mother. However, only **mammals** further extend maternal protection through lactation.  In eutherians (placental mammals), the **lactation period ranges from days to years, whereas marsupials (e.g., kangaroos) give birth to underdeveloped young that mature during lactation. Eutherian milk composition remains stable, while marsupial milk dynamically adjusts its nutritional profile to regulate offspring growth.  Notably, we found that multiple genes expressed in the mammary glands of the tammar wallaby (a marsupial) overlap with key placental genes in eutherians. This suggests that marsupials use lactation—rather than a placenta—to regulate the postnatal development of their "external fetuses" until independence, effectively completing an evolutionary shift from umbilical nourishment to nipple-based sustenance.

Speaker: YE RuVenue: 4-311, Chengjun Court, Zijingang CampusAbstract: When laypeople consult multiple experts—whether in courtrooms, hospitals, or public policy—they often prefer that these experts reach their judgments independently. This intuitive preference for expert autonomy has traditionally been explained by the ‘variety of evidence thesis,’ which claims that agreeing testimonies coming from independent sources are more confirmatory than dependent ones. However, this thesis has been challenged, particularly in contexts involving uncertain source reliability.In this talk, I take a novel approach by shifting focus from the informativeness of agreement among expert testimonies to the informativeness of the entire experiment of consulting experts. I present two main results. First, independence does not in general make the expert-consulting experiment more informative. For some independent group of experts, there exists a correlated counterpart group such that consulting the correlated group is more informative, ceteris paribus. Second, however, when we consider the empirical reality that expert correlation is often ambiguous, and account for decision-makers’ aversion to ambiguity, consulting independent experts will be more informative than consulting correlated ones.