Issue 13 | Fall 2022
Doreen Fraser unlocks the secrets of space-time, analogy, and reality
Dr. Cait O’Donnell: Profile of a Ph.D. alum
Doreen Fraser unlocks the secrets of space-time, analogy, and reality
Dr. Doreen Fraser is an Associate Professor in our Department, as well as a Member at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at Western, and an Affiliate Member at Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute. After a long and successful run as our Associate Chair to Undergraduate studies, she’s currently enjoying every second of a Sabbatical. We were lucky to be able to chat with her recently about her research and other topical issues.
Q1] Congratulations, Doreen, for being on Sabbatical! I trust that it agrees with you?
Yes, it has been a welcome chance to catch up on my research, especially after all of the interruptions due to the pandemic. I have spent most of the time writing and reading.
Q2] Tell us about this exciting new book you’re working on with Oxford University Press.
The book is about the role that formal analogies have played in recent discoveries in physics. Philosophers have recognized the role that analogies play in reasoning in science and everyday life since at least as far back as Aristotle. What is new about the recent use of analogies in quantum theories is that the analogies are purely formal---the similarities that guide recent research have been mathematical similarities, not physical similarities. My book builds on recent work that I have done analyzing case studies of purely formal analogies and addresses some of the philosophical issues that they raise. For example, when physicists successfully formulate a new theory using a physical analogy, there is a straightforward explanation of why they are successful: recognizing that there are physical similarities between electromagnetic waves and water waves explains why aspects of the theory of water waves can be applied to describe electromagnetic waves. In other words, physicists used the physical analogy to learn approximately correct facts about physical properties of electromagnetic waves that are common to electromagnetic waves and water waves. But what explains the successful use of purely formal analogies to discover new theories? This is a more difficult question because physical objects do not have mathematical properties. (Or at least I don’t think they do, but the view that the world is constituted by mathematics is advocated by Pythagoreans). A closely related question is the following: Why is it possible to apply mathematics in physics? I am writing this book to answer these questions.
Q3] Your research is impressively interdisciplinary: math; logic; history of science; contemporary science, including quantum field theory; considering how interpretive- or even almost narrative devices like analogy add to science and new scientific theory. Talk to us about how you’ve arrived at such a great set of interests and how they infuse your work.
I first got interested in math, physics, and history in high school. When I got to university I knew that I wanted to continue studying math and physics, but I also wanted to continue writing and reading, and studying the humanities. History and philosophy of physics were a perfect fit for my interests. In my current work, studying the history of physics reveals conceptual questions that the people who developed new theories and methods were not able to resolve. Sometimes these questions remain unresolved for a surprisingly long time and raise important philosophical issues. I also think that history contributes an important sense of perspective. Physicists understandably want to discover new theories quickly, but looking back at the history of physics reminds us that new discoveries can take a long time. For example, the Scientific Revolution lasted over a century. What we now call classical mechanics was not finished when Newton published the Principia, his great work. After Newton many people contributed to the development of the theory over a few hundred years, and these later developments turned out to be essential for the subsequent revolutions (relativity theory and quantum theory).
Q4] Apart from your own research, I’m wondering what are some new ideas and developments within math and science in general which you’re following closely and think may have an important impact for all of us?
I was just at this wonderful conference on quantum gravity hosted by the QISS consortium, which brought together physicists in many different fields and philosophers of physics. (All of the talks, including my own and the other philosophy talks, are available on this Youtube channel.) Quantum gravity---the theory that will unify quantum theory and gravitational theory---has been the holy grail in physics for almost one hundred years now. Lots of exciting new ideas about how to make progress were presented at this conference. In the past, scientific revolutions have been periods in which philosophical analysis of fundamental concepts such as space, time, and matter has been important for making progress. One of the exciting new philosophical ideas in quantum gravity is that space and time are not fundamental, but emergent. Philosophers have recently been thinking about how to make sense of understanding this radical new idea.
Q5] What remain some of your very favourite and most meaningful works of philosophy? And, if you could recommend to our readers one or two accessible works, in any medium, related to some aspect of your research, which would those be?
I always begin my introduction to philosophy of science course by reading an excerpt from Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. This was a work in natural philosophy that was in the great tradition of philosophical dialogues including Plato. One of the characters argues persuasively for the Copernican view that the earth revolves around the sun. This work had an enormous impact (resulting in Galileo being condemned by the Catholic Church and inspiring revolutionary changes in science), but it also clearly illustrates the scientific methods that Galileo used and includes jokes for his target audience of people who could read Italian (and not only Latin).
For a good discussion of a range of more recent issues in history and philosophy of physics, I recommend this podcast of CBC's Ideas (“The relativity revolution”) on which I was a panelist.
For those readers who wish a deep dive into Dr. Fraser’s research, check out this free, stunning, book chapter of hers, at the link: “The non-miraculous success of formal analogies in quantum theories.” http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/15547/
Full citation: “The non-miraculous success of formal analogies in quantum theories.” In S. French and J. Saatsi (Eds.), Scientific Realism and the Quantum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Dr. Cait O’Donnell: Profile of a Ph.D. alum
Dr. Cait O’Donnell, Ph.D., MBHL, is a Ph.D. alum from our Department’s Applied Philosophy program. Presently, she is the Manager of Market Innovation and Intelligence at Smile CDR Inc in downtown Toronto. We were lucky to chat with her recently about her role, her research, and other topical issues.
Q1] Congratulations, Cait, on your career being off to such a strong and successful start! You’re the Manager of Market Innovation and Intelligence at Smile CDR Inc. Could you tell us some details first about what you do, and then about the company?
Thank you for the kind words! I am thrilled to work at Smile CDR. For the past year and a half, I have been the Manager of Research and Insights at Smile CDR. I supported the company with research initiatives that would contribute to future innovations or project ideas. In this role, I focused heavily on the regulations that drive interoperability. For example, currently, in the United States, the Federal Government has passed several pieces of legislation that mandate interoperability between healthcare providers and healthcare payers (aka insurers). My role was to understand the regulations and how they would apply to our company and our clients.
Recently, I have transitioned into a new role as the Manager of Market Innovation and Intelligence. It's an exciting change as it is a role that allows me to draw upon my expertise and work from the clinical world. In this role, I am working with two brilliant physicians, Dr. Shane McNamee and Dr. Elizabeth Marshall, who are MDs but also experts in health technology. I will be working with them to support Smile's provider (hospitals, clinics, physicians) line of business.
Smile CDR is an incredible company whose mission is Better Global Health. Smile CDR is a health information technology company. Globally, we support the healthcare industry by providing a proven data and integration platform. Our solutions help organizations adopt open standards that support an intelligent flow of data, boost efficiency, reduce costs and generate new value, leading to improved outcomes. Our enterprise-grade open framework enables collaboration, and it allows organizations to ingest, transform, store, enrich, analyze, aggregate, and meaningfully share the health information that powers digital transformation.
We are preparing healthcare providers, payers, researchers, and life sciences organizations for a connected future beyond legacy systems that add new value through intelligent use of information and ultimately deliver better patient outcomes.
Q2] How exciting and challenging is it to work in such a cutting-edge, emerging, and important field? Has the experience of the pandemic changed the work you do?
Working in the health tech world is exciting and challenging in the best ways! It has been inspirational to see the innovations that have emerged within this field! The industry constantly finds new ways to improve upon caring for patients and support healthcare. One example of this is a project that I was recently involved in. In collaboration with Redhat, Cerner, Trisotech, Visible Systems, and Duke University, Smile CDR presented our work “Detecting Human Trafficking with Automation in Emergency Departments.” Together, the companies created an automated system that hospitals can deploy in an Emergency Department to support an already overburdened clinical workforce to detect when their patients are victims of human trafficking.
We're also seeing the industry move with medical devices. Companies have created small kits that clinicians can use for remote patient monitoring. For example, with patients who live in rural areas, or those who are non-ambulatory, a nurse can bring the equipment into the home, and a physician somewhere else can hear their heartbeat, look into their eyes, and monitor blood pressure in real-time.
One of the reasons for the swift movement in innovation has been the pandemic. We have seen a fundamental shift in how fast innovation can happen throughout the pandemic, realizing that we can advance more quickly than we previously thought. We have watched as vaccines are approved and distributed more quickly. With so many patients not being able to receive in-person care, the industry had to pivot to find new ways to deliver the care that patients need. The pandemic has forced the health and health tech industries to be more innovative and make quicker advancements.
Q3] You have advanced expertise regarding the intersection between health care, health law/policy, and health technology: so I thought it’s a great opportunity to ask what you think might be a few of the top priorities for us, as a society, to focus on regarding health care as we (strive to) emerge from the pandemic?
That's a great question! There are many areas to focus on, but I'll highlight four: Interoperability, privacy and security, medical devices, and automation.
Interoperability
The first is interoperability, ensuring that clinical systems can communicate with each other and that a patient's data is aggregated across systems. Currently, our healthcare system doesn't support that fully. Even within hospitals, one department might not be able to exchange a patient's information within their hospital. This move to interoperability would start within a hospital, then within healthcare systems in a city, eventually moving intra-provincially, then across Canada. We know that patients move around, or where they might need healthcare is not their hometown. It would be ideal if your health record were like your bank card; wherever you went, you'd be able to access your data.
Following this idea is having a single, longitudinal record for patients that clinicians can easily access before seeing them. This is linked to interoperability. While this may never be realistically doable, the idea of aggregating a patient's clinical data from clinical providers and sites that have treated the patient so that the next physician has a comprehensive understanding of the patient's health and history. We know that patients will often receive care in multiple settings and from different providers. It would be ideal if the current treating clinician could understand why and how the patient was treated at each stage in that patient's journey. Our healthcare providers do not have time to chase down a patient's record, so it would be better for continuing care if a comprehensive patient record was available to that clinician at the press of a button. Additionally, it would be helpful if there was a way to prioritize and organize the patient record. For example, a Palliative Care physician treating a patient will not be as concerned that the patient had their tonsils out when they were 12 as they would be with the fact that the patient may have suffered from a stroke two years earlier. Giving clinicians the ability to understand the critical points of their patient's history will enable them to provide better care.
Privacy and Security
With interoperability and data sharing comes the need for privacy and security. We need to focus on protecting a patient's data. While sharing data, we need to be sure that we are going so in a manner that protects patient's privacy and their data. It is vital that medical vendors and hospital systems are responsible when sharing and storing data.
Medical devices
The next area of focus is providing care to patients who do not need to be in the hospital or who are unable to obtain care in a hospital due to location or ambulatory status. One way this is done is through medical devices that enable telemedicine and remote patient monitoring. I mentioned this above. Kits and devices have been created to care for patients outside of the hospital, and to monitor acute conditions. As a society, we need to focus on making these more readily available.
Automation
Healthcare will always need human clinicians. However, systems could automate some tasks for healthcare clinicians to enable them to use their energy, time, and skills to be good doctors and nurses who need to make critical decisions in real-time. Healthcare systems can automate several functions within healthcare to reduce the burden on healthcare workers to use their time, energy, and expertise to care for their patients. Malcolm Gladwell discusses how an algorithm was deployed in a Chicago-based ER to predict heart attacks in his book Blink. A study found that the algorithm predicted heart attacks correctly 95% of the time (the study also found that clinicians did this correctly 70-85% of the time). The point was to use machine learning to take on the tasks that do not need a clinician's expertise, thereby freeing them up to make decisions that need to be made in the moment. I discussed Smile's involvement previously in using automation to detect human trafficking. One of the reasons for automating this decision-making is that detecting victims of human trafficking often falls on the shoulders of an already over-burdened clinical workforce. Imagine being a nurse in a busy ER and wondering which of your patients may also be victims of human trafficking? In this context, our automated solution removes the implicit bias and guesswork, thereby allowing clinicians to care for their patients. I believe that using machine learning and AI in healthcare can improve the healthcare system and the care of patients by allowing our clinicians to focus their skills on patient care.
Q4] During your Applied Philosophy PhD here, you worked a lot with the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), focussing on bettering supports—both policy-based and otherwise—for palliative care doctors. A vital, and ever-more-important, topic. What were some of your findings, and how did you come to be interested in the subject to begin with?
My Ph.D. dissertation sought to understand the systems and policy changes needed to support Palliative Care and its clinicians in Canada. The main driving factor behind this project was to help those who practice Palliative Care in Canada after the decriminalization of MAiD [i.e., medical assistance in dying]. This topic, and the reason for pursuing this dissertation, are of personal significance to me. I grew up in the world of Palliative Care. My mother is a Palliative Care clinician, and many of her colleagues have become family to me over the years. Before my PhD, I worked in Palliative Care as a researcher and ethicist, and these "family members" became my colleagues.
When Canada decriminalized MAiD in 2016, I felt the heartbreak of my colleagues. For many, this ruling stood in the face of what they believed Palliative Care to be: that it neither hastened nor postponed death. Witnessing the struggle within the Palliative Care community, both between Palliative Care clinicians who favored MAiD and those who were opposed, and the conflict of how those who were opposed would continue to practice Palliative Care, I knew that changes needed to be made. Given the change in legislation and landscape in Palliative Care, we need to understand how to better support Palliative Care as a discipline in the future.
To understand this, I interviewed 51 Palliative Care physicians from across Canada. During my interview, I asked participants about the challenges faced by Palliative Care and its physicians and about how MAiD has impacted them. I also asked physicians about how MAiD and Palliative Care should converge in the future, what systems or policy changes would address challenges Palliative Care physicians face, and what these physicians hope for the future of Palliative Care in Canada. The purpose of these interviews was to identify the specific challenges confronting Palliative Care from the perspective of Palliative Care physicians to identify potential policy and systems-level changes that would best address those challenges. From the interviews, I made recommendations for systems and policy changes that would support Palliative Care in the future. Based on what clinicians told me, some of the recommendations included:
increased funding for Palliative Care (to train more clinicians); national standards and mandated core competencies for Palliative Care; and the need for Palliative Care clinicians to connect with their colleagues regularly.
Q5] As a professional with a Philosophy Ph.D., but flourishing outside of academe, can you tell us what that experience means for you? What might upcoming Philosophy students, graduate- or undergraduate, be interested to know about your journey?
I feel beyond grateful for a career that I love and colleagues whom I adore. Going into my Ph.D., I knew that I did not want to pursue an academic career. However, I never thought that I would be working in the health-tech field! While completing my Ph.D., I thought I would stay in Palliative Care and get a job that would use my research to support Palliative Care in Canada. However, as I was finishing my Ph.D., the non-clinical jobs in Palliative Care didn't exist. Luckily, at that time, I had a friend working at Smile CDR who thought that the company might be able to use someone with a background in healthcare. He introduced me to the COO of the company, Rhea Kolanko. I will be forever grateful to her because she saw potential in me and knew that someone with a Ph.D. focused on Palliative Care would benefit Smile.
I believe that my experience may be helpful to current students, especially those who know that a career in academia is not for them. Being open to career opportunities you have never even thought of will allow new opportunities to present themselves. You never know which industries, companies, or organizations will value you, and your skillset. Furthermore, KNOW that the skills you have gained in your academic career are incredibly valued outside of academia. Be confident that every skill you have learned throughout your degree can be translated to another field and may be useful in novel ways!
Q6] And I can’t resist: what remain some of your very favourite and most meaningful works of philosophy?
This is tricky because so many works have influenced me. However, there is one specific work, and another category. The specific work that comes to mind is the Divine Comedy - Inferno by Dante Alighieri. It was the first philosophical work I fell in love with during my undergraduate degree. I remember having the guest lecturer walk us through the book in a way that made complete sense and made me fall in love with Philosophy. That was in the first few months of my first year at the University of King's College. Clearly, I never looked back as I completed my PhD in Applied Philosophy.
Then I would say many of the Supreme Court Cases. Interestingly, many of our foundational legal cases reference philosophical works or figures. The Supreme Court Justices have references varying from Plato to Martha Nussbaum. I discovered this in my second year of university in a course on “Ethics and the Law.” I was fascinated to understand the moral components of our legal system and the reasoning behind so many judgments. This course was my first introduction to Applied Philosophy which has always been one of my true loves.
Our Annual Prize Winners!
We had our end-of-year class- and essay prizes, as usual; and owing to the pandemic the celebration was online. Please see the winners below, and join us in congratulating them for their achievements!
Philosophy Class Prizes
Fourth Year: Yvan Deslauriers
Third Year: Olivia Kamminga
Second Year: Kyra Woodend
First Year: Eunice Ho
Department Special Prize
Grace Beach
Philosophy Undergraduate Essay Prize
Gold: “Manufacturing Misunderstanding: Legault’s persistent denial of systemic racism as complex hermeneutical impasse” (Yvan Deslauriers)
Silver: “Online Surveillance and Privacy Rights” (Nicholas Lemoing)
Bronze: “The Morality and Legality of Autonomous Weapons Systems” (Kapil Bilimoria)
Philosophy Graduate Essay Prize
Gold: “Cyber jus in bello: The Problem of Protecting Data and Cyberobjects” (Jim Jordan)
Silver: “Towards a Dependency Based Approach to Fiduciary Duty During Corporate Insolvency” (Andrew Allison)
Bronze: “Mature Minors Eligibility for Medical Assistance in Dying” (Kathryn Morrison)
The Angus Kerr-Lawson Prize
Leanne Woodward, “Racial Data in Canadian Health Research”
The Larry Haworth Prize
Maryam Mughal, “The Bus at Seven O’clock”
Gender and Social Justice Class Prizes
First Year: jointly awarded to Jenna Porter and Elly Schyven
Upper Year: Jointly awarded to Chinye Obiago and Sophia Amstutz
The Sandra Burt Research Award
Jointly awarded to:
Care Rumer for “Burden” (for GSJ 472: Health, Punishment and Carceral Medicine taught by Dr. Andrea Pitts); and
Callum Mac Rempel for “Sexual Violence Against Women Within The Mennonite Community” (for GSJ 472, Sex and Gender in Early Modern Europe with Dr. Greta Kroeker)
The Mapara Scholarship
Alice Sandiford
See our award page for personal congratulatory messages to each of the winners written by their Profs