I did my PhD in Philosophy at Stanford University with Peter Galison and Nancy Cartwright. My first academic position was at the University of California, Riverside. In 1998 I moved to the London School of Economics to join the department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method. From 2002-2013 I was an ICREA at the UAB philosophy department. From 2005-2013 I was coordinator of the research group GRECC at the UAB. From 2009 - 2017 I was the founding Editor in Chief of the European Journal for Philosophy of Science, published by Springer. After a two-year sojourn in Canada (2013-2015) I returned to ICREA and joined the University of Barcelona and the LOGOS research group in July 2015. I am currently Scientific Director of the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy (BIAP) and IP of a María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence grant with funding for 2023-2026. I was the recipient of the 2024 Lakatos Award for an outstanding book in the Philosophy of Science.
Research interests
My research has mostly addressed traditional metaphysical questions by examining the metaphysics of nature that flows from our best scientific theories. In particular, I work on the nature of space, time and motion as revealed by physics (especially, Einstein's theories of relativity); and on the nature of objective probability as revealed by its uses in many branches of science and other human activities. My most recent research interests include these topics: scientific realism (i.e., should we take our best scientific theories to be giving us objective truth about the world?); how to understand quantum non-locality; and the connection between the descriptions of the world given in physics and the descriptions familiar from higher-level sciences and everyday experience. More recently, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic responses, I have begun working on evidence-based medicine (EBM) and the objectivity of medical and epidemiological research.
Selected publications
- Anta J & Hoefer C, 2024 "Rethinking the Intellectual Genesis of Landauer's Principle", Springer pp 389-407
- Hoefer C 2024, 'Review of Wayne C. Myrvold, Beyond Chance and Credence', The Philosophical Review v. 133 -1- 96-101.
Selected research activities
Invited talks:
- “Dubitable and indubitable aspects of quantum physics”, invited talk at 10th International Workshop on Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Information, Università Roma Tre, Rome, Italy, April 2024.
- “Trust in Public Health Science After the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Pessimistic Outlook”, invited talk at workshop MATHIAS (Models and Trust:Highlighting Issues Across Science), Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, June 2024.
- “Generic causation in complex, mind-dependent systems”, Lunch Time Talk, Center for Philosophy of Science, U. Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA, USA.
Research management
- Principal Investigator and work package co-leader for the Barcelona Institute of Analytic Philosophy, María de Maeztu unit of Excellence (CEX2021-001169-M)
- Co-PI of Spanish I+D+I project Reassessing Scientific Objectivity, PID2020-115114GB-I00