Invited speakers in Hilary Term 2016

20/01/2016, 4:30pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Stephen Mumford (University of Nottingham):

New meditations on first philosophy, in which causation's nature and existence is demonstrated.

02/03/2016, 4:30pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Morelli Room:

Sophie Allen (University of Oxford):

It just had to be this way: dispositional necessity, singularism and tropes.

Visiting speakers in Hilary Term 2016

26/01/2016, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Matthew Meyer (The University of Scranton)

Nietzsche's Ontic Structural Realism?  Paper

 

03/02/2016, 5-6.30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Rowland Stout (University College Dublin)

Actions and Achievements


09/02/2016, 5:00-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Michael Esfeld (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

Against properties: why relations are sufficient

 

23/02/2016, 5:00-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Magdalena Bosch Rabell (UIC, Barcelona)

The power of the Desire in Nicomachean Ethics

 

01/03/2016, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Andrea Bottani (University of Bergamo)

Outline of a Locationist Theory of Properties

 

08/03/2016, 5:00pm-6.30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:

Matthew Tugby (Durham University)
A Platonic and Qualitative Theory of Powers



Reading group in Hilary Term 2016

Schedule:

27 Jan. in Fraenkel Room, Corpus Christi College: 

Chapter 4: Varieties of Potentiality (presented by Martin Pickup) handout

Chapter 4 introduces important classifications of potentialities: the joint potentialities that objects possess together; the extrinsic potentialities that objects possess in virtue of possessing joint potentialities together with other objects; and iterated potentialities. In each case, we start with intuitive cases and merely generalize from there.

10 Feb. in Fraenkel Room, Corpus Christi College:

Chapter 5: Formalizing Potentiality (presented by Maximilian Zachrau) handout

A formal language for potentiality is introduced, which allows us to express such potentiality ascriptions as ‘I have a potentiality to be such that I am sitting or you are standing’, etc. Potentiality is governed by axioms and rules that are in parallel with those formetaphysicalmodality: in particular, closure under logical implication, distribution over disjunction, and implication by actuality.

24 Feb. in Fraenkel Room, Corpus Christi College:

Chapter 6: Possibility: Metaphysics and Semantics (presented by Daniel Kodaj) handout

Chapter 6 explores how the account deals with some standard cases of metaphysical possibility and necessity, and how it meets the two constraints of formal adequacy and semantic utility.

9 March in Fraenkel Room, Corpus Christi College:

Chapter 7: Objections (presented by David Glick) handout

The final chapter goes through counterexamples of two kinds: potentialities without the corresponding possibilities, and possibilities without the corresponding potentialities. The chapter also sketches a (Stalnakerian) account of possible worlds as unmanifested potentialities of the world, and discusses the relation between potentiality and time.