Invited Speakers for Michaelmas Term 2014
All talks take place at Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room, from 4:30pm to 6:30pm. Drinks are served afterwards, to which all are warmly invited. Please note that the talk on 12 November will take place in the Rainolds Room.
15/10/14: Anjan Chakravartty (University of Notre Dame):
Fundamental Particles and (Potentially Powerful) Structures: A Proposal for Realist Pragmatism
29/10/14: Stephen Barker (University of Nottingham):
12/11/14: David S Oderberg (University of Reading):
26/11/14: Barbara Vetter (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
A Plenitude of Powers (handout here)
Visiting Speakers for Michaelmas Term 2014
All talks take place at Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room, from 2:30pm to 4:00pm.
21/10/14: Tuomas E. Tahko (University of Helsinki):
11/11/14: Paul Scade (Istanbul Sehir University):
Thought and Reality in Stoic Ontology
02/12/14: Vladimir Mikes (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Function of sayable (lekton) in the Stoic theory of action: new approach to Stoic incorporeals?
For further details, and for upcoming and previous speakers, click here
Reading Group in Michaelmas Term 2014
The joint reading group of the Power Structuralism project and The Metaphysics of Entanglement project will focus on Causation and its Basis in Fundamental Physics by Douglas Kutach (OUP, 2013). Kutach offers a three-tiered account of causation, consisting of a probability-based account of token causation at the fundamental level, a counterfactual account of type causation at the macrolevel, and a reduction of ordinary causal talk to these two. The four chapters covered this term deal with his methodology (Ch.1), fundamental causation (Ch.2), counterfactual difference-making (Ch.3), and derivative causation (Ch.4). The book will be of interest to those working on scientific realism, the philosophy of physics, counterfactuals, and general metaphysics.
Click here for the OUP catalogue entry of the book and here for a review by John T Roberts in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The book is available on Oxford Scholarship online. (For those based in Oxford, the link is here.)
Time: Wednesdays (even weeks), 4.30pm–6.30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room
Schedule:
22 Oct: Chapter 1, "Empirical Analysis and the Metaphysics of Causation" (handout)
5 Nov: Chapter 2, "Fundamental Causation" (handout)
19 Nov: Chapter 3, "Counterfactuals and Difference-Making" (handout)
3 Dec: Chapter 4, "Derivative Causation" (handout)
