Invited speakers in Michaelmas Term 2015
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.
14/10/2015, 4:30pm-6:00pm, Corpus Christi College, Auditorium:
Peter Simons (Trinity College Dublin):
Metaphysics in the Community: Reaching Out to the Parts of Being
04/11/2015, 4:30pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:
Jonathan Hill (University of Exeter):
Varieties of Identity: Metaphysics, Entanglement, and Christian Theology
11/11/2015, 4.30pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Rainolds Room:
Harvey Brown (University of Oxford):
25/11/2015, 4:30pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:
Visiting speakers in Michaelmas Term 2015Paul Nager (University of Munster):
The causal problem of entanglement and how quantum mechanics solves it
20/10/2015, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Seminar Room:
Bryan Reece (University of Toronto)
03/11/2015, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Seminar Room:
Michel Bastit (Université de Bourgogne)
Power, bearers of powers and the priority of act
(full paper here)
10/11/2015, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Rainolds Room:
Gabriele Cornelli (Universidade de Brasilia)
Plato sailing upstream: the image of the ship in the Republic
24/11/2015, 5.00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Seminar Room:
Giannis Stamatellos (The American College of Greece)
01/12/2015, 5:00pm-6:30pm, Corpus Christi College, Fraenkel Room:
Mario De Caro (Università Roma Tre)
Liberal naturalism and pluralistic realism
Reading group in Michaelmas Term 2015
The Metaphysics of Entanglement reading group focuses on Barbara Vetter’s Potentiality (OUP, 2015) in 2015/16. Vetter offers a new theory of the metaphysics of modality, dispositions, and powers. Her central claim is that analytic metaphysics has made a mistake in thinking of modality in terms of possible worlds, which are global and maximal objects. A more fruitful way is to think of modality as residing intrinsically in particular objects, in the form of potentialities for certain effects—the real source of modality is local, rather than global. The book will be of interest to those working on scientific realism, the philosophy of physics, counterfactuals, and general metaphysics.
Time: Wednesdays (even weeks), 4.30pm–6.30pm.
Schedule:
21 Oct. in Rainolds Room, Corpus Christi College:
Chapter 1: The Project (presented by George Darby)
Chapter 1 outlines the main reasons for thinking of modality in local, rather than global terms, explains the three desiderata that a metaphysical theory of modality must fulfill, and introduces the concept of potentiality.
18 Nov. in Morelli Room, Corpus Christi College:
Chapter 2: Dispositions: Against the Standard Conception (presented by Christopher Austin) handout
Chapter 2 argues that the standard linking of dispositions to conditionals runs into trouble if we want to be realists about dispositions, and suggests that dispositions are to be understood not in terms of a stimulus and a manifestation but in terms of the manifestation alone.
2 Dec. in Fraenkel Room, Corpus Christi College:
Chapter 3: Dispositions: an Alternative Conception (presented by Naoya Iwata) handout
Chapter 3 (i) draws on the semantics of ordinary terms and the desiderata on the metaphysics of modality to bolster the thesis that dispositions are individuated in terms of manifestations, and (ii) it elaborates the concept of potentiality.