Research Seminar

Research Seminar: Metametaphysics and The Sciences (2023-2024)

Research Seminar: Metametaphysics and The Sciences (2023-2024) organized by Kévin Chalas (Cefises, UCLouvain) & Florian Marion (De Wulf-Mansion Centre, UCLouvain)

Program (2023-2024)

Friday 20/10/23: Pierre Saint-Germier (CNRS-IRCAM-Sorbonne Université), Hume’s maxim, hyperintensionality and the strangeness of impossibility

Abstract: According to Hume’s maxim, “nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible”. This maxim provides a justification for the method of conceivability, according to which one may arrive at justified modal beliefs after suitably conceiving appropriate scenarios. We propose a formal modeling of the method of conceivability that extends Berto’s logic of ceteris paribus imagination by adding a modal operator and a conceivability operator “C”. A semantic characterization of this operator is proposed in the framework of impossible worlds semantics. This modeling of conceivability provides a hyperintensional account of conceivability, sheds a new light on the sources of modal error, answers some doubts recently voiced by Priest about Hume’s maxim, and is applied to the analysis of philosophical and scientific thought experiments. Overall, our formal model of the method of conceivability provides a nuanced account of its epistemic strengths and weaknesses.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahGmdvC5hRs

Friday 26/01/24: Stephen Barker (Nottingham University), Global Expressivism and 2^nd-Order Nihilism

Abstract: I sketch a metasemantic approach to language that I call global expressivism (GE). GE is a specific kind of generalization to ethical expressivism to all sectors of discourse. I argue that acceptance of GE has metaontological consequences. It implies a view about reality that is fundamentally non-ontological, which is 2^nd-order nihilism. This is nihilism about real definition or ultimate nature of things, the very thing that ontological theories seek to uncover. 2^nd-order nihilists accept that composite things exist, as do values, numbers, facts, properties, etc, and they affirm that, as it seems, there are non-existent entities that we talk about. It just denies that they have any ultimate nature: we reject all real definitions of such entities, including that they are primitive beings.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf9f6Dl1PzI&t=45s

Friday 09/02/24: Emiliano Trizio (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), Phenomenology, philosophy of science, and the idea of metaphysics

Abstract: In this talk, I will outline the structural differences existing between the theory of science based on transcendental phenomenology and philosophy of science as a currently practiced institutionalized discipline. I will then argue that these philosophical discourses on science amount to two incompatible philosophical programmes and bring forth opposing views of the nature of philosophy itself. Subsequently, I will formulate the fundamental challenge to the approach of philosophy of science that stems from transcendental phenomenology: namely the former’s inherent objectivism and the resulting inability to address its own domain of investigation. Two phenomenological notions will play a decisive role in this discussion: life-world and transcendental reduction. Finally, I will suggest that this challenge has significant consequences for metaphysics and its relation to the results of empirical sciences. The aim of this reflection will consist in probing the consequences on metaphysics of the current disunity of philosophy and of its fragmentation in a number of specialized disciplines.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zap3Oh8utXo

Thursday 21/03/24: Roundtable with Tuomas Tahko, Alexandre Guay & Jacob Schmutz on the thematic: Metametaphysics and the History of Philosophy
- Tuomas Tahko (University of Bristol): Essence, modality, and existence from Aristotle and Avicenna to contemporary metaphysics: Contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics tackles with many of the same problems as Aristotle and his commentators did. One of these problems is the possibility of substantial kind change. For instance, is it possible for an animal to change its species? Aristotle and Avicenna both regarded species to be eternal, but their metaphysics might allow for individuals to change their kinds – what is important is that one kind cannot change into another kind. From a contemporary perspective this may seem odd, given what we know about the evolution of species. Moreover, phenomena like beta decay seem to suggest that a given sample of an element may change into another element. Yet, I suggest that the essentialist metaphysics that has developed from Aristotle to neo-Aristotelian metaphysics, via Avicenna, may in fact have the necessary tools to accommodate all this.
- Jacob Schmutz (UCLouvain): Can the programme of meta-metaphysics help us to reconstruct the history of Western metaphysics?
- Alexandre Guay (UCLouvain): The Historical Separation of Science from Philosophy and the Drive towards a Radical Naturalization of Metaphysics.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mGdOJaVcAY

Friday 22/03/24: Tuomas Tahko (University of Bristol), Essence Without Modality?

Abstract: I will sketch a theory of modality built on essential dependence relations between actually existing entities. The background is Aristotelian/Finean essentialism, and the idea that modality can be reduced to essence. However, more needs to be said about what essences are considered to be on this picture and about the nature of this reduction. On my view, essences are not entities. Instead, I propose to read ‘essence’ as ‘the identity and existence conditions of an entity’. A reductive analysis of modality in terms of essence would then suggest that every essential truth has modal implications. I conclude by showing how this view of essence and modality may be connected to scientific modelling practices.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECKl1wMsRI

Friday 03/05/24: Markus Schrenk (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf), The Problematic Properties of Better Best Systems

Abstract: Many advocates of the Better Best System Account (BBSA) and variations thereof suggest that Lewis-style best system competitions can successfully be executed for any arbitrary but fixed set of predicates/properties. This affords the possibility to launch system analyses separately for each of the special sciences. However, unnoticed challenges arise: What are the boundaries between the different sets of properties that demarcate the sciences (if there are any)? Also, the BBSA is in danger of depicting the whole of sciences as a patchwork of unrelated, maybe even contradictory systems. Is there a unity or a hierarchy to be found after all? The latter issues concern the interrelations across separate best systems and their properties. Relating to scientific progress, there are internal issues as well: as a science develops it hosts different sets of properties. System analyses for different property sets, however, might well be incommensurable. How can the BBSA account for this? This paper aims to offer tentative solutions to these challenges but it remains critical.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECKl1wMsRI

Friday 17/05/24: Barbara Vetter (Freie Universität Berlin), Modal Epistemology and the T axiom, online

Abstract: In the epistemology of modality, philosophers often begin by assuming that there is one easy way to learn about possibilities: the inference from actuality to possibility, or ab esse ad posse. I suggest that, if we are looking for a cognitive account of our ordinary human knowledge of possibility, the T axiom is not nearly as natural as has been assumed; it is a theoretical achievement. My argument draws on historical considerations from Aristotle as well as recent work in semantics.

Video link: available soon.

Friday 21/06/24: Quentin Ruyant (Complutense University of Madrid), TBA