James Ladyman, Oystein Linnebo & Richard Pettigrew: Identity and indiscernibility in logic and philosophy

Just before I came to Finland, and after my trip to the Dolomites in Italy, I attended the Structure and Identity conference in Bristol, which was part of the AHRC-funded Structuralism project, led by James Ladyman. The keynote speakers were John Burgess, Katherine Hawley, Fraser Macbride, Simons Saunders and Stewart Shapiro. My photos from the conference are here. I certainly don’t work in structuralism and although I have some interests towards things like the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, which was a major theme at the conference, I haven’t written anything about identity since my MA thesis either. However, one of the suggested themes concerned the notion of a fundamental level (especially in regard to structuralism), and I happen to have a paper about that, my talk was entitled ‘In Search of a Fundamental Level’. The paper is in need of revision and I did get some useful comments at the conference which I need to take into account, but the main argument should be clear enough already from the draft I’ve linked to.

Donnchadh O'Conaill & Olley Pearson: Ontic structral realism and infinite descent

Two of my colleagues from Durham, Donnchadh O’Conaill and Olley Pearson, also attended the conference and we all drove down together from Durham. They presented a joint paper entitled ‘Ontic structral realism and infinite descent’, which concerns the (im)possibility of infinite chains of dependence — something which also supports my thesis of the existence of a fundamental level. The connection with structuralism comes from the widely shared view that structuralism is not committed to the existence of a fundamental level and might in fact be opposed to the idea. However, Kerry McKenzie actually questioned this view and argued that in some sense structuralism might be committed to fundamentalism, albeit perhaps only to fundamental principles. Kerry’s paper was probably the most interesting for me, as it was directly connected to my own.

My talk: In search of a fundamental level (thanks to Olley for the photo)

Donnchadh and Olley presented their paper just before me and got a great audience. Some good discussion as well. Ladyman attended both of our papers, which was nice to see, and commented as well. In some sense we were the official opposition, as the type of metaphysics that we do at Durham is not particularly popular amongst this folk. Having said that, of the keynote speakers, Hawley and Macbride are certainly metaphysicians, and metaphysical issues crept up frequently during the discussions. In my own paper I sketched an a priori argument for a fundamental level, which did not go down so well, but I never had so much confidence in it anyway and in fact the paper is more about the metaphysical possibility of a fundamental level and the methodological issues concerning our research into the existence and nature of such a level rather than about the a priori argument. No one questioned the physics though, so I guess that bit must’ve been roughly correct.

Drinks at a nearby pub after a long conference day

The conference as a whole was enjoyable and fairly well organised, although the timetables did not quite hold (there should’ve been at least a 5min transition time between talks) and due to a lack of chairs the timings were sometimes a bit off. There were some other small things that could’ve been better (Wi-Fi usernames for the delegates for instance), but nothing serious. Bristol is also a lovely city with great pubs and restaurants, so nothing to complain about in that regard! In terms of the social side, I met a few nice people and some old conference aquintances, but I was still rather tired from my trip to Italy and from all the travelling, so I didn’t get so much out of the social activities. I wish I had had more energy though, because it was a great bunch of good philosophers.

Katherine Hawley: Structuralism as monism

As to the content, it was surprisingly varied, with some very technical papers, but even one on continental philosophy (which was a bit strange). All the keynotes were good, although we missed Simons Saunders as we arrived late on the first day. None of the talks were on issues that would be exactly on what I’m working on, but some very interesting issues about the foundations of mathematics were discussed, and there was quite a debate about whether that amounted to metaphysics or not — to me it’s clear that it did! I wish I had some notes or a draft of some of the papers available; John Burgess’ talk on ‘Codifiability vs codification’ for instance was very interesting, and quite easy to follow, but I can’t remember enough of the details to comment on it. Shapiro continued on similar foundational issues, although he mixed some linguistics into his talk and I failed to see the motivation for that really. Well, I think I should read some papers from the huge philosophy of logic and mathematics volume edited by Shapiro to be able to follow these discussions properly. I have that volume, but there are so many other things to read…

Well, that’s about it. What I took from the conference is that I should read more on the foundations of mathematics and even more physics! I recently read Lee Smolin’s excellent book The Trouble with Physics, which I also reviewed. I think I’ll have a look at his other popular physics books before jumping into any hardcore stuff.

But now for some laid back time in the Finnish sun (no kidding, the all-time heat record in Finland was broken this summer: 37,2 degrees centigrade!).