Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science @ Toronto
My first visit to Canada! They say that Canada is a bit like Finland, and I can see why: things are generally fairly organized, it’s clean, and the weather is shitty — it rained most of the time. I did get an 18km run in along the shores of Lake Ontario before the bad weather set in though. I didn’t get (m)any shots of Toronto due to the weather, but my shots from the conference are here. Toronto did seem nice, with a number of interesting bars and (vegan) restaurants, although I didn’t get to explore as much as I hoped, and it wouldn’t have been much fun in the cold and rainy weather anyway.
Victoria College, the conference venue
This conference looked pretty good on paper, and for the most part it delivered as well. The keynote sessions on biology, physics, and methodology were all good, featuring James Ladyman, Katherine Hawley, and Anjan Chakravartty, among others. At many other philosophy of science conferences I’ve found that the talks are too detailed to follow unless you know the (scientific) literature, but not so here: all the talks I attended were quite well presented and not too technical. As expected the Ladyman-Ross book Every Thing Must Go got a fair bit of attention — my talk focused on it as well — and the discussion about the relationship between metaphysics and science was lively.
Stephen Boulter (Oxford Brookes University): On the Transition from Science to Metaphysics
There was a problem regarding discussion though: since even the keynotes only had 40min including discussion, and since many of them had no idea about how to pace their talks, there was hardly any time for Q&A. The general discussion at the end of each plenary session didn’t help much either, as at that point the schedule was broken already. I would’ve had a comment on maybe half of the talks I attended, but I didn’t get to make a single one of them.
James Ladyman (University of Bristol): Plenary session on physics
It was nice to see some familiar faces from previous conferences and I saw a number of new ones as well, but for me the timing wasn’t really ideal for socialising. I had to finish the index for my forthcoming volume while I was in Toronto, and on top of that I got a little bit ill, so I actually went out with the conference folk just once. Anyway, it was a pleasure to catch up with Stephen Boulter especially, since we share interests in the Aristotelian tradition.
Anjan Chakravartty (University of Toronto): Plenary session on methodology
As to the details of the talks, Chakravartty’s was perhaps the most interesting for me. I usually find myself agreeing with a lot that he says, since his approach to the relationship between metaphysics and science is much more relaxed than that of Ladyman’s for instance. Chakravartty argued that there is a clear sense in which a priori methods are involved in scientific inquiry as well, and sketched a system to evaluate such input. However, I would’ve been more interested in detailed examples about how these methods are manifested in science, since this is something that I try to defend myself, but which many philosophers of science find completely baffling. The key, it seems, is that philosophers of science are likely to think that the supposed examples of a priori input in science are just hypotheses and that there is nothing a priori about them. This may indeed seem to be the case if one is stuck with a Cartesian conception of the (infallible) a priori, but this is an obsolete conception anyway. Chakravartty’s project in this regard seemed to be very close to my own: to develop an understanding of the methods of inquiry used to come up with scenarios of what is possible — explanations — in both science and metaphysics.
My talk: Naturalizing Aprioristic Metaphysics
In my own talk, ‘Naturalizing Aprioristic Metaphysics‘ (pdf), I criticised the Ladyman-Ross case against a priori metaphysics by looking at their account of intuitions and general scepticism about being able to access the space of metaphysical possibility a priori. My positive account is a sketch of how this method of inquiry works, taking Lowe’s idea that possibility precedes actuality as a starting point. In fact, the paper is roughly one half of my own contribution to the Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume. The talk went well, but I didn’t have much of an audience. Fortunately those who did come had some interesting things to say in Q&A. It’s clear to me that an important part of this project is to convince philosophers of science (and scientists, I guess!) that there is something we can legitimately call a priori inquiry that science employs, and must employ. I hope to examine some specific examples of this in the future.
The picture of James is brilliant.My caption is:
“OMG! That object is not just pure structure!”
Haha, thanks Peter, I thought it was quite entertaining!
LOL @ Peter
By the way, Dr. T, is anything said about structuralism in your upcoming volume? Going to see if I can beg one of the metaphysics professors to order it.
I’m afraid that there isn’t really anything on structuralism, although in my own contribution I do of course comment on Ladyman’s work (but not his structuralism). Perhaps you can find an alternative selling point?