This workshop at my alma mater, Durham, put together by Markku Keinänen and David Westland, was the first official Dynamis event, in cooperation with the Department of Philosophy at Durham. This was enabled by the fact that Markku Keinänen has been visiting Durham this spring. We had an intensive day of debating the metaphysics of natural kinds with some great discussion, although it would’ve been nice to have some more audience. Sadly, Emma Tobin, who was due to give a talk as well, had to cancel — we had a round table discussion instead.

Hakkarainen & Keinänen on trope nominalism and natural kinds.

E.J. Lowe was under some heavy fire at times with Jani and Markku defending their trope nominalist account of natural kinds and myself developing a criticism about the relationship of laws and kinds due to Alexander Bird. But he can certainly take it, and of course had plenty of his own criticisms! Jani opened with a partly historical talk on Hume and the Humean attitude towards kindhood. Robin Hendry then gave an intriguing talk about chemical kinds and continuity, suggesting that there are reasons to think that at least some chemical kinds lack bona fide boundaries (a topic which I’ve touched on in my own work).

Robin Hendry

My own talk was entitled ‘What Is Realism About Natural Kinds?’, in which I tried to get clear on some of the issues that I’ve encountered especially when discussing natural kinds with philosophers of science. To this end, Robin Hendry’s work is also of special interest. Jani and Markku also had a joint paper on trope nominalism and natural kinds, a view which they’ve developed in a number of papers. David Westland gave us a thorough summary of Brian Ellis’s views on natural kinds, whereas Lowe went into some more detail about the role of kinds in his four-category ontology.

The lovely conference venue, just before my talk.

All in all, it was a great pleasure to be back in Durham and to see some familiar faces. Things in Durham are really picking up with several recent hires and great funding success, most recently a Templeton funded project on emergence (check out the post-doc and PhD opportunities!) lead by Robin Hendry. I hope to be back again soon!

See the rest of the photos in my gallery.

E.J. Lowe in action.

As some readers are no doubt already aware, the Academy of Finland has selected me as an Academy Research Fellow, starting this September in Helsinki. This is a lucrative five year, senior research position — something of a Holy Grail in Finland’s highly competitive academic research circles. I’m obviously rather pleased about this, especially since it was the first time I applied for the position. You can expect to see a series of posts related to this in the near future, as I set out my plans for the next five years. This includes several conferences, international visitors in Helsinki, two longer visits abroad by myself (first of these most likely to Reading, UK), an online presence for the project, recruiting grad students and post-docs (I will post a call for expressions of interest in due course) etc.

The list of new Academy Research Fellows is available here (pdf). There were 20 awards this year, and only two in philosophy. The applications are assessed by an international panel of experts, and I have to say that I was impressed by its standard (the panel included multiple ‘household names’ from Anglo American analytic philosophy) — even if I am a little biased given the results!

My current Post-Doctoral Fellowship is also funded by the Academy of Finland, but it would have ended at the end of 2013, so I’ve been on the market this year. I haven’t had much luck with permanent positions, but earlier I managed to secure a so called EURIAS Fellowship at the Central European University Institute for Advanced Study, in Budapest. I was looking forward to going to Budapest, but unfortunately there isn’t much flexibility with these types of Fellowships (the EURIAS one or the Academy one), so I had no choice but to turn down the EURIAS Fellowship. My EURIAS profile is still up, but I imagine that they’ll take it down at some point. The project, entitled ‘Truth-grounding and Fundamentality’, was pitched for an interdisciplinary audience, but I do have ‘serious’ research interests in this area (and a couple of papers in the works).

The Academy Research Fellow project, however, is on a different topic, more directly related to my on-going research on the foundations of metaphysics. The title is ‘Essential Knowledge: The Metaphysical Basis of Scientific Realism’. This is a very broad project, involving research on metaontological themes, modal epistemology, epistemology of essence, apriority, formal ontology (logic of essence, grounding, fundamentality), natural kinds, philosophy of science (chemistry, biology), Aristotle, ‘Neo-Aristotelianism’, realism, and so on. Of course, these are all themes that I’ve worked on before, at least to a certain extent, but this project ties a lot of threads together. The goals are quite ambitious, but I do have five years at my disposal, with minimal teaching commitments.

The actual research proposal for the project is too long to post here (12 pages), but let me post an outline of the project’s primary Research Focuses as well as the abstract, which will give you an idea about the primary themes and extent of the project, even if not the technical aspects:

Outline of Research Focuses

Natural science studies the natural world, but what makes the world natural? According to scientific realism, nature comes with a designated structure, and it is this structure that natural science investigates. Biological species, chemical substances, and subatomic particles are all part of this structure. The assumption underlying scientific inquiry is that we have some means to identify where one kind of structure ends and another kind begins: the notion of natural kind captures this assumption. But what fixes the identity of a natural kind? What guarantees that a given organism belongs to one biological species rather than another? Why should we consider two isotopes of a chemical element to constitute distinct chemical substances? Moreover, what reasons do we have to think that natural kinds are mind-independent rather than merely conventional, a product of our psychological makeup?

This project aims to determine the metaphysical foundations for any attempt to answer these questions. The hypothesis is that there are indeed genuine natural kind essences. The notion of essence has a long philosophical history — it has made its way back into analytic metaphysics via the ‘neo-Aristotelian’ movement — but it is often misunderstood in contemporary contexts. The consensus among those working in the neo-Aristotelian tradition is that the notion of essence has been misrepresented in much of contemporary work. This is largely due to a misconception of what essences are, or rather, the misconception is that essences are ‘things’ in the first place. Essence, I suggest, is shorthand for whatever it is that makes a given natural kind the very natural kind that it
is. Since the majority of philosophers and scientists subscribe to some form of scientific realism, the theme of this project is of enormous importance.

The notion of essence has been a central theme in my work for nearly a decade – and it is one of three topics pursued in my previous, Academy of Finland funded project. What are essences, how do we come to know them, and why do they matter? These are some of the questions explored in this project, giving raise to the following core objectives:

1. To establish a rigorous definition of the notion of ‘essence’.
2. To examine and revise the ontological status and logic of the established notion.
3. To develop an epistemology of essence.
4. To develop applications of the established notion, specifically with regard to philosophy of science and neo-Aristotelianism.

If you’re intrigued by any of this and want to know more, do drop me a message! Make sure to stay tuned for announcements from Dynamis: The Finnish Network for Metaphysics as well, as we’ve got a couple of things planned…

I look forward to visiting Durham for the first time in a year and a half this May, and the reason for my visit is exciting as well! This workshop on natural kinds is the first official event of Dynamis — The Finnish Network for Metaphysics, kindly put together by one of our founding members, Markku Keinänen, who is currently visiting Durham. In addition to myself and the third founding member of Dynamis, Jani Hakkararainen, the workshop will feature Robin Hendry, E.J. Lowe, Emma Tobin, and David Westland (who is the co-organiser).

I’ve been working on related issues for some time now and this is a great opportunity to reflect on that. Robin Hendry’s recent work on the topic is particularly interesting to me, as I’ve been focusing on chemical kinds as an example in my own work. I hope to post a draft of my paper soon after the event. Incidentally, we’re also putting together a reading group on natural kinds at the University of Helsinki — get in touch with me if you’re interested.

“Metaphysical Issues in Natural Kinds” on Saturday, May 11, 2013.

Venue: Joachim Room, St. Hild & St. Bede College, University of Durham.

Program

9.30-10.30 Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere): Humean Rejection of Kind Essential Properties

10.30-11.30 Emma Tobin (University College London): TBA

11.30-12.30 Robin Hendry (University of Durham): Continuity and Natural Kinds

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.30 Tuomas Tahko (University of Helsinki): What is Realism about Natural Kinds?

14.30-15.30 David Westland (University of Durham): Powers and Processes

15.30-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-17.00 Markku Keinänen (University of Turku) & Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere):
A Trope Nominalist Theory of Natural Kinds

17.00-18.00 E. J. Lowe (University of Durham): Substance Universals

The registration fee is £10, which covers lunch and coffee, to be collected before the start of the event. Registrations and further information: mkeina[at]utu.fi. We would wish to have the registrations by Monday, May 6.

Yet another exciting event coming up in Tübingen this summer, put together by Alessandro Torza and Thomas Sattig. I’m going to this one, as I’m commenting on one of the talks, namely Francesco Berto’s “There is an ‘is’ in ‘There is’”. Meinongian quantification and existence”. Check out the website for more details, program below.

July 5

Afternoon session

Dan López de Sa (LOGOS, Barcelona). “Grounding the reality of the derivative”
Commentator: Akiko Frischhut (Geneva)

Graham Priest (Melbourne / CUNY). “Nagarjuna, fundamentality and truth”
Commentator: Boris Hennig (Tübingen)

July 6

Morning session

Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow). “Total logic”
Commentator: Jan Plate (Washington U)

Friederike Moltmann (Paris I). “On the semantics and ontology of cases”
Commentator: Bjørn Jespersen (Technical University of Ostrava)

Afternoon session

Jason Turner (Leeds). “Are ontological debates defective?”
Commentator: David Etlin (MCMP, Munich)

Francesco Berto (NIP, Aberdeen). “There is an ‘is’ in ‘There is’”. Meinongian quantification and existence
Commentator: Tuomas Tahko (Helsinki)

Here is a splendid opportunity for grad students working on themes related to Kit Fine’s work in metaphysics: Tübingen Masterclass in Theoretical Philosophy. I should mention that Tübingen is a place to keep a close eye on in the coming years, as Thomas Sattig has recently taken up a Professorship there, and Alessandro Torza has also recently moved there — both of them excellent metaphysicians (among others things). Incidentally, I’m going to Tübingen myself in July for a metaphysics workshop (more news anon) — they seem to have a number of great events planned already.

Anyway, make sure to save your best sub 4000 word paper related to Kit Fine’s metaphysics for this one!

Tübingen Masterclass in Theoretical Philosophy 2013:

The Metaphysics of Kit Fine

16-17 October, 2013, University of Tübingen
Call for Papers

Kit Fine, Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University, will give a Masterclass in metaphysics at Tübingen’s Department of Philosophy, which will provide graduate students the opportunity to discuss their work with one of the leading metaphysicians working today. We invite graduate students to submit papers on any aspect of Kit Fine’s metaphysics, including Finean themes concerning mereology, modality, time, essence, grounding and postulation. Please submit papers by 30 June 2013 to Prof. Dr. Thomas B. Sattig (thomas.sattig@uni-tuebingen.de). Papers should not exceed 4000 words. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of July.