Even though Balcerak-Jackson’s Emmy Noether group has moved to Konstanz, there’s still a lot going on in Cologne. This workshop on non-causal explanation looks intriguing, great line-up too.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

WORKSHOP:

EXPLAINING WITHOUT CAUSES
Non-causal Explanation in the Sciences, Mathematics and Philosophy

LOCATION: UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE, MAIN BUILDING, NEUER SENATSSAAL

DATE: DECEMBER 6-7, 2013

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Pittsburgh)
Laura Felline (University of Louvain)
Stephan Hartmann (LMU Munich)
Andreas Hüttemann (University of Cologne)
Marc Lange (University of North Carolina)
Mary Leng (University of York)
Alexander Reutlinger (University of Cologne/LMU Munich)
Benjamin Schnieder (University of Hamburg)

Further information in due course.

If you would like to participate please contact: Alexander.Reutlinger@uni-koeln.de

In a couple of weeks I’ll be going to the Northern Institute of Philosophy in Aberdeen for the second annual Early Career Conference. I was one of the lucky few to get accepted to this conference which looks to be amazing. It features a bunch of early career philosophers, many of whom I know from before, and Jennifer Saul and Peter Graham as keynotes. What makes this conference particularly desirable is that the accepted papers will be invited to be published in the NIP journal Thought, which publishes short papers in analytic philosophy, Analysis style. Because of this, I expect that the quality of the papers to be presented will be exceptionally high for a conference.

My own paper is entitled ‘Truth-Grounding and Transitivity‘. It’s a nice little paper, but rather more focused (and shorter) than I’m usually in the habit of writing. I wrote it very quickly though, only a couple of months ago, so this must be the quickest case of writing to publication that I’ve experienced so far.

I define ‘truth-grounding’ as follows:

(TG) If the fact that q exists helps ground the fact that p is true, then q helps ground the truth of p, i.e. q is a (partial) truth-ground for p.

The gist of the paper is that I argue that one of the following must be true:

1. Grounding is non-transitive.
2. Truth-grounding is not grounding.
3. ‘Grounding’ is not univocal: there are several varieties of grounding.

Since grounding is generally considered to be irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive, the first would be controversial. So would the second, because truth-grounding (or truthmaking), is a typical example of grounding. The third, however, is perhaps the most undesirable, since it would seem to corroborate recent claims about the multiplicity or even incoherence of ‘grounding’, making it an ambiguous expression. Hence, only three options remain: (1), (2), or the combination of them. I don’t attempt to decide between the options in this paper, but if I’m right, it’s important to sort out this issue. The core of the issue is what I call ‘truth-grounding relevance’:

(TGR) If the fact that q is not relevant to the truth of proposition p, then it is not the case that q helps ground the truth of p.

I suggest that TGR is violated in the transitive ‘chaining’ of certain grounding claims. Whether or not the case I examine constitutes a valid grounding claim, there are reasons to think that it does not constitute a valid truth-grounding claim, which gives rise to the tension described above.

Get the full paper from PhilPapers or directly from my website. Comments are very welcome, since I expect to have a chance to make revisions before the full version is published. In particular, the notion of ‘relevance’ that I discuss in this paper requires further work, even though I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to say much more about it in this paper. Each paper will have a dedicated commentator at Aberdeen as well though, so I’m very much looking forward to the conference!

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.

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)