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…

Bringing to front from December 2012

I’m excited to announce this workshop at the University of Helsinki, bringing together Aristotle scholars and contemporary metaphysicians on a number of important themes in Aristotelian metaphysics. I’m organizing this with my colleague and Aristotle scholar Mika Perälä. A poster (free to distribute) is available here.

Aristotelian Themes in Dependence, Modality, and Essence

Workshop at the University of Helsinki
Saturday, January 26th 2013

Location: University of Helsinki Main Building, Fabianinkatu 33, room 8

Program
09:00 – 10:30 Lucas Angioni (Campinas, Brazil), ‘Essence, Causality and Necessity in Aristotle’s Theory of Scientific Explanation’
10:40 – 12:10 Michail Peramatzis (Oxford), ‘Essence and Necessity in Aristotle’
12:10 – 13:10 Lunch
13:10 – 14:40 Tuomas Tahko (Helsinki), ‘Grounding Modality in Essence’
14:50 – 16:20 Benjamin Schnieder (Hamburg), ‘Grounding and Dependence’
16:30 – 18:00 Mika Perälä (Helsinki), ‘Aristotle on ouk aneu Dependence’

Attendance is free, but we would kindly ask you to e-mail either Mika Perälä (mika.perala@helsinki.fi) or Tuomas Tahko (tuomas.tahko@helsinki.fi) if you are planning to attend. Some of the papers will be available for pre-reading, please contact Mika or Tuomas for further details.

The workshop is organized by Dr. Mika Perälä and Dr. Tuomas Tahko and is funded by Mika Perälä’s Academy of Finland project Aristotle on Memory and the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki.

I’ve just started teaching a course entitled ‘Essence, Modality, Reality’ in Helsinki. It’s in English and open to graduate and undergraduate students. Some people have expressed interest in the syllabus, so I’m posting the provisional syllabus below. It’s rather demanding and I may in fact have to change it a little as I go on, but at least it gives you an idea about the themes and literature that I find interesting in this area at the moment. By the way, if you happen to be in Helsinki and are interested in attending the course, do get in touch with me (even if you’re not a student at the University). The course will run until Christmas.

Syllabus for the course ESSENCE, MODALITY, REALITY
University of Helsinki
Dr. Tuomas E. Tahko

For links to online versions of most of the articles and much more resources, see the PhilPapers Modality and Essentialism and De Re Modality categories (both of which I edit).

Meeting 1: Introduction
Outline of course, brief introduction to the notion of essence.

Meetings 2-3: Kripke-Putnam Essentialism
I expect that most will be familiar with the classics in this area, but if you haven’t read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity and Putnam’s ‘The Meaning of Meaning’, now is the time! I will remind you of some key issues, but this course is not an introduction to the classics, but rather an overview of emerging work in essentialism and related topics.

Compulsory reading:
• H. Putnam (1990). ‘Is Water Necessarily H2O?’ In J. Conant (Ed.), Realism with a Human Face (Harvard University Press).

Suggested readings include:
• A. Bird (2009). ‘Essences and Natural Kinds.’ In R. Le Poidevin (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics (Routledge).
• S. Soames (2006). ‘The Philosophical Significance of the Kripkean Necessary Aposteriori.’ Philosophical Issues 16.
• N. Williams (2011). ‘Putnam’s Traditional Neo-Essentialism.’ The Philosophical Quarterly 61 (242).

Meetings 4-5: Natural Kind Essentialism
Natural Kind Essentialism has been a lively topic after Kripke and Putnam as well. In particular, there has been an abundance of (critical) input from philosophy of science. We’ll examine the prospects for scientifically motivated natural kind essentialism in biology, chemistry, and physics.

Compulsory reading:
• A. Bird and K. Hawley (2011). ‘What Are Natural Kinds?’ Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1).

Suggested readings include:
• A. Bird (2012). ‘Are Any Kinds Ontologically Fundamental?’ In T. E. Tahko (Ed.) Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (CUP).
• M. Devitt (2008). ‘Resurrecting Biological Essentialism.’ Philosophy of Science 75.
• E. J. Lowe (2011). ‘Locke on Real Essence and Water as a Natural Kind: A Qualified Defence.’ Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1).
• P. Needham (2011). ‘Microessentialism: What is the Argument?’ Noûs 45 (1).
• J. van Brakel (1986). ‘The Chemistry of Substances and the Philosophy of Mass Terms.’ Synthese 69.

Meetings 6-7: Essence and Modality
We will focus on non-modal accounts of essence and attempts to ground modality to essence, rather than the other way around. This approach has been defended by Kit Fine, E. J. Lowe, Scott Shalkowski, Fabrice Correia, David S. Oderberg, and myself. We’ll read Fine’s classic paper and discuss some more recent developments.

Compulsory reading:
• K. Fine (1994), ‘Essence and Modality.’ Philosophical Perspectives 8.

Suggested readings include:
• F. Correia (2011), ‘On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (3).
• E. J. Lowe (2008), ‘Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence.’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 83 (62).
• D. S. Oderberg (2011), ‘Essence and Properties.’ Erkenntnis 75 (1).
• L. A. Paul (2004), ‘The Context of Essence.’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82.
• S. Roca-Royes (2011), ‘Essential Properties and Individual Essences.’ Philosophy Compass 6/1.
• E. Zalta (2006), ‘Essence and Modality.’ Mind 115 (459).

Meetings 8-9: Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology
One important, open question that we must discuss concerns the epistemology of essence and modality. We will look into this by analysing Timothy Williamson’s recent an account of modal epistemology in terms of counterfactuals. This alternative account attempts to avoid some of the mysteries of essentialism, and it has received a lot of critical attention.

Compulsory reading:
• T. Williamson (2007), ’Philosophical Knowledge and Knowledge of Counterfactuals’. Grazer Philosophische Studien. Or Chapter 5 of his The Philosophy of Philosophy (2007, Blackwell).

Suggested readings include:
• K. Fine (forthcoming). ‘Counterfactuals without Possible Worlds’, to appear in the Journal of Philosophy.
• S. Roca-Royes (2011). ‘Modal Knowledge and Counterfactual Knowledge’, Logique Et Analyse 54 (216).
• T. E. Tahko (2012), ’Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology’. Grazer Philosophische Studien 86.

Meetings 10-11: Essence and Ontological Dependence
In order to understand the role of essence in metaphysics, it is necessary to study the different kinds of relations that essences stand in. These can be grouped under the general title of ‘ontological dependence’. An overview of different kinds of ontological dependence, such as existential and essential dependence will be presented and some of their applications outlined.

Compulsory reading:
• R. Cameron (2008), ‘Turtles All the Way Down.’ The Philosophical Quarterly 58 (230).

Suggested readings include:
• F. Correia (2008), ‘Ontological Dependence.’ Philosophy Compass 3 (5).
• K. Koslicki (2012), ‘Essence, Necessity, and Explanation.’ In T. E. Tahko (Ed.), Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (CUP).
• K. Koslicki (2012), ’Varieties of Ontological Dependence.’ In Correia and Schnieder (Eds.), Metaphysical Grounding (CUP).
• E. J. Lowe (2009), ‘Ontological Dependence’. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Meetings 12-13: Essence and Ground
The notion of ground is closely related to that of ontological dependence. It is a type of metaphysical explanation. One major theme on this course is whether and how modality might be grounded in essence. We will look into some of the latest research on this topic and discuss a number of applications of grounding.

Compulsory reading:
• P. Audi (2012), ‘A Clarification and Defence of the Notion of Grounding.’ In Correia and Schnieder (Eds.), Metaphysical Grounding (CUP).

Suggested readings include:
• F. Correia (ms.) ‘Metaphysical Grounds and Essence.’
• S. Dasgupta (ms.) ‘The Status of Ground.’
• K. Fine (2001), ’The Question of Realism.’ Philosophers Imprint.
• K. Fine (2010), ‘Some Puzzles of Ground.’ Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. 51, no. 1.
• K. Fine (2012), ‘A Guide to Ground.’ In Correia and Schnieder (Eds.), Metaphysical Grounding (CUP).
• K. Fine (2012), ‘The Pure Logic of Ground’. Review of Logic, vol 5, no. 1.
• J. Schaffer (2009), ’On What Grounds What.’ In Chalmers, Manley, and Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics (OUP).
• K. Trogdon (Forthcoming), ‘An Introduction to Grounding.’ In Hoeltje, Schnieder, and Steinberg (Eds.) Basic Philosophical Concepts (Philosophia Verlag, Munich).

I recently posted the penultimate version of my ‘Metaphysics as the First Philosophy‘, forthcoming in a volume edited by Ed Feser: Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics (Palgrave Macmillan). I don’t think that Palgrave has officially announced the volume yet, but I guess I can reveal some of the other contributors; they include Robert Bolton, Stephen Boulter, David Charles, Kathrin Koslicki, David S. Oderberg, E. J. Lowe, Gyula Klima, and others — so it’s a pretty impressive volume! This is in Palgrave Macmillan’s Philosophers in Depth series. (I’ve also contributed to the Spinoza on Monism volume in this series.)

Aristotle talks about ‘the first philosophy’ throughout Metaphysics -– and it is metaphysics that Aristotle considers to be the first philosophy -– but he never makes it entirely clear what first philosophy consists of. What he does make clear is that the first philosophy is not to be understood as a collection of topics that should be studied in advance of any other topics. In fact, Aristotle seems to have thought that the topics of Metaphysics are to be studied after those in Physics. In what sense could metaphysics be the first philosophy in the context of contemporary metaphysics? This is the question examined in my chapter. Contemporary topics such as fundamentality, grounding, and ontological dependence are considered as possible ways to understand the idea of first philosophy, but I argue that the best way to understand it is in terms of essence.

Another, related thing that I wanted to mention. My Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume was recently reviewed in NDPR by Robert C. Koons, as I’ve mentioned. Koons briefly criticised mine and Lowe’s approach to metaphysical modality, noting that it may be closer to Plato’s than Aristotle’s. Alexander Pruss has developed an alternative approach to modality in his recent book, which Koons mentioned, but I can’t comment on that as I haven’t read the book (yet, it’s waiting on my shelf though). An observant reader (John) commented that this may not be quite accurate. John notes that In Book Theta there are suggestions to the effect that actuality is ontologically prior to capacity or possibility, and the line that myself and Lowe (and, of course, Kit Fine) take regarding the ontological priority of essence over modality doesn’t directly conflict with that.

I have a couple of things to say about this. I already mentioned something about this in comments, but I thought it would be useful to dedicate a post to the issue, since it’s quite central to my research. I discuss these matters, albeit briefly, in the first philosophy paper, and I’ve made use of relevant passages below.

Firstly, there is a certain tension between the idea that essence precedes existence (which entails that possibility precedes actuality), and what we see especially in the Posterior Analytics, but I believe that there’s an explanation to this, which is Aristotle’s peculiar conception of ‘species’, i.e. that they are eternal. From my discussions especially with Kathrin Koslicki and some others who know their Aristotle better than I do (like my colleague Mika Perälä here in Helsinki), it seems that it may not be unreasonable to revise the Aristotelian picture somewhat. This contrasts with the views of some Aristotle scholars. In a paper from the 70s (‘Essentialism and Semantic Theory in Aristotle’, The Philosophical Review 85:4), Robert Bolton suggests that, for Aristotle, knowledge of existence typically precedes knowledge of essence. Bolton’s case is based on his reading of the Posterior Analytics (especially 93a16–24). For instance, Aristotle discusses whether someone could know what a goatstag is, but denies that this is possible -– even though one may know what the name signifies -– since goatstags do not exist (92b4–8).

The reason why this may not be as serious as it first seems is that Aristotle holds only species to have essences (Metaphysics 1030a11–17); and, like I said, that species are eternal (e.g. Generation of Animals, 731b24–732a1). We can now see that, for Aristotle, there could never be an essence of a non-existent thing, such as a goatstag, for Aristotle thinks that there could be no such thing. Therefore, if we were to share the Aristotelian conception of species, we would indeed have to agree with him that there is no goatstag essence. Surely, only things that could possibly exist can have essences, and since there are no actual goatstags, Aristotle regards them to be impossible in this sense. Aristotle does not use these exact terms, but we can perhaps take Aristotle’s notion of actuality to correspond with what I am here calling existence. Similarly, my use of possibility roughly corresponds with Aristotle’s potentiality. Accordingly, we can formulate the idea at hand as follows: actuality precedes potentiality. It follows that this peculiar doctrine may be an artefact of the Aristotelian conception of species, although this brief analysis is hardly conclusive.

In his review of my book, Koons also makes the following claim regarding Aristotle’s position:

Epistemologically speaking, there is no clear priority in either direction. Instead, there is a dialectical interplay between our knowledge of the possible and of the actual.

In fact, I also subscribe to this view, at least if we specify it a little bit. That’s because I think that even though essence, or possibility, has ontological priority in individual examples, scientific and philosophical inquiry in general proceed in such a way that our knowledge of possibility is constantly being complemented by our knowledge the actual. I’ve described this process in my earlier papers on the relationship between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, and coined it ‘the bootstrapping relationship’.