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.

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.

No doubt many have already noted this exciting workshop in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where Fabrice Correia recently took a professorship. Speakers include many of the usual suspects on the theme of (non-causal) explanation. I’ve got a couple of things going on in June already, but I’ll certainly go if I happen to be anywhere in the vicinity.

Explanation in Metaphysics
A workshop on the nature, varieties, and prospects for explanation in
metaphysical inquiry

Neuchâtel, 22-23 June 2013

Organised by Fabrice Correia and Alexander Skiles on behalf of the
University of Neuchâtel, the University of Geneva, and eidos – the Centre in
Metaphysics.

Speakers:

- Kit Fine (New York University)
- Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins (University of British Columbia/University of
Aberdeen)
- Marie Kaiser (University of Geneva)
- Stephan Leuenberger (University of Glasgow)
- Jon Erling Litland (University of Oslo)
- Kevin Mulligan (University of Geneva)
- Benjamin Schnieder (University of Hamburg)
- Brad Weslake (University of Rochester)

Venue: University of Neuchâtel / Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines /
1, Espace Louis-Agassiz.

To attend, RSVP by sending an email to:
Fabrice Correia (fabrice.correia@unine.ch) or Alexander Skiles (askiles@nd.edu).

My paper ‘Counterfactuals and Modal Epistemology’ has finally appeared in print, in Grazer Philosophische Studien (Vol 86). The official publication date of the volume is 2012, but for some reason it’s still not available at Grazer‘s online venue, Ingentaconnect — I get the feeling that Rodopi, which publishes the journal, is not quite up to par. Anyway, I thought that Grazer is a nice venue for the paper, given that it’s effectively a commentary of Tim Williamson’s counterfactual account of modality, which was published as ‘Philosophical Knowledge and Knowledge of Counterfactuals’ in Grazer as well as chapter five of his The Philosophy of Philosophy. Whether or not the official online version ever sees the light of day, you can download my paper from PhilPapers or directly from here. Abstract also below.

Talking about modal epistemology, I’ve promised to contribute to a volume on ‘Modal Empiricism’ — more details in due course…

Abstract:

What is our epistemic access to metaphysical modality? Timothy Williamson suggests that the epistemology of counterfactuals will provide the answer. This paper challenges Williamson’s account and argues that certain elements of the epistemology of counterfactuals that he discusses, namely so called background knowledge and constitutive facts, are already saturated with modal content which his account fails to explain. Williamson’s account will first be outlined and the role of background knowledge and constitutive facts analysed. Their key role is to restrict our imagination to rule out irrelevant counterfactual suppositions. However, background knowledge turns out to be problematic in cases where we are dealing with metaphysically possible counterfactual suppositions that violate the actual laws of physics. As we will see, unless Williamson assumes that background knowledge corresponds with the actual, true laws of physics and that these laws are metaphysically necessary, it will be difficult to address this problem. Furthermore, Williamson’s account fails to accommodate the distinction between conceivable yet metaphysically impossible scenarios, and conceivable and metaphysically possible scenarios. This is because background knowledge and constitutive facts are based strictly on our knowledge of the actual world. Williamson does attempt to address this concern with regard to metaphysical necessities – as they hold across all possible worlds – but we will see that even in this case the explanation is questionable. These problems, it will be suggested, cannot be addressed in a counterfactual account of the epistemology of modality. The paper finishes with an analysis of Williamson’s possible rejoinders and some discussion about the prospects of an alternative account of modal epistemology.