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…

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.

I just learned about this interesting conference on the metaphysics of modality in Bratislava, Slovakia, featuring John Divers and Francesco Berto. I’m pleased to see that metaphysics is being pursued in Slovakia! Abstracts due on May 15.

Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava

is pleased to announce call for papers for the conference

MODAL METAPHYSICS:
Issues on the (Im)Possible

held in

September 19-20, 2013

Keynote speakers:

John Divers (University of Leeds)
Francesco Berto (University of Aberdeen)

We invite submissions for a 30 minute presentation followed by a 20 minute discussion. Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):

the nature of possible and impossible worlds
logic of possible and impossible worlds
how possibilia and impossibilia represent?
can we do without them?

A detailed abstract of approximately 500 words should be prepared for blind review and include a cover page with the full name, title, institution and contact information. Files can be submitted in pdf or doc(x) and should be sent to modalmetaphysics@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions: May 15, 2013
Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2013

The authors selected for the conference will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the journal of analytic philosophy Organon F
(http://www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/organon/?q=en). If you wish to submit an abstract, or would like any further details, please, email us to the above address or visit the conference website: http://metaphysicalsociety.webnode.sk/

Program committee: Eugen Andreanský, Ji?í Raclavský, Igor Sedlár, Martin Schmidt
Organizing committee: Lukáš Bielik, Martin Vacek, Marián Zouhar

Looks like an interesting workshop. I have a draft that would be a good fit for this, on Euclidean geometry, apriority, and metaphysical/logical necessity (e-mail me for a copy). Pity there’s no CFP.

‘Necessity, analyticity and the a priori’

10-11 June 2013 in Oslo

Description

As Kripke and others have taught us, the concepts of necessity, analyticity, and apriority need to be carefully distinguished. This workshop aims to investigate these notions, their analysis and legitimacy, and their connections, if any.

Questions may include:

Are there distinctive and perhaps irreducible notions of logical and/or mathematical necessity?

If so, what work can these notions do in philosophical logic and the philosophy of mathematics?

What is the relation between logical necessity and analyticity?

What is the relation between logical necessity and metaphysical necessity?

Speakers

Laura Celani
Aaron Cotnoir
Geoffrey Hellman
Bruno Jacinto
Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins
Øystein Linnebo
Jon Litland
Agustín Rayo
Sam Roberts
Gillian Russell
Stewart Shapiro

To register, or if you have any questions, please contact Sam Roberts at srober21@mail.bbk.ac.uk

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.