Jun
10
Mon
Rutgers-Bristol Workshop on the Metaphysical Unity of Science @ Rutgers U, Newark. Conklin Hall 455
Jun 10 – Jun 11 all-day

Schedule – June 10th 

(Talks are aprox. 45 minutes with 30 minutes for Q&A)

9:00    Mazviita Chirimuuta, Emergence in Science & the Unity of Science

10:15  Joyce Havstad, TBA

12:00  Lunch, Marcus P&B.  Part of RUN and Newark’s Community Development.

2:00    Ricki Bliss, Fundamentality: From Epistemology to Metaphysics

3:15    Tuomas Tahko, Laws of Metaphysics for Essentialists

 

Schedule – June 11th 

9:00    Kelly Trodgon, Grounding and Explanatory Gaps

10:15  Stuart Glennan, Rethinking Mechanistic Constitution 

12:00  Lunch, Mercato Tomato Pie.

2:00    Alex Franklin,  How Do Levels Emerge?

3:15    Ken Aizawa, New Directions in Compositional Explanation: Two Cases Studies

Abstracts


Mazviita Chirimuuta – Emergence in Science & the Unity of Science

This paper considers the implications of recent accounts of emergent phenomena for the question of the unity of the sciences. I first offer a historical account of physicalism in its different guises since the mid 19th century. Two threads connecting these otherwise quite different views have been the rejection of emergent phenomena and the commitment to the unity of science. In section two I provide an exposition of emergence as presented in recent philosophy of science, where the key claim is that “parts behave differently in wholes”, based on the empirical finding of what Gillett (2016) calls “differential powers.” Gillett argues that the empirical evidence does not yet support the strong emergentist claim that there is downward causation or any other form of influence from the whole system to its constituent parts, but that such evidence might be obtained. In section 3 I propose instead that the question of whether or not the finding of differential powers is taken to provide overwhelming evidence for strong emergence depends on the further interpretation of differential powers, and ultimately on very broad metaphysical commitments. The interpretation of differential powers that is most resistant to objections from opponents of strong emergence involves a rejection of substance ontology, and hence the rejection of physicalism. Thus, as I conclude in section 4, philosophers should not wait in expectation for empirical results that will settle the question of whether or not there is strong emergence.  I offer a preliminary costs/benefits analysis of the different ontologies of differential powers, intended to aid the reader in their decision over the status of strong emergence. On the most radical interpretation, the usual physicalist conception of the unity of science must be rejected, while a different kind of metaphysical wholism stands in its place.

Joyce Havstad, TBC

Ricki Bliss – Fundamentality: from Epistemology to Metaphysics

In this talk, I explore what might follow for the metaphysics of fundamentality if we take seriously certain reasons to believe there is anything fundamental in the first place.

Tuomas Tahko – Laws of Metaphysics for Essentialists

There is a line of thought gathering momentum which suggests that just like causal laws govern causation, there needs to be something in metaphysics that governs metaphysical relations. Such laws of metaphysics would be counterfactual-supporting general principles that are responsible for the explanatory force of metaphysical explanations. There are various suggestions about how such principles could be understood. They could be based on what Kelly Trogdon calls grounding-mechanical explanations, where the role that grounding mechanisms play in certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play in certain scientific explanations. Another approach, by Jonathan Schaffer, claims to be neutral regarding grounding or essences (although he does commit to the idea that metaphysical explanation is ‘backed’ by grounding relations). In this paper I will assess these suggestions and argue that for those willing to invoke essences, there is a more promising route available: the unificatory role of metaphysical explanation may be accounted for in terms of natural kind essences.

Kelly Trogdon – Grounding and Explanatory Gaps

 Physicalism is the thesis that all mental facts are ultimately grounded by physical facts. There is an explanatory gap between the mental and physical, and many see this as posing a challenge to physicalism. Jonathan Schaffer (2017) disagrees, arguing that standard grounding connections involve explanatory gaps as a matter of course. I begin by arguing that Schaffer and others mischaracterize the explanatory gap between the mental and physical—it chiefly concerns what I call cognitive significance rather than priori implication or related notions. The upshot is that standard grounding connections normally don’t involve explanatory gaps. Then I consider two grounding-theoretic proposals about how to close explanatory gaps in the relevant sense, one involving structural equations (Schaffer 2017) and the other mechanisms (Trogdon 2018). While each of these proposals seeks to illuminate grounding connections, I argue that neither is helpful in closing the explanatory gap between the mental and physical.  

Stuart Glennan – Rethinking Mechanistic Constitution

  

The relationship between a mechanisms and its working parts is known as mechanistic constitution.   In this paper we review the history of the mechanistic constitution debate, starting with Salmon’s original account, and we  explain what we take to be the proper lessons to be drawn from the extensive literature surrounding Craver’s mutual manipulability account.  Based on our analysis, we argue that much of the difficulty in understanding the mechanistic constitution relation arises from a failure to recognize two different forms of mechanistic constitution — corresponding to two different kinds of relationships between a mechanism and the phenomenon for which it is  responsible.  First, when mechanisms produce phenomena, the mechanism’s parts are diachronic stages of the process by which entities act to produce the phenomenon.  Second, when mechanisms underlie some phenomenon, the phenomenon is a activity of a whole system, and the mechanism’s parts are those of the working entities that synchronically give rise to the phenomenon.  Attending to these different kinds of constitutive  relations will clarify the circumstances under which mechanistic phenomena can be said to occur at different levels.

Alex Franklin – How Do Levels Emerge?

 Levels terminology is employed throughout scientific discourse, and is crucial to the formulation of various debates in the philosophy of science. In this talk, I argue that all levels are, to some degree, autonomous. Building on this, I claim that higher levels may be understood as both emergent from and reducible to lower levels. I cash out this account of levels with a case study. Nerve signals are on a higher level than the individual ionic motions across the neuronal membrane; this is (at least in part) because the nerve signals are autonomous from such motions. In order to understand the instantiation of these levels we ought to identify the mechanisms at the lower level which give rise to such autonomy. In this case we can do so: the gated ion channels and pumps underwrite the autonomy of the higher level.

Ken Aizawa – New Directions in Compositional Explanation: Two Cases Studies

The most familiar approach to scientific compositional explanations is that adopted by the so-called “New Mechanists”. This approach focuses on compositional explanations of processes of wholes in terms of processes of their parts. In addition, the approach focuses on the use of so-called “interlevel interventions” as the means by which compositional relations are investigated. By contrast, on the approach I adopt, we see that there are compositional explanations of individuals in terms of their parts and properties of individuals in terms of the properties of their parts. In addition, I draw attention to the use of abductive methods in investigations of compositional relations. I illustrate my approach by use of Robert Hooke’s microscopic investigations of the cork and the development of the theory of the action potential.

Sep
9
Mon
Temporal ‘de re’ Attitudes (Yael Sharvit) @ CUNY Grad Center, 7314
Sep 9 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

A sensible approach to the semantics of tense says that present tense and past tense “refer” to the evaluation time and to some pre-evaluation time, respectively. Indeed, this seems to be the case in unembedded sentences (e.g., Mary is thirty-five, Mary was thirty-five). But embedded tenses seem to misbehave: (1) does not express the proposition that two months prior to s* (= the speech time) Joseph was sure about the truth of [Mary is currently thirty-five]; this proposition is expressed by (2). Assuming that tenses are indexical expressions does not automatically solve the problem, since (1) does not express the proposition that two months prior to s* Joseph was sure about the truth of [Mary will be thirty-five at s*] either; that proposition is expressed by (3). (In addition, (2) does not express the proposition that two months prior to s* Joseph was sure about the truth of [Mary will be thirty-five at some s** < s*].) In fact, (1) roughly expresses the proposition that two months prior to s* Joseph was sure about the truth of [Mary is currently thirty-five and will still be thirty-five at s*] (Smith (1978), Enc (1987)). Indeed, unlike (1), (1′) is usually quite odd (presumably because most speakers presuppose that, like them, Joseph can accept that Mary is thirty-five for a period of two – sometimes even twelve – months, but not that she is thirty-five for a period of twenty months). To explain why the embedded past in (2) “refers” to the embedded evaluation time, and why the embedded present in (1)/(1’) “refers” to a time much larger than that, we assume, with Abusch (1997), that these embedded tenses are indexical expressions governed by general constraints on ‘de re’ attitude reports, including – crucially – the Upper Limit Constraint. Expanding on Abusch (1997) and Percus (2013), we derive the Upper Limit Constraint itself from general principles as well.

(1) Two months ago, Joseph was sure that Mary is thirty-five.
(2) Two months ago, Joseph was sure that Mary was thirty-five.
(3) Two months ago, Joseph was sure that Mary would now be thirty-five.
(1′)  Twenty months ago, Joseph was sure that Mary is thirty-five.

Logic and Metaphysics Workshop Fall 2019

 

September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING

September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA

September 16  Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen

September 23 Alessandro Rossi, StAndrews

September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC

October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC

October 28 Barbara Montero, GC

November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC

November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster

November 18

November 25
December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto

December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney

December 16  MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT

Sep
16
Mon
Anti-Exceptionalism and Explanations in Logic (Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin) @ CUNY Grad Center, 7314
Sep 16 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

According to logical anti-exceptionalism we come to be justified in believing logical theories by similar means to scientific theories. This is often explained by saying that theory choice in logic proceeds via abductive arguments (Priest, Russell, Williamson, Hjortland). Thus, the success of classical and non-classical theories of validity are compared by their ability to explain the relevant data. However, as of yet there is no agreed upon account of which data logical theories must explain, and subsequently how they prove their mettle. In this paper, we provide a non-causal account of logical explanation, and show how it can accommodate important disputes about logic.


Logic and Metaphysics Workshop Fall 2019

September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING

September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA

September 16  Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen

September 23 Alessandro Rossi, StAndrews

September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC

October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC

October 28 Barbara Montero, GC

November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC

November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster

November 18

November 25
December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto

December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney

December 16  MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT

Sep
20
Fri
Cognitive Science Speaker Series @ CUNY Grad Center, 6493
Sep 20 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

September 20: Matthias Michel
Philosophy and Laboratoire Sciences, Université Paris-Sorbonne and NYU
“Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex”

October 4: Ryan McElhaney
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
“Explanation and Consciousness”

October 18: Sascha Benjamin Fink
Philosophy-Neurosciences-Cognition, University of Magdeburg and NYU
“Varieties of Phenomenal Structuralism”

November 1: Jesse Atencio
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Title TBA

November 15: Frank Pupa
Philosophy, Nassau Community College
“Getting Between: Predicativism, Domain Restriction, and Binding”

December 6: Susana Martinez-Conde
Neurology and Integrative Neuroscience, Downstate Medical Center
Title TBA

https://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cognitive-speaker-series-fall-2019/

Sep
23
Mon
Existence, Verbal Disputes and Equivocation (Alessandro Rossi) @ CUNY Grad Center, 7314
Sep 23 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

Noneism is the theory according to which some things do not exist. Following an established convention, I will call allism the negation of noneism (every thing exists). Lewis [1990] and, more recently, Woodward [2013] argued that the allism/noneism dispute turns on an equivocation about the meaning of ‘exists’ and would thereby be merely verbal. These arguments have been attacked by Priest [2005, 2011, 2013], who took the dispute to be genuine. In this paper, I will present two new arguments for the genuineness of the allism/noneism dispute. The first appeals to a recent version of logical pluralism defended by Kouri Kissel [Forth]: the two parties could be seen as engaging in a metalinguistic negotiation, that is, a normative disagreement about which meaning of ‘exists’ is best suited for a certain domain of discourse. Secondly, Williamson [1987] indicated a proof-theoretic criterion the two sides should meet in order for their dispute to count as genuine: they must share enough rules of inference governing ‘exist’ to characterise it up to logical equivalence. This challenge, I argue, can be met.

Logic and Metaphysics Workshop Fall 2019 Schedule:

September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING

September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA

September 16  Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen

September 23 Alessandro Rossi, St. Andrews

September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC

October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC

October 28 Barbara Montero, GC

November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC

November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster

November 18

November 25
December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto

December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney

December 16  MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT

Oct
4
Fri
Cognitive Science Speaker Series @ CUNY Grad Center, 6493
Oct 4 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

September 20: Matthias Michel
Philosophy and Laboratoire Sciences, Université Paris-Sorbonne and NYU
“Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex”

October 4: Ryan McElhaney
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
“Explanation and Consciousness”

October 18: Sascha Benjamin Fink
Philosophy-Neurosciences-Cognition, University of Magdeburg and NYU
“Varieties of Phenomenal Structuralism”

November 1: Jesse Atencio
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Title TBA

November 15: Frank Pupa
Philosophy, Nassau Community College
“Getting Between: Predicativism, Domain Restriction, and Binding”

December 6: Susana Martinez-Conde
Neurology and Integrative Neuroscience, Downstate Medical Center
Title TBA

https://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cognitive-speaker-series-fall-2019/

Oct
7
Mon
Explanation and Modality: On Why The Swampman Is Still Worrisome to Teleosemanticists (Dongwoo Kim) @ CUNY Grad Center, 7314
Oct 7 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

Many have thought that Davidson’s Swampman scenario offers a serious problem to teleosemantics. For it appears to be possible from the scenario that there are completely ahistorical creatures with beliefs, and this apparent possibility contradicts the theory. In a series of papers (2001, 2006, 2016), Papineau argues that the Swampman scenario is not even the start of an objection to teleosemantics as a scientific reduction of belief. It is against this claim that I want to argue here. I shall argue that the explanatory power of teleosemantics rests on two conceptual pillars, namely success semantics and the etiological conception of biological function, and that the Swampman scenario questions the adequacy of the foundational conceptual commitments. Along the way, some general connection between explanation and modality will be developed that sheds a new light on Kripke’s analysis of necessary a posteriori propositions. The conclusion will be that teleosemanticists should tackle the Swampman objection head on.


Logic and Metaphysics Workshop Fall 2019

September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING

September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA

September 16  Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen

September 23 Alessandro Rossi, StAndrews

September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC

October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC

October 28 Barbara Montero, GC

November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC

November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster

November 18

November 25
December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto

December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney

December 16  MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT

Logic and Metaphysics Workshop @ CUNY Grad Center, 7314
Oct 7 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING

September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA

September 16  Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen

September 23 Alessandro Rossi, StAndrews

September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC

October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC

October 28 Barbara Montero, GC

November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC

November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster

November 18 Matias Bulnes, CUNY

November 25 Vincent Peluce, CUNY

December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto

December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney

December 16  MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT

Oct
17
Thu
Positions in Patriarchy: Retooling the Metaphysics of Gender. Robin Dembroff (Yale) @ CUNY Grad Center, rm 5307
Oct 17 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Decades of feminist theory have approached the question ‘what is gender?’ with an eye to gender as a system — in particular, the system that creates and sustains patriarchy. Using this approach, feminists have proposed theories of gender focused on the social positions that persons occupy within a patriarchal system. However, these analyses almost uniformly assume a gender binary (men women), and so look for corresponding, binary social positions. In this talk, I defend the importance of position-based metaphysics of gender, but challenge the assumption that positions in patriarchy can be captured in a binary. Rather than throw out the baby with the bath water, I’ll propose an alternative position-based approach. It begins with modeling the key axes of the patriarchal ‘blueprint’, or the shared beliefs, norms, and attitudes at the core of dominant, western gender ideology. I’ll then build a framework for describing the variety of positions that persons can collectively occupy in relation to this blueprint. A central upshot is that metaphysics intended to illuminate and debunk gender as imagined within the western patriarchal system fails to sufficiently achieve this end when it presupposes the same binary framework. The categories men and women, I’ll argue, are not primarily descriptive, but rather, contested tools with the central function of reinforcing or revising social power.

Presented by SWIP-Analytic

Oct
18
Fri
Cognitive Science Speaker Series @ CUNY Grad Center, 6493
Oct 18 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

September 20: Matthias Michel
Philosophy and Laboratoire Sciences, Université Paris-Sorbonne and NYU
“Consciousness and the Prefrontal Cortex”

October 4: Ryan McElhaney
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
“Explanation and Consciousness”

October 18: Sascha Benjamin Fink
Philosophy-Neurosciences-Cognition, University of Magdeburg and NYU
“Varieties of Phenomenal Structuralism”

November 1: Jesse Atencio
Cognitive Science and Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Title TBA

November 15: Frank Pupa
Philosophy, Nassau Community College
“Getting Between: Predicativism, Domain Restriction, and Binding”

December 6: Susana Martinez-Conde
Neurology and Integrative Neuroscience, Downstate Medical Center
Title TBA

https://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/cognitive-speaker-series-fall-2019/