Abstract: It is widely recognized by proponents of the notion that grounding can be, indeed is, overdetermined. Further to this, it seems safe to suppose that something of a consensus has emerged: grounding is overdetermined and there is nothing about it, either conceptually or metaphysically, that we ought to find concerning. But from a small sampling of alleged cases no such conclusions can responsibly be drawn. This paper aims to demonstrate that there is nothing obvious or straightforward about grounding overdetermination and that the topic is deserving of much more serious philosophical attention.
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The rich philosophical and mathematical disputes that took place between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz at the start of the eighteenth century have received more historical attention than any other exchange in the history of philosophy. Nevertheless, in this talk, Robert Iliffe discusses a prominent but neglected aspect of their disagreement, namely the mutual claim that their opponents’ conceptual foundations were fictional, and were the product both of diseased thinking and of illegitimately organized intellectual structures. Newton assailed Leibniz’s allegedly debased metaphysics in various prominent places, and mobilized allies such as Roger Cotes and John Keill to do the same. Nevertheless, by far the most sophisticated critique of illicit philosophical assumptions was launched against Newton by Leibniz in his correspondence with Samuel Clarke. In the Fifth letter to Clarke, Leibniz identified core Newtonian positions as infantile, vulgar, and profoundly irreligious, asserting that they were dangerous fictions that were less plausible and much less edifying than the rational romances of writers in the previous century. Although Leibniz saved his most potent intellectual weapons for his final letter to Clarke, Robert Iliffe suggests that his attack on the fictional status of Newton’s work was no mere codicil to his general critique of Newton’s philosophy, but instead lay at the heart of it. This famous debate, while of course somewhat sui generis, is indicative of more general and dynamic features of intellectual debate.
Event Speaker
Robert Iliffe, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford
Event Information
This event is free and open to the public; Registration required. Please contact scienceandsociety@columbia.edu with any questions.
This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Abstract: The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter and non-Humeans who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retro-causal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do.
The talk will take place over Zoom. I will send out the Zoom link closer to the meeting.
The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that William Nava (PhD student, Philosophy, NYU) will deliver the eighth Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Friday, October 8, 2021, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not already on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.
Title: The significance and scope of the adoption problem
Abstract: The adoption problem is an argument purporting to show that certain logical inference rules cannot be rationally ‘adopted’—roughly because one would need to already be guided by the inference rules in question to go about adopting them. In this talk, I’ll first argue that this argument is best understood as showing that certain rules are necessary for adoption of rules in general (where their own unadoptability is then a corollary). I’ll then defend the argument from the objection that the notion of adoption is too narrow for the argument to be relevant to logical debates. Finally, I’ll consider the question of just which rules the argument applies to. I conclude that the argument does not apply to any classical inference rules in full generality, but only to somewhat ad hoc restrictions of some of them. On the other hand, I’ll also show that the argument does apply to the transparent truth rules—or, more precisely, to restrictions of them that suffice to generate paradox. What falls out of these considerations is an ur-logic to which everyone must subscribe on pain of inability to adopt any new rules at all; and which, though quite minimal, is incompatible with classical logic by virtue of including the truth rules.
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 (NY time) entirely online, unless otherwise noted. The provisional schedule is as follows:
Sep 13. Ricki Bliss (Lehigh University)
Sep 20. Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)
Sep 27. Rashed Ahmad (University of Connecticut)
Oct 4. Yale Weiss (CUNY GC)
Oct 11. NO MEETING
Oct 18. Rohit Parikh (CUNY GC)
Oct 25. Noah Friedman-Biglin (San José State University)
Nov 1. Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (University of Amsterdam)
Nov 8. Roman Kossak (CUNY GC)
Nov 15. Sara Uckelman (Durham University)
Nov 22. Konstantinos Georgatos (John Jay)
Nov 29. Martin Pleitz (Münster)
Dec 6. Dirk Batens (University of Ghent)
Dec 13. Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)