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Format

The SMG hosts speakers on a wide array of topics within theoretical philosophy (broadly construed). It is currently run by Owen Griffiths (oeg21@cam.ac.uk) and Marcus Ackermann (maa208@cam.ac.uk). Meetings are 90 minutes long, and consist of a 45-minute presentation followed by a 45-minute Q&A. Everyone can attend - no registration is necessary.

• When? Wednesdays during term time, 4pm-5:30pm.

• Where? Philosophy Faculty, Faculty Board Room.

The Serious Metaphysics Group was founded last millennium by Hugh Mellor.  It is somewhat mis-named, since it is neither especially serious nor does it focus exclusively on metaphysics.  (For Mellor ‘serious metaphysics’ takes metaphysics seriously as a subject matter and does not regard metaphysical truths merely as, for example, shadows of grammar.)   The Serious Metaphysics Group functions as a slightly more intimate and relaxed version of the Moral Sciences Club, generally on topics in theoretical philosophy, broadly construed (metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, etc.). We often invite current graduate students to present, so it is a good opportunity along with the graduate seminar, to present work-in-progress and receive feedback. Like Moral Sciences, it is run by a graduate student or two each year, so it is also an opportunity to get involved in putting together a speaker series, inviting some of the people (at least those based in the UK) whose work you're interested in and getting to talk to them about it.

See below for upcoming talks.

 

Easter Term 2025

 

07 May: J. Robert G. Williams (Leeds)

Title. Inconceivable indeterminacy

Abstract. Can there be no fact of the matter whether a thing exists, where it is located, whether it is part of another thing, or whether it is conscious? Can there be indeterminacy in the fundamental facts that limn reality? Many smart philosophers have assured us that this is inconceivable – a striking contrast to indeterminacy in non-fundamental facts like redness, baldness or whether something is a heap. This encouraged the idea that indeterminacy can never be something “in the world”, but must consist in some kind of mismatch between a (precise) underlying reality and (imprecise) ways of representating it. If that’s true, it’s an extremely informative constraint on metaphysical theories of fundamental reality, ruling out any option that would compromise crystalline precision. My position is that fundamental reality could well be messy and indeterminate, and in previous work I’ve developed positive theories about how such metaphysical indeterminacy would work. In In this paper I’ll explore the idea that the smart philosophers were correct that indeterminacy in the fundamentals is inconceivable, and develop an explanation for this without giving up the claim that it is possible. I trace the consequences for conceivability-possibility links, the rational role of indeterminacy-judgements, and the relation of this to Bernard Williams’ classic discussion of de se indeterminacy.

 

14 May: Neil Dewar (Cambridge)

Title. Coordinates, groups, and geometrical representation

Abstract. This talk is about how to represent geometrical structures. It argues that when we use coordinates to represent such structures, what matters are the relations between the coordinates deemed admissible. These relations are most naturally captured by group-theoretic means; thus, coordinate-based approaches to geometry should be assimilated to group-based approaches.

 

21 May: Alice Hilder-Jarvis (Cambridge)

Title. Gender identities as interpretative frameworks

Abstract. I propose a novel metaphysical account of gender identity. I characterise gender identities as interpretative frameworks, which individuals use to make sense of themselves and their salient life experiences. On my account, having a particular gender identity is a matter of adopting a particular set of interpretations for (some of) one’s life experiences, where those interpretations frame one’s experiences as evidence for membership of some particular, prior gender category. On this view, the act of self-interpretation is central to the concept of gender identity. My account explains why previous philosophical attempts to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for gender identities have not been successful. It also sheds light on some important, previously unanswered questions about gender identity. It illuminates what might lead an individual to have a given gender identity, or to relinquish one gender identity and adopt another. More generally, it explains how and why practices of ascribing gender identity vary over time and across cultures. Most importantly, it explains why individuals cannot exercise entirely free choice over their gender identities, yet can exercise some limited agency over them.

 

28 May: Paula Keller (Cambridge)

Title. Genealogy as ideology critique

Abstract. How can some past state of affairs serve as critique of some present state of affairs? That is the central question for those interested in making the genealogical method work for evaluative purposes. Existing – simple, epistemic, and functional – accounts of genealogy are troubled by genetic fallacy, self- defeat, and the superfluity of the past state of affairs. I defend an account of genealogy as ideology critique: a past state of affairs reveals that some story we have told ourselves about the past is false. On this account, genealogy is not guilty of genetic fallacy, self-defeat or the superfluity of the past. I defend this account against two further objections: that genealogy is then not a direct critique of some present state of affairs and that genealogy is then only applicable in very limited cases.

 

04 Jun: Owen Griffiths (Cambridge)

Title. Inferentialism and Frege’s puzzle

Abstract. Inferentialism is a popular position in the philosophy of language. It is striking, then, that one of the best-known puzzles in the philosophy of language – Frege’s puzzle of informative identity – has not been discussed in relation to it. I will argue that inferentialism faces severe problems when we consider its potential responses to Frege’s puzzle.

 

11 Jun: Sonia Sedivy (Toronto)

Title. Reconciling perceptual contents and relations

Abstract. In this paper I consider whether perception might be both relational and contentful, and specifi- cally, how explanations of perception might invoke both contents and relations. The context of this discussion is that we find ourselves largely in a “stand-off” between representational and relational (or na ̈ıve realist) the- ories of perception. Content or representational theories explain perception as having contents: perceptions represent the world as being some way. Relational theories deny that perceptual experience have contents, they explain perception as constituted by relations to external objects, and the relations are hypothesized to be basic acquaintance or attentional or referential relations. Given that content and relational theories have different explanatory strengths and weaknesses and bring different insights to the table, I argue that it would be good if we could combine their insights. The paper begins by giving an overview of mixed content-relational accounts to date. The bulk of the paper reconstructs the McDowell-Evans Singular Con- tents and De Re Senses approach as well as McDowell’s subsequent work to show how he offers a mixed view that integrates contents and relations. I build on this work, with a skill-based approach to the perceptual understanding or mode of presentation that secures our relation to individual things in the world and their properties.

Recent SMG Termcards

Lent Term 2025

 

29 Jan: A.C. Paseau (Oxford)

Title. Some metaphysical problems for Plenitudinous Platonism

Abstract. Plenitudinous Platonism is the thesis that there are as many types of mathematical object as possible. Because it takes mathematics to be the study of abstract objects, it is a form of platonism; and because it takes any coherently describable mathematical structure to exist, it is also a form of structuralism. An umbrella term, Plenitudinous Platonism also goes by the name of Full-Blooded Platonism, or Egalitarian Platonism, or (less accurately) Mathematical Pluralism. My talk will raise some problems for the view. As my title indicates, I will focus on the metaphysical side of things.

 

05 Feb: Richmond Kwesi (Visiting, Accra)

Title. Conceptual engineering, disagreement, and the metaphoric process

Abstract. Conceptual engineering has been characterized as a project aimed, on the one hand, at fixing, revising, and improving defective or deficient concepts (conceptual re-engineering), and on the other hand, at creating new concepts to replace ill-suited ones (de novo conceptual engineering) (Chalmers, 2020). The need for the engineering of concepts arises out of the occurrence of deep disagreements among speakers in the use of concepts. Should one be resolute or abandon their views or conceptions in the face of disagreements on the content and application of concepts? What are the ontological and epistemic constraints to revising concepts in the face of disagreements? This paper offers two related perspectives on conceptual engineering and deep disagreements: one, conceptual engineering is characteristic of the use of metaphor, and that, since the metaphoric process often involves two concepts, conceptual engineering can be understood as revising or refining a concept in light of another concept. Two, metaphor, understood both in terms of seeing or conceiving from a perspective, often from one’s own perspective, and saying of a thing that it is X while acknowledging that it is not only X, is a useful framework for resolving disagreements over concepts. Understood within the metaphoric process, conceptual engineering can be pursued without the underlying assumption that the concepts to be engineered are defective.

 

12 Feb: Marko Jurjako (Visiting, Rijeka)

Title. Towards a concept of mental disorder for criminal law: an explicationist proposal

Abstract. While the concept of mental disorder is widely debated in the philosophy of psychiatry, its role in criminal law remains underexplored. This paper addresses how mental disorder should be understood in legal contexts where it informs issues such as competency, culpability, and access to special treatment. Using the explicationist methodology, the paper outlines several desiderata for an adequate concept, identifying a key criterion: the non-redundancy criterion, which requires that mental disorder be defined independently of the capacities underpinning criminal responsibility. The paper evaluates objectivist, value-laden, and hybrid accounts of mental disorder from psychiatry, concluding, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, that a naturalistic, objectivist concept best meets the non-redundancy requirement and serves criminal law’s practical needs.

 

19 Feb: Marcus Ackermann (Cambridge)

Title. Modelling compatibilist divine foreknowledge

Abstract. Ever since Arthur Prior created the formal framework of branching time, there has been a ven- erable tradition of using it to investigate the supposed compatibility of divine foreknowledge and creaturely freedom. For example, it has been utilized to formalize the famous compatibilist views of (among others) Anselm, Ockham, Leibniz or de Molina. In this talk, I show that past attempts at formalizing such views systematically fail because they are either descriptively or formally inadequate. I then suggest that the key to overcoming this dilemma lies in rejecting the orthodox view that the sole purpose of such models is to tell us how to assign truth-values to sentences. Once we start thinking of such models in a richer fashion, I argue that a both formally and descriptively adequate approach naturally commends itself to the compatibilist.

 

26 Feb: Neil Dewar (Cambridge)

Title. Representation by coordinates

Abstract. This talk is about how to use coordinates to represent physical structures: in particular, spa- tiotemporal and measurement structures. It argues that the coordinates themselves are less important than one might think; rather, what matters are the relations between the coordinates deemed admissible. These relations are most naturally captured by group-theoretic means.

 

05 Mar: Lukas Skiba (Bergen)

Title. Vertical Ontological Pluralism

Abstract. Ontological pluralists claim that there are multiple ways of being, e.g., one way of being for concrete entities and another way of being for abstract entities. This is usually spelled out quantificationally, i.e., as the claim that there are multiple irreducible quantifiers, e.g., one quantifier ranging over concrete entities and another over abstract entities. Standard ontological pluralism is horizontal: pluralists take their multiple irreducible quantifiers to be all first-order quantifiers, i.e., quantifiers binding variables in the position of singular terms. In this talk, I argue that the conception of reality espoused by higher-order metaphysicians constitutes an alternative and, in many ways, preferable way of spelling out the ontological pluralists’ vision. The higher-orderists’ pluralism is vertical rather than horizontal: the multiple ways of being recognized by higher-orderists correspond not to multiple first-order quantifiers, but to multiple quantifiers of different orders, e.g., first-order quantifiers binding variables in the position of singular terms and second- order quantifiers binding variables in the position predicates. I argue that vertical ontological pluralism does justice to some of the main motivations for ontological pluralism, while offering elegant responses to some major objections put forward against ontological pluralism, such as the notational variant objection and the logicality objection.

 

12 Mar: Zdenka Brzovi ́c (Visiting, Rijeka)

Title. What is the explanatory status of natural kinds?

Abstract. In debates on natural kinds, it is often argued that natural kinds should be identified with categories that play significant inductive and explanatory roles in science. However, the criteria for what constitutes explanatory success remain underexplored. This paper examines whether we can identify specific features of good explanations that rely on kind membership. Some authors who touch upon the explanatory role of natural kinds argue that, ideally, explanations should invoke a single key property, cause, or a mechanism which is crucial for the kind’s explanatory role. Such properties are super-explanatory (Godman et al. 2020). This approach reflects not traditional metaphysical essentialism but a form of explanatory essentialism. While these explanations may be favoured for their simplicity, relying on a single cause risks being incomplete. In other words, if we can identify many causes for the clustering of properties of, say, members of a certain species, why invoke just phylogenetic relations, or just interbreeding, and not genetic causes, developmental causes, etc. To address this issue I draw from the debate on what makes scientific explanations deep or powerful. I argue that citing a single key property is justified if that property provides us with invariant generalizations regarding kind members (see Hitchcock and Woodward 2003).

 

19 Mar: Henrik Røed Sherling (Cambridge)

Title. Mental illness

Abstract. tbd

 

Michaelmas Term 2024.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 16 October 2024

Speaker: Alexander Bird (Cambridge)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: “Is imagination essential to creativity? The case of improvisation in music”

Abstract: We have argued that creativity involves, essentially, the exercise of the imagination (Hills and Bird 2019). Critics have suggested that there are examples of activities that are clearly creative, but do not seem to involve the imagination. In this response we focus on the case of musical improvisation, which is clearly creative. We consider two arguments that suggest that improvisation does not require the imagination. First, it would require an excessive cognitive load, given the quantity of new music being produced. Secondly, improvisation can lack the phenomenology of imagination. We answer the first objection by looking carefully at techniques of improvisation, which aim to reduce the cognitive load. We respond to the second objection by considering two possibilities: first that imagination can sometimes be unconscious; secondly that the imagination in improvisation is sometimes enactive/embodied imagination, which is to say that it is imagination that is constituted in part by the performance itself.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 23 October 2024

Speaker: Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (Visiting Scholar)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: “Quantum music and logic of sound and silence’”

Abstract: This presentation discusses applicability of logic and certain elements of analytic philosophy and mathematics (namely set theory) into structural music analysis. I will start with a brief overview of metaphorical correlations between quantum mechanics and avant-garde music. This will not only present views on interpretations of quantum mechanics, history and philosophy of the twentieth century physics, focusing on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Pauli exclusion principle, superposition, quantum entanglement etc., but will also serve as a prelude to the discussion of advanced composition techniques. In music where pitches and rhythms are dominant and eloquently present, application of logic, mathematics and geometry is fruitful and has already been researched to a substantial extent. What this talk takes into consideration is the sonoristic direction of avant-garde music, where timbre-texture is the fundamental co- ordinate, while pitches and rhythms are emergent. I will also introduce new and innovative concepts such as multi-dimensional ’nets’ of techniques (as opposed to single-dimensional ’sets’) and timbral-textural classes and morphisms (from category theory), and will investigate the applicability of logical space and possible worlds into music structure as well as vagueness and ambiguity of timbres and the role of epistemicism in music. It will be argued that probabilistic logic (and modal operators such as necessity and possibility) can be applied to timbral structures in music.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 30 October 2024

Speaker: Paul Hoyningen-Huene

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: “How do robust abstract economic models explain?”

Abstract: I shall try to answer the question how robust abstract economic models explain; my main illustrative example is the Sakoda-Schelling model of (racial) segregation. I shall presuppose that abstract economic models deliver for the real world how-possibly explanations at best. The crucial question is how model results can be transferred to real-world phenomena. I shall propose reframing this transfer problem in the following way. Robust model results inductively support a conjectured, non-obvious logical truth that can be immediately applied both to the model world and to the real world, thereby delivering how-possibly explanations. I shall develop this thesis in eight steps gradually dismantling its counter-intuitive character. The result will be that one function of robust abstract models is to tease out non-obvious explanatory consequences of theories (evolutionary theory, e.g.) or mechanisms (Sakoda-Schelling dynamics, e.g.) that cannot be directly inferred from them.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 6 November 2024

Speaker: Chris Oldfield (Cambridge)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: "The Activity View of physicalism"

Abstract: Like other philosophical “-isms”, the term “physicalism” covers a multitude. In his 2010 book, Physicalism, the author of the Stanford Encyclopaedia entry on the subject argued that there is no formula- tion of physicalism – that is no way of cashing out the content of the claim – that is both true and deserves the name. In this paper I develop an alternative way of thinking about physicalism, as an activity with an aim, which cannot be reduced to the content of a philosophical theory, or the adoption of a propositional attitude or an ideological commitment to provisionally accept only the ontology of some current or complete physics. This view, which I call The Activity View, is immune from the various dilemmas and challenges raised by Hempel (1980), Chomsky (2009) and Stoljar (2010). It is also open to several possible interpretations of the core concern of physicalism, from Neurath (1931) to Montero (2013). As a metaphilosophical alternative to The Theory View of physicalism, The Activity View of physicalism is in no way intended be an exhaustive view of all that “physicalism” has been taken to mean but it promises to explain what is at stake in current disputes, and the ability of philosophers to change their mind about what physicalism entails, without falling prey to van Fraassen’s (1996) charge of false consciousness in philosophy.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Speaker: Malte Hendrickx (Michigan)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: "Difficulty"

Abstract: What is difficulty? Despite being frequently invoked in numerous normative debates, the nature of difficulty remains poorly understood. Different accounts, tailored to specific explanatory contexts, have recently been proposed in different philosophical discussions. I show that these accounts are vulnerable to clear counterexamples. I then provide an alternative, empirically informed account of difficulty in terms of cognitive demand. This account, I argue, captures empirical phenomena as well as the intuitions underlying existing accounts of difficulty in terms of effort, complexity, or sacrifice, which are correlates of cognitive demand. I end by showcasing the broad applicability of this account of difficulty by looking at a set of normative debates invoking difficulty. I show that understanding difficulty in terms of cognitive demand helps us make progress on pressing questions in the study of moral responsibility, achievement, the value of difficult action, moral demandingness, and epistemic injustice.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Speaker: Matthew Simpson (Cambridge)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: "Universal generalisations and supposition"

Abstract: In this talk I’ll motivate and explore a new account of the words ”all” and ”every” as they appear in sentences like ”every juror agreed on the verdict” and ”all attendees were shocked by the outcome”, which draws on Robert Stalnaker’s famous account of conditionals. I’ll show how this account does better than the three existing accounts of these words, especially with regard to what I call ”uncertainly empty generalisations”, which are generalisations that, to a given agent, might or might not be empty, applying to nothing in the actual world.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Speaker: Rose Ryan Flinn (Cambridge)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: "Frege's Puzzle and forms of perception"

Abstract: Grasping a picture’s content is a ‘twofold’ experience: we are aware of two things at once in different ways. We perceive the picture’s surface, and we have a visual impression of a different sort of its content. At the same time as being twofold, this experience is also unified. We do not have two separate experiences, one of the picture’s surface and another of its content, but are aware of them in a single experience. It has been a puzzle in the philosophy of pictures to account for these two features of the experience. How is it possible for it to be both twofold and unified? In this paper, I suggest that an analogous question arises about the state of understanding a name that we read or hear. Plausibly, this state is structurally similar to grasping a picture’s content in being both twofold and unified. I give a characterization of this state that (a) reconciles these two features and (b) sheds light on the possibility of potentially informative identity statements. In doing so, I interpret and approve of David Kaplan’s intriguing suggestion that ‘the linguistic difference between “Hesperus” and “Phosphorus” – the simple difference between thinking of Venus qua Hesperus and thinking of it qua Phosphorus – may be all [we need to resolve Frege’s Puzzle]’.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 4 December 2024

Speaker: Mariane Olivera (Visiting Scholar)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: "Existence, pre-theoretical knowledge, and meaning in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics

Abstract: In this talk, I will try to answer how it is possible to know scientifically the existence of at- tributes for Aristotle and which skills it involves. Aristotle starts the treatise on Posterior Analytics with the requirement that any inquiry must have some kind of prior knowledge. I shall argue that what is meant by prior knowledge is based mainly on (1) knowledge of the meaning of a set of terms and (2) rudimentary knowledge of the existence of a kind. The former configures the first stage of inquiry, while the later configures a second stage into discovery of attributes as having a causal explanatory structure. The gap between scientific knowledge (the knowledge of definitions of sciences) and the so-called ”pre-theoretical knowledge” is bridged by these stages together.

 

• Date: Wednesday, 11 December 2024

Speaker: Chuang Liu (Shanghai)

Time and location: 16.00 -17.30, Seminar Room 332, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

Title: "The evolutionary game origin of moral facts"

Abstract: In the backdrop of an evolutionary approach for an expressivist conception of morality (`a la Gibbard), we argue that there are moral facts, and they are a species of group or “we” facts that have a separate evolutionary origin and ontological status from the individual or “me” facts. We discuss the empirical evidence for we-commitment or we-identity in the comparative psychology literature. We then discuss the possibility of designing evolutionary games with certain population structures such that the dynamics leads to the appearance of the we-commit (a how-possible explanation). In the end, we discuss connections of the above with the philosophical literature on group or social ontology.

 

Archive 

Lent Term 2024.

• Date: Thursday, 25 January

Speaker: Chris Oldfield (Cambridge)

Time and location: 4:30pm-6pm, Old Divinity School Teaching Room 1 (St. John’s College)

Title: “Mereology Naturalized? Not Yet”

Abstract

 

• Date: Thursday, 8 February 2024

Speaker: Will Hornett (Cambridge)

Time and location: 4:30pm-6pm, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Philosophy

Title: “Perceptual Capacities and the ‘Mosaic of Sensations’”

Abstract

 

• Date: Thursday, 15 February 2024

Speaker: Chiara Martini (Cambridge)

Time and location: 5pm-6:30pm, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Philosophy

Title: “Solving Some Problems in Aristotle’s Philosophy of Geometry”

Abstract

 

• Date: Thursday, 22 February 2024

Speaker: Helene Scott-Fordsmand (Cambridge)

Time and location: 5pm-6:30pm, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Philosophy

Title: tbd

Abstract: tbd

 

 

• *CANCELLED * Date: Thursday, 29 February 2024 *CANCELLED*

Speaker: Henrik Sherling (Cambridge)

Time and location: 5pm-6:30pm, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Philosophy

Title: tbd

Abstract: tbd

 

• Date: Thursday, 7 March 2024

Speaker: Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge)

Time and location: 5pm-6:30pm, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Philosophy

Title: tbd

Abstract: tbd

 

• Date: Thursday, 14 March 2024

Speaker: Kamil Majcherek (Cambridge)

Time and location: 4pm-5:30pm, Faculty Board Room, Faculty of Philosophy

Title: tbd

Abstract: tbd

 

Michaelmas Term 2023                             

Th 5 October   Alexander Bird

            Faculty Board Room, Faulty of Philosophy

            “Naturalized Knowledge-First and the Epistemology of Groups”        

Th 12 October    Nathan Cofnas

            Teaching Room 1, Old Divinity School, St John’s College

            Start time 16.30

            “Is Evolution Directed?”

Th 19 October    Robert Northcott  (Birkbeck)

            Teaching Room 1, Old Divinity School, St John’s College

“Science for a fragile world”

Th 26 October   Milena Ivanova  (HPS)

            Teaching Room 2, Old Divinity School, St John’s College

            “What Makes an Experiment Beautiful?”

Th 2 November   TBC

Th 9 November    Christopher Masterman

            Teaching Room 1, Old Divinity School, St John’s College

            Start time 16.30

Th 16 November  Sophie Dandelet

            Teaching Room 1, Old Divinity School, St John’s College

Th 23 November  Michael Potter

            Teaching Room 1, Old Divinity School, St John’s College

Th 30 November  Daniel Andler

            Faculty Board Room, Faulty of Philosophy

Abstracts

Alexander Bird

“Naturalized Knowledge-First and the Epistemology of Groups”

On the basis of a naturalized approach to knowledge-first epistemology, this paper makes a case for a knowledge-first account of the epistemology of groups.  It then contrasts this with Jennifer Lackey's (2021) account of group epistemology.

Nathan Cofnas

“Is Evolution Directed?”

I argue that evolution is undirected, and that this has implications for how natural selection is conceived.

Robert Northcott

“Science for a fragile world”

Imagine two worlds. In one, causal relations and mechanisms hold reliably across many cases; laws are unchanging. In the second world, by contrast, these things are fragile, holding only unreliably: just because one thing causes another over there doesn’t mean that it causes it over here. Much of our world is like the second world. I will discuss some consequences of this.

Milena Ivanova

“What Makes an Experiment Beautiful?”

Scientific products are often celebrated for their aesthetic dimension and compared to works of art. Scientists themselves, like artists, are praised for their creativity, originality and aesthetic sensibility. In this talk I explore the aesthetic dimension of scientific experiments, from experiments performed in the early years of the Royal Society, to contemporary experiments involving complex technologies and set ups, and ask: what makes an experiment beautiful? By focusing on historical case studies as well as qualitative data collected from interviewing over 200 contemporary scientists, I identify what is aesthetically valued in the lab and what role beauty plays in experimental practice.

 

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Easter 2023 Termcard

27 April	Farbod Akhlaghi (Cambridge)					Grounding and the Naturalism/Non-Naturalism Debate in Meta-Ethics Abstract
4 May	No meeting
11 May	Adham El Shazly (Cambridge)					Communicating Understanding Abstract
18 May	Nadia ben Hassine (Cambridge)					Finding Better Meanings: The Argument from Many Alternatives Abstract
25 May	Marcus Ackermann (Cambridge)					A B-theoretical ‘metaphysical indeterminacy’- account of the open future Abstract
1 June	Neil McDonnell (Glasgow)					Causation in the Privileged Context Abstract
Monday 5 June (16.00)	Finnur Dellsén (University of Iceland) and James Norton (University of Iceland, University of Sydney)					Understanding Philosophical Progress Abstract

 

Lent 2023 Termcard

19 January	Marta Halina (Cambridge)					Folk Psychology and Scientific Understanding Abstract
26 January	Will Hornett (Cambridge)					Forms of Agency Abstract
2 February	David Sosa (University of Texas, Austin)					Getting Closure on the Sorites Abstract
9 February	Cancelled - strike action
16 February	Cancelled - strike action
23 February	Julian Nida-Rümelin (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität)					Cooperation and structural rationality Abstract
2 March	Alice Harberd (UCL)					Insight in Art: a balancing act Abstract
9 March	Anneli Jefferson (Cardiff)					The problem with accounts of blame Abstract

 

Michaelmas 2022 Termcard

6 October	Neil Dewar (Cambridge)					Probability De Dicto and De Re Abstract
13 October	Alexander Bird (Cambridge)					Evidentialism, Justification, and Knowledge-First Abstract
20 October	Sandra Lindblom (Cambridge)					Cause Equals Effect Abstract
27 October	Paul Hoyningen-Huene (Leibniz Universität Hannover)					Objectivity, Value-Free Science, and Inductive Risk Abstract
3 November	Cecily Whiteley (Cambridge)					Natural Kinds of Sleep Experience Abstract
10 November	Emily Caddick Bourne (Manchester)					How it can be that a quasi-miracle would not happen, but might, and does Abstract
17 November	Louise Antony (University of Massachusetts)					Against Amelioration, or, Don't Call a Conceptual Engineer Without Talking to Me First Abstract
24 November Cancelled - strike action	-					-

Easter 2022 Termcard

11 May	Adham El Shazly (Cambridge)					Noetic understanding
18 May	Ina Jäntgen (Cambridge)					How to measure effect sizes for rational decision-making
25 May	Andreas Hüttemann (Cologne)					Modal aspects of laws and models
01 June	Brian Hedden (ANU)					Counterfactual decision theory

Lent 2022 Termcard

26 January	Benjamin Marschall (Cambridge) and Wouter Cohen (Cambridge)					Would Carnap Have Tolerated Sider?
2 February	No meeting
9 February	Alex Fisher (Cambridge)					Millianism and Empty Names
16 February	Jonathan Knowles (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)					Anti-representationalism without expressivism
23 February	Mark Jago  (Nottingham)					Metaphysical Structure
2 March	Nadine Elzein (Warwick)					Time Travel and Failed Assassination Attempts
9 March	Ian Rumfitt (Oxford)					Meaning and Speech Acts
16 March	Joaquim Giannotti (Birmingham)					Brutalism: Moderate and Radical

Michaelmas 2021 Termcard

13 October	Alex Moran (Oxford)					Ground physicalism and contingent metaphysical laws
20 October	Aiden Woodcock (Cambridge)					A Rejoinder to Pettigrew's Argument for Symmetry
27 October	No meeting
3 November	Wolfgang Schwarz (Edinburgh)					Believing without evidence
10 November	Anna Mahtani (LSE)					Contextualism and Awareness Growth
17 November	François Recanati (Collège de France)					Shared Modes of Presentation?
24 November	Johannes Wagner (Cambridge)					Spinoza's Essentialism: Platonic Forms of Singular Things
1 December	No meeting

Easter 2021 Termcard

05 May (week 1)	Thomas Hofweber (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)					Inescapable Concepts
19 May (week 3)	Boris Kment (Princeton)					Ground and paradox
02 June (week 5)	Dee Payton (Rutgers)					The ways we are
16 June (week 7)	Annina Loets (Humboldt Berlin)					Simple and Strong? Plenitude Costed

Lent 2021 Termcard

27 January (week 1)	Jessica Leech (KCL)					Relative necessity redefended
3 February (week 2)	Wouter Cohen (Cambridge)					Frege on existence
10 February (week 3)	Thomas Schindler (Bristol)					Deflationary theories of properties and their ontology
17 February (week 4)	Cancelled					Cancelled
24 February (week 5)	Sofía Meléndez-Gutiérrez (Cambridge)					Reference, instantiation, and the ontology of fictional entities
3 March (week 6)	Jessica Wilson (Toronto)					Identity and relative fundamentality
10 March (week 7)	Sophie Allen (Keele)					Problems with the merely possible: actualism, naturalism and unmanifested dispositions
17 March  (week 8)	Dolf Rami (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)					Discriminating views of existence: two overlooked varieties

Michaelmas 2020 Termcard

14 October (week 1)	No Meeting
21 October (week 2)	Owen Griffiths (Cambridge)					The collapse of logical pluralism
28 October (week 3)	Mat Simpson (Cambridge)					Universal generalisations and belief causation
4 November (week 4)	Benjamin Marschall (Cambridge)					Quine on ontology and the primacy of truth
11 November (week 5)	Tim Button (UCL)					Metaphysicians hate this one simple trick for avoiding universals, but they can't stop you using it!
18 November (week 6)	Barbara Vetter  (Freie Universität Berlin)					Essence, potentiality, and modality
25 November (week 7)	Alex Fisher (Cambridge)					Truth in interactive fiction

Lent 2020 Termcard

January 22nd (week 1)	Lukas Skiba (Hamburg)					'From Higher-Order Modal Logic to Necessitism?’
January 29th (week 2)	Emanuel Viebahn (HU Berlin)					'Insincerity in Linguistic and Pictorial Communication’
February 5th (week 3)	Matt Farr (Cambridge)					'Do we need to explain initial conditions?’
February 12th (week 4)	Alexander Roberts (Cambridge)					‘Theories of Necessity'
February 19th (week 5)	James Cargile (Virginia)					‘Russell’s Paradox’
February 26th (week 6)	CANCELLED Ben Brast-Mckie (Oxford)					‘Identity and Aboutness’
March 4th (week 7)	CANCELLED Annina Loets (Oxford)					'Aspect Theories of Qualification’
March 11th (week 8)	CANCELLED Owen Griffiths (Cambridge)					'The Collapse of Logical Pluralism’

Michaelmas 2019 Termcard

October 16th (week 1)	Hugh Mellor (Cambridge)					The True Causes and Effects
October 23rd (week 2)	Bryan Roberts (LSE)					Causation when time unfolds in the wrong direction
October 30th (week 3)	Hasok Chang (Cambridge)					The Pragmatic Meaning of Reality [Time and room change: 3-4:30pm, Postgraduate Common Room]
November 6th (week 4)	Roland Krause (HU Berlin)					Wittgenstein's verification of verificationionism
November 13th (week 5)	Kenny Walden (Dartmouth)
November 20th (week 6)	Tom McClelland (Cambridge)					Attention & Attendabilia: An Affordance Theory of Salience
November 27th (week 7)	CANCELLED
December 4th (week 8)	CANCELLED

Easter 2019 Termcard

1st May	Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (Professor University of Oxford)					On a certain conception of metaphysical necessity Abstract
8th May	Andrew Sepielli (Assoc. Professor University of Toronto)					On the Superficiality of Normative Ethics Abstract
15th May	Peter van Inwagen (Professor Notre Dame)					Two Problems for a Truth-centered Ontology Abstract
22nd May	Matthew Kramer (Professor Cambridge University)					On the Mind-Independence of Legal Norms Abstract
29th May	Aaron Hanlon (Associate Professor at Colby College)					Literary Studies Needs an Epistemology, and Philosophy Can Help Abstract
5th June	Sahanika Ratnayake (Cambridge PhD student)					How Should We Understand 'The Shoulds'?: Contemporary Psychotherapy and Normative Judgements Abstract
12th June	Wesley Wrigley (PhD student at Cambridge)					Is the concept natural number vague? Abstract

Lent 2019 Termcard

23rd January	Hugh Mellor (Cambridge) and Prof. Richard Bradley (London School of Economics)					Conditionals: Truth and Safety Abstract
30th January	David Oderberg (Professor Reading University)					Evil, Negative Being, and Truthmakers Abstract
6th February	Li Li Tan (PhD student Cambridge)					On visual categorisation and recognition Abstract
13th February	Raamy Majeed (Lecturer Auckland University)					The Indeterminacy of Unconscious Belief Abstract
20th February	Benjamin Marschall (PhD student Cambridge)					Carnap’s Internal Platonism Abstract
27th February	Jeroen Smid (rescheduled) (Post-doc Manchester University)					Aggregates and their role in the problem of coincident objects Abstract
6th March	Nick Treanor (Chancellor's fellow University of Edinburgh)					The (Serious) Metaphysics of Epistemic Normativity Abstract
13th March	Yael Loewenstein (Research Fellow Cambridge)					Heim Sequences and Why Most Unqualified 'Would'-Counterfactuals are Not True Abstract

Michaelmas 2018 Termcard

10th October	Penelope Mackie (Associate Professor at The University of Nottingham)					Essentialism and context-dependence: a New Argument against Lewisian Counterpart Theory Abstract
17th October	Jonathan Schaffer (Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University)					Heavy Ontology, Light Ideology Abstract
24th October	Owen Griffiths and Arif Ahmed (Cambridge University)					Inner and outer harmony Abstract
31st October (note: talk cancelled)	Jeroen Smid (Post-doc at Manchester University)					Aggregates and their role in the problem of coincident objects Abstract
7th November	Rachel Robertson (PhD student at Cambridge University)					Embodied Agency in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science Abstract
14th November	Nakul Krishna (Cambridge University)					Scepticism, Pessimism, Mitigation: The Amoralist in the 1950s Abstract
21st November	Richard Gaskin (Professor at University of Liverpool)					Reference and Propositions Abstract
28th November	Alex Jackson (Associate Professor from Boise State University)					Vagueness, Relativism, and Realism Abstract

Easter 2018 Termcard

25th April	Andreas Stokke					Modal Metarepresentation
2nd May	Ali Boyle					Animalism, Dicephalus Twinning, and Biological Individuation
9th May	Nora Heizelmann					Weakness of Will as a Cognitive Bias
16th May	Kyle Mitchell					From Pragmatism to Easy Ontology—and Back Again
23rd May	Nathan Hawkins					Paired Quantified Modal Logic
30th May	Kasia Jaszczolt					Time: From Semantics to Metaphysics
6th June	Alastair Wilson					Emergent Contingency
13th June	Rachel Fraser					An Ontology of Narrative Belief

Lent 2018 Termcard

24th January	Tim Button					A Dogma of Metaphysics
31st January	Jack Lyons					Toward a solution to the generality problem for reliabilism
7th February	Dorothy Edgington					Indeterminacy and Conditionals
14th February	Bart Streumer					Reduction without Supervenience
21st February	Jonathan Shaheen					Cavendish's Mereology
28th February	Nakul Krishna					*Cancelled*
7th March	Ali Boyle					*Cancelled*
14th March	Brian Pitts					*Cancelled*

Michaelmas 2017 Termcard

11th October	Alexander Bird					“Fundamental Powers, Evolved Powers, and Mental Powers”
18th October	Emanuel Viebahn					“Deceptive presuppositions”
25th October	John Marenbon					“Avicenna and Duns Scotus on Universals”
1st November	Alex Moran					"Material Things, Russell's Principle and 'Grounding-Qua'"
8th November	Hugh Mellor					“Chances and Conditionals”
15th November	Christian List					“Levels: descriptive, explanatory, and ontological”
22nd November	Anthony Fisher					“Thingification in Trope Theory”
29th November	Matt Farr					“Explaining Temporal Qualia”

Easter 2017 Termcard

27 April 2017	Joe Dewhurst (Edinburgh)					Folk Psychology and the Bayesian Brain
4 May 2017	Sarah Sawyer (Sussex)					Concepts, Conceptions, and Self-Knowledge
11 May 2017	Juliet Griffin (Cambridge Psychiatry)					Does the Free Energy Principle Have a Motivation Problem?
18 May 2017	Rachel Robertson (Cambridge)					Kant's Theory of Embodiment
25 May 2017	Annika Boeddeling (Cambridge)					Towards a Non-Metaphysical Explanatory Strategy for Quietists
1 June 2017	Katie Robertson (Cambridge)					TBC

Lent 2017 Termcard

19 January 2017	Adaum Caulton (Oxford)					In what sense is quantum field theory a theory of fields?
26 January 2017	Sean Fleming (Cambridge)					How to Interpret Action-Sentences about States
2 February 2017	Ralph Weir (Cambridge)					The Compresence Relation: A Challenge for Property Dualism
9 February 2017	Wes Wrigley (Cambridge)					Sider's Ontologese Introduction Instructions
16 February 2017	Paul Fletcher (Cambridge)					Rethinking schizophrenia within a predictive coding framework"
23 February 2017	Verena Wagner (Konstanz)					Glitterfree Fredom
2 March 2017	Hugh Mellor (Cambridge)					Properties of Chance
9 March 2017	Robin Le Poidevin					Stereoscopy: some aesthetic - and ontological - issues

Michaelmas 2016 Termcard

6 October 2016	John Broome (Oxford)					Reason fundamentalism and what is wrong with it
13 October 2016	Natalja Deng					Does temporal ontology exist?
20 October 2016	James Hutton					Emotion as sensitivity to value: the implementation problem
27 October 2016	Raamy Majeed					The Cognitive Impenetrability of Recalcitrant Emotions
3 November 2016	Tim Button					I Disappear
10 November 2016	Ori Beck					Rethinking Naive Realism
17 November 2016	Jessica Leech (King's)					Against logical essence
24 November 2016	Luke Cash					TBC

Easter 2016 Termcard

21 April 2016	Henry Taylor					Powerful Qualities and Pure Powers: What's the difference?
28 April 2016	Alexander Greenberg					TBC
5 May 2016	Barry Maguire (UNC)					There are No Reasons for Attitudes
12 May 2016	Sahanika Ratnayake					Multiple Persons
19 May 2016	Carlo Rossi					TBC
26 May 2016	Wes Wrigley					Sider's Ontologese Introduction Instructions
2 June 2016	Stephen Duxbury					The Reduction of Modality to Essence
9 June 2016	Dan Brigham					No Nonsense
17 June 2016 New Time: 12.00 - 1.30 p.m.	Murali Ramachandran					Knowledge-to-Fact Reasoning: Towards a Unified Solution to the Prediction Paradox* *Organised by Arif Ahmed, if you have any questions please email ama24.

Lent 2016 Termcard

14 January 2016	Louise Hanson					The Real Problem with Evolutionary Debunking Arguments
21 January 2016	Margot Strohminger (Antwerp)					Perceptual Knowledge of Nonactual Possibilities*
28 January 2016	Christopher Mole (UBC)					Beauty is Objective
4 February 2016	Max Hayward					Practical Reason, Sympathy, and Reactive Attitudes
11 February 2016	Michael Blome-Tillman					TBC
18 February 2016	Hugh Mellor					Growing Block Theories of Time
25 February 2016	Kyle Mitchell					TBC
3 March 2016	Simona Aimar (UCL)					Disposition Ascriptions as Possibility Ascriptions

*In conjunction with the New Directions in the Study of the Mind Project.

Michaelmas 2015 Termcard

8 October 2015	Bence Nanay					Affective Considerations in Meta-metaphysics
15 October 2015	Huw Price					The End of the World
22 October 2015	Philip Gerrans (Adelaide)					A Processing Account of Emotion
29 October 2015	Alex Moran					On the Thinking Parts Problem
5 November 2015	Tim Crane					The Significance of Behaviourism
12 November 2015	Rae Langton					After Words: The Being in Time of Speech Acts
19 November 2015	Fiona Doherty					The Ontology of Abstraction
26 November 2015	Arif Ahmed					TBC

Easter 2015 Termcard

23 April 2015	Hugh Mellor					Truthmaking vs Physicalism
30 April 2015	Natalja Deng					Religion for Atheists
7 May 2015	Heather Dyke					Invoking Evolutionary Explanations: Relief and other temporal experiences
14 May 2015	Toby Friend					Can parts cause their wholes?
21 May 2015	Carlo Rossi					TBC
28 May 2015	Fredrik Nyseth					Could the Source of Modality Be Contingent?
4 June 2015	Kyle Mitchell					Rejecting 'Everything'
11 June 2015	Annika Boeddeling					TBC

Lent 2015 Termcard

15 January 2015	Piotr Szalek					The Minimal Definition of Goodness and the Problem of Generalisation
22 January 2015	Alex Moran					Dion's Foot and Aristotle's Hand: A New Solution to the Paradox of Decrease
29 January 2015	Gábor Betegh					Colocation
5 February 2015	John Heil					Causal Relations
12 February 2015	Jossi Berkovitz					A New Interpretation of De Finetti's Theory of Subjective Probability
19 February 2015	Adam Bales					Decision-theoretic impossibility proofs: an impossibility proof
26 February 2015	Luz Seiberth
5 March 2015	Alison Fernandes

Michaelmas 2014 Termcard

9 October 2014	Daniel Brigham					Russell’s Multiple-Relation Theory of Judgement and its Critics
16 October 2014	Cheryl Misak					Ramsey and Wittgenstein on Generalizations and Hypotheses, circa 1929
23 October 2014	Alexis Papazoglou					Naturalism and the Quest for Unity
30 October 2014	Mat Simpson					Dispositions and General Beliefs
6 November 2014	Ali Boyle					The Cognitive Significance of Mirror Self-Recognition
13 November 2014	Tuomas Tahko					Fundamentality and Ontological Well-foundedness
20 November 2014	Fiona Doherty					How Frege would object to the Neo-Logicist
27 November 2014	Adrian Boutel					Downward Causation Without Tears

Easter 2014 Termcard

30 April 2014	Daniel Gregory (ANU) - Inner Speech: Phenomenology, Pragmatics and Imagination
7 May 2014	Ali Boyle - Self-awareness
14 May 2014	Jonathan Birch - Punishment, Coordination and the Psychology of Norms
20 May 2014 (Note: change of date)	Georgie Statham - Causal claims in organic chemistry
28 May 2014	Stephen Mumford (Nottingham) - Understanding Causation by Way of Failure
4 June 2014	Lukas Skiba - Modal Fictionalism
11 June 2014	Jennifer Hornsby (Birkbeck)

Lent 2014 Termcard

22 January 2014	David Etlin (Munich)
29 January 2014	TBC
5 February 2014	Irena Cronin (UCLA)
12 February 2014	Rae Langton
19 February 2014	TBC
26 February 2014	Lucy Campbell
5 March 2014	Paulina Sliwa
12 March 2014	Alison Fernandes (Columbia)

16 October 2013	Karen Crowther - Effective spacetime
23 October 2013	Luke Fenton-Glynn (UCL) - Ceteris Paribus Laws and Minutis Rectis Laws
30 October 2013	Tim Button - Truth
6 November 2013	Ella Whiteley - Human nature, dispositions, and gender
13 November 2013	Dan Brigham - Facts
20 November 2013	Shyane Siriwardena - Agency Theory of Causation
27 November 2013	Fiona Doherty - Abstraction Principles
4 December 2013	Lucy Campbell - Practical Knowledge

1 May 2013	Jeremy Butterfield - Renormalization for Philosophers
8 May 2013	Christopher Clarke - On the Alleged Indispensability of Social, Psychological and Biological Explanations
15 May 2013	John Williams (Singapore) - Eliminativism, Dialetheism and Moore’s Paradox
22 May 2013	Kevin Mulligan (Geneva) - Explanation in Metaphysics
29 May 2013	Richard Teague - TBA
5 June 2013	Simon Evnine (Miami) - TBA
12 June 2013	Kyle Mitchell - TBA

23 January 2013	Adam Caulton - Theoretical Analyticity, Revisited
30 January 2013	Will Davies - Colour Constancy and Discrimination
6 February 2013	Emily Thomas - Why Not to Reject Cartesian Dualism
13 February 2013	Carl Rossi - Defining Endurance
20 February 2013	Brian Hedden (Oxford) - Time-Slice Rationality
27 February 2013	Karen Crowther - Novelty and Autonomy as Alternatives to, or Bases for, a Conception of Emergence in Physics
6 March 2013	Mat Simpson - Wilfrid Sellars and Ostrich Nominalism
13 March 2013	Lukas Skiba - On Indirect Sense and Reference

10 October 2012	Tim Crane - Things that don't exist
17 October 2012	Tamer Nawar - Truth and Epistemic Value
24 October 2012	James Cargile (Virginia) - Identity
31 October 2012	Alexander Greenberg - Maps by which we steer
7 November 2012	Daniel Brigham - Propositional Attitudes and Attitudes to Propositions
14 November 2012	John Maier - The Metaphysics of Ignorance
21 November 2012	Brian Pitts - How Almost Everything in Space-time Theory is Illuminated by Simple Particle Physics: The Neglected Case of Massive Scalar Gravity
28 November 2012	Shyane Siriwardena - The Suppositional Theory and Morgenbesser Counterfactuals

 

25 April 2012	Prof. John Marenbon
2 May 2012	Prof. Richard Holton
9 May 2012	Kyle Mitchell
16 May 2012	Prof. Justin Broackes
30 May 2012	Prof. Hugh Mellor

 

16 January 2012	Jeremy Butterfield
23 January 2012	Robert Northcott
30 January 2012	Yohan Joo
6 February 2012	Allan Hazlett
13 February 2012	Bence Nanay
20 February 2012	Shyane Siriwardena
27 February 2012	Daniel Brigham
5 March 2012	Max Hummel

 

12 October 2011	Alexis Papazoglou
19 October 2011	Jody Azzouni
26 October 2011	Peter Smith
2 November 2011	Fraser MacBride
9 November 2011	Alexander Greenberg
16 November 2011	Shyane Siriwardena
23 November 2011	Jonathan Birch
30 November 2011	Tamar Nawar

 

13 October 2010	Fraser MacBride
20 October 2010	Nathan Wildman
27 October 2010	Phyllis Illari
3 November 2010	Nick Jones
10 November 2010	Duen-Min Deng
17 November 2010	Markku Keinänen
24 November 2010	Josh Parsons
1 December 2010	Sam Coleman

 

20 Jan 2010	Luca Incurvati - Iterative Conception and Metaphysical Dependence
27 Jan 2010	Fraser MacBride - Relations and Truth-Making
10 Feb 2010	Gemma Murray - Is Quantum Mechanics about Quantum Information?
17 Feb 2010	Duen-Min Deng - Wiggins' Individuative Essentialism
24 Feb 2010	Nathan Wildman - Hume's Dictum and Non-mereological composition: Lewis against Armstrong's States of Affairs
3 March 2010	Emily Thomas - Mereological nihilism in a gunky world
10 March 2010	Hugh Mellor - Successful Semantics

 

28 April 2010	Daniel Nolan - She's Really Happening
5 May 2010	John Wright - Explaining the Novel Predictive Success of Science Without Realism or Truth
13 May 2010 (THURSDAY)	Helen Beebee - What's So Scientific About Scientific Essentialism?
2 June 2010	Gemma Murray - Chance in Empirical Theories
9 June 2010	Adam Caulton - Weak Discernibility, But Of What?