November 19, 2021 16:00-17:30 CET Anthony Fisher University of Washington, USA https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/65170482357 Abstract Metaphysical explanation has received a lot of attention in the literature recently. In this talk, I develop a functionalist account of metaphysical explanation founded on the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis doctrine of theoretical terms. In developing this account I take as my departure Lewis’s methodology … Continue reading A Functionalist Account of Metaphysical Explanation

November 5, 2021 13:00-15:00 CET Helen Steward University of Leeds, UK Abstract Might plants be agents? This paper considers an attempt by Hans-Johann Glock (2019) to draw two important distinctions which might help us think about the bounds of agency. One is a distinction between ‘information-processing’, on the one hand and ‘behaviour’, on the other; … Continue reading Plants, Wants, and Agents

Webinar Nov. 27, 2020 Philip Goff, Durham University Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. Robust value realism is the view that there are irreducible facts about value. Perhaps the biggest challenge for the robust value realist is how to account for our knowledge of irreducible … Continue reading Panpsychism and Robust Value Realism

Webinar Nov. 20, 2020 Helen Stewart, University of Leeds In this paper, I shall consider a number of different ways in which philosophers in recent years have attempted to offer conceptions of natural law which in various respects suggest that the grip of law on reality might be less tight than has been traditionally supposed. … Continue reading Laws Loosened: How to make Way for Freedom in a Law-Governed World

Webinar Oct. 30, 2020 Anna-Sofia Maurin, University of Gothenborg Flatworldism is a view on the nature of reality according to which reality lacks structure. Prima facie what this means is that reality’s inhabitants are not sub-dividable into the more and less fundamental such that what is more fundamental (at least sometimes) makes what is less … Continue reading Flatworldism: a defense

Webinar Oct. 23, 2020 Rasmus Jaksland, Norwegian University of Science and Technology            In science and particularly in physics, we have a developed notion of approximation. We possess, in many cases at least, quantitative means with which to assess the epistemic risk of using an approximation (i.e. Newtonian Gravity) rather than a theory known to be more … Continue reading Metaphysical approximation in Metaphysics of Science

Webinar Oct. 7, 2020 Johanna Seibt, Aarhus University            GPT is a mono-categoreal process ontology, with non-transitive part-relation as the  basic relationship among the basic entity called “general process”. General processes are concrete, yet indeterminate (general), dynamic individuals.  While according to the GPT the world is a field of interconnected processes, it is possible to define … Continue reading Types of Dynamic Continuity in General Process Theory

Webinar Oct. 2, 2020 Jani Hakkarainen, Tampere University