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IHPST – UMR8590
13, rue du Four
75006 Paris
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Responsable : F. Moltmann
Paris-Hamburg Ontology Workshop, 5 Septembre, Paris
Dans le cadre du projet ANR-DFG NOMINAL
Lieux
IHPST, 13 rue du Four, 75006 Paris
Grande salle (deuxième étage)
Programme
11.00 - 11.45: Nathan Wildman (Hambourg), "Serious problems for Serious
Essentialism"
11.45 - 12.15: Discussion
12.15 - 13.30: Déjeuner
13.30 - 14.15: Damiano Costa (Genève), "Grounding and Criteria of Identity"
14.15 - 14.45: Discussion
14.45 - 15.00: Pause
15.00 - 15.45: Aurélien Tonneau (Paris), "The Coulomb's Law is not a Law"
15.45 - 16.15: Discussion
16.15 - 16.30: Pause
16.30 - 17.15: Friederike Moltmann (Paris), "Existence and Persistence"
17.15 - 17.45: Discussion
Résumés
Damiano Costa (Genève): "Grounding and Criteria of Identity"
What is a criterion of identity? Recent works on this topic (Lowe 1989a;
Williamson 1990; Savellos 1992; Jubien 1996; Carrara and Giaretta 2004; Horsten
2010; Leitgeb 2012) have argued that none of the replies we might find appealing
at first glance are in fact satisfactory. In this paper, I shall examine those
replies, and produce old and new reasons to reject them. This examination will
allow me to identify six desiderata that a good definition of 'criterion of
identity' has to meet. Subsequently, I shall put forward a new definition,
according to which a criterion of identity indicates what grounds identity
facts within a given ontological category, and show how this new definition
meets the whole six desiderata. An interesting consequence of the new
definition is that it justifies the idea - held by some (Simons 1981; Bennett
1988) - that some entities lack identity criteria. According to Quine (1960)
identity criteria were the mark of ontological respectability. Under the
present construal, it is - in some sense - the opposite: the lack of identity
criteria - when theoretically certified - becomes the mark of metaphysical
fundamentality.
Friederike Moltmann (Paris): "Existence and Persistence"
An often noted, but hardly analysed fact abut English existence predicates
'exist' and 'occur' is that they impose restrictions on the entities to which
they can apply. 'Exist' applies only to material and abstract objects, whereas
'occur' applies only to events. In this talk I will pursue the questions of
what this could mean for the notions of existence and persistence that are
reflected in natural language.
Aurélien Tonneau (Paris): "The Coulomb's Law is not a Law"
In Nature's Metaphysics (2007), Bird argues that the laws of nature derive from
the dispositional essence of fundamental properties and proposes a formal frame
for this metaphysics thesis. This analysis is today generally interpreted by
philosophers of science as providing a defense of the incompatibility between a
metaphysical explication for laws and their effective expression in sciences. I
will explore this interpretation. I will show in particular that the
quantitative character of fundamental scientific properties does not allow us
to derive a regularity that is general enough to give it the status of a
scientific law. Finally I will defend that adapting the model conceptually by
multi-track dispositions, even if it considers the derivations of the present
model as particular cases, also fails to allow us to defend the conception of
scientific laws, providing an additional argument for incompatibilists.
Nathan Wildman (Hambourg): "Serious problems for Serious Essentialism"
A Neo-Aristotelian movement is sweeping through metaphysics, and nowhere is the
movement more perspicuous then in issues surrounding the metaphysics of
essence. While the vanguard was Kit Fine, who assaulted the modal understanding
of essence, more recently E.J. Lowe [2008] has joined the battle, offering his
'serious essentialsm', which aims to reduce metaphysical necessity to essence.
In this paper, I critique both Lowe's argument for serious essentialism and the
position itself. To motivate serious essentialism, Lowe suggests that knowledge
of essence is required for any other type of knowledge; he hopes to push us to
this conclusion by cases involving necessary co-location versus identity.
Noting that a rather straightforward appeal to theoretical simplicity undercuts
Lowe's cases, I contend that we've little to no reason to follow Lowe's
argument. Yet, even if he can offer a better argument for serious essentialism,
Lowe simply fails to explain why being a de re necessary property is a necessary
condition for being an essential property. Without such an explanation, serious
essentialism's reduction of necessity to essence cannot succeed. As such, I
conclude that serious essentialism isn't a viable option for those interested
in understanding the notion of essence.
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