Workshop 21. July 2019: As a Matter of Form
We would like to invite anyone interested to participate in a one-day workshop exploring topics such as form, essence, and hylomorphism.
The program begins at 9:30, and ends at 17:45. You are also welcome to join us for dinner on Saturday and Sunday.
Schedule
Saturday 20.7:
20:00 Dinner at Otto's Restaurantshiff
Sunday 21.7:
9:30-10:30 Ludger Jansen: On Hylomorphism in Social Ontology
10:30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-12:00 Michael Wallner: Can Essences Explain Necessity?
12:00-14:00 Lunch buffet
14:00-15:00 Thomas Sattig: Reducing Parthood
15:00-15:15 Short break
15:15-16:15 Jonathan Barker: Form and Explanatory Autonomy
16:15-16:45 Coffee break
16:45-17:45 Kit Fine: Comments on the previous talks
19:30 Dinner at Zwanzig12
Confirmed speakers:
Jonathan Barker (Virginia)
Kit Fine (NYU)
Ludger Jansen (Rostock & Bochum)
Thomas Sattig (Tübingen)
Michael Wallner (Graz)
Organisation:
Ludger Jansen (Rostock/Bochum)
Petter Sandstad (Rostock)
Venue: IBZ, Bergstraße 7a, 18057 Rostock
Registration: There is no conference fee, but places are limited. Thus please register before 19th July by sending an e-mail to (also for further information) Petter Sandstad: petter.sandstaduni-rostockde
When registering, please let us know whether you would like to attend the dinners.
PhilEvents site: https://philevents.org/event/show/70910
Abstracts:
Jonathan Barker: Form and Explanatory Autonomy
TBA
Kit Fine: Comments on the previous talks
Kit Fine will give his comments and feedback to the previous four talks.
Ludger Jansen: On Hylomorphism in Social Ontology
Recently, Kit Fine and others have suggested to apply hylomorphistic accounts to social ontology. In this talk, I will probe this idea. I start by sketching a working definition of hylomorphism, and then discuss some cases that seem to invite a hylomorphic treatment, in particular groups and status entities. Then I turn to more sophisticated examples that seem to forbid an analysis in hylomorphic term, in particular to legal persons and to what Barry Smith has termed ‘free standing y-terms’. Finally, I discuss whether my account in my book „Gruppen und Institutionen“ is a hylomorphistic theory or not.
Thomas Sattig: Reducing Parthood
The aim is to reduce parthood in the realm of material objects to essence and grounding. The first step is to reduce parthood to slot-filling: a material object is structured by a certain arrangement of slots; and the fillers of these slots are the object's proper parts. The second step is to reduce slot-filling to essence and grounding. If this overarching reduction succeeds, it promises new metaphysical foundations for neo-Aristotelian mereology.
Michael Wallner: Can Essences Explain Necessity?
Lately the Finean idea that modal truths are true in virtue of, grounded in, or explained by essentialist truths has been under attack. In this paper I am trying to meet this current criticism by alluding to the distinction between what could be called Reductive Finean Essentialism vs. Non-Reductive Finean Essentialism and to some of Bob Hale’s work on the latter.