Prof. \;Andrew Bacon \;(USC) will give a masterclass on \;Higher-Order \;Metaphysics \;at King&rsquo\;s College London on May 8th-10th\, 2019. The masterclass will include guest talks by \;Nick Jones \;(Birmingham)\, \;Jessica Leech \;(KCL)\, and \;Timothy Williamson \;(Oxford).
\nThe event is open to \;graduate students and researchers from any institution. \;
\nPresentation
\nSome central questions of metaphysics revolve around propositions\, properties and relations and around how they interact with modality: What does it mean for a necessity to be broader than another? Is there such a thing as a broadest necessity? what does it mean for a property or relation to be fundamental? \;Are \;fundamental properties and relations `freely recombinable&rsquo\; in the sense that they can instantiate any logically \;consistent \;pattern? \;Are propositions structured entities constructed out of fundamental properties and relations? \; More generally\, to what extent can we make good on the metaphor of reality as a language\, and the corresponding metaphor of the fundamental as the primitive constants of that language? \;
\nUnfortunately\, debates on such questions are often formulated in ways that are prone to lead to paradoxes. Higher-order logic is a precise framework for regimenting such debates. It is a generalization of first-order logic that allows one to quantify not just into singular position but into \;any given grammatical position. It allows one to replace quantification over propositions\, properties and modalities by quantification into sentence\, predicate or operator position. Higher-order logic \;is often studied in a broadly Fregean setting \;which in effect assumes that there are only two propositions. Once this assumption is lifted \;there are a surprising number of choice \;points regarding the logic and model theory of higher-order logic\, corresponding to a number of different metaphysical pictures of the granularity of properties and propositions. \;Many of the technical tools in this area have been developed by computer scientists and category theorists but aren&rsquo\;t widely known to philosophers. \;
\nThis masterclass will present these ideas in a way that is accessible to philosophers\, and tailored to their concerns. The first half of the series will cover general technical machinery needed for modelling higher-order logic. The second half we will apply these tools to the metaphysical questions raised above.
ORGANIZER;CN=Julien Dutant: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR