The Nature of Becoming

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Nature of Becoming workshop

Università Cattolica, Milan – 16 April 2025

Organizers: Lorenzo Azzano, Ciro De Florio, Giuliano Torrengo

We invite submissions of approximately 500 words abstracts to [email protected]

DEADLINE: 24 March

The selected abstract will be announced shortly after.

In this workshop we aim to explore the intersection of analytic metaphysics that focuses on the study of dynamism, activity, and becoming. This topic can be approached from a variety of perspectives. On the one hand, recent debates in the metaphysics of time have focused on the characterization and explanation of “robust passage”, viz. the kind of genuine becoming that is postulated when tense is taken seriously.

On the other hand, the study of certain items in the nomic/modality family, such as robust laws of nature and dispositional properties, illustrate how we might imbue reality with active and productive elements in a way that would make it incompatible with a static view of the universe.

Finally, study of metaphysical grounding and other kinds of ontological and metaphysical dependence may help us in this endeavor, not only as indirect framing devices, but, more directly, by providing determinative and productive relations, of both causal and non-causal variety.

We invite submissions on the following topics.

1. Metaphysics of time, especially investigations on the passage of time
2. Dynamism and becoming, broadly understood
3. Robust laws of nature and dispositional properties, especially as they relate to notions of activity and change
4. Metaphysical grounding and other similarly determinative relations

Invited Speakers: Sven Rosenkranz (University of Barcelona), Giuliano Torrengo (University of Milan), Samuele Iaquinto (University of Eastern Piedmont), Donatella Donati (University of L’Aquila), Giacomo Giannini (Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf), Lorenzo Azzano (Catholic University, Milan).

The workshop is funded by the project The Varieties of Grounding (National Research Project (PRIN MUR 2022 / PNRR): https://sites.google.com/fisppa.it/prinonground/home