The View from Above: Structure, Emergence, and Causation

The View from Above: Structure, Emergence, and Causation

11th-12th January 2018 
MBI Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

It's a common accepted assumption that reality includes the chemical, biological, and psychological, but are they anything over and above the physical? Or can they all be reduced somehow to the physical? Reductionism has been challenged by various forms of emergentism, which many philosophers still see as unsatisfactory. One alternative way to think about this issue, which has recently come to the fore in the metaphysical debates, is along the lines of Aristotle's Hylomorphism, a view that takes structure and organization to play a pivotal metaphysical role. The aim of this conference is to discuss the assumptions of Hylomorphism, and how it bears on reductionism in relation to special sciences (such as chemistry and biology) and in the philosophy of mind.

Speakers:

William Jaworski (Fordham University)
Hylomorphic Structure, Emergence, and Supervenience

Christopher J. Austin (University of Oxford)
A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism

David Yates (University of Lisbon)
Powerful Qualities as the Key to Emergent Downward Causation

Howard Robinson (Central European University)
Hylomorphism, natural science, mind and God

Robert Koons (University of Texas-Austin) 
Modal Epistemology and the Formal Identity of Intellect and Object

Please direct any queries to the conference organisers: Matteo Grasso ([email protected]) or Anna Marmodoro ([email protected].ac.uk)