Dispositions, Causation, Modality

Call for Participation

D I S P O S I T I O N S,  C A U S E S,  M O D A L I T Y

Workshop in Cologne 

7-9 March 2012

DFG Research Group Causation | Laws | Dispositions | Explanation

Convenors: Arno Goebel, Andreas Hüttemann, Alexander Reutlinger, and Markus Schrenk

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Helen Beebee: Against Dispositional Essentialism

Ralf Busse: Existence, Essence, and Law

Richard Corry: Powers take the Field

Jonathan Jacobs: How to be an Aristotelian and a reductionist about modality

James Ladyman: Dispositions and Forces

Olivier Massin: 'When forces meet each other'

Barbara Vetter: How to be a dispositionalist about possibility

Daniel von Wachter: Causes do not necessitate their effect

Neil Williams: The Significance of Causal Relevance

IMPORTANT DATES:

7-9 March 2012 Workshop

31 January 2012 Registration

REGISTRATION 

Please send an email to [email protected] by the end of January to express your interest to participate. We can unfortunately offer only a limited number of places.

TOPIC OF THE WORKSHOP | ABSTRACT

Dispositionalists are philosophers who defend the view that many or all properties have an irreducible dispositional nature. Some dispositionalists have recently claimed that causal powers, capacities, tendencies, etc. bring their own kind of modality to the world which is neither eliminable by counterfactual conditionals nor reducible to natural or metaphysical necessity. Forces or vectors sometimes serve as a preliminary characterization of a disposition’s sui generis modality. However, such a theory of dispositional modality has yet to be spelled out in detail. It would also have to reveal how dispositions and causation are related. This workshop wishes to investigate into the possibility (or impossibility) of such a project.

TRAVEL GRANTS 

We will be able to offer a restricted number of travel grants (up to 250 Euros each). PhD students and advanced M.A. students are encouraged to apply for these grants by submitting a short letter of motivation (200 words) and a short CV. The deadline is 4 December 2011. Please send the applications to [email protected].

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE RESEARCH GROUP

http://www.clde.uni-koeln.de/

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact one of the organisers:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]