What Do We Do When We Do Metaphysics? - Methods, Limitations, and Consequences

Taken into account that metaphysics is hard to define and its methods are controversial, the need for meta-metaphysics as an additional discipline seems urgent.  Meta-metaphysics is there to understand what we are actually doing when we are asking metaphysical questions like: What are laws of nature? What are properties? What are social kinds? How do objects persist through time? Does the self exist? The task of meta-metaphysics is thus to discuss if and how the almost endless list of metaphysical questions can be answered.

In our workshop, we are interested in finding answers to questions like the following: What methods can be used to answer (certain) metaphysical questions? Are there metaphysical questions that cannot be answered? Are metaphysical concepts value-laden? We hope to bring together various contemporary analytic perspectives on these meta-metaphysical issues including examples of the application of individual methods (both historically and contemporary). 

Keynote speakers:

• Sophie Allen (Keele)
• Jiri Benovsky (Fribourg)
• Richard Woodward (Hamburg)

The conference will be held from 30/08/2018 to 31/08/2018 at Heinrich Heine University’s “Haus der Universität” in the heart of the city. 

The workshop is organized by Till Gallasch, Paul Hasselkuß, Sara Ipakchi and Jessica Struchhold (Düsseldorf), and generously supported by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the German Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP), and Professor Markus Schrenk (Düsseldorf) of the DFG Group Inductive Metaphysics (FOR2495).

We encourage MA and PhD students to participate.