Identity in Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science

Workshop: Identity in Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science

Sunday 6th June, online via videoconference
ALL TIMES ARE CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME (CET).

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9.00 Kathrin Koslicki (University of Neuchâtel): Artifacts and the Limits of Human Creative Intentions

10.15 James Ladyman (Bristol University): Identity, Intension and Isomorphism

11.30 Kai Wehmeier (University of California): Relational Identity: Lessons from Frege and Wittgenstein

12.30 Lunch break

14.00 Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva): Factual Identity vs Propositional Identity

15.15 Charlotte Werndl (University of Salzburg) Can Somebody Please Say What Gibbsian Statistical Mechanics Says?

16.30 Augustin Rayo (MIT)Transcendence and Triviality

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Abstracts:

Kai Wehmeier (University of California): Relational Identity: Lessons from Frege and Wittgenstein

After a brief review of several notions in the vicinity of identity, I will present a reconstruction of what I take to be the principal historical argument against the properly relational character of objectual identity and discuss several objections to it. I will then present Frege’s Begriffsschrift theory of identity, according to which identity is a relation between names, as a viable option, and sharpen it in the light of an objection based on the necessity of identity.


Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva): Factual Identity vs Propositional Identity

I will defend the logic of factual identity (aka factual equivalence) that I advocated in “On the Logic of Factual Equivalence” (Review of Symbolic Logic, 2016) against what seems to be a powerful objection. The objection, I will argue, probably rests on the failure to distinguish between factual identity and what I will call “propositional identity”.


Augustin Rayo (MIT): Transcendence and Triviality

Modal contingentists face a dilemma:  there are two attractive principles ofwhich they can only accept one.   In this paper I show that the most naturalway of resolving the dilemma leads to expressive limitations. I then develop analternative resolution. In addition to overcoming the expressive limitations, thealternative picture allows for an attractive account of arithmetic and for a styleof semantic theorizing that can be helpful to contingentists. http://web.mit.edu/arayo/www/bcbc.pdf

If you want to participate, please register by sending an e-mail with "Identity workshop: registration" in the subject line to Robert Michels: [email protected]

Organisers: Jonas Waechter and Robert Michels

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Identity in Cognitive Science, Quantum Mechanics, and Metaphysics
Project nr. 185435, PI: Kevin Mulligan