MCMP – Metaphysics and Philosophy of Language
18 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 5 years ago - ★★★★ - 2 ratingsMathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists.
The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws.
Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.
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Episodes
Do Modus Ponens and Tollens Really Leak? Remarks from a Linguistic Semanticist
April 19, 2019 00:05 - 1 hour - 1.15 GB VideoDietmar Zaefferer (LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (15 May, 2014) titled "Do Modus Ponens and Tollens Really Leak? Remarks from a Linguistic Semanticist". Abstract: Despite considerable progress in formal logic and semantics conditional constructions continue to be a hotly debated topic. One reason for this difficulty of achieving a consensus could be that the problem is simply too hard to be solvable at the current state of the art, so McGee might still be right with his 1985 conjec...
Putnam and the Multiverse
April 19, 2019 00:05 - 58 minutes - 900 MB VideoTimothy Bays (Notre Dame) gives a talk at the Workshop on ”Putnam's Model-Theoretic Arguments" (May 23, 2013) titled "Putnam and the Multiverse".
The Metaphysics of Lazy Worlds
April 19, 2019 00:05 - 46 minutes - 713 MB VideoBenjamin Smart (Birmingham) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (10 January, 2013) titled "The Metaphysics of Lazy Worlds". Abstract: Although it is not uncommon for philosophers to put the fundamental laws to one side and discuss, say, causal interactions concerning macroscopic objects like vases, matches and so on (Mumford and Anjum 2011), in this paper we are concerned with our most fundamental physical principles, and the universal laws that can be derived from these. When it comes to pre...
Relativism and Superassertibility
April 19, 2019 00:04 - 46 minutes - 702 MB VideoManfred Harth (LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (19 June, 2013) titled "Relativism and Superassertibility". Abstract: Relativism about truth is in vogue these days. More and more areas of thought and language are considered as promising candidates for a relativistic semantics in recent years: future contingents, epistemic modals, taste-judgements, knowledge ascriptions, moral judgements etc. However, current truth-relativism is a highly contested position facing some serious problems,...
Things that don't exist
April 19, 2019 00:04 - 54 minutes - 823 MB VideoTobias Rosefeldt (Berlin) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (5 June, 2013) titled "Things that don't exist". Abstract: Are there things that don’t exist? Several answers seem to be possible here. You can answer ‚yes’ because you are a Mainongian and believe that existence is a discriminating property of objects, i.e. a property that some objects have and others lack. You can answer ‚no’ because you are a Quinean and believe that to exist just means to be identical to something and hence is ...
Naive perception, Cartesian scepticism, and the model-theoretic arguments
April 19, 2019 00:04 - 48 minutes - 737 MB VideoTim Button (Cambridge) gives a talk at the Workshop on ”Putnam's Model-Theoretic Arguments" (May 23, 2013) titled "Naive perception, Cartesian scepticism, and the model-theoretic arguments".
How to be a Dispositionalist about Modality
April 19, 2019 00:01 - 46 minutes - 709 MB VideoBarbara Vetter (Berlin) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (25 April, 2013) titled "How to be a Dispositionalist about Modality". Abstract: In recent years, metaphysicians have become increasingly attracted to the idea that modality is grounded in, or that modal statements are made true by, the dispositions of concrete objects. Some attempts have been made to formulate the view and to respond to objections. Objections typically come in the form of specific counter-examples to the view. I wil...
Internal Realism and Structural Realism
April 18, 2019 23:55 - 31 minutes - 485 MB VideoKate Hodesdon (Bristol) gives a talk at the Workshop on ”Putnam's Model-Theoretic Arguments" (May 23, 2013) titled "Internal Realism and Structural Realism".
Mathematical Structuralism and Metaphysical Dependence
July 20, 2015 14:00 - 45 minutes - 694 MB VideoJohn Wigglesworth (MCMP/LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (16 July, 2015) titled "Mathematical Structuralism and Metaphysical Dependence". Abstract: The notion of dependence plays various roles in non-eliminative mathematical structuralism. Of particular interest is the dependence relation that is said by some structuralists to hold between an abstract mathematical structure and the various realisations that exemplify that structure. This dependence relation can be used to distinguish ...
Realism about Measurement and Realism about Magnitudes
July 14, 2015 01:00 - 56 minutes - 872 MB VideoJohanna Wolff (Hong Kong) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (8 July, 2015) titled "Realism about Measurement and Realism about Magnitudes". Abstract: A realist about measurement, roughly speaking, holds that measurements give us information about, or epistemic access to, the way the world is. Measurement, on such an account, is objective. A realist about magnitudes, understood either as properties or relations, holds that the way measurements provide such objective knowledge is by tracking ...
Existiert Gott? (Teil 2)
July 10, 2015 01:00 - 31 minutes - 482 MB VideoWinfried Löffler (Innsbruck) nimmt Stellung zum Thema "Existiert Gott?" (8. Dezember 2014) auf der gleichnamigen Veranstaltung und vertritt damit eine gegensätzliche Postion zu Norbert Hoerster (Mainz), ebenfalls Diskutant der Veranstaltung. (Hinweis: Wegen technischer Schwierigkeiten beginnt das Live-Video ab der 2. Minute.) Zusammenfassung: „Existiert Gott?“– Wenn es eine Frage gibt, über die man sich einfach nicht einig wird, dann ist es diese Frage. Aber woran liegt es, dass es in Bezug a...
Fregean Compositionality
July 08, 2015 01:00 - 1 hour - 1.02 GB VideoThomas Ede Zimmermann (Frankfurt) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (25 June, 2015) titled "Fregean Compositionality". Abstract: The distinction between transparent and opaque contexts has always played a major rôle in theories of linguistic semantics, though it has undergone a number of reformulations and precisifications since its origins in Frege’s classical substitution arguments. Most dramatically, the unfathomable distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung has been recast in more perspicu...
Logic and Metaphysical Presuppositions
February 10, 2015 05:04 - 59 minutes - 910 MB VideoOtávio Bueno (Miami) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (22 January, 2015) titled "Logic and Metaphysical Presuppositions". Abstract: Does logic (in particular, classical logic) have metaphysical presuppositions? It may be thought that it doesn’t: logical principles and logical inferences are often taken as not requiring the existence of any objects for them to hold. Logical principles are supposedly true in any domain (so there is no reliance on the subject matter at hand), and logical infe...
Making Quotation Transparent: A Compositional Analysis of an Apparently Opaque Phenomenon
January 21, 2015 00:49 - 1 hour - 930 MB VideoMarkus Werning (Bochum) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (11 December, 2014) titled "Making Quotation Transparent: A Compositional Analysis of an Apparently Opaque Phenomenon". Abstract: Quotation is regarded as a paradigmatically opaque context. This is due to two failures: (i) A failure of substitution: in quotations the substitution of an expression with a synonym does not leave the meaning of the embedding context unchanged. (ii) A failure of existential generalization: in quotations t...
Existiert Gott? (Teil 1)
January 15, 2015 15:36 - 29 minutes - 456 MB VideoNorbert Hoerster (Mainz) nimmt Stellung zum Thema "Existiert Gott?" (8. Dezember 2014) auf der gleichnamigen Veranstaltung und vertritt damit eine gegensätzliche Postion zu Winfried Löffler (Innsbruck), ebenfalls Diskutant der Veranstaltung. Zusammenfassung: „Existiert Gott?“ – Wenn es eine Frage gibt, über die man sich einfach nicht einig wird, dann ist es diese Frage. Aber woran liegt es, dass es in Bezug auf die Existenz Gottes seit Jahrhunderten (oder sogar Jahrtausenden) keine Einigung...
Structural Realism
November 04, 2014 01:44 - 1 hour - 1.23 GB VideoDavid Chalmers (NYU) meets Thomas Meier (MCMP/LMU) in a joint session on "Structural Realism" (generously supported by the Goethe-Institut New York) at the MCMP workshop "Bridges 2014" (2 and 3 Sept, 2014, German House, New York City). The 2-day trans-continental meeting in mathematical philosophy focused on inter-theoretical relations thereby connecting form and content of this philosophical exchange. Idea and motivation: We use theories to explain, to predict and to instruct, to talk about ...
Inter-Theoretical Relations in Linguistics
October 06, 2014 01:58 - 1 hour - 1000 MB VideoKristina Liefke (MCMP/LMU) meets Lucas Champollion (NYU) in a joint session on "Inter-Theoretical Relations in Linguistics" at the MCMP workshop "Bridges 2014" (2 and 3 Sept, 2014, German House, New York City). The 2-day trans-continental meeting in mathematical philosophy focused on inter-theoretical relations thereby connecting form and content of this philosophical exchange. Idea and motivation: We use theories to explain, to predict and to instruct, to talk about our world and order the o...
On the Classification of Diseases
February 18, 2014 05:07 - 36 minutes - 557 MB VideoBenjamin Smart (Birmingham) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (18 December, 2013) titled "On the Classification of Diseases". Abstract: Identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for individuating and classifying diseases is a matter of great importance in the fields of law, ethics, epidemiology, and of course medicine. Here I engage in this conceptual debate to facilitate a metaphysical analysis of disease. My targets are two-fold: first, to provide a means of uniquely picking out...