Logic and Philosophy of Science Group Talk (Ted Sider, Rutgers)

The Logic and Philosophy of Science Group is pleased to welcome guest speaker Ted Sider, Distinguished Professor and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Dr. Sider specializes in metaphysics (time, identity, mereology, modality, supervenience, fundamentality). He also has research and/or teaching interests in philosophy of language, logic, philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of physics.

Join the meeting:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/89632021226

Talk Title

Determinism and the Metaphysics of Quantity

Talk Abstract

Metaphysical accounts of quantitative properties—properties like mass and distance—have implications for the laws of nature in which those properties figure. An otherwise attractive fundamentality-centric approach to properties has unsettling implications of this sort. These implications emerge from David Baker’s argument that a comparativist metaphysics of quantity can lead to indeterminism in otherwise deterministic theories, but are not limited to comparativism.

About the Logic and Philosophy of Science Group

One of six departmental Research Interest Groups, the Logic and Philosophy of Science Group hosts talks on logic, general philosophy of science, and philosophy of the particular sciences, as well as talks in allied areas such as formal epistemology, decision theory, and the metaphysics of science.