Workshops

november24 2023 : GEM Workshop

• Donnchadh O'Conaill (University of Freiburg) : " On the Methods, Aims and Value of Metaphysics "
• Guido Imaguire (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) : " Priority, Existence and Fact Constituency "

8 December 2023 : GEM Workshop

• Agnès Baehni (University of Geneva) & Vincent Grandjean (University of Oxford) : " Moral Duties to Past Selves "
• Uriah Kriegel (Rice University) : " Realism and Objective Similarities "

february9 2024 : GEM Workshop

• Marco Marabello (University of Neuchâtel) :" Is Modal Normativism Really Different from Conventionalism? "
• Julien Tricard (Université catholique de Louvain) :" The Ultimate Argument against Nominalistic Relationism "

april26  2024 : GEM Workshop

• Robin Bianchi (University of Neuchâtel) :" The Scope of Agency "
• Carlo Rossi (University of Santiago de Chile) : "  Powers, Regress, and the Individuation of Events "

17 May 2024 :  GEM Workshop

• Anna Marmodoro (Durham University/Oxford) :" Individual Particulars "
• Pierre Saint-Germier (IRCAM/CNRS) :" Digital pictures, notations, and the autographic/allographic distinction "

Workshops

september 20, 2022 : GEM workshop

• Javier Cumpa (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): " The Neo-Aristotelian Approach "
• Alexandre Declos (Collège de France): " Virtual Properties and Their Troubles "

november 25, 2022 : GEM Workshop

• Louis Rouillé (Université de Liège): " Is Virtual Sex Sex?
• Donnchadh O'Connail (University of Fribourg): " The Virtual Self: Swiss Franc, Altairian Dollar, or Bored Ape? "

january 20, 2023 : GEM Workshop

• Anna Marmodoro (Durham University/University of Oxford): " The Dualism of Oneness in Plato and Aristotle "
• Guillaume Bucchioni (Aix-Marseille University): "Le Digitalisme non Réductionniste" (Non-reductionist Digitalism)

march 17, 2023 : GEM Workshop

• Uriah Kriegel (Rice University): " Physicalism and Nominalism: A Case Study in Unbracketing Metaphysics "
• Jean-Marie Chevalier (Université Paris-Est Créteil): "Quidditas, quiddité, quidditisme : les faux amis ?"

april 14, 2023 : GEM Workshop

• Nathan Oaklander (University of Michigan): " Does Analytic Philosophy of Time Rest on a Mistake? "
• Vincent Grandjean (University of Oxford): " Indeterminate Personal Identity "

Workshops

october 27, 2021 : GEM Workshop
Anna Marmodoro (Durham University): "Instantiation"
Julien Tricard (Sorbonne University): "Particulars, properties and sortals"

december 3, 2021 : GEM workshop
Uriah Kriegel (Rice University): " Qua Objects and Nominalism "
Damiano Costa (University Of Italian Switzerland): " The perils of Aristotelian realism "

december 10, 2021 : GEM workshop
Sebastián Briceño (Universidad de Santiago de Chile) : "The Cosmological Argument and the Principle of Sufficient Reason: The Rationalist Path"
Camilo Silva (ENS): "Leibniz et le nominalisme après le Discours de métaphysique et la correspondance avec Arnauld"

march 4, 2022 : GEM workshop
Louis Pijaudier-Cabot (ENS): "Localization as an intrinsic property in Suárez"
Raphaël Künstler (Université Toulouse 2 - Jean-Jaurès): " Essentialist Microfoundational Social Ontology "

march 18, 2022 : GEM workshop
Frédéric Nef (EHESS - IJN): "Présentisme et tropisme" (Presentism and tropism)
Muriel Cahen (Lycée Blanche de Castille, Villemomble): "Les tropes différenciés" (Differentiated tropes)

april 15, 2022 : GEM workshop
Guido Imaguire (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro): " On the Fundamentality Profile of Properties "
Guillaume Bucchioni (Aix Marseille Université): "Realism of Ordinary Objects and Sortal Properties"

may 6, 2022 : GEM Workshop
Carlo Rossi (Universidad de Santiago de Chile): " Events, Processes, and Robustness in Virtue of Form "

Workshops

december 18, 2020 : GEM Workshop
Naomi Thompson (University of Southampton) and Donnchadh O'Conaill (University of Freiburg): " Carving Reality at the Joints "

january 22, 2021 : GEM Workshop
Francesco Berto (University of St Andrews): " Meinongian Quantification, Equivocation, and Existence "

february 19, 2021 : GEM Workshop
Anna-Sofia Maurin (University of Gothenburg): " Metaphysical Explanatory Gaps "

march 12, 2021 : GEM Workshop
Raphaël Künstler (University of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès): " The new problem of demarcation "

march 26, 2021 : GEM Workshop
Benoit Gaultier (University of Zurich): "Is knowledge of species uniform?"

june 11, 2021 : GEM workshop
Guillaume Bucchioni (Aix-Marseille University): "A certain way of being realistic about ordinary objects"

june 18, 2021 : GEM workshop
Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva): "Non-modal conceptions of essence in contemporary metaphysics"

Workshops

october 25, 2019 : Workshop on the year's theme
Vincent Grandjean (University of Neuchâtel): " Bare Particulars to the Rescue of Growing Block Theory "
Nicolas Erdrich (Archives Poincaré): "Replicas, doubles and pure coincidences. Three regimes of indiscernibles"

december 20, 2019 : Workshop on the year's theme
Jean-Baptiste Rauzy (Université Paris Sorbonne): "Carving, semantics and approximation"
Robert Michels (University of Geneva): " Characterizing Finean Essentiality

february 21, 2020 : Workshop on the year's theme
Guillaume Bucchioni (Aix-Marseille University): "Du mode d'être des objets ordinaires" ("The mode of being of ordinary objects")
Alexandre Declos (Collège de France): "A defense of foundation nominalism"

may 8, 2020 :(Virtual) workshop on the year's theme
Donnchadh O'Conaill (University of Freiburg): " Grounding and the Unity of Facts "

june 11, 2020 : (Virtual) workshop on the year's theme
Pierre Saint-Germier (Université Catholique de Louvain): " Counterpossibles in Metaphysics "

Workshops

november 28, 2018 : Workshop on the year's theme
Vincent Grandjean (University of Neuchâtel): " How is the Asymmetry between the Open Future and the Fixed Past to be Characterized? "
Muriel Cahen (IJN): "Perdurantism and the expanding block theory"

february^1, 2019 : Workshop on the year's theme
Guillaume Bucchioni (Aix-Marseille Université): "Modes of being and persistence"
Vincent Clos (Rennes 1 University): "The parallel between time and modality"

march 22, 2019 : Workshop on the year's theme
David Hyder (University of Ottawa): "A causal theory of time"
Frederic Nef (EHESS-IJN): "L'irréelle réalité du temps dans le fragmentalisme de Kit Fine" (The unreal reality of time in Kit Fine's fragmentalism)

may 17, 2019 : Guest speaker
Javier Cumpa (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): "Naturalistic Neutralism"

Listen to the lecture:

june 27, 2019
Alexandre Declos: "In Defense of an Old Theory"
Jean-Maurice Monnoyer: "Permanentism and Temporality"

Workshops

november 3, 2017 - Thematic workshop on "the notion of metaphysical explanation"
Naomi Thompson (University of Southampton): "Metaphysical Explanation and the Structure of Reality"
Uriah Kriegel: "Metaphysical Explanation and Explanatory Unification"

december 15, 2017 - Thematic workshop on "conceivability and metaphysical possibility"
Robert Michels (University of Geneva): "Conceivability and Essence"
Pierre Saint-Germier (Aarhus University): "The Logic and Metaphysics of Hume's Maxim"

january 19, 2018 - Workshop in honor of Eric T. Olson
Eric T. Olson (University of Sheffield): "The Metaphysics of Artificial Intelligence"
Jean-Baptiste Guillon: "Three Theories of Coincident Entities"

Listen to the presentations :

march 2, 2018 : Thematic workshop on unrestricted quantification
Øystein Linnebo (University of Oslo) : "Dummett on Indefinite Extensibility "
Sébastien Motta (PhD Université de Nantes) : "How's Everything?"

april 25, 2018 : Workshop in the annual theme
Filipe Drapeau Contim : "Rigidity with counterparts"
Guillaume Bucchioni : "Discussion of the reality argument in favor of metaphysical foundationalism"

june 22, 2018 : Off-topic workshop
Grégoire Lefftz : "The identity of ordinary objects"
Cyrille Michon and Jean-Baptiste Guillon : "Vuillemin and the antinomies of the Anselmian concept of God"

Year colloquium

october 2-3, 2018: "Metaphysical principles"

Since Aristotle, metaphysics has been understood as the science of "first principles". While the history of the discipline provides examples of what these might be (principle of non-contradiction, principle of sufficient reason, etc.), it remains to determine more precisely what a metaphysical principle is. Is it a general or abstract truth about reality? Or is it a basic, non-inferential knowledge?

First, we'll look at the status of "principial" metaphysical truths, to determine what they are and how they can be known. It will also be necessary to determine whether there are "axioms" in metaphysics, or even whether there can be any that are specifically metaphysical. Finally, we will examine the distinction between the epistemological foundation of metaphysics and its ontological foundation, i.e. the principles that condition metaphysical knowledge and the principles that condition reality itself.

In a transversal manner, or through more specific case studies, this colloquium will attempt to determine which are, in the tradition as in contemporary philosophy, the serious candidates for the title of "metaphysical principle"

workshops

october 14, 2016
Guillaume Bucchioni: "From Composition Universalism to Priority Monism"

december 16, 2016
Sébastien Richard: "The mereo-topological integrity of objects"

february 24, 2017
Uriah Kriegel: "From Priority Monism to Nominalism" / Muriel Cahen: "Individuation of temporal parts"

may 5, 2017
Sophie Berlioz: "Mereology of social objects" / Grégoire Lefftz: "What is an object? Reflections on the problem of the multiple"

International Colloquium

june 29-30, 2017: "Metaphysics of Composition"

Questions surrounding the composition of material objects and their parts are among the most classic metaphysical issues that have occupied metaphysicians and philosophers of nature since ancient Greece: can the decomposition of material objects be pursued ad infinitum, or must it stop at unseparables, i.e. material atoms, or even monads? Do elements always enter into a composition partes extra partes, or must we also think of a metaphysics of "mixtion"? Do the parts of an object have a more "fundamental" existence than the object they compose, or does the whole on the contrary have ontological priority over its parts? If a whole is nothing more than its material parts, don't we end up with unsolvable paradoxes (the paradox of Theseus' boat, of amputation, etc.)? But can we really escape the paradox by postulating a "form" alongside "matter", as Aristotelian tradition does?

In contemporary times, these questions were considerably renewed in the early ^twentieth century through the work of Husserl and Lesniewski. These developments (and, in particular, the formalized logical tool represented by classical mereology) are at the root of the tremendous boom in questions of composition and mixing over the last thirty years, not only in metaphysics (the special question of composition, mereological approaches to hylemorphism, the question of monism, the theory of temporal parts), but also in the philosophy of science (questions of biological organism or chemical composition), in the philosophy of action and political philosophy (the question of collective action) or even in ethics (the composition of values).

The aim of this colloquium, the second international colloquium of the Groupe d'Études en Métaphysique, is to bring together metaphysicians from France and abroad to assess and discuss the most recent advances in the philosophy of composition in all these fields.

Speakers: Jean-Pascal Anfray, Sophie Berlioz, Guillaume Bucchioni, Muriel Cahen, Claudio Calosi, Alexandre Guay, Ghislain Guigon, Jean-Baptiste Guillon, Uriah Kriegel, Olivier Massin, Frédéric Nef, Jean-Baptiste Rauzy, Sébastien Richard, Claudine Tiercelin, Achille Varzi.

Workshops

september 28, 2015
Cyrille Michon: "Responsibility for consequences and alternative possibilities"

october 12, 2015
Jean-Baptiste Guillon: "The problem of Integration for Libertarianism"

december 14, 2015
Jean-Baptiste Rauzy: "Epistemic Dualism: the case ofsplit-screen epistemological compatibilism"

january 18, 2016
Ghislain Le Gousse: "Could he do otherwise?"

february 15, 2016
Aurélien Nioche: "Exercising free will: a decision-making process"

march 21, 2016
Paul Egré, Aurélien Nioche, Florian Cova: "Reactive attitudes and Determinism: An experimental investigation"

april 11, 2016
Niels van Miltenburg: "The Libertarian Predicament, a Plea for Action Theory"

may 2, 2016
Benedikt Schick: "The practical role of reasons"

may 17, 2016
Sara Bernstein: "Causal Proportions and Moral Responsibility"

International colloquium

september 22-23, 2016: "Free Will and Causation"

One of the greatest philosophical challenges in understanding human free will is to situate it within the web of natural causality: is freedom compatible or incompatible with the entanglement of causal relations? Does free will require a different, sui generis type of causality, or can it be interpreted in terms of natural causes? Should we prefer the concept of "agentive causality" or that of "event causality"? The answer to these questions depends very much on the position - Humian, Reidian, neo-Aristotelian, etc. - one adopts in theory. - that we adopt in the theory of causality.

The aim of this conference is to explore these questions in the light of the most recent theories of free will and causality.

Speakers: Jean-Pascal Anfray, Helen Beebee, Jean-Baptiste Guillon, Richard Holton, Ghislain Le Gousse, Cyrille Michon, Timothy O'Connor, Derk Pereboom, Joana Rigato, Carolina Sartorio, Claudine Tiercelin, Patrick Todd, Kadri Vihvelin.

Publication

Le Libre-Arbitre, approches contemporaines, dir. J.-B. Guillon, Éditions du Collège de France, 2017, https://books.openedition.org/cdf/4937