 Donc bonjour et bienvenue à cette table au monde sur le thème de la thérapie et de la gestion de l'Euse d'Avie. Comme vous pouvez le voir récentive, il faut être sûr de prendre en anglais. Et en un moment dans la partie question à la fin, si vous ne vous sentez pas des questions en anglais, vous ne les avez pas pensées, il n'y a pas de soucis, on a une illustration autant possible. Et voilà. Donc maintenant je vais me passer en anglais. C'est une chose de fort, c'est que la thérapie métallique était une partie de la thérapie métallique, dans la histoire de la philosophie. Et d'ailleurs, je pense qu'il y a des critiques de votre raison, c'est l'exemple de quoi la thérapie métallique est supposed à être. Et la question c'est, qu'est-ce que je peux faire pour la thérapie métallique? Mais pourquoi se termine comme une séparatrice de séparatrice, c'est parce que aujourd'hui, si on prend la signification régional de la thérapie métallique comme une priorité pour la structure fondamentale de la réalité, aujourd'hui c'est un challenge de la science. Et beaucoup de scientifiques réalistes tendent à penser qu'il n'y a pas de régiment de la thérapie métallique au-delà de la science de la thérapie métallique, c'est aussi possible pour la science de la thérapie métallique. Et ça peut être une crise de la thérapie métallique aujourd'hui, et c'est une crise de la thérapie métallique, où vous avez une tradition qui s'occupe de la thérapie métallique. Il y a des intérêts dans la thérapie métallique et on essaie d'avoir une neutralisation et maintenant on peut discuter de la thérapie métallique et essayer de résoudre la tension de la thérapie métallique. Et c'est aussi pourquoi je pense que cette tension de la thérapie métallique est très intéressante, parce que, comme sur chaque topic, quand vous avez une tradition qui s'occupe de la thérapie métallique, c'est utile d'occuper de la thérapie métallique et de voir que ce n'est pas toujours le cas que la tradition qui s'occupe de la thérapie métallique était avant. Donc, c'est une bonne idée d'explication de ce que la thérapie métallique devrait être avec Loup-Bat et aussi de l'histoire de la thérapie métallique c'est une belle inspiration pour la thérapie métallique d'une discussion, pour essayer de résoudre la tension et de nouvelles idées, nouvelles manières de la thérapie métallique. C'est pourquoi je veux que vous ayez crispy la hors-vête de l'essence de l'hélo-de-chroisse-Tépot nous présente nos speakers en premier, merci beaucoup d'avoir eu le compliment pour vous pour venir de la thérapie métallique le Rabbi Henri-Camillou le professeur des sciences et le professeur restaurant de la thérapie métallique de la thérapie métallique c'est la meilleure personne responsable de la popularisation de la thérapie métallique depuis que les experts ont l' oikeau pourquoi ils sont prêts pour embroiderer vous êtes professeur de l'histoire et de l'histoire philosophie de 15 à 18 métaphysiques, l'histoire et la métaphysique, et aussi les études de la philosophie moderne, et votre terme aujourd'hui sera plus sur comment la métaphysique est une façon d'invertir ou d'entraîner la méthodologie de l'histoire dans une manière non historique, pour comparer les métaphysiques de l'histoire de l'histoire. Et le professeur de l'histoire, Alexandre Regueu, est un professeur de l'histoire et je vous remercie pour l'invertir ou d'entraîner la méthodologie. Comme vous le savez, Alexandre est spécialiste de la science philosophie et de la science méta-physique, et la science philosophie et de la science philosophie est maintenant en train de faire une technologie de l'histoire. Comme je le dis, et vous devez parler aujourd'hui de l'intérêt et de l'ambition de la métaphysique. Nous devons parler d'une certaine présentation, une très grande présentation de 10 à 15 minutes, des discussions, et en fin de la fin, nous avons 40 minutes de questions à poser. Donc si tout est bien, je vous remercie. Merci beaucoup pour la très générale introduction de l'interdiction, et pour la justice. C'est un plaisir d'être là, c'est très sympa de vous voir, c'est la première fois que je vous l'amène. Donc je vais vous remercier ce brief, comme j'ai dit, et je suppose que je dois dire que c'est quelque chose d'un très réel étudiant sur l'interface entre la philosophie, la méta-physique et la science, ou la science philosophie. Donc avec le titre, c'est comme si je vais faire beaucoup de choses, mais je vais juste vous donner un très réel exemple, parce que c'est tout ce que je peux vraiment faire dans ce temps. Et je me suis toujours dit, quand je parle de l'histoire de course Cree, et je ne suis pas vraiment un collègue de la Badoche, ou d'un des septembre, car je ne peux pas le lire avec la langue. Donc je suis toujours réel sur les collègues valorisées qui sont vraiment des ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-ex. Et je me suis promis de la gouvernement, donc j'ai eu des erreurs sur ma main. Le cas étudiant sur la question de s'obtenir du changement de la kiné de la substantially sondage, je vais vous donner un exemple de ce que ça est, mais je vais commencer par une distingue rudimentaire entre trois visées relatives de la kiné de l'essentiel pour l'individu ou en combattant les deux visées de la kiné. Donc, je vous présente ces deux visées. c'est essentiel pour l'individ c'est essentiel to an individual X, that it belongs to a given kind called individual and individual. So it's essential to a given individual for instance a biological organism that it belongs to a given species that can be an example. Second view, each individual member of a given kind say a biological species has a general essence or natural kind essence which might consist of one or more properties c'est essentiel to all members of that kind, so some shared properties. This is a pretty standard formation of what might be called natural kind essentialism although it's controversial because what those properties might be that are shared between the kinds, especially in the case of biological species. The third one I'm not really going to focus on but it's worth distinguishing as well calling it sui generis essentialism The kind, if the kind is a kind, is a kind of entity itself might have an essence which might include the fact that each of its members has certain shared properties so if the kind is universal, its essence would be more of that sort. And I'm going to focus on the first two here a little bit sort of dilemma that arises from it. Ok, so here's the problem of substantial kind change. It's possible that we might think that it's possible for an individual, let's say a cat, to become a dog while retaining its individual essence so remaining the same entity, so we might make a claim like this. So individual cat tibles could be transmuted into a dog with some sort of process and still remain tibles. Is that possible or not? Well that kind of change of species membership, the kind membership would violate the first of the principles that I gave you, so it's essential to the individual so it belongs to the kind cat. But it wouldn't necessarily violate the second one because the kind doesn't change that. So the general essence of the kind doesn't enter into the picture when an individual changes its kind membership or if it's possible to enter into the kind membership. To give another example from Kevin Strupp, from physics, consider B2K, B2-2K, weak interaction converts an atomic nucleus into a different atomic nucleus. So I think an example is carbon-14 to nitrogen-14 to be correct for me if I'm wrong. So it seems like we might have an individual atom changing into another atom, changing its kind. So that as well violates the first principle that I would say. So the question is should we accept this kind of kind change, substantial kind change or remain committed to essentiality of the kind membership? And that's a question that we can ask in terms of physics and certainly a question that we can ask in the historical life. So that's my case study. So I've got a text here now from Agnes Sennel which speaks to this issue, but it speaks to quite a lot of other things as well. But I'll quickly read it and give you the relevant part. So Agnes Sennel writes that, if one supposes say that at some moment there is no color of the white or any other than one of the infinite colors, it would then be true in an absolute sense which would expect an absolute mode that every color is white or somal. Whereas prior to that time, true and unstable would it be possible. This possibility is not true if it's associated with a predicate where it's not possible in a specific sense that every color is white. On the contrary, our colors here do not necessarily not white. Likewise, if we suppose a time at which there are no animals, but men, it would be at that time according to this mode that every animal is white. Whereas prior to that time, this would have been true according to the possibilities. If it was a predicate, however, possibilities would not have been like. There's a lot of stuff happening in this passage and I'm back at all and I should nod to Yadikov while my Finnish colleague who is the scholar of Agnes Sennel who's used this text in another context. But there's something happening with kind membership in this curve and there's something happening with modalities that we have to take to modalities in particular. So, the question of kind change has a historical precedent and I'll say a little bit more about this now. It has obviously a roots to gyrosol, not a lack of quotes there, but take my word for it. And gyrosol, I have set up famously both regarding species to be eternal, so they would have denied the kind of substantial kind change presumably from what I'm talking about. So, as of all, we'd also reject maybe Agnes Sennel too, the coming into existence of any new animal species and notoriously so, because that does seem completely what we know. And we see this in other examples as well such as this Agnes Sennel quotes. So, Agnes Sennel discusses the impossibility of other colours becoming white. So, he's focusing on the rare possibility which involves the kind itself and allows for some sort of a deification possibilities here. But the thought here of course is something like this. Not that a non-white object couldn't become white, or individual objects can change their colours, but rather the colour white itself, or the colour black itself could not become white. So, the kind itself can't change. So, this would seem to be compatible with the second natural kind session due to the fact that I would like to not be the first. So, both Agnes Sennel would seem to deny the possibility of a kind change in this sense. And this is a view that is shared by some conjugal philosophers. My late mentor and PhD supervisor E.J. Lo notoriously was a little bit uncompensable on this question of substantial kind change which is one reason why I think it's an interesting case like it with contemporary metaphysics as well because it's difficult to accommodate substantial kind change if you are committed to certain metaphysics. Ok. So, now we get to this question. What should we make of the lessons from science then when we know from contemporary perspective that some kind of substantial kind change would seem to be happening, like the Peter Decay or the Darwinian theory of species. So what should we say about this? The metaphysics, the medieval mystery and also from contemporary metaphysics and all that, if you like, is the metaphysical question. Can we somehow reconcile these different decisions? Well, one way forward I think that helps is to deny that there are any individualism at all. But that is not to undermine essentialism. You can still see that there are natural kinder senses or general essence in the sense of the second view of the vital line. But you deny that there are individualism or the first option redundant. So, Socrates's humanity is shared by all of us as humans. We all share the same natural kind essence in this sense. And my reading of the Irish and tedious scholarship is that Irish and void, perhaps Irish and void would have been sympathetic to this option that there are just general essences and we all share the same kind essence in this sort of sense. So, that will help you get some way to accommodate this kind change. But still, if essences are beautiful in the sense that certainly Irish and void seem to have helped, how could species change all the time? How could we accommodate evolution in this type of picture? That doesn't immediately get solved with your abandon of individual essences because the kind itself seems to change all the time. So, how could you possibly do this? I think that it does solve the beta decay problem you would just deny that individual assets have something like an individual essence. What happens there is one member of a given kind goes out of existence and another member of another kind comes into existence. No violation of essentially principle need. Well, I suggest that there's an answer to this question as well and you must, somebody do a broader question but that's a good question if you like related to Irish to be an imminent universe or Irish to be a universe that needs to be instantiated to exist. So, I think this is my last slide so I'm getting done in 15 minutes. So, if we've got natural kinds to be substantially inverse also I'm trying to not carry in there all right as I do and as E.J. Lowell famously did as well and I think we can say that we're simply so much. These kinds can't exist without instances so you don't have any kinds without instances. Armstrong calls this principle instantiation so it's also featured elsewhere in contemporary metaphysics. Now, that gives us a problem for for those kinds because you don't have dinosaurs where there's no instances anymore that kind seems to have come without our existence but as Lowell puts it somewhere it shouldn't be conceiving an existing in time you should really take a four-dimensional picture of these kinds. Their instances exist in time but the kinds themselves do not exist in time so as long as you have an instance of a kind at some point in the past or in the future you can say that that kind exists in a sense that we're interested in here and in that line of thought we should conceive natural kinds such as biological species international. Now, I suggest that's where the Aristotelian essentialist or Aristotle for that matter has the answer to the problem of Darwinian biology because each of the species presumably has the same origin assuming that we're dealing with one evolutionary tree and if we accept that then no matter speaking there's just one kind of being it's a member of that same kind and it's in the essence of that kind that it evolves over time in the way that it does but it doesn't change as such it's to be conceived four dimensionally so if it changes over time it does change over time in a matter of speaking but if in an eternalist a four dimensionless picture you shouldn't have to be worried about that question, of course now the question of course is is this type of four dimensionless picture compatible with Aristotle's or Aristotle's picture I don't know what the right answer to this is Aristotle has conflicting passages on whether the future is open or not I was recently in a conference where this very question was debated from both ends so Yari Kanko claims that any kind of seeming open future there is just a epistemic modality so far as disagree now I don't mean to have an answer to that question but I think that this is an interesting case of the history coming in the science coming in and contemporary methods coming in and we can make some progress by bringing these views together in an interesting way shall we go straight to Jane if there are precise questions on this we can also I don't know I'll get to some more more general things than that people might forget about species and Darwin but it's as you like Yari has a specific question on this talk well ok thank you for mastermind this and for also giving us I mean the reason I'm here in Alexander's fear as far as I understand is that we are an institute where philosophers of science and historians of philosophy don't always talk to each other though I'm very happy that this happens I I have decided basically to just make some general comments and remarks about what this metaphysics that as Kevin said Thomas is one of the most what it has to say not for us as philosophers as we are very much on now but just for my own profession which is basically history of philosophy I don't make big claims about whether kind or eternal today in biology I have no clue no no my ambition is to just make as good as possible interpretation of texts of the past so let me start first with one thing I thought because I have discovered you work a few years ago already and as you might all have seen two years ago all European news agencies came up with good news for especially our Finnish colleagues because for the 8th year in a row Finnish people were declared the happiest people by the world happiness report the Danes were not far if you were not far and the Belgians didn't do that badly 8 years that's almost what separates us from the publication of Tuomas Tarko's introductions to metaphysics the relation is not causality we all know that but there is clearly I would say from my point of view something refreshing and optimistic in your project just compare it with what some of the most prominent representatives of the angry and depressed old continental nations have to say about metaphysics over the major part of the 20th century oh sorry for that to give you my little handout let's just get it through I don't know if they're enough I keep on them sorry so just compare it with what some of the most prominent representatives of the angry and depressed old continental nations have to say about metaphysics France in particular was downgraded in the report this year angry people these days mainly seem to speak German or French himself famously claimed text number 3 that we must disconnect everything metaphysical I translate this has to be completely restored because it only leads to a degradation a degradation of scientific reality and thereby jeopardizes the very project of a theory of knowledge which should not be about imposing our concepts to the world but trying to receive the structure of the world itself two decades later as you know his most famous student and definitely an angry white man turned the central idea of who sells theory of knowledge into a full-fledged historical program given that metaphysics was both at the heart and the top of classical European philosophy since ancient Greece one had now to work towards I quote text 4 destroying the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieve our first ways of determining the nature of being the program of destruction went paradoxically hand in hand with a systematic reconstruction of the emergence, development systematization, transformation and decay of metaphysics from Aristotle to Nietzsche rarely has an author dedicated so much time to reconstruct something he hates certainly a reason for depression and angriness the strong impact of Heidegger on certain strands of post-war philosophy especially in francophone lands and now in the Far East has led to a continuous application of this protocol and has provided us with a number of studies on the historical constitution of metaphysics from Neoplatonism to the Middle Ages in particular we have spoken about Avicenna I mean the first big studies of Avicenna Heideggerian inspiration I mean the first western Heideggerian Avicenian studies and so I would like to add to that or on studies on potential escaipies people who escape from this horrible narrative some Neoplatonists maybe or some mystics from the Middle Ages Phenomenology finally then could be called the best post-metaphysical philosophy a program that in the case of France for instance has been pursued in the phenomenological reading of just to quote one example text 5 Jean-Luc Marion an undertaking to free presence from any condition or precondition for receiving what gives itself as it gives itself Phenomenology therefore attempts to complete metaphysics and indissolubly to bring it to an end since over 20 years now books on not the end of metaphysics but the end of the end La fin de la fin since now it is assumed that metaphysics is dead we should stop writing about its illness but develop a new philosophy freed from it capable of abandoning all the evils and temptations of objectification and reification now I am as you know a historian of mainly medieval and post-medieval scholastic philosophy as Kevin has recalled which is a tradition famed for having coined the vocabulary of ontology and which also ventured into the meta word game inventing new sciences meta logic meta logica and meta ethics meta etica but alas I have not so far found meta ontologies nor meta metaphysics I will try however not to be an angry historian of philosophy and therefore believe we can learn something from the general program of Tuomas' meta metaphysics as a methodology for practicing history of philosophy let me start with just reminding those of you who don't know I know I have some maybe some students also here two of the most general statements about meta metaphysics philosophy given by Tuomas which I have reproduced here in text one and two meta metaphysics is the study of the foundations and methodology of metaphysics whereas meta ontology leaves exclusively with the study of existence quantification ontological commitment meta metaphysics and compasses these areas but also broader issues as you have shown right now I would like for the sake of opening the room for discussion address very briefly two questions highlighting both what I believe are the virtualities but also perhaps the limitations or doubts I might have about what this approach can yield for my own sub branch of history of philosophy and I will address them for discussion the first question is about whether meta metaphysics can free us from the implicit normativity of historical reconstruction and the second about the way meta metaphysics can treat the problem of historicity and your presentation today gave us a good example concerning the first point I believe that the great number of historical debates about the history of metaphysics have indeed been plagued by implicit normative statements about what the proper object of metaphysics should be or what the proper way of doing metaphysics should be and hence how bad other metaphysical traditions who do not do that are so example if you are a neobladonist then of course meta metaphysics is not about being but about god and if you do ontology you are just playing with words and not grasping reality if you are a scotist so followers of jondon scotus general metaphysics can only be about being it's famous transcendental properties it's in text 5, text 6 the famous text by scotus and god can then only become a part this is even about method if you are a humanist then if you are here in text 8 l'ouvain example from a l'ouvain humanist then you believe metaphysics should help you to reach the sky and happiness jocé-cléchtove metaphysics is a supernatural art which leads us to celestial contemplations with the help of the inferior sciences I don't know if you promise that to us but certainly in the context of cléchtove who was a low country humanist at the same time or a few years later if you were a Calvinist or a protestant you certainly did not believe this was the case metaphysics could not bring happiness lord bliss and you should stitch to what they call finally the catholicity catholicity of things that is the universal predicates and transform ontology into something that has nothing to do with God at all famous quote here from the definition Leibniz would inherit from ontology is text 9 for your memory the famous statement ontologia est ciencière de haricots et nihilo the most successful historical metaphysical systems in history have usually been those that have to some point managed to compatibilise several of these perspectives one can of course hear things of avicenna an islamic tradition and it is certainly also one of the appeals, a century long appeal of tombs in the west I gave you also for memory the famous prologue of Aquinas' commentary on the metaphysics which is an interesting text because he gives three different ways of understanding the first things, God common being or first causes and this means that you can from on the basis of this text have a very strong teocentric reading of Aquinas' metaphysics which is good for some or a very ontological reading which is also a way that has been followed in history and I think you can say the same about avicenna's metaphysics who had basically also in the islamic tradition itself followers who actually read him really in a very neoblatonic way and of course others may need in a very ontological way so I think the successful systems are those that actually allow these multiple readings now against these narratives I believe metaphysics downplays or helps us to downplay these normative claims from the side of historians rather than enshrining one specific position as an historical absolute and the correct perception of metaphysics existential interpretation of Aquinas transcendental thought, criticism according to Kant and these are the only proper ways to do philosophy right I think the method you defend is freeing us from this normative statement because you invite us basically to sketch always the different possible position that are available for a specific philosophical problem you give in your book for instance you say that the debate about ontological commitment we should in the whole debate about ontological commitment I advise this chapter to students because it's very clear we should systematically identify four metaphysical positions which cannot simply be ordered like in a chronological historical order but which are all structurally possible solutions ontological realism ontological anti-realism deflationnism and conventionalism these are all claims from us metaphysical positions because they assume a certain type of relationship between mind and world or on the foundations of concepts whereas realists would happily confess to be metaphysicians conventionalists or nominalists in general would usually vigorously protest against such a denomination and call themselves anti metaphysical that's why we have difficulties with words of philosophy to talk about nominalistic metaphysics now you prove that we can talk of course about nominalistic metaphysics from a metaphysical point of view because conventionalism or nominalism of course has certain fundamental assumptions and that is what the metaphysics is basically trying to analyse so by showing that even what does not classically count as metaphysical relies on certain types of assumptions the shift from the metaphysical anti metaphysical alternative to a meta metaphysical perspective is I believe a very good tool for research now just shortly so I am not talking shortly to my second part of my question which is perhaps a more open question as such I think that the metaphysical approach methodology seems also to share certain elements which have been popular in certain countries in the history of philosophy in particular structuralism they have shared with structuralism a certain I would call it anti historicist conviction and I would like to have your opinion on that especially we can use the example you gave I say anti historicist not anti historical because just in the case study you gave we can easily make these authors we can dialogue with those historical authors but now I am not talking about anti historicist anti historicist in the sense that the metaphysical outlook rather gives the impression that similar forms of realism or anti realism can pop up at different moments of history rather than assuming what a historicist would say they actually do not have anything in common even if they look similar they actually do not have anything in common the advantage of such a timeless approach which I think is at the core of the whole tradition that does no metaphysics is that it justifies of course to treat past authors not as purely antiquarian objects of interest but as true partners in discussion my doubt however my doubt that one can voice is whether metaphysics can remain sufficiently attentive to historical differences in certain fundamental metaphysical positions is metaphysics compatible with some form of historicist claim or does it reject it altogether I am not thinking here of course about the historicism of the angry German science history nor about the angry Neil Thomas narrative of decline and fall of western metaphysics I am thinking here just give this one example and it will please somebody in the room I think a more happy form of historicism as it was for instance practiced in pre-war Oxford by Collingwood although it is a very understated form of happiness as the happiness of the bridge upper class is nevertheless I think rather happiness happy form of historicism in the sense that it is completely or largely devoid of the romantic longing for a lost age that would be much better and disdain for our contemporary age but it does make one strong claim namely that metaphysics is and I think I gave also here quote 11, 12 and 13 metaphysics quote 11 is a certain class of historical facts which Collingwood then defines who calls absolute presupposition the key example he gives for such absolute presuppositions defined as one which stands text 12 relatively to all questions to which it is related as a presupposition never as an answer are for instance all the statements about causality and that is something one can relate to contemporary discussions in metaphysics about grounding causality dependence Collingwood argues that the different senses of causation we use for instance are themselves historical fact and therefore an absolute presupposition is not just let's my last quote 13 a presupposition innate in the human mind but it belongs it's a nice formula to the mental furniture of a certain age which can be long or short depending on the thesis now I think your example here you gave today is actually really fitting because if you ask whether substantial universals exist in time and you deny the fact that kinds do exist in time but you accept that the instances exist in times is of course as you have hinted at the end also a commitment to a certain conception of time and that conception of time whether it's an open future or a closed future for instance would be I think an absolute presupposition and that absolute presupposition is it and that's my question it's a Collingwood in question is it just a former possibility of a human mind ok or is it something that is rooted in a historical culture civilization cosmologie which perhaps we do not really understand now because what we extract from Aristotle or Avicenna is just one specific thing the example you gave that we all part of one kind is of course linked to creationist metaphysics in Avicenna which we don't care about when we talk about natural kinds today for instance so that is in a certain way the question I would have so let me finish and again in the paper I read today's ago about the happiness of the Finns a colleague from the University of Helsinki explained that the Finns were so happy I quote because they have a more attainable understanding of what a successful life is compared to the German and the French so that might be a very interesting claim also about our practice of philosophy making and history of philosophy making is less ambitious than the discussion of ancient or medieval or early modern position might yield better results than having this idea that of course there is some unique perfect form that has been either forgotten or has to be reclaimed so my question is for the discussion with Thomas and with the people around here so what would be a reasonable to quote that researcher attainable metaphysical program in the history of philosophy B from the high ambitions of not only reconstructing but also interpreting the concepts or propositions we studied in their own historical framework or rather as some atemporal floating entities I would be very curious to have your opinion about this and on whether metaphysics has some place for historicism or whether we should reasonably just get away with it thank you so position j'agrange pour le stock so arexom so I'm sorry but anything became square and otherwise so I will say it's pretty close in fact so I'm happy so I'm not gonna be your engine so so I have been a philosopher of science for a long time for a very long time en faisant un grand plan ontologique et seulement jusqu'à très récemment nous commençons à dire nous faisons des metaphysiques et maintenant c'est institutionnel, il y a une société de metaphysiques de science donc quand il est arrivé moins de 10 ans plus tard, ce sont mes gens donc je suis allé sur le site de récemment pour dire si ils ont changé leur mind parce que je n'ai pas... je ne pouvais pas être... c'est bon donc sur le site de récemment, ils disent qu'il y a une science de metaphysique la science de metaphysique, l'investigation d'intérêts ontologiques, les soucis les risques d'amélioration de la science, etc en dessinant sur une grande range de literatures, ils disent oh, c'est mes gens mais le prochain paragraphe juste crache tout le garbage intense, le garbage néo-hélien le garbage a priori il s'explicit sur le site de récemment il n'est pas élevé c'est juste après ce paragraphe donc si tu fais ça, tu ne fais pas la science de metaphysique et où ça ne vient pas? c'est bizarre nous passons par... et c'est le claim normatif que tu parles nous passons par, nous ne faisons pas la science de metaphysique nous sommes le seul à faire la science de metaphysique donc bien sûr le garbage, tu sais ça mais pour les gens qui ne sont pas proches de l'anglophone il y a eu un bunch de gros books qui ont fait le débat le débat de metaphysique dans la physique, à un moment la metaphysique, en tant que concernant le monde naturel devrait regarder la physique mais pas seulement la physique la théorie de physique théories période tout le reste garbage tout doit aller, ton collègue tu sais la physique naturel exclut tout l'autre mais par ce que nous devons dire la metaphysique qui est motivée à l'exclusive par l'attente d'unifier les hypothèses et les théories qui ont été sérieusement faits par la science de metaphysique pour les raisons à être expliquées ce n'est pas très clair dans le livre nous prenons la vue qu'un autre genre de metaphysique peut être regardé légitimement à tout c'est pas... c'est pas... il n'est pas d厉li ils sont complètement malin on continue ensemble parsoigner le projet de metaphysique naturel éventuellement céduler la vue que la prétention de connaissance compétissant dans notre science terciale n'est pas basée pour cela vous devez être un réaliste scientifique quelles sont les théories scientifiques La compétition avec le réalisme scientifique n'est pas même d'accord, c'est basé. Donc, nous passons d'une non-métaphysique dans la science falsifiée à un monde très homogène, qui est normatif. Et évidemment, pas beaucoup de gens ont lu votre livre, ou peut-être que vous l'avez lu, mais il y en a beaucoup. Donc, je vais vous montrer 4 cas où cette approche normative dans l'histoire falsifiée, fait les problèmes difficiles d'understand. La première, je suis désolé, c'est seulement en français, parce que je n'ai pas trouvé la transition d'Imménie du Châté. Mais je n'ai pas l'air d'y aller. Imménie du Châté, une grande mathematician du 18e siècle, qui a été la meilleure rôpe, un grand livre d'institution dans la physique, dans laquelle elle a argumenté, elle a essayé de faire le sens dans la position menthaphysique entre l'Imménie et Newton, et elle s'agresse beaucoup avec l'Imménie, non, avec l'Imménie philosophiquement, mais synthétiquement avec Newton, parce qu'elle est une d'eux de la seule personne à cette époque que je pouvais lire le Brunki Pia, dans les détails auto-understands. Et elle s'agissait très fortement que la loi de la Draftation de Newton n'a pas expliqué, parce qu'elle n'est pas fatiguée d'expliquer. Mais il y a quelques années, après 3 ans, elle a traduit, elle a traduit, la seule transition française, par contre, il n'y a pas de transition depuis 1755. C'est un point intéressant, directement. Elle dit, d'ailleurs, l'attraction, c'est génial d'expliquer tout, parce que c'est un modélité légère. Donc, bien sûr, si vous êtes réaliste, si vous regardez les théories pour avoir l'autologie, ce mouvement est impossible d'understand. Et mon claim est que cette approche normative n'a plus d'étonnement d'understand ce problème. Et vous voyez que probablement, ce qui s'est passé, n'est pas que tout de suite, Émilie Duchartlet a compris Newton. Elle a compris Newton mieux que personne d'autre. D'ailleurs, c'est la source de... Voltaire. C'est la source de Voltaire pour Newton, parce que Newton, Voltaire, n'est pas capable d'avoir rien de scientifique. Mais il défend l'esprit anglais contre l'esprit français. Parce qu'Émilie Duchartlet explique pour lui toutes les parties. Donc, mon claim est que c'est un mouvement philistique, pas le scientifique. Elle n'a pas commencé à comprendre mieux Newton. Elle a juste échoué ses interpretations de modélité. Elle s'est passée d'un monde mécanique, probablement un monde homologique, où l'équation pourrait identifier l'esprit de modélité dans le monde. Un autre exemple, qui est plus grave. Ce gars que nous étudions tout le temps a écrit un petit mot magnifique. Et il est un très, très bon readeur de Newton. Parce que si vous ré-Newtons, il y a 3 livres dans le Pinguipia. Le premier, il y a le 3 fameux ce qu'on appelle Newton's law aujourd'hui. Newton's law, inertia, definition of force, action or reaction. Newton calls them axiom. Il n'a pas call them laws, parce qu'ils ne sont pas laws in his mind. In his mind, they are the framework of all possible mechanics. And it's only in the book 3 where we discuss evitational law, which is a law in our world. So there's some bizarre original text that not a lot of people saw because they, not a lot of people can read Newton the text. Can can't read Newton the text. He understood and he tried to make sense of this. This is completely forgotten. Because if you read every theory gives you your ontology, it's just a you read the theory and suddenly the ontology is hitting you in on the head. These nuances are not there. You need someone that has some sensibility about different program of metaphysics. I'm not arguing for his program, I'm just saying. The fact that it was not a realist helped him to understand his nuance and the modality in this one that you said. On what there is the famous paper of 1948 ontological commitment. Every people doing metaphysics of science, when I asked them why are you just defined to read the ontology just in the language of the theory? They say on what there is 1948. These are the two last sentences of what there is in 1948. For among the various conceptual schemes one, the femininity state place is epistemological priority so one was a strong emperce that viewed from within the aesthetic conceptual scheme the ontologies of physics objects and mathematical objects are myth that they read the same. They are myth. The quality of myth however is relative in this case to the epistemological point of view. So it's a better myth than the gods because we can make cars with that myth and laser. This is un metaphysical position. Il a une certain conception close to nominalistic but I'm still puzzled about how they read these papers. Even in the last example even inside their teams, that's Simon Sonder famous philosopher of physics from Oxford, he wrote the various important paper on quantum particles objects where he argues using coins coins techniques that quantum particles are not absolutely discernible. A property usually considered necessary for individuality. However, fermions not bosons but fermions or weakly discernible therefore they have some individuality in a certain sense. They are individualized by their relation. And here there's a job should we conclude that there are no individuals in quantum mechanics which is same because we have a framework or should we revise our framework and say ok, the concept of individuals that was really grounded in the organism in Aristotle should be abandoned and transformed. But this choice is not obvious it's a choice about what is the methodology of metaphysics. Of course all the realists chose this one lady man for example chose this one they said ok, the concept of individuals chose from Aristotle garbage we should take this one forgetting that in fact most of the discussion about individuals in the history of philosophy are organisms which are very specific kind of individuals so almost a conclusion so if we take metaphysics weird papers so if we take metaphysical project and we divide them in three of course classification is bad but it helped me to think and I cannot think without the graph so that's me ok so here it's where is the main epistemic authorities in your metaphysical project is it science is it common sense or manifest image is it in the Aristotle group stuff what is your favorite method and what is the goal of the project revisionary metaphysics or descriptive metaphysics so these guys are saying that this this part of the of the room is the only one that is good and they partically dislike traditional metaphysics are clearly revisionary or descriptive and they dislike this one because this is the campus or neo-agilean however there's other possibility even inside people inside the themes that people take science as the main there's other possibility than this one even without discussing the other one inside people taking science as the main authority epistemic authority you could do something else you could do descriptive metaphysics study the scheme of how a human being or understanding basic categories like that neurologist is doing some kind of applied metaphysics to the mind or you could be a theory it's a progressive deduction of metaphysics of science to a series of step or you could even get interested in a weirder stuff like Denmark the physicists that published that everything is a mathematical structure and we are a mathematical structure trying to understand another mathematical structure why not but obviously he has another metaphysics another mythology of metaphysics and why exclude them at the beginning of the inquiry I don't understand and now you cannot go to the society of metaphysics of science because obviously I should not be there I am not a realist I am on the worst side of history so that's the normative aspect that I find probable but I like your approach question no take your free for a nice foundation so open the discussion with the west I have to say something thank you very much really fascinating talks did you coordinate beforehand because you have the same point so I am reassured it's very good but first let me say as the former president of the society of metaphysics of science I wasn't aware of that you are very welcome I don't think it's an exclusive bunch but the philosophers of physics may have strong beliefs but I wasn't aware of that anyway so I mean the normative point is really interesting that you both make and I think that there's something more we can build on that I am tempted to bring in an example which I should say is something that my PhD student was working on metaphysics and metaethics and he is developing this interesting point which I think is related to what you are saying as well that there are those views in metaphysics that are de la nature or perhaps anti-realist and might say that maybe inspired by Amy Thomas or something like this what we are doing metaphysics we are really doing something else but also what the contemporary metaphysics are doing where we should be for instance améliorative projects or political projects and contemporary metaphysics of race or gender we see a lot of this and that sort of motivation is influencing a lot of this sort of emerging metaphysical tradition but pyro makes an interesting point that to say that you are going to have to make normative assumptions as well just as you both pointed out in these other examples because if you don't have any real normative principles that you can appeal to then you can't make those decisions or what metaphysical position is better so if you want to have a normative project it better be based on some normative values so it turns out maybe you have to be realist about normative properties in order to do deflationist metaphysics that's guided by normative goals so again you're making you're taking a minimum metaphysical position no matter what you call it which is guided by normative principles so I think Gabe you asked whether we can get around to these normative principles in some ways but maybe this suggests to me that maybe we cannot get around but maybe we should just acknowledge them better and now here from you there are implicit normative principles like this guiding a lot of the contemporary metaphysics of science already anyway and if that filters through what you might do in history of force then again you've influenced by it so maybe if the study board should be here that's part of the metaphysical picture as well which I haven't really acknowledged myself in my work because I often assume the kind of rears approach just to get the discussion go on so I'm fascinated by this from part of you but I'm not claiming that metaphysics is without norms because every metaphysical project is normative in a certain sense but if you acknowledge it and you understand that the metaphysical project is more like a posture like a stance then then a project aiming at truth where you could compare things that are close enough we can debate inside the metaphysics of science what is the best way to proceed but maybe about other kind of project of metaphysics we just have to let's see how your sense can go and we cannot really compare because we don't have any meta norms for me there are some cutting wood there are some thinking about deep deep culture stuff but to my knowledge it's not about the metaphors in metaphysics norms that every kind of metaphysical project could agree on except we're looking for the object of reality so much you agree I don't know if I agree with the idea that because we're not talking about the same thing he's talking about the true picture of reality as you said I'm talking about the true picture of the past which is dead so of course all historical metaphysicians make normative claims that's why we remember them ok my point was rather what should we do as historians in front of these normative claims and I think a big part of our history of philosophy has been choosing one of these past positions as the good normative claim and therefore all the rest is either evil or at the worst or at the best just an anticipation or something and so we embark on our historical enterprises which are very time consuming as you know you talk all really does with sometimes very thin presuppositions I think so I perfectly agree of course a historical author makes a normative claim in the sense that he or she believes that the system he or she depends is better than the other one is a better explanation should we endorse these claims and I think a big part of 20th century historians of philosophy have done that and I've always been annoyed by that that's why I found the perspective you offer as quite refreshing in a certain way because you start you may claim of course yourself I mean you defend a realist position as basically the most sensible but before doing that specific answers different metaphysical positions can give about a specific problem I think that was a bit what you wanted to say too is that in the tradition of metaphysical science you're not an outcast if you're not committed to that specific type of realism advocated by Esfeldt or others and I think as a methodology and I use that a bit in my own course design when I do historical courses I think it's good to use a approach of the different positions that are possible and then of course you pick and choose the one you think is the most sensible but as a historian as a historian you should not do that I mean that's my own position as a historian I try to refrain from doing that I try always to reconstruct the positions by saying well that's the advantage of that position that's the flaw that's the disadvantage of that one but I'm not trying now to say that this one is better than the other one because by doing that you also commit yourself to not seeing what other positions are potentially what have to say so I think of course I agree that you cannot completely go away from normative claims but my question was really whether the historian should do it or not and if we can practice what I sometimes call myself a very empiricist or empirical history of philosophy we're trying not to make these normative claims as a non historian I think it makes sense but I don't know of course the society of metaphysics of science they want to propose ontological claim about the objectivity the object of truth whatever that is at least they try and when you were interested by the problem of species of course you were interested because biology is struggling to have a good concept of species right now and we are trying to solve not the same for when we really never stop going in the arts of the world well I mean solving is a strong just to contribute so I mean if we try to get as neutral position as possible in the historical law in the contemporary realm then my appeal is to that type of method that you mentioned in passing which is mapping the possibilities so if you're noisy you're mapping the possibilities and about a given historical author or about the object of nature of reality if you're in the business of mapping the possibilities then the normative point is in where you take a stand and say well I think this is the best one of those possibilities I'm going to commit to that one but you could retain a lot of neutrality without if you do not make that commitment if you just say that you're in the business of mapping the possibilities of space you know and leave it to others you know all my papers would I don't take stands and I do some kind of graph of position rather than oversight it so obviously in the community there's a need for classification of different classification different approach it's true that now in philosophy we're used to take position especially in the end of the world and the strongest the weirdest the better you care well polemical like my colleague James Ladevin and Don Ross yeah it's just a polemical position but of course it's the normative position of this take it but if they don't call it that and they're the one they are against it's scared yeah I'll see if there's a lot of time oh ok yeah, not surprising you have a question very stimulating thank you first of all I make a distinction between ontology and metaphysics I tend to use the word ontology to refer to the to the science of what there is you know and this is given by our best science under a scientific realist interpretation now metaphysics is is something that this with the existing entities the collection of which with the experience is more genius and I certainly by embrace the project you know of developing a metaphysics inspired by science and you took the example of the concept of individuality and then I am sympathetic with the revisionist conception which is induced by some results and quantum mechanics which is after all a very successful theory but then as you say there is some leeway in making choice and taking the stance then if you have some leeway and you have the possibility of taking several postures or stances with respect to metaphysical orientations because what is individual that's really a metaphysical issue it's not going to tell you immediately or even entirely what counts as an individual so if this is correct and I think this is correct then how can you define a naturalistic metaphysics in a strong sense because then there are some as you said also there are norms coming into the picture so every stance our question is linked with some specific norms and so the connection of those norms and postures with experience is not naturalistic anymore I mean it's not science so it's something which goes beyond ontology and which is generally I think metaphysical in this sense so I think you can you can have a different strong sense that you would read a metaphysics from the current scientific theories you might be you must I think to be inspired by the scientific research that science as such will not tell you what an individual is but it can also show you that well if you want to keep the notion of individual in metaphysics there are some things that contradict science but on the other hand science isn't going to do to tell you what exactly an individual or should be an individual or should be the right concept of an individual which is a metaphysical to a metaphysical concept I'm spawning because I had the exact same discussion with Jonathan Brogd but you're absolutely right I write mine also you're absolutely right Michel the distinction between ontology and metaphysics is not as present as it should in the agricultural world the philosophical world so the discussion of ontology in a certain framework and the question of metaphysics is often conflated so I think we should bring back this distinction it would help the debate a lot but in that case I'm quite I'm not sure that my colleague but I'm quite agreeing with you that the naturalistic ontology ok but the naturalistic metaphysics it's very difficult for me to understand what exactly it would be except some kind of study of natural language of the conceptual scheme of the human species or I don't know something else on the other hand I see how when you're already convinced by naturalistic ontology the project of naturalism is mostly in James City men and all these people they are using the word metaphysics but in fact they are mostly they are mostly discussing about ontology in the old sense they I'm not sure they would like to stop there say yeah we're discussing ontology but the notion of individuality modality maybe we should not have too strong claim about modality that we should not stop there even if the grounding of the discussion is less and less clear especially for example structural realism ontic structural realism when they have to to answer the claim where is the modality in your stuff that was difficult to get that from a scientific perspective maybe not impossible more difficult I guess though when the metaphysics re-entends the structural realism picture because it is part of at least the way James defends it that there is objective model structure or the structure of that quite the art of saying but that's where the view differs from someone like Macross who doesn't want to bring the modality in where they fail on the other hand that's a good case because when James we argue against shape saying that if you don't commit to any kind of modality in fact you cannot distinguish physical structure from mathematical structure and there's all argument from Russell with that word forget he said ok so let's add modality now ha ha ha if I add modality I know that a physical structure but you see how the argument was was built it's not it was not naturalistic it was an old philosophical arguments from philosophy of language of 1910 that says or you commit that every structure is mathematical or you add something to patch patch your theory but it's not naturalistic in the method it's more debate of metaphysics that we can recognize between cost benefits extraordinary power and things like that values debate among values yes but on the other hand when you know that I defend the metaphysics of causal powers I think you know powers and dispositions of experience I know that there are things I can do and things I can't do I'm pretty sure of that the ones I die very quickly so if you have the notion of potential or power well you have like you know you have everything but the notion of power is pretty much I think connected with experience it's naturalistic in that sense it's not scientific but it's you know you can be an empiricist philosopher we can be an empiricist without being naturalist and so I think you can make a version a rather soft version of naturalism which is pretty reasonable reasonable empiricist position so so there's an interesting I'm going to I'm going to refer to another PhD student working on this aspect looking at looking at Von Krossen and the empiricist project there but a key part of that project is arguably trying to to deny un observable so so we don't refer to the un observable or we don't include those in our research presumably not and and we can be naturalistic so I think you're right that you can be naturalistic in a sense well you can be an empiricist in a sense but not be naturalistic in that but I mean I'm interested in how you understand naturalism because many times when I teach this to students it doesn't really mean anything because there's many people who are ready to be natural now everyone says that they're naturalists nowadays it's almost a rule unless they're empiricists you're not naturalists but I can say that I'm naturalist and I think that any part of reason needs to go on so I'm curious what do you think about naturalism because there's a history so I've seen featuring in history philosophy that there's an instance of how we understand naturalism from there in a way that isn't quite so because it stands like it's just whatever possible sorry I was just trying to discover a tech mark I didn't just apologize because I I was interested I didn't know it seemed a quite radical case interesting sorry to get your question I don't work for you in a spot but I'm just I thought it might happen to this site So yeah I was also yeah of course well again It goes back to the question I had whether the concept of nature that we use is really always the same it's not it's not c'est si la religion est compatible avec la forme de l'historisme, ou pas, éventuellement. L'idée de la nature... C'est très compliqué, c'est une question que je veux dire, parce qu'on tente de travailler sur... Le standard narrative, pour nous, a toujours été que la science financière était la même chose, parce qu'on avait un concept commun de nature, qui était itself, normative, dans le sens que l'observation correcte de la nature devinait être une compréhension correcte de... C'est un concept comme les pouvoirs, par exemple. C'est parce qu'on voit que les cuissons et le spring font des pouvoirs, que l'on commence à développer les idées et les dispositions des pouvoirs, etc. Et donc on croit sur l'objectif, c'est le standard sort de la narrative, on croit sur l'objectif, parce qu'ils sont, à un certain point, liés à une vision naïve de l'univers. Mais maintenant, et vous savez que c'est mieux que moi, parce que vous êtes plus en philosophie de nature que j'ai jamais eu, dans les derniers 50 ans, personne ne s'est pas appris sur cette narrative, par exemple, je ne sais pas, vraiment, peut-être de neo-con, neo-conserv. Personne ne s'est pas appris sur cette méthode, par exemple, par exemple, les anciens, ils n'avaient pas juste une observation de l'ontologie, dans le sens que leur ontologie n'était pas juste un concept de la vision naïve de l'univers, mais c'était une ontologie qui était en soi, alors vous pouvez, vous avez le débat. Je l'ai linké avec le gramma, je l'ai linké avec les politiques, c'est la toute nouvelle de l'âge et de la metaphysique. Je pense que l'histoire, c'est vraiment un concept de fiction que vous utilisez et comment vous l'entendez, si vous l'entendez comme quelque chose, ou comme quelque chose constructif, et que vous avez toutes les différentes options, si vous assumez que c'est constructif par la langue, ou si c'est constructif par les pratiques sociaux, ce qui est très fort. Ce qui se passe dans une très grosse direction, donc à ce point de vue, je préfère beaucoup plus votre approche formale. Mais je vous dis que toutes les choses peuvent être concevées comme un projet naturel, si vous arrêtez la conception de la nature. Je pense que c'est probablement correct, et c'est pourquoi la notion n'est pas très utile mais c'est probablement correct. Mais à l'autre end, les choses sont changées. Par exemple, pour les empiricistes, nous n'avons jamais parlé de modèlité. Et la modèlité était une banque. Et les sounds start from agentivity, abstract from agentivity, et nous avons le concept of woodward of causality, which is clearly abstracted from agentivity and making it abstract. And it's not purely observable. You start from a first person perspective, you abstract and you get to this abstract modality inside a very empiricist tradition. Woodward. Woodward. James Woodward. James Woodward. But also my PhD student that wrote model empiricist, the model empiricism book saying that, based on planification of experience, when you do an experience, you expect something, you try something, you're not just observing and hoping for the best. And there's constitutive of these choices, some model claim, implicitly. And so surprising for empiricists that were really allergic to any kind of modality. Now these seems to be empiricist's mean to get to modality. Maybe it's not the modality that James Woodward would like, but it's surprising that inside these stances, these stances evolved. Like, when Eddard Biby was doing the Merci-Sher, she said, okay, there's the Lewis stance, there's this stance, then this stance, and they develop a lot in the history of philosophy from their founders because people develop them, improve arguments, but the problem is compare stances among each other. Inside the stances we can discuss, but when you go to another stance, how an Eoccantiel could discuss with a realist, probably there's nothing to say. Except, yeah, I have more explanatory power. What is explanatory power? It's inside my stance. One question, is that they have questions. Sorry, not so important, but I was intrigued by something that we said before, about when you were describing kind of a more neutral way of presenting your positions by just talking about the advantage and disadvantages but not committing or something like that. But how can an advantage and a disadvantage be disadvantage, how can this analysis be done in a kind of a neutral way? Because if you that's really momentary for a stance, and there's always and also like going to this phase of possibilities without choosing considering something a possibility it's probably because there's some momentary principle that opens up this logical space of things. So while I am very affected to the more neutral approach I wonder how feasible it is and certainly for somebody like me who is interested in non classical logics where even on what is logically possible you can have discussions. Is it, I mean is this neutrality not just replacing some kind of dogmatism by some other one that is then supposed to be more general but therefore also less defensible or something less flexible because you have like gotten to this point where you see the whole logical space and nothing can be questioned anymore because well now we are just like objectively looking at advantages and disadvantages everywhere from this like super perspective so it's like an open suggestion for reflection to all human but triggered by something general sense. Well thank you it's a good point and it's actually something sometimes students complain about me and then they come up at the end of the course and say so where do you stand? Where do you stand? Are you a realist? Are you anti realist? Are you so? Because you're always trying to give the pro and cons so as you know I spent most of my adult life reading schonastics who do all the time pro and cons and then sometimes at the end of the day you don't actually know what they were really saying but you have a lot of good arguments for one position or anything against the other but then you at the end I agree that's why people sometimes well were anti-classic because they said eventually these people don't commit now I think there is one way to answer I mean your question is very it's good in the sense that of course you could say that certain solutions to a given problem are you can either give an answer that there are better solutions than other by using basically epistemic virtues in the sense that well that solution is more economic that solution explains more things that solution doesn't get you into specific troubles I mean that's my mathematicians are very used to that also that solution is more elegant than another one more compelling so either you can just use epistemic virtues narratives but I keep saying and that's why I keep having my little historicist culturalist background coming off from time to time it's also about if you take away just the formal aspect or beauty or elegance or efficiency or theory what does that theory really help you answer as a problem that might not be strictly a philosophical problem and that's why a theory is very often linked to a certain moment in history and maybe sometimes even to a certain culture and maybe even to a certain language or whatever we see a culture is that was my question basically and I think that is sometimes the point that allows us to decide today I take people who look at medieval distinctions between existence and essence for instance historians they look at it very formally and say ok a real distinction not real distinction what's the best possible argument from the point of view of semantics of course a non real distinction is much better ok but how if you ask yourself now as a historian how did that question emerge well then you actually realize that in the 13th century for instance it largely or you never say now so it largely emerged in a discussion with column so with Islamic theology about the question of explaining creation out of nothingness that is a fundamentally non philosophical question or at least it can be philosophical but so then I think you have a point to say which solution is better or not because what the advantage or disadvantage is really objectively in the sense that real distinction for instance was a very efficient way to compatibilize philosophy with a creationist vision of the universe because you will not committing yourself to any internal licenses or you will not committing yourself to any so from that and that's why I keep thinking that I use Colin Good today just as an example but I tend to quite think that we have to have a look at these fundamental presuppositions that sometimes are behind those metaphysical questions when we just we can just extract them as a problem and solve them as a toolbox but actually they are linked to something bigger themselves and that probably gives you an answer about the advantages or disadvantages and that's very important to use when they ask me yeah so what solution is better and I said well if you are a Christian creationist you better take that one but you can take the argument I mean we were talking about species you know why is there today about eternity or not eternity of species I mean come on we have now a huge comeback of discussion scientific discussion about racism of racial differences it's exploding ok and of course gender yeah so that's the elephant in the room behind and of course in general again here that type of question which is outside of the ethereal world of philosophy can't tell you which solution it has more advantages depending what you want really to actually promote I don't know what you think about that but on the same question from a from a slightly different point of view you're absolutely right but it's even before even compare possibilities the fact that you say there are possibilities it's because you think ok I should commit possibilities but you know I was checking because in my last paper that is soon published one of the referees said that makes no sense to commit to possibilities he said he said we commit to constraint and we derive possibilities from constraint what are the constraints on on the metaphysical discourse on the metaphysical different possibilities so we would have to commit to some kind of norm of what is the physics which is we don't know what they could be because we have different positions we try to compare them so it's even worse than what you said to me for me because it's before even comparing the fact that I can say I can identify I can have a claim about what is the possible position except historically saying this one this one up here this one it's because I already come into some kind of norms to say this is a genuine possibility this is a genuine metaphysical project so and by the way the guy arguing that because I'm just checking because it's John diverse on modality and yeah thank you for this anonymous referee that referred to another I didn't know that there's no notion of possibilities without constraint can I jump on as well I'd like both of your your takes on it but but maybe just to continue on this what you call a metanorm I suppose metanorm for metaphysics the constraining of the possibility space if that is a a view that wants to be told now you mentioned non-tasical logics because my first answer is always well you know probably law and order addiction is a good starting point and of course even that goes if you so I directly wanted to give a hardcore yeah I mean look I mean I often I often use that as a starting point because you have to start from somewhere but I acknowledge the possibility of non-tasical logical pluralism of some form but look I mean even non-tasical logics will have axioms will have rulers so so you can everybody has senses yeah so so you're still going to have a set of social momentum so we can at least agree that there are going to be constraints and there could be competing systems of those constraints but if you if you have a wide enough notion of possibility it can it can accommodate these things now I mean then the problem is have you made any progress if everything everything you know everything anything goes well look I mean you still have to whatever framework you're using here to constrain the possibilities you're still going to have to make it compatible with the available evidence so which I I mean comes mainly from science as opposed to just any kind of evidence that you're accepting to your own in your system so then you get into into providing explanations based on on the framework that that you've chosen and those explanations are going to be guided by systemic norms perhaps or criteria maybe we should go on the norms I mean you can you can objectively say that this this this position explains more of the evidence that's that's available if it does so and I suppose another metanorme that I would offer is something like Hawkins razor or if you like Shackler's laser version of that you know doubled by fundamental entities to be honest so you know you can start constructing minimal set of metanormes non you know they're not necessarily stone but you know I think we can make some progress I think also but when you say the constraint of science scientific theories scientific practices scientific experimentation philosopher reluctaries because we don't understand that much but what is the the norm coming from science is it practice? well this is evidence this is net so it's yes and it's pretty much okay your position seems to to sustain that you need a a block work a conception of space time that is a block space time block space time could be understood when I look at the theory as a geometric entity but not in practice in practice you need the clock to measure stuff because you cannot presume in practice in actual measurement that every facts is fixed or dependent of what you did that's super determinism and in that way there's always a moment where you want to say that the fact that I switch the experiment that way has an impact on the result sure but that would be a cost of adopting that kind of four dimensional picture yeah but I'm just saying that even from my point of even if I take science as a strong constraint there's a lot more word that us philosophers were doing because we're just looking at theories we're not looking a lot at scientific practice scientific measurement which also is a source of authority of science, epistemic adult yeah that's true I'm sure Peter looks at that hmm or questions or comments or opinions or metaphysics is good or constraints or constraints then I have my own question if I may so I was I wanted to come back to what Jacob was saying about the the history science meta-metaphysics and the job of history and part of the job of a metaphysician in a way I suppose that the divergence between the term of metaphysics using meta-metaphysics and the contemporaries of using meta-metaphysics is on how you treat historical metaphysicists because if you're a a metaphysician today you're probably trying to have some kind of narrative to support your preferred metaphysical position or if you're trying to if you're more like a BB or a Louis Guy and trying to do equilibrations equilibrations stuff and just sketch the equilibrations you will sketch them with some kind of narrative of how the system used to be I know our history of metaphysics your equilibrations is historically situated now but you're doing the history of metaphysics that you take we'll give to this equilibrations but it's not necessarily the one that used to be the aesthetic position right it's a different equilibrium that you associate with the older one because you have a narrative of history and this way I think there you have a difference of do you respect history in a sense or do you betray it for the purpose of your own work and I think there's a difference here in the mention when Thomas was doing the easy example of using a mission as well for quantum metaphysics I don't know how much it's contributing to this capacity or much of training for to fix quantum hypothesis so in this way it's already historically situated I think in this way at least I don't know if it makes sense or no no it's important to you so I mean there's a lot of that that is okay but I mean what's your last suggestion that what are we doing in cases like the one I presented where we take some supposed textural evidence and we kind of make it contemporary so I mean I'm actually aware of the sort of anachronistic we're reading those classic texts but I think that with the kind of method that I have in mind which we have talked about a little bit there isn't that being a problem with it because if you are just mapping a position in the logical metaphysical space if you like you're saying that well this is a better match with the evidence from contemporary science but it still respects some of the metanormes if you like of that historical author and then the question that I ended up with well which of these metanormes or norms of would be more ways is it a commitment to this type of essentialist framework that denies substantial kind change or is it this adoption of some like four dimensions picture is that from that part of the word so you're tweaking the classic picture and that's anachronistic but you're using all the available evidence that these original historical authors didn't have so you're kind of speculating I mean it is just speculation well what would they say now if they had the evidence available to us that's of course not what historian philosophy usually does from what I see but I see some columns doing that type of work quite interesting bringing contemporary metaphysics to science as well so then you can be upfront about well this is not something that they meant or would have meant and probably in a conference on Abhichan I heard and say that he would be rolling in his grave this proposal which is acknowledged in a way that this is not compatible with that original view but as long as you are upfront about what you're doing I don't see any real problem with that I mean in a way where epistemically limited anywhere we will never know exactly about the historical news I don't meant it as a big problem it's just that it's very cool but we are drawing today using past when you're reading I saw it in the past year in 1926 today I'm interested in the way it was trying to just fit it to a contemporary evidence while I'm drawing a new question that Jacob was asking about can we start with the metaphysics is it really like a real continuity or is it necessarily a historical situation in this sense these are basically questions that I threw in the discussion myself I'm not sure I have a good answer on that but just to go a bit to make a strong claim about why we do that it's not just a pick and chew thing in the sense that's very Oxford style oh I found this great argument in Simplicius do you know that what the hell yeah okay maybe he made some argument about no so I think actually the fact that we go back to this not because we're in a big narrative romantic narrative of science but sometimes we go back to history just because to quote actually the late Finnish great philosopher Simu Knutila whom I had chance to know a bit personally at one point Knutila said he was once asked in a conference why did you start doing this whole work on modalities in medieval philosophy in his very sort of subtle and shy way well it's just because they have a much better logic than we have or at least it's just because they had a much better logic than at least what happens between Descartes and Kant where we know as historians how much logic has been deconstructed and he said well terminus logic had potentialities that have been rediscovered by people like Perse in particular and then of course by the Orgological Atomism in England and then it exploded and that's how the interest in terminus logic came back because we suddenly realized and here we go back again about what the theory can give you outside maybe of the pure philosophical realm well terminus logic medieval terminus logic is just better than any logic textbook of 19th century Germany and all you can speak about France which French post-revolutionary authorities banned logic because they thought it's really leading people to discussions and that's not good for the republic it's not happening, I'm not kidding the recommendations of the French Ministry of Education of the number of polygons was to scrap logic because it's leading to imagine imagine people from the society of metaphysics of science would rule the country and it would work I mean it would be like ostracizing each other all the time no so no actually go back and of course why is that all the new mathematical logic that develops from the 1910s and so on interest suddenly in the working of semantics independently of just psychology as the 19th century psychologist logic did and that suddenly let a lot of people and I think the finish goal in particular was interesting from that point of view to go back to it with fresh eyes and say well we do it because it's actually just better logic than what we do now other example I was hinting at it, I scrapped this little paragraph because I didn't want to be too long I mean what you do also from the pure point of view of medieval philosophy for instance is very close to a certain extent to what Claude Panachiot and people in Quebec who is really the hero of a reconstruction reading of this pure philosophy he says we should just go back in time and look at the best possible theory if it answers questions we have now of course and then we have all the debate about anachronism and so on but I'm sure it did with all the debate about conservation basically because well today we largely have in philosophy of mind course theories of perception and then new cause theories of perception and then you suddenly realize yeah well this whole Descartes thing doesn't work and this whole kind of thing is too complicated we have no proof, scientific proof of the existence of the categories so what do we do with all that oh god, imagine we have a cause of theory of the working of the mind of course we have a bizarre concept of causality and that's why I'm asking are we talking about the same type of causality or are we not just completely mistaken we are not in the field of philosophy people who really hate each other because of that because they say oh yeah look they think there are material theories of intentionality and causal concept formation and others say that's not the point at all they're not looking at that at all they have just the concept of continuous nature but so I think the answer again is a bit what I answered the question is what justifies is to a certain extent maybe an extra philosophical demand when you suddenly realize that in your philosophical toolbox well your own tradition or the recent tradition you've been trained doesn't give you the right tools to answer and that is why history of philosophy can be very refreshing and it's not just a pretty huge thing so it's really about realising that oh yeah I mean it's just when you're trying a process you know you sometimes just try on the wrong road and you don't know how to get out and then you have to park the car and go back and go back in time and take another road you know if I may and I think you could be more pretty to us that you are because the difference it's closer I was writing a paper on there so this morning I really think it's I managed to publish a paper on there so I can die but when I was a physicist what's the point to do that because of course they are so historically straight but in their natural philosophy that is completely useless for so maybe a few ideas from there and when I searched for philosophy especially weird then we think we can be in dialogue with someone of the past like their concept are not situated as much as scientific concepts which is a bizarre position and when I moved to France I discovered historical epistemology which is exactly that which is saying you should never do that because of course every words that these people use have no connection to the one we use except in a very long study about how it changed so we should never never go back to philosophy like we do like we were in dialogue with these people of the class so I don't know because if they are right about concept which is completely situated in a culture maybe we are not using we are only using Aristotle as a toolbox which it's not the way philosophy we think about ourselves we think we are in a continuous project since at least the Greek I am usually careful to say that I use some artistic ideas as an inspiration for I do like I do like the idea of being in dialogue with historical that's part of our community the way we think ourselves so if we were wrong about that that would be a high cost just the person how's your own work at the center received when you go to a center congress well I was part of this conference as a contemporary meditation commenting on scholarship we found lots of continuities but probably that was because it was a sort of very understanding environment trying to bring together a contemporary ok Madame Heslick is an historical work but I mean if we are going to read the historical work in the first place we are going to have to use some conception of the theoretical, philosophical notions that are in play such as essence or what have you just assume that there's no continuity would equally be mistaken because of course we've inherited those notions from this historical scholarship now of course they've changed over time but you know again if we're sort of upfront about those epistemic limitations I don't see anything wrong with being in dialogue with historical alges because we can't be an actual dialogue with them if we can construct an AI model that aspect but you see how the scientists would say there is irregular ruptures in the evolution of concept of word, mass, energy, whatever but there's continuity empirical continuity so they try to save the empirical part but there's a cumulative technology so technology of 16th century they still work they are not as good as today but they still work it's not because everything you believe about the world is false according to science that their technology did not work so scientists would go back it's okay not about concepts not about the content just about these empirical predictions or technology even when I talk of essence it's not exactly there is totalism because I accept more properties than there is total but I hope it's pretty close and maybe I'm completely wrong about that so bad but well what if you're a place of this right and the place I was right about analysis and Tony Kevin we are actually in contact with the very same ideas yeah okay sorry yeah okay sorry I have a quick and dirty remarkable about this I tend to believe that it is a human nature and the human nature I mean our perceptual apparatus the way we think we reason it seems to me hasn't changed that much since the time of Aristotel whereas of science did the science did so this at least in some sense a human nature at least explains to some extent that we can dialogue not only with Aristotel and a very ancient philosophy but also with other human tradition like Indian philosophy Chinese philosophy well it takes some effort struggle because you are not used but it's possible I mean we can understand we can get things out of them yeah so I think there is a human nature in some sense there is something which endures in our speech biologically speech biologically we didn't change that much in 2003,000 years and there are that many differences between Indians, Chinese and other people and we are I would agree about the body but the language culture that's something else I don't know that that's complicated because a fan of it can shine language is as complicated as biology it's something that we don't understand but you can learn Sanskrit Am I able to understand Sanskrit like the Eora word or am I doing some kind of bizarre translation when I was a student I took a course in Sanskrit was the worst when the most difficult course ever to people awful I mean just but well I mean if you work but actually we get something you can understand you know you know the beta it's like that it's a great different language when it's in European you would reply sense in that that's a question that should be a good question when you're doing Greek philosophy or when you're reading I will learn to by reading the language to put your mind inside the culture of time I'm necessarily outside of any inside of stuff or can you put your mind inside the culture of time is it a question? yeah anyway to me well if you know I'll give you the answer I'm a great German philologist Wilhelmowitz in the University of Pre-World of War in Berlin he took his students to his villa in the beautiful outskirts of Berlin and they all walked around in Todas and then they made annual sacrifices after a course in Aristotle and it went on until the neighbors started complaining well but it was this whole sort of idea that Wilhelmowitz's point was that you can only understand the ritual of the Greeks and what they were actually feeling when they do it, if you do it yourself so he was basically playing that with his students and taking it really seriously but then still yeah that's a question to what extent it is actually possible to go beyond the fact that this is actually just a play and that even your you speak about your language if you are a bit of an historian but your emotions what does a German Protestant student from 19th century Berlin early 20th century Berlin what does he or she feel when she kills a chicken in the garden of her professor it's not sure that she will perform the act but it's not sure that she will understand what it really means so from that point of view the sort of historic history construction I don't know if it's if it's actually doable full stop I don't have that metaphysical sort of claim when I do myself I can assume it but I don't have that claim which was a very strong claim in a certain German tradition in particular that you actually really have to sort of get into the mind of the people you study by speaking the language and even as I gave the example which is fun it's not just by learning Sanskrit it's really by actually performing rituals doing Indian food all day and that's what you convert it which is better of a role if you're doing historical history because I think about the idea of doing history put yourself put your mind inside the history of mathematics that the people were speaking with even you can't do that you can't do history of science you can't do that at all but the rate of history of history is a bit harder you have to conceive a lot of stuff because what you're doing is not exactly about or at least you do you have no sense but what you're interpreting out of history is exactly what's said at that time well 2 or 3 weeks ago in the same room we had us I think I wasn't there but it was told yeah across the way we had a strong discussion about the same thing basically what is Aristotle talking about he talks about metaphysics and God well some people felt attacked because they saw metaphysics as a form of science and as the ancient root of ontology and blah blah blah which is standard reading basically up to yours and Fabian Müller who is a comparative scholar and who is doing Hindu ancient philosophy and comparison with greed he was of course taking the stance that everything in Aristotle's metaphysics had nothing to do with all what we call scholastic constructions of essences and ontology it has just to do about worshipping the gods and transforming ourselves in a catharsis that Aristotelian ethics has nothing to do with a sort of more philosophy but it is actually a spiritual transformation of the soul so it was clearly the same idea so I don't know I mean it's not my practice of philosophy I'm not trying to I'm reading texts as a science of something and since they are reread I'm interested basically in the reason why people reread them and I work on the scholastic late scholastic tradition which is actually it's a good point it's a good effort to try that out because you see that they read it again and again and again the Arabs have read it the Hebrews have read it and we read it again so I'm really interested in the discrepancies of these readings what do they see and what we don't see and to what extent is what they see still in a certain way framing our way of looking at these things that's why I think it's also important to look at the 20th century historiography very often because the problems that we have been bequeathed by medieval studies for instance or our stadium studies is linked to certain ideological constraints of either neo-tomism or anti-idealism in the 19th century and we should be aware of that also the reason why we rediscovered these texts the whole story of neo-ristotelians it's very interesting to read and so they not only give us the texts but also a certain amount a certain number of preset questions I mean those who revived Aristotle in the 19th century in Europe were basically all anti-Cantians whether German, Polish or Belgian especially our founders and our founders so they gave us also a number of questions with that and we need to be aware of that it's the only way also I think to chase anachronisms I cannot make any more bigger metaphysical claims about what Aristotle felt when he wrote that the first principle is pure joy There was a question? Yes I've already talked about what you're talking about now It's the normative aspect of your radical curiosity which is how you work in the middle in the two ways it's about that we should be looking for what Cunningham calls as to personal positions because radical curiosity is not that you can just combine an article on any topic you can take the physics of spires about the category of Ubi or rather let's claim, let's not claim in this mythology you have to be looking for what's important in these of your possible No, no, no, I'm not claiming that I think you can work on things that are not important at all I wrote an article on flies in the middle ages and they're not important Flies are very often given for relations how very small items relate to other big items but no, I think that's not a claim I would make I mean you don't What are you looking for when you do radical criticism in the history of astronomy? Ok, that's a better question Well I could give a Wittgenstein answer and it's a sort of disease in the sense that if you think of philosophy as an you said that as an evolution still to a certain extent we live ourselves as philosophers since ancient Greece still as somehow part of a tradition and whether that is linked to human nature at least it's linked to a certain shared language that we have at least in our traditions so if you're assuming that's true then I think the radical empiricism for me the point is really but I'm just talking about what I don't know it's not the point it's really that if we have that history we need to write in the most adequate way empirically that is the way these ideas and concepts or problems have actually been transmitted in time against all these narratives of big changes and big ruptures and big revolutions and new paradigms I think that's what is I think interesting in having a very empirical approach is by claiming that there is no creation ex nihilo in the history of philosophy so every idea comes from another one and you just need to track down from which one it comes exactly and that is how you can I mean that's the point which you will philosophy is really exciting I think among different periods of history of philosophy because people of the last hundred years have made progress have made historical progress if you look at what textbooks and I'm not sure it's the same in 19th century philosophy and it's not aggressive we came from a very bad situation when you look at what the time of Mercier for instance they were writing about Aquinas replying to God knows what we now realize it's wrong it's wrong Aquinas was not replying to those people Mercier believed he was replying because we have been able to prove it empirically through the text, through the document through the argument, through the language and that eventually will give you I think a better picture of what was really at the stake and then only you get to the absolute preposition I'm not looking immediately at the absolute preposition as being a sort of graal of the philosopher I'm trying to look for we can continue the discussion afterwards your presentation we still have a bit of time we still have 20 minutes thank you I agree with my colleagues we are in full agreement that's refreshing what is important you can stay a realist if you want thank you thank you Jacob just said that I think it's quite interesting to have empirical evidence of history so when you can do metaphysics of history in the same way that you can do metaphysics of science and to be aware to discuss this question of continuity in a sense if you want to do metaphysics of history to solve the question of continuity to the metaphysics of science so if you guys have no more questions and no more comments thank you very much for this thank you