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Nature and its Classification

A Metaphysics of Science Conference

Jurys Inn Birmingham, 245 Broad Street, Birmingham, UK, B1 2HQ

12th-14th October 2007

We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial assistance provided by the AHRC and the British Society for the Philosophy of Science.

Programme

Confirmed Speakers:

Plenary Sessions

Confirmed Speakers:

Plenary Sessions

1. Alexander Bird (Bristol)
2. Richard Boyd (Cornell)
3. John Dupré (Exeter)
4. Allan Gotthelf (Pittsburgh)
5. Paul Griffiths (Sydney/Exeter)
6. Joseph LaPorte (Hope College)
7. Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh)
8. Ruth Millikan (Connecticut)
9. David Oderberg (Reading)
10. Jonathan Schaffer (ANU)
11. Ãsa Wikforss (Stockholm)
12. Jessica Wilson (Toronto)

Parallel Sessions:

13. Corine Besson (Oxford)
14. Corinne Bloch (Tel Aviv/Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
15. Ingo Brigandt (Alberta)
16. Massimiliano Carrara (Padova) & Pieter Vermaas (Delft)
17. Rachel Cooper (Lancaster)
18. Mark Couch (Seton Hall)
19. Malte Dahlgrün (RWTH Aachen)
20. Stefan Dragulinescu (Lancaster)
21. Gary Gabor (Fordham)
22. Trond Jakobsen (Lillehammer University College)
23. Andreas Kamlah (Osnabrück)
24. Amir Karbasizadeh (Iranian Institute for Philosophy)
25. Ian Kidd (Durham)
26. Gal Kober (Boston University)
27. Nigel Leary (Birmingham)
28. Svein Lie (Tromso/Nottingham)
29. Francis Longworth (Birmingham/Ohio)
30. Genoveva Marti (Barcelona)
31. Jose Martinez (Barcelona)
32. Harold Noonan (Nottingham)
33. Joanna Odrowaz-Sypniewska (Warsaw)
34. Greg Salmieri (Pittsburgh)
35. Matthew Slater (Idaho)
36. Peter Sykora (UCM, Trnava)
37. Tuomas Tahko (Durham)
38. Emma Tobin (Bristol)
39. Matt Tugby (Nottingham)
40. Eileen Walker (Reading)

Friday 12th October

• 16.00 – 16.15: Conference Introduction
• 16.15 – 18.15: Plenary Session – Author Meets Critics
• 16.15 – 16.30: Joseph LaPorte (author, Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change) Introduction
• 16.30 – 17.00: Alexander Bird “Essences of Natural Kinds: Discovery or Stipulation? Comments on LaPorte’s Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change”
• 17.00 – 17.30: John Dupré “Comments on LaPorte’s Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change”. Dupré’s paper will be based partly on his review of LaPorte’s book for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (Review)
• 17.30 – 17.45: Joseph LaPorte (Reply to Bird and Dupré)
• 17.45 – 18.15: Discussion
• 19:00 – Onwards: Dinner at Arches Restaurant, Jurys Inn.

Saturday 13th October

• 09:30 – 10:30: Plenary Session – Ruth Millikan (Keynote Address) “Nature and its Identification”
• 10:30 – 10:45: Coffee Break
• 10:45 – 11:15: Parallel Sessions –
  1. Massimiliano Carrara & Pieter Vermaas “The Erratically Fine-Grained Metaphysics of Functional Kinds in Technology and Biology,”
  2. Corinne Bloch “Definitions and Their Role in Scientific Classification”
  3. Francis Longworth “Genetic Classification in the Earth Sciences”
• 11:15 – 12:15: Plenary Session – Jessica Wilson “From Constitutional Necessities to Causal Necessities”
• 12:15 – 13:15: Lunch
• 13:15 – 13:45 Parallel Sessions
  1. Malte Dahlgrün “Doing Away with the Notion of a Recognitional Concept”
  2. Corine Besson “Natural Kind Terms & Rigidity : A Metasemantic Approach”
  3. Trond Jakobsen “Biological Classification, Causal Powers, Dispositions and Functional Kinds”
• 13.45 – 14:45: Plenary Session – Ãsa Wikforss “Are Natural Kind Terms Special?”
• 14:45 – 15:25: Parallel Sessions
1. Harold Noonan “The Commonalities between Proper Names and Natural Kind Terms: A Fregean Perspective”
2. Peter Sykora “Are Species-Kind and Species-Individual Talks Equivalent? Comments on LaPorte´s Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change”
3. Svein Lie “Intrinsic Properties and Natural Kinds”
• 15:15 – 15:30: Coffee Break
• 15:30 – 16:00: Parallel Sessions
  1. Eileen Walker “The Semantics of Natural Kind Terms: How to Make Kripke's Theory Work”
  2. Rachel Cooper “Must Natural Kinds be Discrete?”
  3. Andreas Kamlah “Prediction and Necessity”
  16:00 – 17:00: Plenary Session – Allan Gotthelf “Ayn Rand on Concepts: Another Approach to Abstraction, Essence, and Kinds”
• 17:00 – 17:15: Coffee Break
• 17:15 – 18:45 Plenary Session – Jonathan Schaffer (Keynote Address) “The Internal Relatedness of All Things”
• 19:30 Conference Dinner at ‘BANK’, Brindley Place

Sunday 14th October

• 09:00 – 10:30: Plenary Session – Richard Boyd (Keynote Address) “Natural kinds, Naturalistic Epistemology and Philosophical Method”
• 10:30 – 10:45: Coffee Break
• 10:45 – 11:15: Parallel Sessions
  1. Stefan Dragulinescu “On Natural Kinds of Diseases”
  2. Nigel Leary “Isotopes, Isomers and Isomorphs : Some Problems for Metaphysical Necessity”
  3. Ian Kidd “Feyerabend on Classificatory Pluralism”
• 11:15 – 12:15: Plenary Session – David Oderberg “The Nature and Classification of Life”
• 12:15 – 13:15: Lunch
• 13:15 – 13:45: Parallel Sessions
  1. Ingo Brigandt “Natural Kinds in Evolution and Systematics: from Metaphysics to Epistemology”
  2. Joanna Odrowaz-Sypniewska “Rigidity and Essentialism : Do we have a viable conception of rigidity for natural kind terms?"”
  3. Gary Gabor “Porphyry and Boethius on Division and Natural Kinds”
• 13:45 – 14:45: Plenary Session – Edouard Machery “Two Types of Eliminativism: Semantic Eliminativism and Scientific Eliminativism”
• 14:45 – 15:15: Parallel Sessions
  1. Matt Tugby “A Challenge for Dispositional Essentialism about Structural Properties”
  2. Amir Karbasizadeh “Troubles for the Cluster Conception of Species”
  3. Greg Salmieri “Aristotle on the Ontological Basis of Zoological Classification”
• 15:15 – 15:30 Coffee Break
• 15:30 – 16:00: Parallel Session
  1. Gal Kober “Biology Without Species: The Concept Species as an Unnecessary Entity in the Theory”
  2. Tuomas Tahko “On the Semantics of Natural Kinds”
  3. Emma Tobin “Classifying Macromolecules”
• 16:00 – 16:30 Parallel Session
  1. Genoveva Marti & Jose Martinez “General Terms, Classifiers vs. Designators”
  2. Mark Couch “Natural Kinds in Physiology”
  3. Matthew Slater “Modes of Macromolecular Classification”
• 16:30 – 16:45 Coffee Break
• 16:45 – 18:15: Plenary Session – Paul Griffiths (Keynote Address) “The Phenomena of Homology”
• 18:15 – 18:30: Conference Close

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