‘Inheritance’ is a project funded by Vetenskapsrådet - the Swedish Research Council (2023-01289) and awarded to Anna-Sofia Maurin (Gothenburg) as PI with Naomi Thompson (Bristol) as Co-I. The project’s total value is 4 million SEK. It runs for three years from 2024-2027.
It is not uncommon for philosophers to speak loosely of one thing ‘inheriting’ some feature or features from another. We might say, for example, that features of a whole are inherited from those of its parts, or that justification for some questioned belief B is inherited from the beliefs offered in support of B. Though there has been plenty of research into what is happening in these specific examples, the notion of inheritance itself has received very little attention. We think this is both surprising and problematic. Not only do philosophers often talk of one thing ‘inheriting’ its features from another, inheritance-claims also feature prominently in what we may call ‘inheritance arguments’, i.e., arguments where inheritance claims function as a kind of ‘inference-ticket’: because b inherits (some of) its features from a, if Fa then Fb. Without a good understanding of the nature and function of inheritance we lack the resources to properly evaluate arguments of this kind. This project aims to remedy this situation by systematically investigating both the nature and function of inheritance.