You are here:  >  Faculty of Philosophy  >  Lectures  >  John Locke Lectures

• Home
• The Faculty
• Admissions
• Vacancies
• News
• Events
• Undergraduate
• Graduate
• IT Information
• Lectures
  • Lectures this term
  • Lecture Materials
  • Graduate Questionnaire
  • Undergraduate Questionnaire
• Research
• Podcasts
• Prizes
• Find Us
• Library
• Links
• Site Map

John Locke Lectures

Trinity Term 2016

Professor Ted Sider (Rutgers University) 'The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science' The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford is pleased to announce the 2016 John Locke Lectures, to be given by Professor Ted Sider. The lectures will take place at 5pm on Wednesdays in weeks 3 to 8 of Trinity Term, or 11th May to 15th June inclusive, and will be given at the T S Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College, Oxford. (Please note: admissions to the Auditorium will be strictly limited to the seating capacity, without exception.) There will be a drinks reception after the first lecture.

Abstract

First-order metaphysical questions are sensitive to a second-order question, that of the appropriate concepts for framing first-order questions. It makes a big difference whether one views metaphysics through a modal lens, or through the lens of conceptual analysis, or through the lens of ground. These lectures will examine how the recent shift to concepts of fundamentality and ground affect a range of issues in the metaphysics of science, in particular “structuralist” positions: causal/nomic/dispositional essentialism, relationalism about quantities, mathematical structuralism, structural realism, qualitativism.