Hakkarainen & Keinänen on trope nominalism and natural kinds.

E.J. Lowe was under some heavy fire at times with Jani and Markku defending their trope nominalist account of natural kinds and myself developing a criticism about the relationship of laws and kinds due to Alexander Bird. But he can certainly take it, and of course had plenty of his own criticisms! Jani opened with a partly historical talk on Hume and the Humean attitude towards kindhood. Robin Hendry then gave an intriguing talk about chemical kinds and continuity, suggesting that there are reasons to think that at least some chemical kinds lack bona fide boundaries (a topic which I’ve touched on in my own work).

Robin Hendry

My own talk was entitled ‘What Is Realism About Natural Kinds?’, in which I tried to get clear on some of the issues that I’ve encountered especially when discussing natural kinds with philosophers of science. To this end, Robin Hendry’s work is also of special interest. Jani and Markku also had a joint paper on trope nominalism and natural kinds, a view which they’ve developed in a number of papers. David Westland gave us a thorough summary of Brian Ellis’s views on natural kinds, whereas Lowe went into some more detail about the role of kinds in his four-category ontology.

The lovely conference venue, just before my talk.

All in all, it was a great pleasure to be back in Durham and to see some familiar faces. Things in Durham are really picking up with several recent hires and great funding success, most recently a Templeton funded project on emergence (check out the post-doc and PhD opportunities!) lead by Robin Hendry. I hope to be back again soon!

See the rest of the photos in my gallery.

E.J. Lowe in action.

The list of new Academy Research Fellows is available here (pdf). There were 20 awards this year, and only two in philosophy. The applications are assessed by an international panel of experts, and I have to say that I was impressed by its standard (the panel included multiple ‘household names’ from Anglo American analytic philosophy) — even if I am a little biased given the results!

My current Post-Doctoral Fellowship is also funded by the Academy of Finland, but it would have ended at the end of 2013, so I’ve been on the market this year. I haven’t had much luck with permanent positions, but earlier I managed to secure a so called EURIAS Fellowship at the Central European University Institute for Advanced Study, in Budapest. I was looking forward to going to Budapest, but unfortunately there isn’t much flexibility with these types of Fellowships (the EURIAS one or the Academy one), so I had no choice but to turn down the EURIAS Fellowship. My EURIAS profile is still up, but I imagine that they’ll take it down at some point. The project, entitled ‘Truth-grounding and Fundamentality’, was pitched for an interdisciplinary audience, but I do have ‘serious’ research interests in this area (and a couple of papers in the works).

The Academy Research Fellow project, however, is on a different topic, more directly related to my on-going research on the foundations of metaphysics. The title is ‘Essential Knowledge: The Metaphysical Basis of Scientific Realism’. This is a very broad project, involving research on metaontological themes, modal epistemology, epistemology of essence, apriority, formal ontology (logic of essence, grounding, fundamentality), natural kinds, philosophy of science (chemistry, biology), Aristotle, ‘Neo-Aristotelianism’, realism, and so on. Of course, these are all themes that I’ve worked on before, at least to a certain extent, but this project ties a lot of threads together. The goals are quite ambitious, but I do have five years at my disposal, with minimal teaching commitments.

The actual research proposal for the project is too long to post here (12 pages), but let me post an outline of the project’s primary Research Focuses as well as the abstract, which will give you an idea about the primary themes and extent of the project, even if not the technical aspects:

Outline of Research Focuses

Natural science studies the natural world, but what makes the world natural? According to scientific realism, nature comes with a designated structure, and it is this structure that natural science investigates. Biological species, chemical substances, and subatomic particles are all part of this structure. The assumption underlying scientific inquiry is that we have some means to identify where one kind of structure ends and another kind begins: the notion of natural kind captures this assumption. But what fixes the identity of a natural kind? What guarantees that a given organism belongs to one biological species rather than another? Why should we consider two isotopes of a chemical element to constitute distinct chemical substances? Moreover, what reasons do we have to think that natural kinds are mind-independent rather than merely conventional, a product of our psychological makeup?

This project aims to determine the metaphysical foundations for any attempt to answer these questions. The hypothesis is that there are indeed genuine natural kind essences. The notion of essence has a long philosophical history — it has made its way back into analytic metaphysics via the ‘neo-Aristotelian’ movement — but it is often misunderstood in contemporary contexts. The consensus among those working in the neo-Aristotelian tradition is that the notion of essence has been misrepresented in much of contemporary work. This is largely due to a misconception of what essences are, or rather, the misconception is that essences are ‘things’ in the first place. Essence, I suggest, is shorthand for whatever it is that makes a given natural kind the very natural kind that it
is. Since the majority of philosophers and scientists subscribe to some form of scientific realism, the theme of this project is of enormous importance.

The notion of essence has been a central theme in my work for nearly a decade – and it is one of three topics pursued in my previous, Academy of Finland funded project. What are essences, how do we come to know them, and why do they matter? These are some of the questions explored in this project, giving raise to the following core objectives:

1. To establish a rigorous definition of the notion of ‘essence’.
2. To examine and revise the ontological status and logic of the established notion.
3. To develop an epistemology of essence.
4. To develop applications of the established notion, specifically with regard to philosophy of science and neo-Aristotelianism.

If you’re intrigued by any of this and want to know more, do drop me a message! Make sure to stay tuned for announcements from Dynamis: The Finnish Network for Metaphysics as well, as we’ve got a couple of things planned…

For now, content is what the site needs. Helsinki had zero entries when I joined (my profile is here), but I’m in the process of adding some content, mainly the few vegan friendly restaurants that we have here (I just added the brand new Helsinki location of Soi Soi). I guess I might also post some of my recipes there.

I realize that this may be of interest only to a small fraction of my readers, but I was excited about the new site, so there you have it! Do consider joining in and contributing if you’re a veg*an.

I have had some problems with this heavy theme in the past and I’m starting to consider a change. It looks good and has some neat functionality, but also some tricky issues that required a lot of tweaking. Some aspects (like way too large vertically aligned featured blog images) are not really fixable without breaking the theme elsewhere, so I just gave up with those. I’m now thinking of a possible ‘minimal’ design which would still have the functionality that I want (like photo gallery and some nice slideshow features etc. for blog images). Alas, I don’t have time to look into the options now (but I welcome suggestion; I’m willing to pay for the theme).

I’ve been working on related issues for some time now and this is a great opportunity to reflect on that. Robin Hendry’s recent work on the topic is particularly interesting to me, as I’ve been focusing on chemical kinds as an example in my own work. I hope to post a draft of my paper soon after the event. Incidentally, we’re also putting together a reading group on natural kinds at the University of Helsinki — get in touch with me if you’re interested.

“Metaphysical Issues in Natural Kinds” on Saturday, May 11, 2013.

Venue: Joachim Room, St. Hild & St. Bede College, University of Durham.

Program

9.30-10.30 Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere): Humean Rejection of Kind Essential Properties

10.30-11.30 Emma Tobin (University College London): TBA

11.30-12.30 Robin Hendry (University of Durham): Continuity and Natural Kinds

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.30 Tuomas Tahko (University of Helsinki): What is Realism about Natural Kinds?

14.30-15.30 David Westland (University of Durham): Powers and Processes

15.30-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-17.00 Markku Keinänen (University of Turku) & Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere):
A Trope Nominalist Theory of Natural Kinds

17.00-18.00 E. J. Lowe (University of Durham): Substance Universals

The registration fee is £10, which covers lunch and coffee, to be collected before the start of the event. Registrations and further information: mkeina[at]utu.fi. We would wish to have the registrations by Monday, May 6.

July 5

Afternoon session

Dan López de Sa (LOGOS, Barcelona). “Grounding the reality of the derivative”
Commentator: Akiko Frischhut (Geneva)

Graham Priest (Melbourne / CUNY). “Nagarjuna, fundamentality and truth”
Commentator: Boris Hennig (Tübingen)

July 6

Morning session

Stephan Leuenberger (Glasgow). “Total logic”
Commentator: Jan Plate (Washington U)

Friederike Moltmann (Paris I). “On the semantics and ontology of cases”
Commentator: Bjørn Jespersen (Technical University of Ostrava)

Afternoon session

Jason Turner (Leeds). “Are ontological debates defective?”
Commentator: David Etlin (MCMP, Munich)

Francesco Berto (NIP, Aberdeen). “There is an ‘is’ in ‘There is’”. Meinongian quantification and existence
Commentator: Tuomas Tahko (Helsinki)

Any kind of conventional race report seems out of place after the incident in Boston. As my friends and family will know, I was not personally affected (physically) by the attack, but while I’m writing this post in Boston, things are still hardly back to normal. Many businesses are operating, but I’m sitting just ten meters away from the start of the blocked off area on Boylston street — the area is patrolled by hundreds of police officers and military personnel. I finished about an hour before the incident and I had already settled back at my hotel, some half a mile from the finish line, when the explosions took place. I heard them, but I didn’t think much about the noise at first, figuring that it was just fireworks or something. I did note the unusual amount of sirens though… Anyway, I don’t have much to add to the official news, since I wasn’t at the site when the incident took place, but what I can report is the feeling in Boston now. You can see it on people’s faces, it just doesn’t feel right. A lot of people are working normally today — although some are not — so they have to keep up the appearances, but it’s obvious that it’s not “business as usual”.

Because of all this, I’ll keep the actual race report brief. I was not expecting any great results, given a serious lack of training this past winter (partly due to injury, partly due to the Finnish winter). Because it was difficult and risky to do many long runs in training, I decided to try a different approach, focusing on speed training on the indoor track. Not that I did a huge amount of any training — my weekly mileage peaked at around 50 miles over the winter, compared to the 75+ mpw that I ran before Berlin.

So, I thought that I’d be happy with something in the range of 3:05, as I knew that sub 3h was not really on. But I had also underestimated the toughness of the Boston course. I knew about the notorious Heartbreak Hill, of course, but I didn’t realize that there are some three more hills between miles 16 and 20! None of them, including Heartbreak, are really bad, but obviously they do slow you down. There’s also plenty of downhill, but you have to save your legs a bit and not power the hills down too hard. Given all this, I’m satisfied with my result. The result also reflects the general field: the race numbers were assigned in the order of the qualifying time (apart from bib numbers 1-100 for the elite), so — in theory — I managed to improve my position by 260 places overall with regard to my starting position.

I’ll just paste the official splits here, without any in-depth analysis:

The Garmin data has more details:

Looking at the above data, it’s pretty obvious how things went down. I had decided to keep sub 3h pace until the half marathon point just out of spite, and it was easy enough, but I knew that I couldn’t keep it up on the second half, which is much tougher than the first. So, even though I could’ve probably kept sub 3h pace maybe as far as the 20 mile marker, I made the sensible choice of slowing down to avoid injury. It was a wise choice, as the last 10km were tough regardless. However, the heart rate data indicates that I was really doing quite ok towards the end, as the average heart rate dropped to 166bpm overall compared to 169bpm at Amsterdam in 2011 (I didn’t wear an HR strap in Berlin).

Other than the hills, the course is great, and the spectators make it even better — the super-loud Wellesley girls in particular… Race organisation is top notch as well, even if the security could’ve obviously been better. You do have to get up ridiculously early despite the 10am start (for Wave 1) though, since it takes an hour or more to catch the official bus to the starting line. The race village is good, with free coffee, bagels, massage etc., but it’s a bit boring to wait around for a couple of hours before the race starts.

I was pleased to have avoided any major calf cramping issues this time. I opted for more cushioned shoes (Mizuno Wave Inspire) and coated my legs with a generous amount of Extra Strength Tiger Balm — one of these or the two together kept cramps away for the most part. I did feel a little bit of cramping setting in at around 18 miles, but fortunately it passed quickly. However, I did also slow down considerably at that point, so I don’t know if the cramping would’ve set in had I kept the pace up.

By the way, this was the first time that I didn’t improve on my marathon PB — my fifth marathon overall, and third fastest after Berlin and Amsterdam.

Well, I don’t really feel great writing about racing or anything at this point, so I’ll leave it at this for now. Time to go and forget about it all at the Samuel Adams Brewery.

These bacteria mat patterns were perhaps my favourite thing.

Yellowstone is photographer’s heaven, but there’s only so much you can do in four days — one of them including a 49km run/hike around Shoshone Lake. The trip is not exactly in fresh memory, but I’ve got a lot of stories to tell. The Shoshone Lake roundabout is by far the most eventful. Fortunately, Elizabeth, who has much better literary talent than myself, has written an account of our little adventure. The story (all true!) was originally sent to a friend; I have reproduced it below with permission, including my own illustration. You can follow the route from my Garmin data. Lucky thing that I had the Garmin for a compass, as we didn’t even have a map…

A fine example of Yellowstone colours.

Check out all the shots from Yellowstone here.

Back in civilization today after four days in Yellowstone, if you can call Idaho Falls civilization. Did a trail run yesterday that was supposed to be a rather easy (good trails and relatively flat) 24 miles around a lake in the back country. Instead, I saw my first grizzly and ran my first ultra. Running the three miles down from the road to the lake was easy and scenic, pine forests and little streams that wound through lush meadows. The lake looked huge, but the maps had it marked as 18 miles around. We set off on the first leg of the trail, five miles to a ford. Since June is a little early for Yellowstone, we wanted to see if it was passable before getting too deep in the wilderness.

Paint pots

Less than a mile down the trail though, Tuomas quite suddenly came to a halt and did a fantastic little panic/warning dance. So I crept up to the little rise in the trail where he was standing and saw a big fat bear ass right there. It clearly knew we were there and was ambling away peacefully enough, so we decided to wait twenty minutes or so and then go on cautiously. We jogged on talking loudly and noticing that the fresh bear tracks just kept going along the trail. Sure enough, we came around a corner another mile in, and there the bear was, still shuffling away. Again we waited, deciding we would give it one last shot, and if we saw the bear again, we’d have to go back before it decided we were stalking it, or just got annoyed and swatted us.

Bacteria mats

Fortunately that was the last we saw of the bear, though I worried a bit about it for the rest of the run, when I wasn’t worrying about other things. We made it to the ford, which was another first for me, thigh deep, fast and wide. The whole area was above 6500 feet and still melting. Stripped down, fought across glacial water running over pumice pebbles, put my running clothes back on… and though it was the only ford on the map, we wound up doing that at least five more times over the whole run.

The textures were unbelievable!

The next challenge was snow, waist deep in places and soft from the pleasant June temperatures. Tuomas has, unsurprisingly, a preternatural ability to move over snow. Me, not so much, though now, I’ve learned to be much better at it. At first I lagged behind as we ran over swaths of snow and patches of trail. Then, we both slowed to a hiking pace as the snow deepened and the trail was completely obliterated. Although it was marked frequently with orange metal tabs bolted to trees, we lost over an hour trying to not lose the trail. As though that weren’t enough of a challenge, the wind picked up and trees started falling. We were going through one of the areas hit lightly by the 1988 fire, so there were a good number of old, dead trees still standing. Not quite so many still upright by the time we found the trail back down towards the lake.

Camp

Once we found our way, we tried to make up for lost time, anticipating additional challenges and wanting to get out before dark. Though we’d planned to finish five hours before sunset, the bear and the snow set us back quite a bit. We encountered several more fords and severely boggy ground until again the trail was entirely lost, this time in a marsh. We knew roughly where the trail should be, but that was waist deep water, so we worked our way around further inland, aiming towards an area marked as Shoshone Geyser Basin on the map.

Plenty of curious marmots up on Mt. Washburn.

The geyser basin was unmissable, but no sign of the trail. In the tourist crowded areas by the roads, the park has these wonderful signs warning people to stay on the boardwalks. They feature a curious and ill starred little boy falling through the thin crust of a thermal area, his face twisting in shock and pain as he sinks into a boiling pool of sulfuric acid. So here we were with no marked trail and a wide, treeless stretch of iron and sulfur deposits dotted with geysers in front of us. As we followed the sulfur and mud caked trees back towards where the lake should be, and maybe the trail, I was convinced that one of the geysers would go and melt my face off.

Mt. Washburn summit

It was back to the bog and a compromise of calf deep water and geysers still too close for comfort. After about an hour of this, we found the trail. And where did it take us? Closer to more thermal features than we had previously dared to go. So again I thought I might have my face melted, but on the upside I got to check out some gorgeously colored pools and some boiling mud pots in complete solitude, no xxxl sized rednecks in xl sized shirts or 11 year old girls in pink brand hot shorts scratching their names into fragile, intricately textured bacterial mats.

That’s close enough!

The rest of the trip was a hard push across more snow, unmarked fords, and rolling terrain. We’d come 14 miles and found a nice trail marker reporting 16 miles to go. Very worried about time at this point, we pushed as hard as we could, running through deep drifts and jumping little streams. But it was Wednesday and I’d raced a half marathon on Sunday and I’ve never run 30 miles before even on asphalt… so I finally found the endurance limit in my legs, and we hiked the last seven miles out. Tuomas hallucinated some bears and other wildlife along the way. I became a glass pitcher half full of water.

Yes, we saw geysers too.

The ending, rest assured, was a happy one nevertheless. Seitan sausages grilled on campfire and some Montana microbrew (Big Sky brewery, if I’m not mistaken) down the hatch, and all was better. It’s the first time I’ve seen a bear in wilderness as well.. so I had to get that shot! Didn’t dare to get very close though.

Well, I think that this story and set of photos is more than enough. General impression of Yellowstone was that there’s way too many tourists, but if you’re willing to go off the beaten path (see above), you’ll be left well alone. Again, make sure to check out rest of the shots.

Anyway, make sure to save your best sub 4000 word paper related to Kit Fine’s metaphysics for this one!

Tübingen Masterclass in Theoretical Philosophy 2013:

The Metaphysics of Kit Fine

16-17 October, 2013, University of Tübingen
Call for Papers

Kit Fine, Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University, will give a Masterclass in metaphysics at Tübingen’s Department of Philosophy, which will provide graduate students the opportunity to discuss their work with one of the leading metaphysicians working today. We invite graduate students to submit papers on any aspect of Kit Fine’s metaphysics, including Finean themes concerning mereology, modality, time, essence, grounding and postulation. Please submit papers by 30 June 2013 to Prof. Dr. Thomas B. Sattig (thomas.sattig@uni-tuebingen.de). Papers should not exceed 4000 words. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of July.

Explanation in Metaphysics
A workshop on the nature, varieties, and prospects for explanation in
metaphysical inquiry

Neuchâtel, 22-23 June 2013

Organised by Fabrice Correia and Alexander Skiles on behalf of the
University of Neuchâtel, the University of Geneva, and eidos – the Centre in
Metaphysics.

Speakers:

- Kit Fine (New York University)
- Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins (University of British Columbia/University of
Aberdeen)
- Marie Kaiser (University of Geneva)
- Stephan Leuenberger (University of Glasgow)
- Jon Erling Litland (University of Oslo)
- Kevin Mulligan (University of Geneva)
- Benjamin Schnieder (University of Hamburg)
- Brad Weslake (University of Rochester)

Venue: University of Neuchâtel / Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines /
1, Espace Louis-Agassiz.

To attend, RSVP by sending an email to:
Fabrice Correia (fabrice.correia@unine.ch) or Alexander Skiles (askiles@nd.edu).