organisation

Financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and supported by the research project Iris, Kevin Mulligan (Geneva), Gianfranco Soldati (Fribourg), Michael Esfeld (Lausanne) and I are organising a summer school ("école doctorale"/"Graduiertenkurs") on abstract entities during summer term 2004. The school consists in five workshops, with two invited speakers each.

The aim of the workshops is to maximise interaction and discussion between the invited speakers and the other participants. There are two ways of participating in the workshops:

Workshops start with a tutorial on Thursday morning, where student participants discuss the paper they read and introduce themselves to the topic.

At the end of every workshop, we have a "general question period", where the invited speakers answer written questions by other participants, on either their presentation or other parts of their work. These questions are to be given to Philipp Keller before Saturday morning, so that the speakers have some time to prepare themselves.

calls for papers

Corresponding to the workshops, there are five calls for discussion papers, to be presented during the workshop. Discussion papers do not have to be well-polished publishable articles. The submitted written version will be distributed to all participants of the workshop - the oral presentation of about 20 minutes only summarises the argument. Presentations are in English, though papers may be in other languages too. Please send your papers as pdf documents to philipp.keller@lettres.unige.ch. Here are possible topics (all disjunctions are inclusive):

• papers on modality or (preferably related) work by Ian Rumfitt or Bob Hale. Deadline: 12 March.
• papers on facts, events or (preferably related) work by Terence Parsons or Stephen Neale. Deadline: 16 April.
• papers on Humean supervenience or (preferably related) work by Frank Jackson or John Hawthorne. Deadline: 16 April.
• papers on relations, order, variables or (preferably related) work by Kit Fine or Manuel García-Carpintero. Deadline: 21 May.
• papers on time, tense or (preferably related) work by Dean Zimmerman or Peter Ludlow. Deadline: 18 June.

Time and Tense

Participants: Dean Zimmerman, Peter Ludlow
Date: 3-5 July
Place: University of Geneva, B302.
Click here for a very beautifully designed poster.
Program: (click here for a pdf version)

The workshop starts Saturday morning and ends Monday early afternoon.

• Saturday morning 10h15-11h15: presentation by Philipp Keller, "How to tell universals from particulars"
• Saturday morning 11h30-12h30: presentation by David Stauffer, "Presentism & the Ongoing and Transient Aspects of Events"
• Saturday afternoon 14h15-15h45: talk by Frédéric Nef, "Time and tense: and irenic view", commentator: Fabrice Correia
• Saturday afternoon 16h15-18h15: talk by Dean Zimmerman, "Persistence, Properties, and the Present"; commentator: Peter Ludlow
• Sunday morning 10h15-11h15: presentation by Alexander Kellenberger, "What is Coincidence (and Identity Through Time)?"
• Sunday morning 11h30-12h30: presentation by Stephan Leuenberger, "The rotating homogeneous disk argument"
• Sunday afternoon 15h-16h: presentation by André Zdunek, "Putting Metaphysics First in the Theory of Time"
• Sunday afternoon 16h15-18h15: talk by Peter Ludlow, "Presentism and the Problem of Temporal Anaphora"; commentator: Dean Zimmerman
• Monday morning 10h15-11h15: presentation by Philipp Keller, "Tropes, in- and outside of time"
• Monday morning 11h30-12h30: presentation by Alain Pé-Curto, "Does "Does Tense Logic Rest on a Mistake?" Rest on a Mistake?"

Suggested reading:

• Ludlow, Peter 1999, Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Ludlow, Peter 2004, "Presentism, Triviality, and the Varieties of Tensism", in Zimmerman, Dean, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.
• Zimmerman, Dean 1993, "Review of Heller, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53, pp. 220-224
• Zimmerman, Dean 1996, "Persistence and Presentism, Philosophical Papers 25(2), pp. 115-126
• Zimmerman, Dean 1997, "Immanent Causation, Philosophical Persepctives, pp. 433-471
• Zimmerman, Dean 1998, "Temporal Parts and Supervenient Causation:The Incompatibility of Two Humean Doctrines", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76, pp. 265-288
• Zimmerman, Dean 1998a, "Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism", in: Zimmerman / Inwagen, eds., Metaphysics: the Big Questions, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 206-219
• Lewis, David 2004, "Tensed Quantifiers" in Zimmerman, Dean, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 3-14
• Markosian, Ned 2004, "A Defense of Presentism", in Zimmerman, Dean, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.
• Crisp, Thomas 2004, "On Presentism and Triviality", in Zimmerman, Dean, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.
• Crisp, Thomas 2004a, "Reply to Ludlow", in Zimmerman, Dean, ed., Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.
• Crisp,Thomas 2003, "Presentism", in Loux / Zimmerman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford UP
• Rea, Michael 2003, "Four-Dimensionalism", in Loux / Zimmerman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford UP

Available papers:

• Zimmerman, Dean 2004, "Persistence, Properties, and the Present", ms
• Ludlow, Peter 2004, "Presentism and the Problem of Temporal Anaphora", ms.