Teaching Schedule
Powers, Perception & Agency Summer School
21 - 25 September 2015
The British School at Rome | Via Gramsci 61 | 00197 | Italy
(Seminar room)
* * *
Monday 21 September
3:30 - 4:00pm Registration and welcome coffee
4:00 6:00pm Lecture I: The metaphysics of powers
Drs Anna Marmodoro and Erasmus Mayr
The first lecture will introduce students to the metaphysics of powers. It will address the following key questions: Are powers genuine properties? Are they reducible to non-power properties? Do they need grounding in them? How do powers manifest? How are powers to be individuated? Is there a special dispositional modality, different both from contingency and necessity? How do powers compose?
Tuesday 22 September
9:30am 12:30pm Lecture II:
Part 1: Powers-based accounts of modality, causality
and laws of nature
Drs Anna Marmodoro and Erasmus Mayr
Part 2: Ancient Power Ontologies and Aristotle's
Theory of Perception
Dr Anna Marmodoro
The first part of the second lecture will examine the following questions: What is the relation between powers and laws of nature? Can powers account for modal statements? Is causality reducible to powers? The second part will introduce the students to some key features of power metaphysics in ancient Greek philosophy. Of particular interest will be Aristotles power ontology, which has given rise to many neo-Aristotelian developments in contemporary metaphysics. Aristotle's theory of perception, which crucially depends on his ontology, will also be introduced.
12:30pm 3:00pm Lunch break
4:00pm 5:00pm Group work session
6:00pm 7:00pm After group session
Wednesday 23 September
9:30am 12:30pm Lecture III: Powers and Perception
Dr Anna Marmodoro
What is it that we perceive? Most of us share the intuition that objects in the world are truly as colourful, as noisy, as tasty etc., as we perceive them to be. This suggests that perceptible qualities are genuine and intrinsic properties of the objects they are normally ascribe to. But if so, what metaphysics can account for inverted spectrum phenomena and the like? This lecture investigates how the hypothesis that these properties are causal powers support perceptual realism, and develops the special form of realism which can be derived from this view.
Free afternoon with walk along the Gianicolo hill with visit to Villa Lante
Thursday 24 September
9:30am 12:30pm Lecture IV: Powers in the Explanation of Agency
Dr Erasmus Mayr
The fourth lecture will investigate whether powers can help us to understand the nature of human agency and the active role agents are playing in producing effects in their environment. The 'standard' picture of agency in modern philosophy of action, which evolved from Hume's theory of motivation, is often criticized for reducing the agent to an 'arena' within which changes occur, without properly taking into account the agent's own active role. Realism about powers may enable us to do more justice to this aspect, if we can use powers to explain how agents themselves, qua substances, can be considered as causes of change in the world. Key questions will be: Can actions be fruitfully understood as realizations of powers? Inhowfar can the weaknesses of Human theories of agency be seen as direct consequences the rejection of powers?
12:30pm 3:00pm Lunch break
3:00pm 5:00pm Group work session
5:00pm 6:30pm After group session
Friday 25 September
9:30am 12:30pm Lecture V: Powers and the Free Will Problem
Dr Erasmus Mayr
Recently, philosophers of action have become interested in the question how the problem of free will can be construed in novel terms if one takes seriously the idea that powers are genuine properties. In particular, power-based accounts of free will may be capable of giving an analysis of the principle of alternative possibilities, which is normally taken to state an essential prerequisite of free will, which bypasses the age-old question of whether fulfilment of this condition requires the falsity of universal determinism. Key question: How would a power-based account of free will look like? Does fulfilment of the 'could have done' condition require more than the possession of certain powers by the agent? Is the possession of the relevant powers compatible with determinism?
12:30pm 3:00pm Lunch break
3:00pm 5:00pm Group work session
5:00pm - 6:00pm After group session
Saturday 26 September
09:30am - 11:30am Group work session
11:30am - 12:30pm After group session