[News] TEAP – Ø. Linnebo “Non-instantial generality: What it is and why we need it”

Dear all, I am pleased to announce a new seminar series titled Themes from Early Analytic Philosophy. Themes from Early Analytic Philosophy is an online seminar series organized by Michele Contente (Czech Academy of Sciences), Ludovica Conti (University of Vienna), and Caterina Sisti (University of Turin). The aim of the series is to bring together scholars whose work addresses topics central to the early analytic tradition, is inspired by the work of major philosophers in this tradition, or offers historically grounded reconstructions of the contributions of key figures. The upcoming semester's theme is “Generality and Generalisations”. You can find more information here: https://sites.google.com/view/themeseap – we plan to update the website regularly. We are delighted to invite you to our first talk on Friday 16 January, 11-13 am (CET), at the following link: https://univienna.zoom.us/j/5880778120?pwd=sagYfjPsE7DV8IfbFzNEZSpfkK3UYz.1. Øystein Linnebo (University of Oslo) – Non-instantial generality: What it is and why we need it What features of reality are responsible for the truth of a universal generalization? The orthodox answer proceeds via the instances of the generalization. Everything is F because a is F, b is F, and so on, plus (perhaps) the fact that these are all the objects. I show that the orthodoxy needs to be supplemented with (wholly or partially) non-instantial explanations. E.g., we can explain why everything crimson is red or why every object has a singleton set without invoking any instances of these generalizations. Although non-instantial generality is familiar from mathematical intuitionism, I divorce the idea from the intuitionistic philosophy and show how it can be put on a robustly realist footing (say, in terms of Finean essences). With non-instantial generality on board, all the truths of intuitionistic (but not classical) first-order logic turn out to have a trivial truthmaker. The talk will describe the truthmaker analysis of non-instantial generality developed in my “Generality explained”. Some more recent developments will also be discussed, especially an extension of my analysis of non-instantial generality to the framework of metaphysical grounding, as well as some applications of the analysis in philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. Hope to see you online! Ludovica Conti