Richard Creath (Arizona State University) will be giving his talk on Friday\, October 2\, 2015 in BUCH A202 at 3pm.
TITLE:
C
arnap and Ontology: Foreign Travel and Domestic Understanding
ABSTRAC
T:
L.P. Hartly once wrote: “The past is a foreign country\; they do th
ings differently there.” The past is foreign to many of us\, and p
eople have done things differently. But foreign travel\, they say\
, is educational. Perhaps we can learn something we can use. And those of u
s who are accustomed to “foreign” travel might also learn something from th
ose who stay at home. Or so I argue here. The part of the past that concern
s me here is Rudolf Carnap on ontology. And the domestic matters that conce
rn me are the current discussions of metaontology\, especially the broadly
neo-Carnapian movement and the inevitable backlash.
First\, I examine \, or at least illustrate\, what the historian can learn from the contempor ary debate. Thereafter\, I investigate features of Carnap’s position that a re interesting\, or suggestive\, or helpful in the context of contemporary discussions. We do not need to agree completely with Carnap in order to lea rn from him. In this way an interchange between philosophy’s present and it s past can be fruitful – in both directions.
LOCATION:BUCH A202 GEO:49.269076;-123.254727 URL;VALUE=URI:https://philosophy.ubc.ca/events/event/oct-2-colloquia-richar d-creath-carnap-and-ontology-foreign-travel-and-domestic-understanding/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20150308T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR