The plurality of priority

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• Kerry McKenzie (University of Calgary)
• Wednesday 04 December 2013, 13:00-14:30
• Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Christopher Clarke.

My talk will focus on how to think about the concept of ontological priority from a broadly naturalistic perspective. After walking us through some priority claims made by philosophers of physics, I will argue that we are using a plurality of priority relations to express our fundamentality claims. After gesturing at why I think this plurality is problematic, I’ll suggest that we revise how we talk about priority and make a couple of prescriptions for doing so. What is noteworthy is that the conception of priority we thereby arrive at looks a lot like that defended in contemporary analytic metaphysics. The significance of this for the much-discussed antagonism between philosophy of physics and analytic metaphysics is a question I’ll leave on the table.

This talk is part of the CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) seminar series.

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