Potestas essendi

Medieval philosophy and unconceivable stuff, by Nicola Polloni

Nature and Emergence

A Reading Group of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity

Research Reading Group, HU Berlin, MPIWG Berlin, KU Leuven (BE), online. From 1 April 2020 to 5 May 2021.

The research reading group start on 1 April 2020 and will meet biweekly on Zoom. We will read the four books of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity. Participants are supposed to read the texts (usually two chapters per meeting) before the biweekly session in which the texts will be discussed. Participation in the research reading group is upon invitation only. However, anyone willing to participate can send me an email and I will be happy to include them in the reading group.

Participants: Alexander Blum, Dominic Dold, Yael Kedar, Núria Muñoz-Garganté, Nicola Polloni, Rosie Reed Gold

Programme

1 April 2020
General introductory discussion

15 April 2020
General discussion of the Introduction, Physical Space Time, and Perspectives and Sections of Space-Time (I, 1-2).

29 April 2020
Discussion of Mental Space and Time and Mental Space-Time (I, 3-4), led by Yael Kedar.

13 May 2020
Discussion of Mathematical Space and Time and Relations in Space and Time (I, 5-6), led by Dominic Dold.

27 May 2020
Discussion of Nature of the Categories and Identity, Diversity, and Existence (II, 1-2), led by Nicola Polloni.

10 June 2020
General discussion of The One and the Many (II, 10).

24 June 2020
General discussion of book II, as follows:
– Yael Kedar: Universal, Particular, and Individual (II, 3).
– Dominic Dold: Relation and Whole and Parts and Number (II, 4 and 8).
– Nicola Polloni: Order and Quantity and Intensity (II, 5 and 7).
– Núria Muñoz Garganté: Substance, Causality, Reciprocity (II, 6).
– Alexander Blum: Motion and the Categories in General (II, 9).

15 July 2020
General discussion of books I and II. The reading group will reconvene again after the Summer break.

28 October 2020
General discussion of books I and II.

25 November 2020
Discussion of the Broad-Alexander debate and the following articles:
– A.R.J. Fisher, “Samuel Alexander’s Theory of Categories,” The Monist 98/3 (2015): 246–267;
– E. Thomas, “Space, Time, and Samuel Alexander,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21/3 (2013): 549–569.

17 December 2020
Discussion of the following texts:
– Space, Time, and Deity, book III, chapter 1: The Clue to Quality
– C. Gillett, “Samuel Alexander’s Emergentism: Or, Higher Causation for Physicalists,” Synthese 153/2 (2006): 261-296.

21 January 2021
Discussion of Space, Time, and Deity, book III, chapters 2-4: The Order of Empirical Qualities, The Empirical Problem, and Mind and Knowing.

17 February 2021
Discussion of Space, Time, and Deity, book III, chapter 5 (Mind and Its Acts) and exploration of the remainder of the third book.

24 March 2021
Discussion of Space, Time, and Deity, book IV, chapters 1 and 2: Deity and God and Deity and the Religious Sentiment.

5 May 2021
General discussion of the four books of Space, Time, and Deity