DFG Research Group Causation | Laws | Dispositions | Explanation (http://www.clde.uni-koeln.de/) in collaboration with the Templeton Project “From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics” (http://biological-practice-to-metaphysics.org/)

Covenors: Janella Baxter, Marie I. Kaiser

Keynote Speakers

• Janella Baxter: Lessons for Causal Selection from Biological Technology
• Eva Boon: The spiral, the circle and the microbe: heredity and biological Practice
• Adrian Currie: Making Use of
• John Dupré: Process Ontology as a Paradigm for Scientifically Grounded Metaphysics?
• Laura Franklin-Hall: Metaphysics through Science: The Case of Kinds
• Joyce Havstad: Underlying Concept Structure
• Andreas Hüttemann: Inductive Metaphysics and Scientific Practice
• Marie Kaiser: A Case Study in the Metaphysics of Biological Practice: The Parts of the Human Genome
• Catherine Kendig: Individuation and identity: towards a practice-based metaphysics for homology
• Thomas Reydon: Taxa aren’t kinds, nor are they individuals: Lessons from phylogenetic practice for the metaphysics of biological classification
• Derek Skillings: What are Holobionts? - A Case Study for Hard Questions About Biological Individuality

Important Dates
15-16 June 2017 Workshop
10 June 2017 Registration

Registration
All participants are welcome, but please send a short email to jbaxter@umn.edu to let us know you are coming.

Travel Grants
We will be able to offer a restricted number of travel grants (up to 250 Euros each). PhD students and advanced M.A. students are encouraged to apply for these grants by submitting a short letter of motivation (200 words) and a short CV. Please send the applications to jbaxter@umn.edu.

Topic of the workshop
Philosophers of science have increasingly shifted their focus away from scientific theories to scientific practice. This workshop seeks to explore what, if anything, the explanatory and investigative strategies of the biological sciences can tell us about reality. Some philosophers draw heavily from biological practices to develop accounts of individuality, the nature of kinds, causal variables, and causal selection. We wish to investigate the relationship between biological practice and metaphysics. Does the former offer a fruitful approach to the latter? What, exactly, does it mean for a metaphysical claim to account for biological practice? Does informing metaphysics with biological practice require that we rethink common views about what counts as metaphysics, what counts as a biological practice, and what sorts of methodological approaches are appropriate? This workshop aims to make explicit methodological and conceptual commitments implicit to the work of philosophers of biology who draw from biological practices.