Call for Papers

Dear Friends:

We are pleased to invite you to submit an abstract for a contributed talk at the fourth Taiwan Metaphysics Colloquium (TMC-IV).

Deadline of the submission: 30 September, 2019.

Notification of the acceptance of abstracts: 15 October, 2019       

DESCRIPTION OF TMC-IV 

The Taiwan Metaphysics Colloquium (TMCs) is a series of biennial conferences founded in 2013 and hosted by the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University, accompanied with the Taiwan Philosophical Logic Colloquium (TPLCs) established since 2012. The TMC-series intends to provide a forum for dialogues amongst researchers working on traditional metaphysical issues/problems, but not exclusively, from a variety of contemporary perspectives, such as philosophical logic, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, to mention a few. To narrow the scope of the discussions and to enhance the interaction among the speakers, we typically have a main theme for each TMC conference.

We are now organizing TMC-IV, the main theme of which is ‘the realism-antirealism debates’. Traditionally, realism has been a dominant position in metaphysics. On a prominent realist position, there are abstract entities such as universals and numbers. Such entities will guarantee the objectivity and truth of metaphysics and mathematics. But antirealists claim that the objective reality should not include these kinds of entities. In particular, mathematical/ scientific theories are not about the external world but merely useful tools with explanatory power. We have observed a variety of strong arguments for antirealism in the second half of the last century, by some influential philosophers, such as Nelson Goodman, W. V. Quine, Hartry Field, etc. For the past two decades, however, a group of leading philosophers, noticeably Kit Fine, Timothy Williamson, and some others, have argued for realism with the equipment of a large-scaled theorization of the fixed subject matter. Perhaps it is time to re-examine the debates between realism and anti-realism again.

The realism-vs.-anti-realism debate is very complex, intricate, long-lasting and ubiquitous, in character. It has appeared in a large number of philosophical concepts/issues, ranging from universals with regard to general terms and properties since the middle age to controversial mathematical entities, unobservable theoretical entities in scientific theories, meaning in the philosophy of language, qualia in the philosophy of mind, and more recently modal reality in modal discourse and some fundamental concepts in meta-ethics, to mention a few. We will focus (not exclusively) on five topics:

(i)    Objectivity in Mathematics and Logic

(ii) Structural Realism and Philosophy of Mind

(iii)  The Identity of Indiscernibles

(iv)  Meta-ethical Robustness

(v) Expressivism

Keynote speakers

• Hartry Field (New York University)
• Daniel Stoljar (Australian National University)

Invited speakers

• Ralf Bader (Merton College, Oxford)
• Simon Goldstein (Lingnan University, Hong Kong)
• Nate Charlow (University of Toronto)
• Mary Leng (University of York, UK)
• Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (Oriel College, Oxford). 
• Paolo Santorio (UC San Diego); and some more will join us

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS FOR CONTRIBUTED TALKS 

All researchers working on the related topics are cordially invited to submit their abstracts for a contributed talk. Authors should submit an extended abstract (preferably, no less than one page but no more than four pages in A4 size, single space). Please put on a separate page with (all) authors’ basic information, including full names, titles, affiliations, email addresses. By convention, the first author will be the corresponding author, unless special notification is added. Each submission will be reviewed. Abstracts must be submitted both in PDF-format and in Word format and send to Lok-Chi Chan [lokchan@ntu.edu.tw] 

POST-CONFERENCE PUBLICATION

Following the tradition of TMCs and TPLCs, we are planning to publish a post-conference proceedings as a new volume of the ‘Logic in Asia’ (LIAA) Book Series (Studia Logica Library, Springer), or some other venue. All speakers are invited to submit a full length paper. All papers submitted will be refereed to high journal standards, and thus acceptance as a presentation at the conference is no guarantee that the post-conference paper will be published. A substantial schedule concerning the submission of manuscripts and some other detailed information will be announced after the conference. Based on our previous experience, the deadline of the submission of manuscripts is likely to be around the end of June 2020.

TRAVEL GRANTS FOR STUDENTS AND JUNIOR RESEARCHERS

Free accommodation and travel awards for a limited number of graduates and junior researchers have been made available by the organizing committee. In some cases, full compensation of expenses is possible. The details, including general information about the awards and the instructions of application, will be announced later on the website. However, it is strongly recommended that as long as you have the intention to submit an abstract, send us a note at your convenience. In particular, it would be very helpful if we can get a brief note from your supervisor.

ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE

• Lok-Chi Chan (National Taiwan University)
• Szu-Ting Chen (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.)
• Duen-Min Deng (National Taiwan University)
• Kok Yong Lee (National Chung Cheng University)
• Churn-Jung Liau (Academia Sinica)
• Hsuan-Chih Lin (Soochow University, Taiwan)
• Syraya Chin-Mu Yang (Chair, National Taiwan University)

FURTHER CONTACT:

• Lok-Chi Chan [lokchan@ntu.edu.tw]
• Duen-Min Deng [dmdeng@ntu.edu.tw]
• Syraya Chin-Mu Yang [cmyang@ntu.edu.tw]