Workshop on the History of Modal Metaphysics
Dates: April 29 – May 2, 2025
Location: Bilkent University
About: The first session of the workshop was devoted to Aristotle’s so-called statistical theory of modality. We then turned to the medieval tradition, examining the views of William of Sherwood and Robert Kilwardby. The following session focused on John Duns Scotus’s groundbreaking account of modality, which is often credited with initiating a shift away from the statistical approach toward a model in which modal truths are grounded in divine faculties. The next four sessions explored the accounts of Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz, with particular attention to how each philosopher’s position relates to the tradition of grounding modality in divine faculties, as opposed to the more contemporary approach that appeals to intuitions about counterfactuals.
Participants: Faculty and graduate students from Princeton, Bilkent, and beyond. The confirmed visiting participants are:
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- Enrique Chavez-Arvizo (CUNY)
- Shohei Edamura (Meiji University)
- Spencer Johnston (Cambridge)
- Fanhao Meng (Princeton)
- Zachary Ottati (Princeton)
- Domenica Romagni (Colorado State)
- Connor Tannas (Princeton)
- Aurora (Kexin) Yu (UNC-Chapel Hill, visiting at Princeton)
Principal organizer: Alireza Fatollahi
