Séminaire │ MEPHISTO

Nous entendrons une conférence on-line de Sami Pihlström (Helsinki, Finland), Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki

Titre : Abstract: "Putnamian Transcendental Arguments"

vendredi 26 septembre 2025 ; 14h-16h

Given Hilary Putnam’s deep interest in the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, it is surprising that he never sympathized with his interlocutors’ proposals to compare his views on realism and idealism to Kant’s transcendental idealism. In this paper, I am trying to interpret Putnam as a Kant-inspired transcendental philosopher. I will confine myself to an investigation of a selection of Putnam’s (or, rather, Putnamian) transcendental arguments. I will argue that some of these arguments offer us useful philosophical resources for developing a pragmatic non-reductive naturalism – i.e., a version of transcendental naturalism, or pragmatically naturalized transcendental philosophy. The paper will briefly discuss five transcendental arguments: (i) the Brains in a Vat argument; (ii) the argument against metaphysical realism based on conceptual relativity; (iii) the argument for realism rejecting relativism and other non-realisms; (iv) the argument against reductive naturalism (or physicalism); and (v) the argument for the entanglement of fact and value.

On Friday, 24th October 2025, Michel Bitbol (CNRS, Archives Husserl, Paris, France) will give an online talk entitled "Transcendental epistemologies and probabilism" in the context of UCLouvain’s new monthly seminar MEPHISTO ("MEtaphysics and PHIlosophy of Science: Transcendental Orientations").

Please note that this conference will be streamed live on the youtube channel of the CEFISES. No registration required.

When?: Friday, 24th October 2025, from 14h to 16h CEST (1h of talk + 1h of Q&A)

Where?: Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), Place Cardinal Mercier 14, Salle Ladrière + live on youtube

All info: ISP website + CEFISES website

Abstract: "Transcendental epistemologies and probabilism" 

Transcendental epistemologies, in their Kantian and Husserlian varieties, can be characterized by two basic tenets: (1) It is possible to regress from objects to the preconditions for their givenness, and (2) The constitution of objects involves anticipating phenomena—both intellectually and practically—through structural assumptions that conform to these preconditions. Anticipation is the key concept here, one to which Husserl ascribes an ambivalent status in his Crisis. According to Husserl, anticipating future appearances is a basic function essential to life. But this is also, unfortunately, the task to which modern natural sciences restrict themselves—far from the ideal of genuine theoretical knowledge that had inaugurated the project of science. In this talk, I wish to show that when its anticipatory status is fully embraced by physical science in the form of probabilism, an about-turn occurs—bringing us closer to Husserl’s ideal of a comprehensive science wholly aware of its own foundation, rather than distancing us from it. This paradoxical development is not difficult to grasp. Indeed, with probabilism, we move away from the deceptive traditional static, demiurgic, objectivistic, naturalistic, third-person, and falsely omniscient view of science. Instead, we move toward a dynamic, practical, first-person, engaged, and inherently finite conception. In this new framework, probability is no longer regarded merely as a mathematical tool reluctantly employed to cope with temporarily incomplete knowledge. Rather, it emerges as the foundational principle of all cognition, finally revealed by the most advanced scientific developments. In this light, quantum physics becomes the paradigm of a new science – one that (unlike classical physics) can no longer ignore its transcendental preconditions.

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from 14h to 16h CEST (1h of talk + 1h of Q&A)

Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), Place Cardinal Mercier 14, Salle Ladrière

+ live on youtube

Kristina Engelhard (Trier University, Germany) will give a talk entitled "Powers BSAs and Cognitive Capacities. A Powerful Capacitist Theory of Laws of Nature" in the context of UCLouvain’s new monthly seminar MEPHISTO ("MEtaphysics and PHIlosophy of Science: Transcendental Orientations").

Abstract: "Powers BSAs and Cognitive Capacities. A Powerful Capacitist Theory of Laws of Nature"

This talk sketches and explores the outlines of a new theory of the laws of nature, according to which laws, understood as both law facts and law propositions, can be grounded on two kinds of powers: physical and cognitive powers. This theory is called the Powerful Capacitist Theory of Laws (PTLPC). This approach combines an ontological and an epistemological perspective on laws. One version of this account is Powers BSA, which has recently been discussed in the literature. Like the Powers BSA, the PTLPC can explain epistemic features connected to the laws of nature, such as the relationship of laws and theories to scientific practices. However, it is superior to recent Powers BSAs in that it can provide a unified and systematic account of this dualism. In part one I discuss the PBSA account and Friend's objection to; I then show in part two that a powers theory of laws including powerful capacitism — the view that there are cognitive powers bringing about cognitive outputs such as intuitions, propositions, inferences, and theories — is unaffected by Friend's objections. Section three sketches a metaphysics of cognitive powers. Section four outlines how a powers theory including powerful capacitism grounds the laws of nature. Finally, section five concludes the results of this investigation.

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