17 May 2019, Cool Logic, Matteo Ferrari

There is a reason why we take some every-day ontological practices for granted. It is for the same reason that people in Trafalgar Square can‘t see England. ‘‘Pegasus flies’’, ‘‘Sherlock Holmes is intelligent’’ and ‘‘Apollo is not a rock-star”: all these things are conventionally accepted. The question is: how can we make sense of them? Or, to complicate the picture, consider ‘‘Ajax liked daises’’ or ‘‘Reptilians exist’’. This only gets more puzzling; but why so?

The existence of fictional characters challenges our way of deciding whether a sentence is true or not. Different philosophical stories seem to run into different formal problems and vice versa. In short, during this talk we will discuss stories about stories and try to make sense of our ontological practices.

Join us for drinks and snacks afterwards!