Past Semesters of the Doctoral Seminar

Week 4, 17th November, Talk. Marco Ruffino (University of Campinas), Pragmatics as a by-product in Frege's early Writings.

Week 5, 24th November, Talk. Guanglong Luo (University of Konstanz), Nominalism and Mathematical Truth.

Week 6, 1st December, Talk. Tabea Rohr (CNRS, Université Paris Cité), The Frege-Hilbert Controversy in Context.

Week 7, 8th December, Work-in-Progress. Carolin Antos (Universität Konstanz), Defectiveness of Formal Concepts.

Week 8, 15th December, Talk. Sofie Vaas (University of Konstanz), Can proofs by mathematical induction be explanatory?

Week 10, 11th - 12th January, Gödel Workshop   |   Poster   |   Itinerary

Week 11, 19th January, Talk. Dirk Schlimm (McGill University), What can we learn by studying mathematical notations?

Week 12, 26th January, Talk. Pascal Wagner (University of Konstanz), Probabilities and the Set-theoretic Multiverse.

Week 13, 2nd February, Talk. Luca Castaldo (University of Warsaw), Implicit commitments of Instrumental acceptance: A case study.

Week 14, 9th February, Talk. Salvatore Florio (University of Oslo), Singularism, Pluralism, and Definitional Equivalence.

Week 1, 14th April, Talk: Kentaro Fujimoto (University of Bristol), Liberal Predicativism and Super Geach-Kaplan sentences

Week 3, 28th April, Talk: Sam Roberts (University of Konstanz), A Philosophical Introduction to Forcing

Week 4, 5th May, Talk: Sam Roberts (University of Konstanz), A Philosophical Introduction to Forcing, part 2

Week 5, 12th May, Talk: Philip Welch (University of Bristol), Dark Classes

• Welch Abstract: We look at some results of Mack Stanley that allow us to forgo ideas of so-called "width potentialism", at the price of venturing further out into the murky world of classes beyond the minimal vNBG model. These classes nevertheless have something of a constructive flavour.

Week 8, 2nd June, DISCUSSION. A coherence theory of truth and knowledge, by Donald Davidson.

Week 9, 16 June, Two Talks  |  10:00am - 1:15pm  |  Room Y132: 

• Bokai Yao (University of Notre Dame), Reflection with Absolute Generality
  • Yao Abstract: Traditionally, reflection principles in set theory claim that the set-theoretic universe is indescribable. It is natural to consider reflection principles with absolute generality, which asserts that the universe containing everything, including sets and urelements, is indescribable. In the first part of this talk, I will consider the first-order reflection principle in urelement set theory. With the Axiom of Choice, first-order reflection holds just in case the sets of urelements are arranged in a certain way, and this equivalence falls apart without AC.  In the second part of this talk, I will present my joint work with Joel Hamkins on second-order reflection principles with urelements. A standard version of second-order reflection, due to Paul Bernays, is often considered as a weak large cardinal axiom in set theory. With abundant urelements, however, Bernays’ second-order reflection principle bi-interprets a supercompact cardinal.
• Xinhe Wu (University of Bristol), Vagueness in Parthood and Identity: Applications of Boolean-Valued Semantics 
  • Wu Abstract: Some philosophically important relations are vague, or at least appear to be so. Two examples are the relation of parthood and the relation of identity. In this talk, I present a novel kind of many-valued semantics - Boolean-valued semantics - and argue that it makes for a very attractive semantic framework for modeling vagueness in parthood and identity. In particular, I argue that it works better than the traditional choice - fuzzy-valued semantics.

Week 10, 23 June, Talk: Bartek Tuta (University of Konstanz), Knowledge without justification: The phenomenon of knowledge transfer as a case of knowledge acquisition based on epistemic entitlement.

Week 11, 30 June, Talk: Hans Halvorson (Princeton University), Dispensing with the hole argument.

• Halvorson Abstract: I will be talking about the sorts of puzzles that come up when there are mathematical models that are isomorphic, but not identical. These puzzles raise the question of whether set theory ought to be replaced by some sort of more structuralism-friendly foundation for mathematics.

Week 12, 7 July, Talk: Lukas Skiba (Universität Hamburg), Higher-Order Being and Time.

Monday 10. July, Talk: Matteo Zicchetti (University of Warsaw), Soundness arguments for consistency and their epistemic value. |  5:30 - 7pm |  Room G308

Week 13, 14 July, Talk: Andrea Reichenberger  (Universität Siegen), Heinrich Scholz and the School of Muenster: From Mathematical Foundations to Application.

Week 14, 21 July - 22 July: Uni Konstanz Forcing Workshop |  Room G304

• 21 July | 10:00am - 11:30am | Talk: Victoria Gitman (City University of New York)
  • A Gentle Introduction to Class Forcing
• 21 July | 1:30pm - 3:00pm | Talk: Victoria Gitman (City University of New York)
  • An Overview of Virtual Large Cardinals
• 22 July | 11:00am - 12:30pm | Talk: Karl-Georg Niebergall (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
  • Truth and Forcing in Set Theory

Meeting in person (room TBD), Fri, 11:45 - 13:15 H German time.

Each week we will meet to hear a talk or discuss a paper. Hopefully see you there! If you have any questions, please feel free to email Sam Roberts (sam.roberts@uni-konstanz.de), Carolin Antos (carolin.antos-kuby@uni-konstanz.de), or Leon Horsten (leon.horsten@uni-konstanz.de).

Week 1, 28th October, Talk: Hazhir Roshangar (Masaryk University), How can Mathematical Objects be Real but Mind-Dependent? 

Week 2, 4th November, ONLINE Talk: Jared Ifland (Florida State), Realism on Thin Ice: An Argument from Mathematical Practice.. THIS WEEK WE MEET VIA ZOOM AT 2pm

Week 2.5 9th November, Talk: Simon Schmidt (Torino), Kripkean Satisfaction for Unrestricted Higher-order Languages

Week 3, 11th November, Talk: Maciej Kłeczek (Frankfurt), On Kit Fine’s Paradox of the Variable.

Week 4, 18th November, Talk: László Komorjai, Progression and Infinity.

Week 5, 25th November, Informal WIP talk: Leon Horsten (Konstanz), Boolean valued models and arbitrary sets.  

Week 7, 9th December, Talk: Carlo Nicolai (King's College London), Property Theory and Non-well-founded Structures.

Week 8, 16th December, Talk: Guanglong Luo (Konstanz), Truth and Finite Conjunctions.

Week 11, 27th January, Konstanz-Pisa-Torino Workshop

Week 13, 10th February, Discussion. Infinite Reasoning, by Jared Warren.

Week 15. 24th Februar, Talk: Merlin Carl (Flensburg), A first introduction to ordinal computability.

• Abstract: Turing computability is an attractive concept insofar as, according to the Church-Turing-thesis, it offers a formally precise definition of the intuitive concept of a procedure that can be carried out in a "mechanical" way. However, while Turing computability is restricted to operations that can be carried out with a finite amount of space and time, there are many occurences in mathematics of an intuition of effectiveness that goes beyond finitary processes; in the words of Wilfried Hodges, "every mathematician is at least vaguely aware of another quite different notion of "effective function", which has nothing at all to do with denumerable sets". This motivates the introduction of models of computability that generalize Turing computability to the transfinite. Although not explicitly for the sake of this goal, several such models have indeed been proposed, such as the Infinite Time Turing Machines (ITTMs) of Hamkins and Kidder or the Ordinal Turing Machines (OTMs) of Koepke. We will give an overview of ordinal computability and what we regard as its relevance for the philosophy of mathematics.

Meeting in person (room G 203), Fri, 11:45 - 13:15 H German time

Each week we will meet to hear a talk or discuss a paper. 

Hopefully see you there! If you have any questions, please feel free to email Sam Roberts (sam.roberts@uni-konstanz.de), Carolin Antos (carolin.antos-kuby@uni-konstanz.de), or Leon Horsten (leon.horsten@uni-konstanz.de). 

Week 0 (EXTRA EVENT), 1st April, TALKS. Luca San Mauro (Rome), The Interplay Between Structure and Computation. 

Mattias Wikstrom (Konstanz), Parts of Mathematical Objects. 

Week 1, 22nd April, TALK. Cezary Cieśliński (Warsaw), Yablo’s Paradox at Work. 

Week 2, 29th April, DISCUSSION. The Function of Truth and the Conservativeness Argument, by Kentaro Fujimoto.  

Week 3, 6th May, TALK. Deborah Kant (Hamburg), Value Judgements in Set-theoretic Practice. 

NOTE THE DIFFERENT DAY:

Week 4, MONDAY 16th May, TALK. Annina Loets (Berlin), Modal Variation, Plenitude, and Vagueness.

Week 5, 19th May, WORK IN PROGRESS. Beau Mont (Konstanz) and Sam Roberts (Konstanz), on propositional truth. 

Week 6, 27th-28th May, WORKSHOP. Formal Ontology of Mathematical Objects. 

Week 7, 3rd June, WORK IN PROGRESS. Carolin Antos (Konstanz), Engineering the concept of set in practice - a case for concept pluralism?. 

Week 8, 10th June. WORK IN PROGRESS. Leon Horsten (Konstanz), Towards models for introspection and reflection principles for typefree subjective probability (joint work with Cezary Cieslinski (Warsaw))

Week 9, 17th June, TALK. Jon Litland (Texas), Generating Propositions.

Week 10, 24th June, WORK IN PROGRESS. Beau Mount (Konstanz), Externalism and mathematical knowledge.

Week 11,1st July, WORK IN PROGRESS. Carolin Antos (Konstanz), Engineering the concept of set in practice - a case for concept pluralism?

Week 12, 8th July, DISCUSSION. We will read and discuss What Model Companionship Can Say About the Continuum Problem (by Giorgio Venturi and Matteo Viale)

Week 14, 22nd July, TALK. Silvia Jonas (Munich), Realism, Pluralism, and Indispensability.

29. Okt. 2021, VORTRAG. Beau Madison Mount (Konstanz), The Metaphysics of Opacity (in Kooperation mit Catharine Diehl).

3. Nov. 2021, VORTRÄGE.

• 11.00-12.30 Lorenzo Rossi (Torino), Truth and Quantification (in Kooperation mit Michel Glanzberg).
• 17.-18.00 Matteo Plebani (Torino), Thin Objects are Not Transparent (in Kooperation mit Luca San Maura and Giorgio Venturi)

5. Nov. 2021, VORTRAG. Jan Heylen (Leuven), Logical Problems with Divine Omniscience.

12. Nov. 2021, VORTRAG. Philip Welch (Bristol), Weak Categoricity Arguments.

19-20. Nov. 2021, WORKSHOP. München-Konstanz Workshop, welcher in München statt findet.

26. Nov. 2021, VORTRAG. Tim Button (UCL), Three Views on the Cumulative Hierarchy of Sets.

3. Dez. 2021, WORKSHOP. Set Theory Workshop.

10. Dez. 2021, VORTRAG. Salvatore Florio (Birmingham).

14. Jan. 2022, VORTRAG. Luca San Mauro (Rome).

21. Jan. 2022, VORTRAG. Daniela Schuster (Konstanz), On the pure logic of justified belief.

28. Jan. 2022, VORTRAG. Zeynep Soysal (Rochester).

4. Feb. 2022, VORTRAG. Christopher von Bülow (Konstanz), Agent-oriented Metaphysics of the Manifest Image.

11. Feb. 2022, VORTRAG. Sam Roberst (Konstanz).

April 16^th, 2021, TALK. Carolin Antos (Konstanz), TBD.

April 23^rd, 2021, TALK. Alex Roberts (Oxford), TBD.

April 30^th, 2021, TALK. Babu Thaliath (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), TBD. 

May 7^th, 2021, READING. A. Passeau, Mathematical knowledge without proof (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4) [(2015]:775-799).

May 14^th, 2021, READING. J. Matheson, Deep Disagreements and Rational Resolutions (Topoi, forthcoming).

May 21^st, 2021, TALK. Li (Alexandra) Zhang (Tsinghua/Konstanz), Horwich about Truth Generalisations. 

May 28^th, 2021, READING. J. Friedman, Why Suspend Judging? (Noûs 51 (2) [(2017]: 302-326).

June 11^th, 2021, TALK. Martin Fischer & Matteo Zicchetti (MCMP), Internal Categoricity.

June 18^th, 2021, READING. T. Williamson, Disagreement in Metaphysics.

June 25^th, 2021, TALK. Feng Ye (Capital Normal University), Naturalism in Philosophy of Mathematics.

July 9^th, 2021, TALK. Ming Xiong (South China Normal University), Unwinding Modal Paradoxes on Digraphs.

Nov. 6^th 2020, TALK.  Sam Roberts (Konstanz), Ultimate V.

Nov. 13^th 2020, READING. Kenny Easwaran's Probabilistic Proofs and Transferability (Philosophia Mathematica 17 [2009]: 341–62).

Nov. 20^th 2020, TALK. Carolin Antos (Konstanz), Two aspects of mathematical explanatoriness.

Nov. 27^th 2020, READING. Jared Warren’s Quantifier Variance and Indefinite Extensibility (Philosophical Review, 126 (1) [2017]:81-122).

Dec. 4^th 2020, TALK. Beau Mont (Konstanz), Bivalence, Fidelity, and Large Cardinal Reflection: Variations on a Kreiselian Theme.

Dec. 11^th 2020, READING. Erich Reck’s On Reconstructing Dedekind Abstraction Logically (Logic, Philosophy of Mathematica, and their History: Essays in Honor W.W. Tait, E. Reck (Ed.) [2018]: 113-138).

Dec. 18^th 2020, TALK. Kameryn Williams (Hawai), Class-theoretic Potentialism.

Jan. 8^th 2021, READING. Julien C. Cole’s Creativity, Freedom, and Authority: A New Perspective On the Metaphysics of Mathematics (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4) [2009]:589-608).

Jan. 15^th 2021, READING. Silvia De Toffoli’s Groundwork for a Fallibilist Account of Mathematics. Philosophical Quarterly.

Jan. 29^th 2021, TALK. Neil Barton (Konstanz), Intensional Classes and Intuitionistic Topoi in Potentialist Systems.

Feb. 5^th 2021, TALK. James Studd (Oxford), An Iterative Conception of Properties.

Feb. 12^th 2021, TALK. Carlo Nicolai (King’s College), A Theory of Implicit Commitment.