Research

The members of the MCMP address a broad range of questions from different areas of philosophy. Here is a list of some of them.

In epistemology and social epistemology we ask questions such as:

• How should one rationally change one’s beliefs or theories in the face of new evidence?
• Is it possible at all to justify inferences that go beyond the data?
• What does it mean to say that the evidence confirms a theory?
• Is coherence truth-conducive? And: How does belief relate to probability?
• When is it rational to disagree? How should groups deliberate?
• And: How should we aggregate logically interconnected judgments?

In logic and the philosophy of language, we ask questions such as:

• How should we deal with sentences that speak about their own truth value, validity, necessity, or probability?
• Is truth grounded in the facts in a sense than can be made formally precise?
• What is the meaning of logical symbols? Do conditionals have truth conditions?
• When should we accept a conditional, and how should we change our beliefs when we learn a conditional?
• What does formal semantics teach us about natural language?
• And: Is logic normative?

In philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics, we ask questions such as:

• What is the meaning of theoretical terms in science?
• Is there knowledge of causal relationships?
• Which types of inter-theoretic relations are there in the various sciences?
• Why should one reduce one theory to another theory?
• What is the role of explanations in science and mathematics?
• Is mathematics the science of structures, and if so, in what sense?
• And: Which role do probabilities play in physics?

In metaphysics, we ask questions such as:

• What is distinctive of good criteria of identity?
• How does abstraction work? Is it possible to logically reconstruct the notion of essentiality of properties?
• What do modal logic and second-order logic tell us about metaphysical necessity and possibility?
• What sense can we make of dispositions and propensities?
• And: What is meant by ontological dependence?

In ethics and political philosophy, we ask questions such as:  

• What is a reason for an action?
• How can we make rational decisions when their outcomes depend on some other agents' decisions?
• How can we deliberate rationally? Are there coherence criteria for practical rationality?
• Do numbers count? How should one reason with norms?
• And: How do norms emerge?

Finally, the members of the MCMP are interested in meta-philosophical issues (such as: 

• Is it possible to support philosophical theories on empirical grounds?
• What can we learn from the merits and shortcomings of early mathematical philosophy?),

and in the history of mathematical philosophy (esp. Carnap and Logical Empiricism).

If you would like to know more about the research topics that are pursued at the MCMP, please read this document.