Colloquium: Dana Goswick, University of Melbourne
Biography:
I received my doctorate from the University of California at Davis in December 2009. Since 2010, I’ve been a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. My work centers on various topics within metaphysics, with a particular emphasis on modality, ordinary objects, the relation between logic and metaphysics, and Realism.
The Role of Logic in Metaphysical Theorizing:
Many of us (myself included) were inculcated in graduate school with the Quine/Kripke/Lewis line which takes classical logic to be sacrosanct and to provide an important constraint on philosophical theorizing. Having spent nearly ten years in the marvelously logically open-minded environment of the University of Melbourne, I’m far less certain of the classical logic party line than I once was. In this talk, I’ll (1) highlight some of the metaphysical consequences of respecting one particular theorem of standard logic: the law of the excluded middle, (2) examine what this can tell us, in general, about the relation between logic and metaphysics, and (3) argue that we have good reason to think that classical logic should not constrain our metaphysical views, i.e., we should not reject — or even think less of — metaphysical view m simply because it cannot be modelled by classical logic.