Philosophy Seminar Series: 15 February 2011, 2-3:45pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Dan Korman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois; Moderator: Dr. Tang Weng Hong

Abstract: Various prominent views in material-object metaphysics-for instance, eliminativism, according to which there are no statues or chairs, and universalism, according to which there is an object composed of your nose and the Eiffel Tower- seem manifestly at odds with things we are ordinarily inclined to say and believe. Defenders of these views often maintain that the conflict is merely apparent; what they are saying in the “ontology room” is entirely compatible with the things we ordinarily say and believe. I critically assess a variety of such compatibilist accounts.

About the speaker: Dan Korman is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois and is currently visiting the Australian National University as a research fellow. He is primarily interested in the metaphysics of material objects. When he tries to work on this topic he finds himself distracted by the philosophy of perception, the ontology of documents, Locke on substratum, the nature and status of intuition, and anything having anything to do with Naming and Necessity.