The School of Social Sciences, its Center for the Advancement of Logic, its Philosophy, History, and Applications (C-ALPHA), and its Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science present the Dean’s Workshop

                            The Logic, Metaphysics and Semantics of Identity

Identity, the binary relation that every object bears to itself, and itself only, is regarded by most analytic philosophers as an entirely unproblematic notion. But ever since the inception of analytic philosophy, there has been an undercurrent of worry about the relational status of identity; indeed, this status has been questioned by many of the major early figures, including Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Ramsey. The workshop aims to explore the problem of identity, and recent proposals for its solution, from a variety of perspectives, including those of logic, metaphysics, semantics, cognitive science, and the history of philosophy.

Date:                  Saturday, 11 October 2014, 9am–6pm
Location:            UC Irvine, Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway Building # 214, Conference Room # 1321

                                                               Program

 9:00 –   9:45      Kai Wehmeier (UC Irvine), “The Necessity of Identity (without Identity)”
 9:45 – 10:15      Discussion and coffee
10:15–  11:00     Robert Trueman (University of Stirling), “Eliminating Identity”
11:00 – 11:30     Discussion and coffee
11:30 – 12:15     Fatema Amijee (University of Texas at Austin), "Identity Is Not Fundamental"

12:15 –12:45      Discussion
12:45 –  2:00      Lunch break
  2:00 –  2:45      Max Weiss (Boston University), “Pictures, Predication and Generality in the Tractatus”
  2:45 –  3:15      Discussion and coffee
  3:15 –  4:00      Sarah Lawsky (UC Irvine), “Can Cognitive Science Explain Identity?”
  4:00 –  4:30      Discussion and coffee
  4:30 –  5:15      Alexis Burgess (Claremont McKenna), “Personal Identity without Identity”
  5:15 –  5:45      Discussion

Please RSVP to Patty Jones (patty.jones@uci.edu, 949 824-1520), C-ALPHA manager, by 1 October 2014.