”In this talk, I develop and defend a novel form of property deflationism—predicate-variable deflationism—that is fully compatible with property nominalism. I argue that property-talk—discourse involving terms like ‘property’, ‘attribute’, etc.—does not describe a domain of abstract universals but rather provides a first-order surrogate for second-order quantification into predicate-position.

A central challenge for property deflationists is to interpret such second-order machinery without smuggling properties back in. After critically assessing extant deflationist approaches, I meet this challenge by drawing on A.N. Prior’s work on non-nominal, adjectival (‘how-talk‘) quantification. I then explain how property-talk indirectly expresses such higher-order content by invoking semantic-pretense-involving fictionalism (‘SPIF‘), which allows property-talk to be genuinely true while avoiding any ontological commitment to properties.”

”Model pluralism pervades scientific practice (Weit, 2019), as multiple kinds of models are often employed to investigate the properties and structures of the same phenomenon. The proliferation of multiple models targeting the same phenomenon has generated what Roman Frigg (2022) calls the “problem of abundance” referring to the existence of multiple, often incompatible yet empirically successful models representing a single target system. Nuclear physics exemplifies this problem: liquid-drop, shell, and quark models each capture salient features of nuclear behaviour while endorsing fundamentally different ontologies (Morrison, 2015). More generally, the problem of abundance can be summarized as “many models, one target” and raises two key questions: (1) what motivates the construction of multiple models of the same target, and (2) what strategies are available for managing the resulting abundance (Frigg, 2022, p. 40).

This presentation evaluates whether perspectival realism offers a viable response to both questions. Perspectival realism is a recent trade-off position, resulting between two distinct pluralist and realist commitments (Bica, 2026). In this sense, I analyse three contemporary interpretations of perspectival realism: Giere’s epistemic account emphasizes that multiple models represent limited and partial aspects of their target systems (Giere, 2006). However, it struggles to clarify in what sense this view constitutes a stable trade-off. Mitchell’s ontic view by contrast, focuses on how models, as partial and incomplete representations, target level-relative causal structures (Mitchell, 2019). Mitchell addresses the problem of abundance by proposing the concept of model integration. According to this concept, distinct models at different levels can be combined to achieve multilevel integration. Nonetheless, I argue that such integration may not always be achievable in all cases of model pluralism.

Finally, Massimi’s modal approach redirects attention to how allegedly incompatible models generate modal knowledge and enable a form of physical conceivability (Massimi, 2022). In this respect, her account provides a robust strategy for navigating the problem of abundance,
or so I will argue.”

‘The aim of my talk is to seek a notion of intellectual autonomy compatible with the different ends that it serves to achieve. One of these aims is the search for knowledge or justified belief, but other aims include understanding and improving our reasoning skills. I will begin by distinguishing two notions of intellectual autonomy, and then focus on one of them, intellectual autonomy understood as independence in the pursuit of knowledge or justified belief. I will then discuss other ends that the practice of intellectual autonomy might help foster, and consequently present a dilemma for the novice concerning this practice. In last section I propose a solution to this dilemma, and I identify a few potential problems with this solution.’