Mission Statement

The Metaphysics Collaborative is an international organization founded in 2015. Its purpose is to facilitate collaboration among metaphysicians from around the world.

Current Activities

The Metaphysics Collaborative, directed by Kathrin Koslicki and Michael Raven, is engaged in several ongoing research projects. These include:

First, the Ontology of Production: Products and Byproducts project, hosted by the Université de Neuchâtel under the direction of Kathrin Koslicki and Olivier Massin. The goal of the project is to develop and implement an ontology of human-made products (e.g., books, baristas, and bitcoin) and by-products (e.g., sawdust, waste, and contractual obligations) by way of a detailed study of the ontology of artifacts (subproject 1) as well as the ontology of wealth and economic goods (subproject 2). Further details concerning the project as well as the full project description can be found here.

Second, the Essence of Anti-Essentialism project investigates an entity’s essential features in the face of influential anti-essentialist challenges. The project’s primary aim is to defend essentialism against these challenges, and to clarify the important role it plays in our meta-metaphysical frameworks.

The Essence of Anti-Essentialism project has produced The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, co-edited by Koslicki and Raven, an anthology that collects over thirty contributions representing a wide variety of perspectives on essence from a variety of contemporary scholars. In addition, Koslicki and Raven co-edit the philpapers category, “Essence and Essentialism”.

 Lastly, the Collaborative administers Metaphysics, an open access, peer reviewed, online journal that publishes state-of-the-art research that engages with themes in Aristotelian metaphysics, broadly construed. Over the last several years, Metaphysics has published volumes connected to the themes of Metaphysics Collaborative conferences.

 The Metaphysics Collaborative meets monthly to discuss the research projects above, as well as related research by both our active and affiliated members. See our monthly meeting schedule for details. You can also subscribe to our mailing list to keep up to date on our events.

Contact

For inquiries about The Metaphysics Collaborative, please contact Kathrin Koslicki. For questions regarding this website, please contact Antoine Taillard.