Date: June 11, 2018 13:00-15:00 (Door opens at 12:30)
Venue: Seminar Room@13F, Faculty of Medicine Experimental Research Building, School of Medicine, Hongo Campus
Speaker:
Markus Gabriel (University of Bonn)
Markus Gabriel was born in Germany in 1980. After receiving his PhD from Heidelberg University, Gabriel joined the University of Bonn in 2009, and is currently Professor of Epistemology, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy. He also serves as Director of the university's International Centre for Philosophy. Since 2017, he has served as one of founding directors at Center for Science and Thought. His popular book "Warum es die Welt nicht gibt" was translated into Japanese in January this year.
Credit: Markus Gabriel
Hosts:
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU)
International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCN)
Abstract:
“Metaphysics” is the discipline which begins where physics ends. In this talk, I will explore the limits of natural science. Given that physics is a moving target, it cannot know where it begins and where it ends, as it has no fixed boundaries. This implies that metaphysics equally changes its domain of objects by its very nature. The reason for this, I will argue, is that natural science is a paradigmatic form of empirical knowledge. Empirical knowledge draws on objective knowledge claims. These can either be true or false. On this basis, I will present a view that goes beyond Popper’s still famous fallibilism by emphasizing both sides of the reality of empirical knowledge acquisition. For science evidently does not only succeed where it fails. Otherwise, we could not really know anything in science, which is an absurd view implied by Popper’s position.
