‘Caring About What Would Have Been'
Ever wondered how your everyday "what if" statements hold the key to unlocking insights about our world? This thinking can be commonplace (if you had set your alarm, you wouldn’t have been late); it can be a source of great regret (if I hadn’t lost my temper, she would never have got on that flight); it can be mind-blowing (if my father hadn’t gone into the wrong shop that day then none of you children would have existed); it can seem utterly speculative (if Cleopatra’s nose had been a different size, the Roman Empire would have lasted another century) and yet it can also seem to live at the very heart of science (if the brick had been dropped it would have fallen towards the earth).
John Divers works on modality – what we say (and think) that goes beyond how the world actually is and speaks of how the world could have been, could not have been, would have been or would not have been.
In this lecture John will explore these questions to illustrate his overall philosophy of modality.
Date | Thursday, 7th March 2024
Time | 7.30pm - 9.00pm
Location | The Synge Theatre, The Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin
Prof. John Divers
John is Professor of Moral Philosophy (1837) in Trinity College Dublin and also Head of the Department of Philosophy. Before joining Trinity in 2022, John was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield and (more recently) at the University of Leeds. His primary research is focused on matters of modality: what might be, what would have been, what must be and what cannot be.