Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
Prof. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Oxford
Colin Prestige Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Oriel College
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra is currently Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Oxford and Colin Prestige Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Oriel College, where he has been the Senior Tutor since 2019. He studied Philosophy as an undergraduate in the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina, and then went to do an MPhil and PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where he worked under the supervision of D H Mellor. After the PhD he was a Junior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and then he had his first permanent appointment at the University of Edinburgh. From there he moved to Oxford and in 2005 he moved to a joint appointment between the University of Nottingham and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. In 2007 he moved back to Oxford, where he took up his current position.
He has published extensively in Metaphysics and Early Modern Philosophy. His main publications are Resemblance Nominalism; a solution to the Problem of Universals (2002), Leibniz’s Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (2014), Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics; translation and commentary (2020) and Two Arguments for the Identity of Indiscernibles (2022), all published with Oxford University Press.
Voltaire and Rousseau on Optimism
Joining the Face-to-Face Talks (Please register by 6 September 2023): https://cloud.itsc.
Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 962 7437 7535
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/
For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract:
Voltaire’s poem on the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 marks the beginning of Voltaire’s attacks on optimism, the idea that everything is well, or that this is the best possible world, ideas that Voltaire and most of his contemporaries associated with Leibniz and Pope. In a short letter of 1756 Rousseau rejected Voltaire’s rejection of optimism and in fact he argued for a kind of optimism. In the lecture I shall discuss Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s positions.
Bolzano on the Identity of Indiscernibles
Joining the Face-to-Face Talks (Please register by 6 September 2023): https://cloud.itsc.
Joining the Talks Online (No registration is needed):
Zoom Meeting ID: 962 7437 7535
Link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/
For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract:
In his Wissenschaftslehre of 1837 Bernard Bolzano presented a new argument for the Identity of Indiscernibles, the thesis that there aren’t two things sharing all their attributes. The argument is clearly different from every other argument I know of for the Identity of Indiscernibles. In the seminar I shall discuss the argument and present my reasons for thinking that Bolzano’s argument is either invalid or unsound.