Activities:
Events, Talks, Publications

Talks

Scheduled

  1. tba

Past

  1. “Can response-dependent properties ground direct realism?“, talk at the 16th Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (SIFA), Turin, 27 – 29 August 2025
  2. “The Response-dependence of Meaning“, 7th Philosophy of Language and Mind Network Conference, Prague, 26 – 28 August 2024
  3. “Real Responses vs. Judgments“, International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, 12-17 August 2024
  4. “Response-dependence and Knowledge“, RT Cognitive Capacitism from Kant to Carnap, World Congress of Philosophy, Rome, 1-8 August 2024
  5. “Response-dependence and meaning“, MUMBLE talk, Università di Torino, 20 June 2023
  6. “Subtler Responses“, WIP presentation at Orly Shenker’s research group, Hebrew University, 30 May 2023
  7. “Water, not H2O – a philosophical tragedy“, Vienna Language and Mind group, 2 December 2022
  8. “John Wilkins and his Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language“, talk at symposium on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of his death, 30 November 2022
  9. “Reivindicando el agua“, keynote at XXII Foro de Estudiantes, Profesores y Egresados de Filosofía & IV Congreso Filosófico del Caribe Colombiano & Celebración de los 25 años del Programa de Filosofía Julio Enrique Blanco, 23 September 2022
  10. “Vindicating Water“, talk at 43rd International Wittgenstein Symposium, 7 – 13 August 2022, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria
  11. “True ways of translating“, talk at ExLog2022 Explanation and Logic, 12 – 14 July 2022, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
  12. “Translating Trueways“, talk at Truthmaker Semantics: What, What for, and How?, 19 – 20 June 2022, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
  13. “Was zählt sind die Menschen“, talk at ÖSTERREICHISCHE PHILOSOPHIE UND WIENER FIN DE SIECLE, Internationale Tagung anlässlich des 100. Geburtstages von KURT R. FISCHER (1922 – 2014), 12 May 2022, Institute Vienna Circle, Vienna, Austria.
  14. “Response‐dependence and Block’s puzzle about colour terms”, talk at SIFA, 24 September 2021, Noto, Italy.
  15. “Ryle’s and Carnap’s impact on Goodman’s notions of linguistic aboutness”, talk at SSHAP, 14 July 2021, online.
  16. “Direct realism, empiricism and response-dependence in light of Block’s puzzle about colour terms”, work-in-progress talk at AK, 20 April 2021, online
  17. “Response-Dependence and Language”, work-in-progress talk at Vienna Language and Mind group, 28 January 2021, online.
  18. “Why Subject Matters Should Be Topics”, talk at ECAP 10 symposium Conceptualising Aboutness and Subject Matter, 25 August 2020, online.

Publications

  1. Vindicating Water, Platonism. Proceedings of the 43rd International Wittgenstein Symposium (forthcoming)
  2. Osorio-Kupferblum, N. (2024) Real Responses vs. Judgments. In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Facets of Reality — Contemporary Debates. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Contributions of the 45th International Wittgenstein Symposium, vol. XXX. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 584-592
  3. Book Symposium on Ayers’ Knowing and Seeing: Groundwork for a New Empiricism, Special Topic edited by Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum and Mira Magdalena Sickinger (2021). Grazer Philosophische Studien 98(4), 488-627 
    With contributions by Maria Rosa Antognazza, Menno Lievers, Guy Longworth, Rory Madden, Sofia Miguens & Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum, Mira Magdalena Sickinger, and Charles Travis, and replies by Michael Ayers.
  4. Osorio-Kupferblum, N., & Sickinger, M. M. (2021). Editors’ Preface, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 98(4), 489-494. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-00000152
  5. Miguens, S., & Osorio-Kupferblum, N. (2021). The Thing before Us, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 98(4), 584-599. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-00000150

Events

How to be an Externalist about Meaning – Symposium on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the death of John Wilkins

30 November 2022

Speakers: Natascha Gruver, C. Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum

Round table discussion with: Michael Ayers, Delia Belleri, and Indrek Reiland

Conceptualising Aboutness And Subject Matter

25 August 2020

Symposium co-organised with Matteo Plebani (Torino), philosophy of language section of ECAP 10, with Stephen Yablo, Arthur Schipper, Matteo Plebani, and Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum

Knowing and Seeing

Symposium with Michael Ayers

26 – 28 February 2020

Invited speakers: Maria Rosa Antognazza, Tom Crowther, Guy Longworth, Rory Madden, and Charles Travis.

Commentators: Sofia Miguens, and Barbara Haas, Mira Magdalena Sickinger, Arnaud de Coster, Paul Tucek

Co-organised with the Vienna Forum of Analytic Philosophy

Call for papers

Paper submissions are invited for the special issue/collection of Topoi entitled: CAPACITIES-FIRST PHILOSOPHY. This special issue aims to analyze various models of “capacities-first philosophy,” also known as “capacitism,” from the perspectives of epistemology and metaphysics. It focuses on mental capacities, particularly perception and cognitive abilities, as well as causal powers, response-dependent properties, and dispositions.

Guest editors:

• Luca Oliva, University of Houston

• C. Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum, University of Vienna

DESCRIPTION:

This special issue aims to analyze various models of “capacities-first philosophy,” also known as “capacitism.” It will examine the most recent and compelling arguments defending capacitism from different but complementary viewpoints in epistemology and metaphysics. We will integrate cognitive (primarily perceptual), causal, and dispositional analyses. Specifically, we intend to discuss (1) Kant’s capacitism (Longuenesse 1998; Schafer 2023) and (2) Schellenberg’s developments (2018), an account for knowledge prioritizing those cognitive conditions that are reducible to mental capacities. Within capacities-first models, we will further differentiate between cognitive abilities performing a constitutive function and related but distinct metaphysical notions. These will primarily include (3) explanatory powers, such as those clarifying causation (Thomasson 2007, 2015; Marmodoro 2010; Price 2011), and (4) response-dependent properties and dispositions (Johnston 1989, 1992, Wright 1992). Accordingly, our topic, “Capacities-First Philosophy,” will cover four key aspects, as follows.

(1) Kant’s capacitism (1787) emerges from his critique of reason as a self-subsistent organon encompassing all mental faculties required for delivering cognitions (Gomes 2017). Roughly put, he deduces the conditions for our cognitions and their objects from examining the mental capacities we inherently employ when we cognize. Our separate capacities for representation and conceptualization are central. The former enables us to have singular and immediate representations of particular objects, i.e., intuitions; the latter allows us to form abstract and general representations, known as concepts. Accordingly, Kant identifies the primary function of our cognitive capacities with the a priori synthesis of mental states (i.e., inner representations) leading to judgment, our ultimate cognitive power. Although hugely influential, his tenets have been criticized ever since (Strawson 1966; Guyer 1987, 1980).

(2) Building on Kant’s representationalism, Schellenberg (2018) develops a capacities-first view of perception. So, central to her model of capacities-first philosophy is the notion of perception. Perceptions (a) justify beliefs and yield knowledge of our environment, (b) bring about conscious mental states, and (c) convert varying informational inputs into mental representations of invariant features in our environment. Schellenberg’s fundamental insight is that perception is constituted by employing perceptual capacities whose function consists in discriminating and singling out mind-independent particulars (i.e., individual instances of a specific type) in our environment (Strawson 1959). Accordingly, she defends the particularity thesis: a subject’s perceptual state M brought about by being perceptually related to the particular α is constituted by α. Also, Schellenberg’s mental activism embraces externalism, facing criticism from reliabilists and relationalists.

(3) Being abstract functions, mental capacities lack causal powers, which, on the contrary, characterize real objects by default. Such an Eleatic criterion of existence excludes from our ontology everything that fails to make a difference to the causal powers of something – specifically, any entity falling short of causal powers (Davidson 1997). But then, how can cognitive powers relate to metaphysical powers, or how can physical states cause mental states? There is no consensus on this issue. For example, van Inwagen (2014) rejects the epiphenomenalism advocated by Kim (1993), while Williamson (2000) and Yablo (2003) question the causal relevance of mental-behavioral correlations. Yet, even if we disregard mental states, ascribing a power to a thing is challenging. Indeed, Hume’s standard definition – ‘X has the power to A, meaning X will/can do A, in the appropriate conditions, in virtue of its intrinsic nature’ (Madden and Harré 1975) – remains a subject of debate (Mumford 2009; Marmodoro 2010; Bird 2010).

(4) Nonetheless, many powers or secondary qualities of things depend on specific, usually human, capacities and arise from interaction with perceiving subjects. Therefore, our dispositions and abilities significantly influence the conceptual framework we apply to the world. Echoing Kant, response-dependence theorists such as Johnston (1989, 1992), Petit (1991), and Wright (1992) argue that much of that framework isn’t merely derived from the world around us; instead, it comes from us. Despite their differences, they subscribe to a principle of the form: x is F if and only if x would elicit response R from subjects S in circumstances C (Busck-Gundersen 2006). Dispositional and response-dependence, as well as judgment-dependence accounts indeed provide the metaphysical underpinning for the discussion about capacities in philosophy.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Kant and the theories of mental capacities

• Cognitive and/or conceptual capacities

• Capacities and perception

• Representationalism

• Schellenberg’s particularity thesis and its arguments

• Phenomenology of perceptual experience

• Powers, capacities, and causation

• Mental states and dispositions

• Response-dependence properties

• Capacities in epistemology

• Metaphysical capacities and the relationship between potency and act

• Potentiality, abilities, and capacities

• Different kinds of capacities

• Capacities-first philosophy?

Submission DEADLINE: Please submit your paper by December 15th, 2025. Should you not be able to meet this deadline, please contact the Lead Guest Editor (contact details below).

Online SUBMISSION: Please use the journal’s Online Manuscript Submission System (Editorial Manager), accessible here Editorial Manager®. Do note that paper submissions via email are not accepted.

Author Submission’s GUIDELINES: Authors are asked to prepare their manuscripts according to the journal’s standard Submission Guidelines.

EDITORIAL PROCESS:

• When uploading your paper in Editorial Manager, please select “SI: Capacities-first Philosophy” in the drop-down menu “Article Type”.

• Papers should not exceed a maximum of 9000 words.

• All papers will undergo the journal’s standard review procedure (double-blind peer-review), according to the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance

• Reviewers will be selected according to the Peer Reviewer Selection policies.

• This journal offers the option to publish Open Access. You are allowed to publish open access through Open Choice. Please explore the OA options available through your institution by referring to our list of OA Transformative Agreements.

• Once papers are accepted, they will be made available as Online articles publications until final publication into an issue and available on the page Collections.