On 14 March 2019 Al Wilson was at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stockholm to give a talk titled ‘Emergent Contingency’ – on the general prospects of naturalistic metaphysics, on how to bring science to bear on modality, and on how Everettian quantum theory can underwrite a naturalistic theory of contingency. Fun was had (we think) by all. Abstract and slides are below!

Abstract: I develop and defend a reductive account of objective contingency in nature, drawing on resources from Everettian (many-worlds) quantum mechanics. I distinguish four degrees of naturalistic involvement in the theory of modality; the proposed quantum modal realism is naturalistic in all four senses. I also sketch some consequences of the account for the methodology of metaphysics.