Call for Registration:
Entity Realism Beyond Manipulation
Workshop 16 – 17 June 2026
Room 028, University of Bern,
Hochschulstrasse 4, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Program
Tuesday, June 16
11.30 – 11.45 Welcome Address
11.45 – 12.30 Katherine Morrow, University of Oslo: Against Selective Antirealism About Ecological Entities
12.30 – 14.00 Lunch Break
14.00 – 14.45 Kenneth Aizawa, Rutgers University, Newark : Compositional Abduction and Entity Realism
14.45 – 15.30 Mahdi Khalili, University of Bern: Entity Realism about Black Holes
15.30 – 16.00 Coffee Break
16.00 – 16.45 Gauvain Leconte-Chevillard, University of Namur : No Manipulation, No Entities? The Ontological Commitment of Natural Experiments in Astrophysics and Cosmology
16.45 – 18.00 Mauricio Suárez, Complutense University of Madrid: Deflating Experimental Realism in Astrophysics
19.00 – 22.00 Workshop Dinner
Wednesday, June 17
11.00 – 11.45 Thijs Latten, Delft University of Technology: An Engineering Perspective on Quantum State Realism: A Case Study in Expanding Causal Realism
11.45 – 12.30 Ruey-Lin Chen, National Chung Cheng University, Jonathan Hricko, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University: Real Entities and Real Causal Relationships: The Cases of the Transgenic and Gene Knockout/Knock-In Methods
12.30 – 14.00 Lunch Break
14.00 – 14.45 Matthias Egg, University of Bern: Effective Entity Realism
14.45 – 16.00 Nora Boyd (online), Siena University: How to Get in Touch With Distant Reality: The Causal Production of Empirical Data
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break
16.30 – 17.15 General Discussion
17.15 – 17.30 Closing Remarks
Participation (including lunch and refreshments) is free of charge, but we ask you to register by7 June 2026 by sending your name and affiliation to mahdi.khalili@unibe.ch. For more information, visit: http://www.philosophie.unibe.ch/entity.
This workshop is part of the project Extending the Scope of Causal Realism, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Organizing team: Matthias Egg, Mahdi Khalili, and Frederick Britt.