Metaphysical Mayhem is a week-long, bi-annual graduate student workshop in metaphysics, which consists of a mix of professor and student presentations, and is hosted by the Rutgers Philosophy Department. A history of the conference from 1996 to 2020 can be found here.

Our next Mayhem will take place May 19–23, 2025 in the Rutgers Philosophy seminar room, on the 5th floor at 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ. Our participating professors will be Karen Bennett, David Builes, Louis deRosset, Ned Markosian, and Elanor Taylor. (Other Rutgers professors in the mix include Brian Leftow, Carolina Sartorio, Jonathan Schaffer, Ted Sider, Alex Skiles, and Dean Zimmerman.)

Attendance is open to all local graduate students (those enrolled in a philosophy Ph.D. program located in New Jersey or New York City), and to those non-local graduate students who have applied and been accepted to the workshop. Applications are now closed for this cycle.
 

Our schedule is as follows:
 

Monday, May 19th

10am - 1pm Karen Bennett, Landscaping the Grounds (readings: none required)

2pm - 2:55pm Grace Atkins, Reference in Plenitude

3pm - 3:55pm Antonio Freiles, Material Plenitude for Fineans

4pm - 4:55pm Kate Lohnes, Plenitude, Pluralism, and the Grounding Problem
 

Tuesday, May 20th

10am - 1pm David Builes, Four Views of the First Person (readings: Builes1, Builes2)

2pm - 2:55pm Caleb Camrud, First-person Facts, Transworld Identity, and Counteridenticals

3pm - 3:55pm Lila Graham, "Would You Love Me If I Was a Worm?" and the Limits of Modal Factualism

4pm - 4:55pm Liam O’Brien, Why One’s Worm is When It Is
 

Wednesday, May 21st

10am - 1pm Louis deRosset, The Social Determinants of Reference, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Metaphysics (reading: deRosset)

2pm - 2:55pm Antonio Cleani, Quantificationalism

3pm - 3:55pm Pranciskus Gricius, Type Theory as Metaphysics

4pm - 4:55pm Jacob Lettie, Impossible Stuff Doesn’t Exist
 

Thursday, May 22nd

10am - 1pm Ned Markosian, Agent Causation and the Open Future (reading: Markosian)

2pm - 2:55pm Chenyu Bu, Toward a General Theory of Generativism

3pm - 3:55pm Tyler Collins, Continuous Manifestation and Explanatory Connection

4pm - 4:55pm Hyejin Kim, How on Earth Does that Banana Sculpture Persist?
 

Friday, May 23rd

10am - 1pm Elanor Taylor, Social Metaphysics and Metametaphysics (readings: Taylor1, Taylor2)

2pm - 2:55pm Jojo Lovejoy, How to Socially Construct a Kind

3pm - 3:55pm Gus Turyn, Counterfactual Truth and Decision-making

4pm - 4:55pm Minghui Yang, Metasemantic Symmetry

Credits: Mayhem was unleashed when the world was young by Dean Zimmerman. Our current organizers are Jonathan Schaffer and Alex Skiles, with help from Rose Fonth and Trevor Woodward. Website credit to Peter van Elswyk. History website credit to Ted Sider.