Fabrice Correia: Location as a topic-neutral concept

Tuesday 2 June 2026 @11:30 (CET)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
Following a line of thought stemming from joint work with Claudio Calosi, I will argue that the concept of location has a range of applications that is much broader than is usually thought—in a slogan: location is, to a great extent, topic-neutral—and that properly appreciating this fact has far reaching consequences concerning how we should think about location. One of them is that we should view location as essentially relative to what Claudio and I call locational structures. Another one is that locational phenomena that are often taken to be “exotic” and therefore not worthy of too much attention—in particular, multilocation and inexact location—should, on the contrary, be taken seriously. Formulating a general theory of location that complies with this perspective on the concept is a challenge. I will briefly criticize extant contenders, propose a theory that I recently developed as a better alternative, and briefly discuss a more general theory recently devised by Claudio that goes in the same direction. I will end up applying my theory to the debate about persistence in a spatiotemporal setting, showing that the characterization of the perdurance / endurance it allows one to formulate avoids important limitations encountered by a now classic characterization that we owe to Cody Gilmore.

Bio
Fabrice Correia holds the Chair of Analytic Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Geneva. He is a founder and director of eidos, the Centre for Metaphysics, based in Geneva, which promotes research and collaboration in metaphysics and related fields. His main research interests include metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology, and philosophy of mind.