This conference is being given with the support of the British Academy, Peking University, The Philosophy Faculty of the University of Cambridge and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Papers/summaries of talks available from the conference:
- Anselm Oelze - summary of Material Souls, Material Thoughts?
Some Medieval Views on Rational Operations in Non-Rational Animals - Jane Heal - Metaphysical atomism and the attraction of materialism
Conference Programme
Tuesday 14 July
|
9.00 |
Huw Price, Welcome to the Cambridge Philosophy Faculty |
|
9.15 |
John Marenbon, Introduction: Immateriality, Thinking and the Self in the Long Middle Ages |
|
9.45 |
Tianyue Wu, Aquinas on the Individuation of Thinking [Respondent: John Marenbon] |
|
11.00 |
Coffee break |
|
11.20 |
Martin Klein, Aquinas on Self-Knowledge and the Immaterial Nature of the Human Intellect |
|
12.20 |
Lunch (A sandwich lunch in the Allhusen Room, Trinity College is provided for all participants in the conference) |
|
1.45 |
Elena Baltuta, Three Accounts of Form and Matter in the Thirteenth Century: Aquinas, Kilwardby and Olivi |
|
2.45 |
Daniel de Haan, Under the Conditions of Matter: Thomas Aquinas on the Quasi-Immateriality of Cogitative Thinking |
|
3.45 |
Coffee break |
|
4.00 |
Anselm Oelze, Material Souls, Material Thoughts? Some Medieval Views on Rational Operations in Non-Rational Animals |
|
8.00 |
Chinese Dinner (venue to be announced) [Invited guests] |
Wednesday 15 July
|
9.00 |
Qilin Li, Safety and the Lottery Puzzle: a case study for the distinction between epistemic safety and probability [Respondent: tba] |
|
10.00 |
Jane Heal, Metaphysical atomism and the attraction of materialism |
|
10.45 |
Coffee |
|
11.00 |
Craig French, The Argument from Illusion and Immateriality |
|
12.00 |
Chris Meyns, Extended Souls |
|
1.00 |
Lunch |
|
2.30 |
Zhe Liu, Merleau-Ponty’s Structuralist Naturalism: a radical form of Cartesianism - [Respondent: TBA] |
|
3.45 |
Jari Kaukua, [on immateriality and the self in the Islamic Long Middle Ages] - respondent: Ayman Shihadeh |
|
5.00 |
Coffee break |
|
5.20 |
Discussion Medieval and contemporary views of the distinction between material and immaterial things [Special participants: Sophie Connell, Natalja Deng, Caterina Tarlazzi, Derek Matravers] |
|
6.20 |
End of conference |
|
7.30 |
Conference dinner: Private Supply Room, Trinity College [Invited guests] |
Immateriality, Thinking and the Self in the Long Middle Ages: project description
The feature of medieval and much early modern philosophy which seems strangest to readers today is the large role given to concrete, immaterial things: not just God (in all sorts of ways a special case), but souls and angels (or, in some traditions, Intelligences). All these things are considered to be essentially thinkers, but, before Descartes, the thinking involved (intelligere – ‘intellectual thinking’) is of a very special sort: grasping universals and syllogizing with them, so as to demonstrate scientific truths. In humans, it is only this intellectually thinking thing which is considered immaterial and immortal, and it is the subject for moral judgement, reward and punishment. Usually, this complex of ideas is simply taken for granted, as a starting point for discussing medieval philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Our project aims to examine it, distinguishing its various forms in different Western traditions (Latin, Greek, Arabic, Jewish) from c. 200 to c.1700, and to understand it, making use of the insights of those working in other areas of philosophy. An important feature of the project is its chronological range. When philosophers today think about immaterial concrete things, they usually have Cartesian minds in view. We shall explore how far Descartes inherits an earlier view of immaterial thinkers, and how far his far broader conception of thinking transforms the notion.
For further details, see http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/research/immateriality
Conference abstracts are available here.
