Workshop: Berlin, November 20, 2015 to November 21, 2015

How does change work? If a thing moves from one state to another, when does it exactly start being in its new state, and when does it cease being in its former one? Should one consider that there is an instant at which change takes place? And if one does, in what state should the thing be at that moment: the former one, the new one, neither, both? The first two options seem arbitrary; the third goes against the law of excluded middle; the forth against that of contradiction. And if one doesn’t, if there is no moment of change, how can there be change? What is sometimes called the “limit decision problem” has its roots in Aristotle and has been intensely debated by late medieval philosophers, who explored the four options. It became popular again in the second half of the twentieth-century when, once more, each option was considered – as well as the possibility that there is no such thing as a moment of change.

The workshop will provide the occasion of a dialogue between medieval and contemporary perspectives and shall result in a volume on the instant of change in medieval and contemporary philosophy.

Further information here.

Durham Day of Medieval Thought, 5 July 2015, full details here. 

Conference at The Warburg Institute, 23 January 2015. For full details download the poster below. 

A two-day workshop on 'Wyclif and the Realist Tradition in 14th-Century Logic' will be held at the University of St Andrews on 16-17 May 2015.  Proposals should be submitted by 12 January.

Historians of logic have known for decades that the 14th century was a tremendously productive period in the Latin West.  As far as the relationship between logic and metaphysics is concerned, however, research has tended to focus on the nominalist tradition associated with Ockham and Buridan.  The aim of this workshop is to redress the balance a little by focussing instead on the realist tradition that spans the 14th century.  We have singled out for special mention the influential figure of John Wyclif, whose Logic is currently being re-edited here at St Andrews, but we welcome contributions involving other figures from Walter Burley to Paul of Venice.

Each accepted paper will standardly be allocated an hour including time for discussion.  Authors of accepted papers will be provided with meals during the conference and overnight accommodation for three nights.  Please submit abstracts of around 250 words to the organizers Mark Thakkar (mnat@st-andrews.ac.uk) and Stephen Read by Monday 12 January 2015.  We will notify you of the outcome by the end of January.

The list of participants currently includes Jenny Ashworth, Laurent Cesalli, Alessandro Conti, and Sara Uckelman.  Further details will be made available in due course on the website:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/arche/events/event?id=866

St Thomas Aquinas Society of Ireland/Cairde Thomáis Naofa
Saturday 29th November 2014
St Catherine’s Dominican Convent
33 Dominic St
Newry, Co., Down
Northern Ireland
BT35 8BN

Timetable
1.15 Registration
1.30 Welcome address
1.35 Donald Collins – ‘A Noteworthy Revision in the Metaphysical Thought of Étienne Gilson’
2.30 Fr Terence Crotty OP – ‘Aquinas as Poet of the Eucharist’
3.30 Tea/coffee – Cairde AGM
3.50 Br Kevin O’Reilly OP – ‘The Theological Hermeneutics of Thomas Aquinas and Benedict XVI’
5.00 Holy Mass

Registration fee:
£5 / €6 (Non-student)
£3 / € 4 (Student)

All are welcome

Medieval Theories of Relations, University of Cambridge, 12-16 June 2014. 

Full details here. 

The study of relations, in the history and philosophy of logic, plays an important role in the shift from the traditional paradigm of Aristotelian logic, primarily centred around an idea of analysis of language in terms of the subject-predicate distinction, to the new conceptual framework emerging at the end of the XIXth and at the beginning of the XXth century with the progressive mathematisation of logic. 

Innovation, however, did not occur all at once in this process. Late ancient and medieval interpreters, writing in Greek, Latin, and Arabic over a span of more than ten centuries - from the 5th to the 15th - already offered a broad array of theoretical options, some of which were later on to be rediscovered and given rigorous formal treatment by moderns. For instance, the  study of the validity of inferences involving polyadic terms, albeit practically absent in Aristotle, was quite elaborate in medieval logic both in the Latin and in the Arabic tradition, well before attracting the attention of early contemporary logicians in a more systematic way. 

The purpose of this conference is to contribute to a deeper, multi-disciplinary, understanding of how this process developed over time, by bringing together specialists with a diversified range of competencies in logic, analytic philosophy, linguistics, history of science, philology, medieval Latin and Arabic-Islamic studies. Although the core of the conference will be made of papers focused on logic and semantics, it will also explore how these logical discussions were linked to wider philosophical concerns, and the participants will be encouraged to keep the similarities to and differences from logic today constantly in view. 

[Information and further details from here.]

Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship in the History of Ideas, 2013/14 ‘A Shaky Hold on Reality: Lectures on the History of our Epistemic Ideals'

Professor Robert Pasnau (University of Colorado) will deliver the Isaiah Berlin Lectures on Tuesdays of weeks 3-8 of Trinity Term at 5 pm on the following days, venue to be confirmed.

Lecture 1 (13th May)
Lecture 2 (20th May)
Lecture 3 (27th May)
Lecture 4 (3rd June)
Lecture 5 (10th June)
Lecture 6 (17th June)

Abstract: Between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity, our conception of knowledge underwent a series of dramatic transformations, changing the way we think about philosophy, science, perception, and reality. With the decline of Aristotelianism came radically new perspectives on the prospects for certainty, our grasp of underlying causes, and the reliability of the senses. These transformations were in fact so central to our changing worldview in the seventeenth century that that might plausibly be thought to define the beginnings of the modern era. Ranging over the whole history of philosophy, but focusing especially on the transition from the later Middle Ages into the seventeenth century, these lectures will trace the rise of a new way of thinking about our cognitive aspirations and achievements. 

Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, 
St Andrews 12-13 May 2014


Provisional schedule:

Monday 12 May

09.30 Tea/Coffee

10.00 Stephen Read, ‘Richard Kilvington and the Theory of Obligations’

11.00 Tea/Coffee

11.30 visit to MUSA

12.30 Lunch 

14.00 Cecilia Trifogli, ‘Geoffrey of Aspall on Composite Substances’

15.00 Tea/Coffee

15.30 John Marenbon, 'Abelard on dicta'

16.30 Tea/Coffee

17.00 Anna Marmodoro, ‘Emerging and Descendent Wholes in Aquinas’

18.00 Finish

19.00 Dinner 

Tuesday 13 May

09.30 Tea/Coffee

10.00 Spencer Johnston, ‘Essence and Modality in Robert Kilwardby’

11.00 Tea/Coffee

11.30 Catarina Dutilh Novaes, 'Validity, formality, and evidence in Buridan’s Treatise on Consequence and his questions on the Prior Analytics'

12.30 Lunch 

14.15 visit to Chapel

15.00 Mark Thakkar, 'Towards a New Edition of Wyclif's Logic'

16.00 Tea/Coffee

16.30 Rega Wood, ‘The Formal Distinction and the Razor: Rufus, Scotus and Ockham’

17.45 Finish

For further details, see: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/arche/events/event?id=745. 

This year’s Voltaire lecture will be presented by the BHA’s president Jim Al-Khalili and will focus on the impacts and changes felt within the Islamic world towards science and philosophy. It shall be a reminder of the breakthroughs achieved by Islamic science over a millennium ago, and how lessons can be learned today from the Golden Age of Islamic Science.

Taking place at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, Holborn on Monday 14th April 2014, from 7.30pm to 9.00pm, this promises to be a fascinating look at an often forgotten period of Islamic history.

Further details about this event can be found below and further enquiries can be made at info@humanism.org.uk.

*Press release*

Voltaire Lecture - Lessons from the past: science and rationalism in medieval Islam
Presented by Jim Al-Khalili

We often hear these days about the tensions between science and rationalism on the one hand and devout religious beliefs on the other, whether it’s concerns over teaching of evolution in faith schools or the funding of stem cell research, or simply the attitudes of some towards science in general, either when seeing it as a threat or, at best, as no more than a driver of technology and economic power, a view often found in many countries in the developing world.

This lecture will focus on attitudes towards science in the Islamic world and will serve as a reminder of a period a millennium ago, during the Golden Age of Arabic Science, when scholars and thinkers were allowed the freedom to question and study the world around them within a spirit of free, rational enquiry that is often sadly lacking today. What lessons can we learn from the past if we are to move away from muddled thinking, superstition and ignorance?

Time: 7:30 PM through 9:00 PM
Date: Monday April 14th, 2014
Venue: Conway Hall
Red Lion Square
Holborn
London
WC1R 4RL
Tickets: General £15.00
Member/student/unwaged £10.00

Details about this event can be found at- https://humanism.org.uk/events/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/info&reset=1&id=48

Or register now at- https://humanism.org.uk/events/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/register&id=48&reset=1

About Professor Jim Al-Khalili
Jim Al-Khalili is an Iraqi born theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is a professor at the University of Surrey where he teaches and carries out his research in quantum physics.
Jim currently presents The Life Scientific on Radio 4 on Tuesday mornings, where he interviews prominent scientists about their life and work. He has presented a number of science documentaries on television, particularly on BBC4 where he says he is happiest as he can really get his teeth into a subject.

About the Voltaire Lecture
The Voltaire Lectures Fund was established by the legacy of Theodore Besterman, biographer of Voltaire, for lectures on “any aspect of scientific or philosophical thought or human activity as affected by or with particular reference to humanism.” The British Humanist Association now oversees the fund. Previous Voltaire lecturers have included: Herman Bondi, Barbara Wootton, Bernard Crick, Richard Dawkins, Antony Flew, Michael Foot, Robert Hinde, Ludovic Kennedy, Simon Blackburn, Natalie Haynes, Robin Ince, Kenan Malik, Ray Tallis and Dick Taverne.

Renaissance philosophy is a fascinating yet neglected period in the history of philosophy. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the rise of Humanism and the rediscovery of ancient texts led to new ways of doing philosophy. At the same time the period saw the culmination of the medieval scholastic tradition, with the works of Aristotle and his commentators printed for the first time and an unprecedented number of new commentaries being written. These contrasting tendencies of continuity and change mark the period that bridges the gap between Medieval and Early Modern philosophy. The aim of this workshop is to explore and assess the place of Renaissance philosophy within the Western philosophical tradition. 


Further details at: 
http://renaissance-philosophy.blogspot.co.uk/