Solipsism and Otherness: Recognizing Minds in Early Modern Philosophy

Online Seminar Series - Program & Calendar

As a result of the downfall of the concept of ‘soul’ (as well as of the significant geographical and anthropological discoveries of the late fifteenth century), ...the entire early modern age comes to be the place of fundamental debates on human and non-human intelligence, through which the notion of ‘mind’ is shaped. Such a reassessment conveys also the repositioning of some traditional theoretical and moral issues, including those concerning the relationship of the mind with the extra-mental world, the premises and the mechanisms that regulate the mutual recognition between ‘minds’, and accordingly the criteria that allow one to truthfully identify real ‘minds’ and sentient subjects, and to distinguish them from other beings showing intelligent-like or emotion-driven behaviours.

This online seminar series is therefore aimed at reconstructing significant moments of the philosophy of intersubjectivity in the early modern age (with particular regard to the period 1630-1770), dwelling especially on the conceptual and terminological elements that, in the debates which constitute the very notion of ‘mind’, allow philosophers to account for intersubjective, sympathetic and social phenomena.
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Events

JAMES HILL (Charles University), Berkeley and the Threat of Solipsism.
Session 1 - Solipsism and Otherness
Thur. 18 January 2024, 4 PM - CET Time

FABRIZIO BALDASSARRI (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), The Mind of Plants: Vegetal Cognition in Pre-Modern Times
JAN PURNIS (University of Regina), Cannibalism and Early Modern Theories of Mind.
Session 2 - Solipsism and Otherness
Thur. 8 February 2024, 4 PM - CET Time

DANIEL HEIDER (University of South Bohemia), Suárez on the Involuntary Attention in Angelic Locution
MARTIN LENZ (University of Groningen), The Irresistible Contagion of Opinion: Hume's Medical Model of Sympathy.
Session 3 - Solipsism and Otherness
Thur. 22 February 2024, 4 PM - CET Time

ANTONIA LOLORDO (University of Virginia), Self and World in Mary Shepherd
ANDREW PLATT (Villanova University), Norris and Astell: Occasionalism, Charity, and Moral Worth.
Session 4 - Solipsism and Otherness
Thu. 21 March, 4 PM - CET Time

RAFFAELE CARBONE (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II), Bodies, Minds and Social Relations in the Anthropology of the Montpellier School
ANITA AVRAMIDES (St. Hilda’s College, University of Oxford), Solipsism: J.S. Mill’s Response to Thomas Reid.
Session 5 - Solipsism and Otherness
Thur. 4 April 4 PM - CET Time

GIULIANA DI BIASE (Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti), Socialisation, Custom and Language in John Locke
ANGELA FERRARO (Université Laval), The Status of Otherness in Malebranche’s Thought.
Session 6 - Solipsism and Otherness
Thur. 18 April 4 PM - CET Time

SÉBASTIEN CHARLES (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières), Penser le solipsisme à l’âge classique : de la métaphysique cartésienne aux diatribes des Lumières
ALBERTO FRIGO (Università degli Studi di Milano Statale), Language, Community, Mortality: Condillac, Rousseau and the Sentiment of Mortality.
Session 7 - Solipsism and Otherness
Wed. 24 April 4 PM - CET Time

CECILIA MURATORI (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), The Mind of the Philosopher: Physiognomics and the Body-Mind Problem in Early Modernity
MIRIAM AIELLO (CNR-ILIESI), Leibniz on the Other Minds.
Session 8 - Solipsism and Otherness
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Fri. 24 May 4 PM - CET Time