Summer School | Medieval and Early Modern Theories of Cognition

1-6 July 2024 | FLUP

Medieval and Early Modern Theories of Cognition
New Approaches to an Old Debate

July 1-6, 2024
Instituto de Filosofia – Universidade do Porto


Summer School - Call for Applications

IF Support for Travel and Accommodation:

The Summer School's Scientific Committee will select the abstracts.
To encourage the participation of students from outside Porto, the Institute of Philosophy will support travelling (*) and accommodation expenses, up to 500 euros, for the 10 best abstracts selected.

(*) Travelling within Europe only.

Description:
The 1st meeting of the Porto Summer School on Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy aims to explore the transformations in the theories of knowledge in the broad timespan from the 13th to the 17th century. Its main objective will be to examine common elements as well as breakpoints that characterise the different ways in which philosophers accounted for the problem of the nature and the limits of human knowledge. This Summer School will deal with this kind of issues: is human reason capable of knowing the objects of the material world with certainty? If so, what psychological mechanisms give access to these objects?  What is the role of the imagination and of the intellect in this process? Is there a clear boundary between human knowledge and that of irrational animals? Medieval theories of cognition defending the mind’s ability to know the world with certainty were committed to the so-called theory of species as mental tools able to represent the outside objects in the mind. Therefore, such theories were also committed to a certain form of realism. However, consistent criticisms of such theory (most of which addressing Thomas Aquinas’s theory of the species) were already spreading at the end of the 13th century, thereby opening new scenarios and raising new questions: is the likeness between the mental world and the outside world necessary for a cognitive act to take place? Are there alternatives to abstractionism and realism? If there are, what is the metaphysical model at the basis of these alternatives? Is it possible to find, in the works of medieval and early modern authors, an outline of modern theories about the autonomy of the knowing subject?

Seminars will be led by:
André Martin (Charles University, Prague)
Anna Tropia (Charles University, Prague)
Dani Pino (Universidad de Sevilla)
Domingos Faria (Universidade do Porto)
Fabio Lampert (University of Greifswald)
José Meirinhos (Universidade do Porto)
João Rebalde (Universidade do Porto)
Olivier Ribordy (Universität Wien)
Paula Oliveira e Silva (Universidade do Porto)
Peter John Hartman (Loyola University Chicago)

Scientific Committee:
Anna Tropia, José Meirinhos, Mário Correia, Vera Rodrigues

Organizing Committee and Program:
José Meirinhos, João Rebalde, Paula Oliveira e Silva
Secretariat – Eduarda Machado, Filipa Teixeira

 

Seminar sessions will take place at the Círculo Universitário da Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre 877, 4150-180 Porto
https://shre.ink/r9wd

Funding:
LT Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy
Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto - UIDB/00502/2020
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)