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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for CEFISES @ UCLouvain
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251003T140000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251003T160000
DTSTAMP:20260414T200653
CREATED:20250916T151109Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260108T214841Z
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SUMMARY:CEFISES Seminar: Charles T. Wolfe\, "Vitalism\, organicism and 'biological philosophy' in Canguilhem: the state of affairs in 1947 and now"
DESCRIPTION:Livestream  https://youtu.be/4WNU_YmB_f0 \nSeries: HPS \nSpeaker: Charles T. Wolfe (Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès) \nTitle: “Vitalism\, organicism and ‘biological philosophy’ in Canguilhem: the state of affairs in 1947 and now” \nAbstract \nIn a short and rarely discussed paper published in 1947 in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale\, entitled “Note sur la situation faite en France à la philosophie biologique” (untranslated)\, Canguilhem is quite blunt in denouncing the “situation” of what he calls biological philosophy in France\, in favour of a more developed Germanic tradition. He explains that French thought on biological questions is in a state of arrest\, both due to its Cartesian heritage and to a kind of unstated fear with respect to the Romantic lebenspphilosophisch tradition in Germany and its political outcomes. This is unusual enough in an essay appearing shortly after the war\, authored by someone who had been an active resistant. But rather than reflect on the possible socio-historical juncture and set of influences that may have led to Canguilhem’s “Note\,” I wish to reflect on and evaluate his claims. What would this biological philosophy be? A Germanic philosophy of life translated into French? In a sense\, Canguilhem’s very enthusiastic reception of the work of Kurt Goldstein (the translation of which he was instrumental in enabling) is one part of such a translatio (if not translation). But in another sense\, not all his work fits this program: in some ways\, The Normal and the Pathological (1943\, revised and expanded in 1966) does\, but the various essays collected in volumes like Knowledge of Life (first edition 1952\, expanded in 1965) do not\, notably due to their more ‘historicist’ focus. The latter case makes this particularly clear: a historical epistemology of the life sciences is quite a different project from a Romantically inspired “biological philosophy” (or philosophy of life). In closing\, I reflect on how these Canguilhemian projects might speak to us\, including in the sense of the ‘prospects’ of a biological philosophy today.
URL:https://cefises.be/en/event/cefises-seminar-3-oct/
LOCATION:Salle Ladrière\, Place du Cardinal Mercier 14 (bâtiment Socrate\, a.124)\, Louvain-la-Neuve\, 1348\, Belgium
ORGANIZER;CN="Max Bautista-Perpiny%C3%A0":MAILTO:max.bautista@uclouvain.be
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251010T140000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251010T160000
DTSTAMP:20260414T200653
CREATED:20250916T151322Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260108T214928Z
UID:1903-1760104800-1760112000@cefises.be
SUMMARY:CEFISES Seminar: Florian Marion\, "Special Relativity from a Meta-Ontological Point of View: A Defence of External Relativism"
DESCRIPTION:Livestream  https://youtu.be/e3DQlF1RfqQ\nSeries: Work-in-Progress \nSpeaker: Florian Marion (UCLouvain) \nTitle: “Special Relativity from a Meta-Ontological Point of View: A Defence of External Relativism” \nAbstract \nAbstract: Metaphysicians who are aware of modern physics usually follow Putnam (1967) in arguing that Special Theory of Relativity is incompatible with the view that what exists is only what exists now or presently. Partisans of presentism (the motto ‘only present things exist’) had very difficult times since\, and no presentist theory of time seems to have been able to satisfactorily counter the objection raised from Special Relativity. One of the strategies offered to the presentist consists in dropping out ‘There Are No Privileged Observers’. Two meta-ontological moves follow this strategy: either existence is relativized to inertial frames\, or existence is fragmented into pieces (there is no one coherent encompassing reality but many ontological coherent realities\, one for every inertial frame). The relativistic strategy has been accused of counterfeiting\, since the meaning of the concept of existence would be incompatible with its relativization. Therefore\, existence could only be relativistically invariant. In this presentation\, I shall examine whether such an accusation hits its target\, and I will do this by examining whether the different criteria of existence that have been suggested by the Philosophical Tradition from Plato onwards imply that existence cannot be relativized. \n 
URL:https://cefises.be/en/event/cefises-seminar-10-oct/
LOCATION:Salle Ladrière\, Place du Cardinal Mercier 14 (bâtiment Socrate\, a.124)\, Louvain-la-Neuve\, 1348\, Belgium
ORGANIZER;CN="Alexandre Guay":MAILTO:alexandre.guay@uclouvain.be
END:VEVENT
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251017T140000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251017T160000
DTSTAMP:20260414T200653
CREATED:20250916T151440Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260108T215015Z
UID:1906-1760709600-1760716800@cefises.be
SUMMARY:CEFISES Seminar: Alexandre Francq\, "The Haunting Specter of Complexity; the Pluralist Metaphysical Crutch"
DESCRIPTION:Livestream  https://youtu.be/pDKGNFWKo7w\nSeries: OLOFOS \nSpeaker: Alexandre Francq (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne – Institut Gustave Roussy) \nTitle: “The Haunting Specter of Complexity; the Pluralist Metaphysical Crutch” \nAbstract \nBroadly defined\, Scientific pluralism holds that a plurality of models\, theories\, and methods is not merely useful but often necessary for understanding complex phenomena. Few would deny the success of this pluralist outlook in contemporary science and philosophy. Yet much of this success has rested on the background assumption that the world\, and especially the biological world\, is complex in a way that blocks reductionist explanation. Complex systems\, we are told\, display emergent behaviors\, adaptive dynamics\, and context-sensitive interactions that require multiple descriptive frameworks. But this appeal to complexity raises three fundamental problems. \nFirst\, is pluralism’s dependence on complexity truly necessary? Does a defense of pluralism require a metaphysical commitment to the complexity of biological entities\, or could a more modest pluralism stand on epistemic or methodological grounds alone? If no such necessity exists\, then appeals to complexity would appear superfluous to the defense of the pluralist agenda. Second\, it is no secret that the notion of complexity itself is deeply ambiguous. It covers both properties of natural systems\, such as emergence or adaptivity\, and properties of the models we construct\, such as non-linearity or multi-scalar behavior. This conceptual vagueness would be harmless if complexity were a purely descriptive notion\, but it often functions as a justificatory and explanatory one. In philosophy of science\, complexity often serves to justify particular explanatory or methodological strategies. In scientific practice itself\, it functions as far more than a mere buzzword\, for complexity can appear as an explanandum—when we ask why or how something is complex—or as an explanans—when we assume complexity in order to predict or explain other properties of a system. \nFinally\, canonical pluralist accounts such as Sandra Mitchell’s Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism rest on a metaphysical reading of complexity. I argue that this interpretation risks circularity and pointlessness. At the moment\, complexity behaves less like a concept and more like a specter\, it is evoked everywhere both in science and philosophy\, yet never clearly seen nor grasped. It haunts our epistemological conception precisely because of its vagueness. If we truly endeavour to take complexity seriously\, we have good reasons to release the notion from its metaphysical weight. A weaker\, more modest epistemic conception of complexity may lack the grandeur of its metaphysical counterpart\, yet it might be more defensible.
URL:https://cefises.be/en/event/cefises-17-oct/
LOCATION:Salle Ladrière\, Place du Cardinal Mercier 14 (bâtiment Socrate\, a.124)\, Louvain-la-Neuve\, 1348\, Belgium
ORGANIZER;CN="Peter Verd%C3%A9e":MAILTO:peter.verdee@uclouvain.be
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251024T140000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Brussels:20251024T160000
DTSTAMP:20260414T200653
CREATED:20250916T151557Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260108T215112Z
UID:1909-1761314400-1761321600@cefises.be
SUMMARY:CEFISES Seminar: Michel Bitbol\, "Transcendental epistemologies and probabilism"
DESCRIPTION:Livestream  https://youtu.be/5STUEjQrhJU \nSeries: MEPHISTO (MEtaphysics and PHIlosophy of Science: Transcendental Orientations) \nSpeaker: Michel Bitbol (CNRS/Archives Husserl\, École normale supérieure) \nTitle: “Transcendental epistemologies and probabilism” \nAbstract \nTranscendental epistemologies\, in their Kantian and Husserlian varieties\, can be characterized by two basic tenets: (1) It is possible to regress from objects to the preconditions for their givenness\, and (2) The constitution of objects involves anticipating phenomena—both intellectually and practically—through structural assumptions that conform to these preconditions. Anticipation is the key concept here\, one to which Husserl ascribes an ambivalent status in his Crisis. According to Husserl\, anticipating future appearances is a basic function essential to life. But this is also\, unfortunately\, the task to which modern natural sciences restrict themselves—far from the ideal of genuine theoretical knowledge that had inaugurated the project of science. In this talk\, I wish to show that when its anticipatory status is fully embraced by physical science in the form of probabilism\, an about-turn occurs—bringing us closer to Husserl’s ideal of a comprehensive science wholly aware of its own foundation\, rather than distancing us from it. This paradoxical development is not difficult to grasp. Indeed\, with probabilism\, we move away from the deceptive traditional static\, demiurgic\, objectivistic\, naturalistic\, third-person\, and falsely omniscient view of science. Instead\, we move toward a dynamic\, practical\, first-person\, engaged\, and inherently finite conception. In this new framework\, probability is no longer regarded merely as a mathematical tool reluctantly employed to cope with temporarily incomplete knowledge. Rather\, it emerges as the foundational principle of all cognition\, finally revealed by the most advanced scientific developments. In this light\, quantum physics becomes the paradigm of a new science – one that (unlike classical physics) can no longer ignore its transcendental preconditions.
URL:https://cefises.be/en/event/cefises-seminar-24-oct/
LOCATION:Salle Ladrière\, Place du Cardinal Mercier 14 (bâtiment Socrate\, a.124)\, Louvain-la-Neuve\, 1348\, Belgium
ORGANIZER;CN="Danielle Pizzocaro":MAILTO:daniele.pizzocaro@uclouvain.be
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