[PHILOS-L] Deadline extended - CFA - International Conference "Limits and Vagueness in the Long Middle Ages" (Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, October 17th-19th, 2024)
Roberto Zambiasi
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CFA: International Conference “Limits and Vagueness in the Long Middle Ages”
Call for Abstracts
International Conference “Limits and Vagueness in the Long Middle Ages”
October 17th-19th, 2024, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven
The concept of limit is ubiquitous in medieval philosophy. The constant influence of Aristotelian thought throughout this period gave to the notion of limit a prominent place. Indeed, the Aristotelian sublunary realm is composed of continuous entities, and, to make sense of a continuum, in Aristotle’s perspective, it is inevitable to refer to its limits. The easiest example is that of a line (what we would call a line segment). A line is always limited between two points. In Aristotelian terms, however, the limits of the line, the two endpoints, are not parts of the line, but, rather, indivisible entities that ontologically depend on the line for their existence. Medieval thinkers influenced by Aristotle, therefore, had to face a difficult challenge. On the one hand, whenever considering a continuous entity they had to refer to its limits. On the other hand, when doing so, they had to rely on the very thin and elusive characterisation of limits provided by Aristotle. Besides, due to the predominant role of continuous magnitudes in Aristotle’s physics, many medieval philosophers were reluctant to consider limits as real items existing outside the mind. For this reason, throughout the Middle Ages, the attempt to understand the concept of limit and to assign limits to all kinds of continua gave rise to a wide literature and lively controversies. Such literature crossed the traditional boundaries between disciplines, introducing distinctive logical and mathematical concepts and arguments in a debate ultimately pertaining to natural philosophy.
Throughout the medieval period the concept of limit progressively started to be used in a wider sense in fields as diverse as logic, metaphysics, epistemology, zoology, and medicine. To provide a few examples, when determining the limit between truth and falsity in future contingents, the limit between intra-mental and extra-mental existence, the limits between scientific disciplines and the knowledge each of them can attain, those between animal species, and, finally, those between conjoined twins, medieval thinkers had to resort, in one way or another, to a certain understanding of what limits are and of how they operate.
At the same time, this wider use of the concept of limit frequently gave rise to cases where it seemed impossible to precisely determine limits between the entities under consideration. That is to say, this wider use of the concept of limit generated problems of vagueness. Although the problem of vagueness has long drawn the attention of scholars of Ancient philosophy (especially in connection with the Sorites Paradox), and has been the focus of important developments in contemporary logic, in-depth studies on the medieval debate about vagueness and vague properties are still mostly lacking.
The aim of the conference is to try to foster a unified understanding of the medieval concepts of limits and vagueness, by bringing together scholars working on any topic dealing with limits and/or vagueness in the long Middle Ages (approximately, from the 6th to the 16th century), whether in the Latin tradition or in any of the other major traditions that are the pillars of medieval philosophy as nowadays defined (Arabic-Islamic, Jewish, Byzantine, and vernacular). We encourage submissions on any aspect of the debate about limits and/or vagueness in the period, either focusing on specific authors and texts or following the development of specific issues over time.
Possible topics include (but are not restricted to):
– Types of limits in the Middle Ages (What types of entities have limits? What types of limits (e.g., extrinsic vs intrinsic) do medieval thinkers acknowledge for specific types of entities?)
– Logical and semantic analyses of limit-related terms (incipit / desinit; maximum / minimum…)
– Medieval treatment of paradoxes involving limits and/or vagueness
– Fuzzy logic in the Middle Ages
– The so-called ‘new analytical languages’ (referred to as such by John Murdoch) of limits and their applications to different disciplines
– Vague or indeterminate objects (Are there vague or indeterminate objects outside the mind? Are there vague properties in the world?)
– The ontological status of points, lines, instants and other indivisible entities in medieval philosophy
– Medieval debates on natural limits (natural minima or maxima) and their implications
– Vagueness in language and thought (Are there vague concepts or definitions? Is vagueness a property of language or thought?)
– Limits and vagueness in medieval theories of perception
– Essences and definitions (Can there be indeterminate essences? In what sense?)
– Limits and vagueness in classifications of beings (natural species, categories…)
Early-career researchers and members of underrepresented groups in academia are especially encouraged to apply.
Practical Information:
The conference is set to take place in person on October 17th-19th, 2024 at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven.
Submission of abstracts:
Please send your proposal, which should include a title and an abstract of no more than 500 words, to the organizers. The new deadline for submission is July 31st and we aim to send the notifications of acceptance by August 10th. Please include your name and your institutional affiliation in the main body of the email.
Questions?
Contact the organizers:
Sylvain Roudaut (sylvain...@kuleuven.be)
Roberto Zambiasi (roberto....@kuleuven.be)
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