BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260417T080545Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Rome:20140410T110000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Rome:20140413T180000 SUMMARY:"Understanding Matter" Philosophical Perspectives UID:20260417T175618Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@philevents-web-f5d4878dd-g4ggw TZID:Europe/Rome LOCATION:Palermo\, Italy DESCRIPTION:

For more information\, contact Andrea Le Moli:  \;andrea.lemoli@unipa.it

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How do we experience matter? Does it present itself to the senses? Or is it only an empty substratum \;that cannot be grasped if deprived of all sensible qualities? Is it perceived as a continuum\, or \;rather intellectually reconstructed through mental and logical forms? Or is it that the very idea of a \;continuum in itself the outcome of mental abstraction? And what about the \;status of matter in light of contemporary subatomic physics? Is matter an unpredictable \;flux of pure energy or an organized kosmos of even more basic elements?

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The nature of matter has been a central issue for philosophy from its very beginning. Over the \;course of centuries of debate\, a wide variety of theoretical solutions have been proposed. Indeed\, all \;major historical shifts of thought have prompted fundamental re-thinking of the nature of matter. \;For instance\, the rise of the importance of mathematics in the natural sciences helped shape the \;transition from positing a &ldquo\;philosophy of nature&rdquo\; to concentrating on the empirical sciences. Debates \;about matter were intimately connected with the polemical rejections of Materialism and Dogmatism \;in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Most recently\, contemporary physics has called for a fundamental \;re-orientation of the traditional paradigm.  \;

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The aim of this conference is to provide scholars from across the world an opportunity to discuss \;these and other important issues in an interdisciplinary environment. The organizers of the conference \;are open to a wide range of fields of research and historical eras. The organizers hope to bring \;together a program which spans from ancient to modern philosophy\, and includes perspectives from \;drawn from the criticism of Kant\, idealism\, and materialism\, as well as contemporary physics and \;biology.

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The conference will be hosted by The Department of the Humanistic Sciences at the University of \;Palermo\, and organized in cooperation with the International Center for Philosophical Research \;(Centro Internazionale per la Ricerca Filosofica: CRF) and Società\; Filosofica Italiana ("Santino \;Caramella" chapter). The conference will be held in Palermo\, Sicily. Participants will also have the \;opportunity to explore neighboring\, historic locales and other relevant sites in Sicily.

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