CFP: On, Around, and Beyond the Internal Senses

Paper submissions are invited for the special issue of Topoi entitled On, Around, and Beyond the Internal Senses. The special issue aims to explore the medieval conceptions of the internal senses, their historical sources, and their influence or reverberation on later philosophical thought. 

Guest Editors:

Elena Băltuță, Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, [email protected]

Sergiu Sava, Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, [email protected]

Description:

Contemporary philosophy, whether analytic or continental, has developed a fruitful dialogue with medieval philosophy. It thus opened new research directions or extended and deepened ongoing research on subject matters such as: consciousness, self-consciousness, and pre-reflective self-consciousness; the kinds of intentionality and approaches to intentionality; the relation between mind and body; perception, its subject, and the various models of accounting for the relation between rationality and sensitivity. However, the dialogue has been, and still is today, kept mainly at the level of the medieval conceptions concerned with the higher faculties of the soul, especially the intellect. It seldom dives deeper, into the fine-grained conceptions dealing with the sensitive faculties, particularly with the internal senses. To be more precise, the dialogue overlooks the roles medieval philosophers attributed to common sense, memory, imagination, estimation, or cogitation when accounting for consciousness, intentionality, or perception, as well as for the relations between mind and body or rationality and sensitivity. The prime reason for this dialogical flaw is easily traceable to the fact that not even the historians of philosophy have paid enough attention to the medieval topic of the internal senses in all their complexity.

This situation does seem to be changing for the better lately. New papers are being published; and newer research is being undertaken. Nevertheless, the investigation of the medieval ways of understanding the internal senses is still in its infancy. There are still plenty of gaps that need to be filled. With this special issue of Topoi, we aim to contribute to this task by paying close attention not just to the epistemological but also to the metaphysical functions attributed to the internal senses and by inquiring into the historical sources of medieval conceptions, their wide variety, and their endurance up to early modern and even modern philosophy.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• The internal senses and their functions in the process of perception: What is the contribution of the internal senses to perception? What kind of intentionality do the internal senses possess? How do the internal senses connect sensitivity and rationality? How do the internal senses of humans differ from those of animals? What are the historical sources of the medieval answers to such questions? What are the influences these answers had on other domains or later philosophies?

• The internal senses and their functions in the architecture of the soul: How many internal senses are there? How do they interact with the external ones? How do the internal senses relate to the intellect? What kind of consciousness, if any, is present at the level of the internal senses? What part do the internal senses play in the relation between body and soul? What are the historical sources of the medieval answers to such questions? What are the influences these answers had on other domains or later philosophies?

Invited contributors:

• Tommaso Alpina (University of Pavia, American University of Beirut)

• Janelle DeWitt (University of California)

• Jack Ford (University College London)

• Paloma Hernández-Rubio (Autonomous Metropolitan University, Mexico City)

• Annette Kern-Stähler (University of Bern)

• Anastasia Kopylova (Humboldt University of Berlin)

• Jordan Lavender (Purdue University, West Lafayette)

• André Martin (Charles University in Prague)

• Dominik Perler (Humboldt University of Berlin)

• Martin Pickavé (University of Toronto)

• José Filipe Silva (University of Helsinki)

• Mikko Yrjönsuuri (University of Jyväskylä)

Submission deadline: April 1, 2025.

For more details, please see the link below: