Perception, Knowledge, and Assimilation

ʻAll humans naturally strive for knowledgeʼ, Aristotle famously states at the beginning of his Metaphysics. Yet philosophers have wondered ever since what it means to know something and how we can actually acquire knowledge. Can we know anything at all, and if so, where does this knowledge come from? Do we need to have sensory information first and do we have to become like the things we want to know? In the history of philosophy, diferent answers have been given to these and related questions and in this workshop we would like to discuss some of them, especially those by ancient, medieval, and early modern philosophers in the Greek, Latin, and Arabic tradition.

The workshop is organised by the European Research Council project Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550 (University of Helsinki, Finland). It is part of the Nordic Network for the History of Philosophy workshop series.