Cultural Analytics and Digital Approaches in Philosophy
Description
This online seminar series brings together researchers exploring the intersection of computational methods and philosophical inquiry. We examine how digital tools—including text mining, machine learning, large language models, and data visualization—can offer new perspectives on philosophical questions, test philosophical hypotheses, and uncover patterns in the history of ideas.The seminar features presentations from scholars working at the forefront of digital humanities and philosophy, covering topics such as: computational analysis of philosophical texts and corpora; machine learning applications in conceptual analysis; digital methods for studying the evolution of philosophical ideas; AI and human cognition; abstraction and understanding in artificial systems; and cross-cultural computational studies of philosophical traditions.
Each session lasts no more than one hour, comprising approximately 25 minutes of presentation followed by 25 minutes of questions and exchange. The seminar welcomes philosophers, digital humanists, computer scientists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and anyone interested in how computational approaches can enrich philosophical research.
The seminar is free and open to all. We hope to encourage open discussion and engagement. Interested participants are welcome to join by sending an email with the subject line "Participation in Seminar Cultural Analytics and Digital Approaches in Philosophy" to Hugo.Viciana[at]gmail.com or Hviciana[at]us.es
Sessions are held online and are not recorded.
See below for some of the forthcoming sessions:
SESSION 1 - October 23, 2025
Speaker
Ying Zhong
Institut Jean Nicod
“Literary Fiction Indicates Early Modernization in China Prior to Western Influence”
About this session
This presentation explores how computational analysis of Chinese literary fiction reveals patterns of modernization that emerged independently before significant Western contact. Through digital humanities methods, the research examines textual evidence suggesting indigenous modernization processes in Chinese culture and thought, challenging traditional narratives about the origins of modernization in China.
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CET (12:00 PM UTC)
Session 2- November 19, 2025
Speaker
Lucian Li
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“Tracing the Genealogies of Ideas with Sentence Embeddings”
About this session
This presentation addresses the problem of detecting intellectual influence in unstructured text, a challenge relevant to fields such as intellectual history, social science, and bibliometrics. Previous studies in computational social science and digital humanities have approached this issue using dictionary-based, embedding-based, and language-model-based methods. The presentation outlines a new approach that leverages a sentence embedding index to efficiently search for similar ideas within a large historical corpus.
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM CET (2:00 PM UTC)
SESSION 3 - January 22, 2026
Speaker
Mark Alfano
Macquarie University
“Hermeneutic Calvinball versus modest digital humanities in philosophical interpretation”
About this session
In the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” Calvin invents Calvinball—a game where players make up rules as they go along, and no rule can be used twice. Whether someone is winning becomes definitionally indeterminate. Philosophy risks playing a similar game: it’s often unclear what the rules are, whether rules exist, and who gets to make them. In the history of philosophy, some interpreters stick to the letter of the text, while others, like Heidegger, insist that what’s most important is what wasn’t written. This makes it hard to tell who is winning an interpretive argument.
This paper proposes that digital humanities offers a modest way forward for interpreters who don’t want to play Calvinball. Digital humanities methods can be used to: (1) set a default for the importance of various concepts, (2) periodize a philosopher’s works and track the evolution of concepts across their career, and (3) establish which conceptual connections should or should not be attributed to a philosopher. The value of this approach is demonstrated through a detailed investigation of Nietzsche on the functions of shame.
Each session lasts no more than one hour, comprising approximately 25 minutes of presentation followed by 25 minutes of questions and exchange. The seminar welcomes philosophers, digital humanists, computer scientists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and anyone interested in how computational approaches can enrich philosophical research.
The seminar is free and open to all. We hope to encourage open discussion and engagement. Interested participants are welcome to join by sending an email with the subject line "Participation in Seminar Cultural Analytics and Digital Approaches in Philosophy" to Hugo.Viciana[at]gmail.com or Hviciana[at]us.es
Sessions are held online and are not recorded.
See below for some of the forthcoming sessions:
SESSION 1 - October 23, 2025
Speaker
Ying Zhong
Institut Jean Nicod
“Literary Fiction Indicates Early Modernization in China Prior to Western Influence”
About this session
This presentation explores how computational analysis of Chinese literary fiction reveals patterns of modernization that emerged independently before significant Western contact. Through digital humanities methods, the research examines textual evidence suggesting indigenous modernization processes in Chinese culture and thought, challenging traditional narratives about the origins of modernization in China.
Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CET (12:00 PM UTC)
Session 2- November 19, 2025
Speaker
Lucian Li
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“Tracing the Genealogies of Ideas with Sentence Embeddings”
About this session
This presentation addresses the problem of detecting intellectual influence in unstructured text, a challenge relevant to fields such as intellectual history, social science, and bibliometrics. Previous studies in computational social science and digital humanities have approached this issue using dictionary-based, embedding-based, and language-model-based methods. The presentation outlines a new approach that leverages a sentence embedding index to efficiently search for similar ideas within a large historical corpus.
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM CET (2:00 PM UTC)
SESSION 3 - January 22, 2026
Speaker
Mark Alfano
Macquarie University
“Hermeneutic Calvinball versus modest digital humanities in philosophical interpretation”
About this session
In the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” Calvin invents Calvinball—a game where players make up rules as they go along, and no rule can be used twice. Whether someone is winning becomes definitionally indeterminate. Philosophy risks playing a similar game: it’s often unclear what the rules are, whether rules exist, and who gets to make them. In the history of philosophy, some interpreters stick to the letter of the text, while others, like Heidegger, insist that what’s most important is what wasn’t written. This makes it hard to tell who is winning an interpretive argument.
This paper proposes that digital humanities offers a modest way forward for interpreters who don’t want to play Calvinball. Digital humanities methods can be used to: (1) set a default for the importance of various concepts, (2) periodize a philosopher’s works and track the evolution of concepts across their career, and (3) establish which conceptual connections should or should not be attributed to a philosopher. The value of this approach is demonstrated through a detailed investigation of Nietzsche on the functions of shame.
| September 25, 2025 |
Link for additional information
(No link has been provided.)
Organisers
Universidad de Sevilla
Sponsoring institution
Universidad de Sevilla