Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell'Educazione

20 May 2022 h 10 a.m.
Online and onsite
Møterom Innsikten Iff, EPGresearchgroup, Tromsø
The Institute of Philosophy and First Semester Studies in collaboration with Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell’Educazione

What seems to become progressively clearer in the era of Anthropocene is that our neverending growth and expansion are exceeding the limits of nature: in different ways we have started to face and feel them every day. This is why today the question and deeper understanding about limits appears to be crucial and necessary. Does nature have its own limits at all? Through (especially) science we seem to find our day by day strategies to work our way around what we deem to be limits in nature. Is this strategy starting to crumble? Are we facing a situation where our modus operandi needs to be seriously challenged by more general and philosophical perspectives?
Thus, our intention in this workshop is to question the passive ontology [Lie, 2016, 50] that painted nature as something we could easily manage and control. We shall set the concept of'limit' at the basis of our inquiry. Possible issues to explore are:
What is a limit and what are limits in nature? Is there a form of realism that can help to develop new concepts of both limits and nature? If we side with a relational and dispositional ontology and abandon the idea that we are the one and only active designer of the limits in nature, what happens to our relationship with nature? How far can we transcend the limits?
How to think about and manage technological goals. Can it be anything other than a means to enhance and rebuild nature’s limits? If we want to change our ways of living with and within nature, might we need a new concept of freedom?

Programme
10.00 Welcome and Introduction
10.15 Limits and dispositions: a relational view?
Adele Ciriotti, M.A. Student Unito & Visiting Student Uit
11.20 The Limits of ourRealism(s). In search for natural things
Giacomo Pezzano, Post doc Researcher, University of Turin

12.30 Break

13.30 Limits and Balance in nature
Svein Anders Noer Lie, Associate Professor, Arctic University of Norway
14.40 Limits of and in Nature: on the First and Second Nature divide
Gaetano Chiurazzi, Full Professor, University of Turin

15.45 Conclusions and final remarks

Register via email at: adele.ciriotti@edu.unito.it