Jenny Boulboullé will give a presentation at the Workshop Early Modern Perception: ‘Shifts Towards Experimentation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy’.

What is it to perceive something? How is taste different from touch? Can instruments such as sticks or microscopes extend our senses? Issues about perception are at the heart of many early modern philosophical debates. They drive puzzles about what we can know, how we experience, what exists, as well as moral considerations about how we relate to others. In this workshop we will investigate issues about perception in the early modern period.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/workshop-early-modern-perception-tickets-28279759522
Watch the livestream: https://goo.gl/sQQs2T

Program

09:30 Doors open
10:00 Anna Ortín (University of Edinburgh): Mental Activity in Descartes’ Causal Theory of Sensory Perception
10:30 Hanoch Ben-Yami (Central European University): Descartes on Structural Representation without Resemblance: From Mathematics to Perception
11:00 Lightning talks:

• John Ashfield (Utrecht University): What Happened to the Distinction Between Proper and Common Sensibles?
• Marin Kaufman (Utrecht University): Descartes on Responsibility and External Blame Attribution

11:30 Alexandra Ileana Bacalu (University of Bucharest): Early Modern Techniques for Managing Sense-Impressions: A ‘Sensitive’ or ‘Cognitive’ Cure?
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Raphael Krut-Landau (Princeton University): Spinoza on Numbing, Dawning, and Vagueness
14:00 Jenny Boulboullé (Utrecht University): Shifts Towards Experimentation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy
14:30 Lightning talks:

• M.G. de Jong (Utrecht University): Brain Research in the Seventeenth Century: Innovations and Superstitions
• Steven Kraaijeveld (Utrecht University): The Role of Perfection in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy
• Lennard Pater (Utrecht University): The Birth and Development of Sir Isaac Newton’s Theory of Light and Colours

15:15 Break
15:30 Brian Glenney (Norwich University): Anticipation by Simulation: Adam Smith’s Theory of Perception
16:00 Lightning talks:

• Theo de Jong (Utrecht University & University of Amsterdam): Language and Perception as the Foundation of Knowledge by Early Modern Philosophers
• Mariëlle Ekkelenkamp (Utrecht University): The Tension Between Reason and Experience in Early Modern Aesthetics

16:30 Break
16:45 Keynote: Delphine Bellis (Ghent University): Perceiving Depth and Distance in Vision: Descartes’ Reversal of Kepler’s Optics
18:00 Workshop End / Reception