This looks interesting:
CFP: Epigenesis and Philosophy: A Workshop on the work of Catherine Malabou
Call For Papers
Philosophy and Epigenesis
A Workshop on the work of Catherine Malabou
March 15-16, UWE, Bristol.
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Catherine Malabou (CRMEP, Kingston), ‘Epigenesis of the Text’
In her 2014 book, Avant demain: Èpigenèse et rationalité (Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality) Catherine Malabou explores contemporary philosophical attempts to move beyond the Kantian transcendental via an epigenetic account of the emergence of rationality. In particular, Malabou makes this analysis not only with the intellectual tools of recent European philosophy, but also with the tools of contemporary neuroscience. This project, along with much of Malabou’s other recent work, cuts through the trend to relinquish the Kantian transcendental by reframing the very terms of this debate with reference to recent natural science. In this way, Malabou points the way towards a new future in which continental philosophy boldly embraces recent developments in the natural sciences and rejects the anti-scientific bias which has infected many dominant strands of continental philosophy.
This event aims to further explore Malabou’s recent work both constructively and critically by bringing together scholars in both the humanities and the natural sciences to discuss the questions opened up by Malabou. We invite submissions for 20-minute presentations that fit broadly with the themes of Malabou’s recent work, and in particular, the themes of epigenesis and rationality.
Relevant topics include, but are by no means limited to:
- The work of Catherine Malabou (and in particular, the project outlined in Avant demain)
- Philosophical considerations of plasticity, life, and the brain
- Deep History and the brain
- Materialist and naturalist accounts of life
- Epigenetics and contemporary European philosophy
- Philosophical anthropology and natural science
- Naturalist accounts of reason
- The place of the organic in Kantian philosophy
- Epigenesis in German idealism
- Critical encounters between neuroscience and psychoanalysis
- The role of plasticity in contemporary thought
- The relationship between contemporary philosophy and the natural sciences
We especially encourage submissions from underrepresented groups in the humanities.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Michael2.Burns@uwe.ac.uk by February 4th, 2016.
Hosted by the Natural World and Technology Theme of the UWE, Bristol Social Science Research Group, and the Working Group on Contemporary Materialism.
http://www.uwephilosophy.org.uk/