Eighth International Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism
April 6th & 7th, 2018
Theme:
"Nature and the Symbolic in the Human and
Non-human"
A central feature of any naturalism is that there is at
least some form of continuity between mind and nature – or, that mind
"stretches" to meet nature (in the words of John Dewey). But, what is
"mind" within a naturalistic register? A basic premise for
naturalists such as Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Alfred
North Whitehead, or Susanne Langer – naturalists in the American philosophical
tradition – is that "mind" is essentially symbolic. This is to say that, conceptually, mind is both expressive and representational. This, though, begs the question: what within nature might be able to
"think?" As any "ecstatic" naturalism seeks to explore
nature's deeply embedded transformational potential, the theme of this year's
congress questions nature's potential for "mind" – or
"intelligence" - and questions how that mind might be at work within
the natural world, especially as expressed by means of symbol. What precisely
is nature's potential for expressive intelligence and how is it expressed
through symbol and concept? And further, what other than the human might be
able to "think?" What does it mean to think? Can machines think? Can
forests think? Insects? Birds? Fish? Transcending beyond the boundaries of the human,
we seek papers that wish to explore especially non-human modes of intelligence within the realm of the symbolic in
order to connect naturalism to applied philosophical fields, whether animal
ethics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, political ecology,
biosemiotics, and so on. Papers need not be exclusively about the philosophy of
ecstatic naturalism but are encouraged to at least minimally address its
perspective before moving on to present a different thesis of the paper so as to place all papers of the congress within the stream of
contemporary philosophical naturalism.
Submissions of abstracts 300-500 words in length should be
emailed to: niemoczynskil@moravian.edu
no later than October 31st, 2017. Authors of accepted papers will be
contacted no later than November 30th with a paper deadline (no more
than 15-20 minutes in length of reading or 6-8 pages double-spaced) of March
1st.
