Conference
1 June 2022
What is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a simple tool and other technical artifacts?
A machine is always, in a sense, magical and dangerous, as it does something “by itself”.
In comparing machines with living systems, a debate that has been with us since Descartes’ theory of the animal-machine, rather than asking what type of machines are living systems, the arising question is: if living systems are machines, in what way are human-made machines particular?
Conference
1 June 2022, 17:00-19:00
Aula Magna «Gaetano Cima»
Via Corte d’Appello 87, Cagliari
What is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a simple tool and other technical artifacts?
A machine is always, in a sense, magical and dangerous, as it does something “by itself”.
In comparing machines with living systems, a debate that has been with us since Descartes’ theory of the animal-machine, rather than asking what type of machines are living systems, the arising question is: if living systems are machines, in what way are human-made machines particular?
Discussants
Ivan Blečić, Elisabetta Gola, Mauro Pala and Giuseppe Sergioli
Paul Dumouchel was until recently professor at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, where he thought political philosophy and philosophy of science. Now back in Canada he is affiliated with the Department of Philosophy of the University of Quebec in Montreal.
Served as President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. Co-founder of the Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliée (CREA) at the École Polythechnique in Paris.
Author of Emotions (1999), The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays (2014) and The Barren Sacrifice (2015); with Reiko Gotoh he edited Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen (2009) and Social Bonds as Freedom (2015). His most recent book, with Luisa Damiano, is Living with Robots (2017).
Co-organised by
Master’s programme in Entrepreneurial Innovation for Building Industry (Master PIE)
PhD programme in Civil Engineering and Architecture
PhD programme in Philosophy, Epistemology, Human Sciences
PhD programme in Philological and Literary, Historical and Cultural Studies