Are there things that can be bad for you even if you never know of them—things that never show up in your experience at all? When we say that a person has irreplaceable value, what exactly do we mean, and is it the same thing we mean when we say that a work of art is irreplaceable? Why do we owe something to people and to animals, but nothing to rocks, computers, or robots—is it because in the one case, and not the other, there is someone home? What is the difference between knowing something and really understanding it? Does that difference have to do with experience? And can an experience itself be beautiful—not the thing experienced, but the having of it?
Each of these can be seen as a question about the relationship between consciousness and value—value of quite different kinds: prudential, moral, epistemic, aesthetic. In recent years, work in separate areas of philosophy has converged on this relationship, without always recognizing that a common thread ran through it. Questions can equally be asked in the other direction: if conscious experience turns out to be valuable in ways nothing else is, does that tell us anything about the nature of consciousness?
In this trilingual seminar we will take up a selection of these questions on the basis of recent contributions to the literature. The language of our discussions will depend on the preferences of the participants, but everyone will be welcome to speak in French, German, or English.
- Dozent/in: Julien Bugnon