‘Working on the Fringes of Philosophy and Discovering New Territory’

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On January 10-11, metaphysics negativity research group from the HSE University School of Philosophy held its first international event, an online conference entitled ‘Defining Nothingness’. One of the members of the organizing committee, as well as some of the international participants share their impressions and talk about their research.

Dmitry Tourko, member of the organising committee, doctoral student at the HSE University School of Philosophy

As far as I know, this is the first conference at HSE University on such an unconventional topic. We are pioneers of a kind, and I believe that this new experience was a success.

The conference included all sorts of presentations on topics such as feminist theology, the philosophy of physics, the aesthetics of Antonioni films, and the art of Russian avant-garde. Some of them covered themes that are important to any modern thinking individual, while others might only be of interest to specialists.

All the presentations were united by the highly uncommon topic of unbeing, nothing and negativity

I believe that this made the conference important: the speakers work on the fringes of philosophy, discovering new territory that is quite unusual in the humanities. We are going to publish the proceedings of the conference, which will include papers by international and Russian participants.

We contacted researchers in Europe and the USA who work in the field of negativity and nothingness. Since it is a very broad theme, we wrote to a wide range of professionals—those dealing in aesthetics, art history, antique thought, religious studies, continental and analytical philosophy. As a result, the event showcased a variety of approaches to the same problem.

At the same time, there was no misunderstanding or a feeling that we were speaking different languages—quite the opposite. Audience interest always remained high, no matter who was speaking. This was obvious from the number of questions, which the participants didn’t always have enough time to answer.

I am now working on the topic of the ontology of personality. This is a field of metaphysics that includes the problems of reality and the nature of personality, or the ‘self’.

There is a group of philosophers who deny the reality of the self from the perspective of neuroscience

Essentially, they say that personality does not exist and that all the properties we have traditionally assigned to personality are actually limited to conditions of the brain. I studied the arguments of these ‘neurophilosophers’, the philosophical consequences of their positions, and whether there are versions of neurophilosophy that don’t deny the reality of the self. This is what my paper was about.

Graham Priest, Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center

My first contact with the HSE was when I was invited to give a talk there at the conference Trends in Logic, in 2019. When I was at the conference, I met some of the philosophers at the School, and had a number of enjoyable discussions. In 2021, Tatiana Levina wrote to me asking if I would talk at the present conference. I was very happy to accept.

The subject of this conference was nothingness. This is an intriguing and paradoxical notion, which has engaged many philosophers (East and West)

I touched on it briefly in a previous book (One, Oxford University Press, 2014), and am currently writing a book on the subject itself. One of the intriguing things about the notion is that it appears, as many philosophers have suggested, to be the ground of reality, in some sense. The title of my talk, Ex Nihilo Omnis Fit, expresses one way in which this matter is often raised.

Philosophy certainly deals with issues that can appear abstract and arcane. But at its heart are perennial questions that are at the centre of human existence, such as: how should I live? what is the nature of the world in which we live? how should one organize a society? how does one go about finding answers to these questions? 

The social organisations where these questions are discussed and debated have changed from time to time and place to place in the last 3,000 years, and will doubtless continue to do so. But the questions are so important, as is treating them thoughtfully, that they will never disappear.

We live in an exciting time in philosophy. All the old issues are still there, but the changes in the world are bringing many new ones into view

For a (major) example: the old barriers between “analytic philosophy” and “continental philosophy” are breaking down. And so are the barriers between “Western philosophy” and “Eastern Philosophy”.

We are entering a truly global period in philosophy for the first time. So whatever area of philosophy you work in, learn from the insights of all these traditions. Then use them to develop new insights of your own.

Eddy Keming Chen, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego

I was invited to be a speaker of the conference as I just published an article that is relevant to the theme of the conference.

We often assume that there are things that exist in the universe: tables, chairs, trees, buildings, planets, stars, and all the particles and fields that make up such things. Call them material objects. What if we take away every such object? Can we still describe a world? Normally it’s impossible.

To describe a world, we need to describe the locations and properties of such material objects (to say the least). But it turns out to be possible, but only in a universe governed by a special kind of laws that are “strongly deterministic.” I call it a “cosmic void,” in which nothing exists in space or time but every fact about our world can be deduced from the laws of physics alone. It is an extraordinarily speculative idea (one that I don’t endorse). Nevertheless, it is an interesting one, and it might help us understand why we do postulate the existence of matter in physical theories. 

Philosophy has many roles to play in the modern world

Different subfields of philosophy have different goals and may play different roles. Some examples: moral philosophy seeks to understand the nature of right and wrong; philosophy of science seeks to understand the nature of scientific inquiry; metaphysics seeks to understand the nature of existence in a very broad sense.

In philosophy of physics, we often look at particular physical theories (such as classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and quantum field theories) put forward by physicists and try to understand what they say about the world. Of course, there is more to say about each of these. 
I think many young people these days have a strong interest in philosophy. Many philosophy YouTube channels are quite popular. Not all of them will go on to become professional philosophers, which is ok.

Learning philosophy can often enrich one’s life and clarify one’s purpose in life