25-27 November 2025, University of Genoa
Concrete objects such as tables, chairs, hammers, or screwdrivers are usually cast as paradigm artifacts. More recently, the philosophy of technology has paid attention also to abstract artifacts such as algorithms or recipes. Yet, little philosophical attention has been paid so far to another interesting kind of artifacts, namely, artefactual events, which differ from both paradigmatic concrete artifacts and abstract artifacts in virtue of their distinctive temporal profile. An interesting species of the artifactual event is the mental artifact, which also has a temporal profile but unfolds in a sort of inner “Cartesian theater”, as it were, instead of in the public space. Hallucinations, dreams and psychedelic experiences arguably are mental artifacts of this sort.
This conference aims to investigate the philosophy of artifactual events, including mental artifacts, both from a metaphysical perspective and from an aesthetic perspective. The focus is not only on how to properly theorize the nature of artifactual events but also on how to account for our experience and appreciation of them. In this sense, the conference encourages submissions on general metaphysical issues about the nature of artifactual events and the specificity of mental artifacts, as well as on aesthetically relevant topics as for example performative arts like theater and dance or artworld events like happenings and festivals, but also—drawing on the growing field of the aesthetics of consciousness—the appreciation of non-paradigmatic aesthetic entities such as dreams, psychedelic experiences and other inner products of the mind.
Research questions for papers may include but are not limited to:
- What are the metaphysical specificities of artifactual events as opposed to paradigm artifacts?
- Are artifactual events better cast as artifacts or as social entities?
- What are the aesthetic specificities of artifactual events as opposed to paradigm works of art?
- Artifactual events and the arts of time
- Performances as artifactual events in theater, dance, music and contemporary art
- Artifactual events and the artworld: the philosophy of festivals, exhibitions and conferences
- Can there be mental artifacts? In case, are they artifactual events?
- Are actions artifactual events? Are they mental artifacts as well?
- Are dreams and hallucinations mental artifacts?
- Do psychedelic experiences involve the creation of mental artifacts?
- If the predictive processing approach is right in casting conscious experience as “controlled hallucination”, should we cast the whole experience as a mental artifact?
- Can mental artifacts be objects of aesthetic appreciation?
- Can the study of mental artifacts contribute to the rising field of the aesthetics of consciousness?
Invited speakers:
Michael Y. Bennett (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)
Gwen Bradford (University of Toronto)
David Davies (McGill University)
Simon Evnine (University of Miami)
Uriah Kriegel (Rice University)
Aidan Lyon (Leiden University)
Anna Pakes (University of Roehampton)
Giuliano Torrengo (University of Milan)
Call for Abstracts
Please submit proposals by writing to: pea@unige.it Submissions should be done as PDF files prepared for blind review. Please submit abstracts between 500 and 1000 words (references excluded) together with a title and 3 keywords.
The deadline for receipt is August 24, 2025. Speakers will be notified of decisions by September 7, 2025.
There will be no conference fees. It will be possible to apply for bursaries.
The PEA Research Team has another conference planned for 10–12 November on rule-constituted entities. For those who may be interested, here is the call for abstracts: https://pea.unige.it/node/281