Visions and Conjectures. The Virtuous Matching of Sense of Reality and Sense of Possibility

Lecture: Visions and Conjectures. The Virtuous Matching of Sense of Reality and Sense of Possibility

Lecturer: Silvano Tagliagambe (Università di Sassari)

Date: Friday, May 26, 2023, h. 6:30pm

Place: Monte Verità (Ascona), Auditorium

Cycle: Eranos-Jung Lectures 2023 - The Great Worksites of Contemporaneity. Looks at the Knots of the Present

Language: Italian

Chairperson: Fabio Merlini (Eranos Foundation, Ascona; SFUVET, Lugano)

Discussion with the audience and aperitif to follow

The recording of the conference can be viewed on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.

Lecture Presentation

The metaverse is often presented as a dangerous escape from reality, a kind of toyland destined to make "dummies," so effectively described by Collodi in Pinocchio, of all those who have the unfortunate idea of frequenting it and immersing themselves in it. In reality, things are otherwise, and if one turns away from ad hoc presentations made to discredit its image and to belittle and undermine its scope and potential or to exalt only its playful and commercial aspects, one can realize the possibilities related to the multiple uses and benefits that can be drawn from the virtuous combination of the physical universe and the digital world. Considered from this perspective, the metaverse appears to be an opportunity, not only technological but also cultural. Prominent among its many applications is the ability to predict, within a virtual environment, a wide variety of real-life use cases, and thus the possibility of expanding the range of possible options and applications, predicting the effect of a desired or unintended change of state, making "what if" assessments, reasoning in predictive mode, avoiding malfunctions, and reducing the risks of incorrect choices and decisions with preventive actions. In short, when interpreted in the proper way, it is a tool to empower us to deal more effectively with the great challenges and problems facing humanity today.

Lecturer' Bio-bibliography

Silvano Tagliagambe, born in 1945, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Science at University of Sassari, Italy. Physicist and philosopher, he previously taught at the universities of Pisa, Cagliari, “Sapienza” – University of Rome, and Sassari, at the Faculty of Architecture in Alghero (Italy). He held courses at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain, at the Universidade de Lisboa (ULISBOA), and at the Universidade do Porto (UP), Portugal. He also served as the Vice-President of the Centro di Ricerca, Sviluppo, Studi Superiori (CRS4) in the Region of Sardinia (Italy), presided by the physicist, Carlo Rubbia. He authored over four hundred publications. Among his main works, we mention here L’interpretazione materialistica della meccanica quantistica (1972), Scienza, Filosofia, Politica in Unione Sovietica 1924–1939 (1978), Scienza e marxismo in URSS (1979), La mediazione linguistica. Il rapporto pensiero-linguaggio da Leibniz a Hegel (1980), L’epistemologia contemporanea (1991), Epistemologia del confine (1997, republished in 2017), La città possibile (in collaboration with Giovanni Maciocco, 1997), Epistemologia del cyberspazio (1997), L’albero flessibile. La cultura della progettualità (1998), Il sogno di Dostoevskij. Come la mente emerge dal cervello (2002), Come leggere Florenskij (2006), Lo spazio intermedio. Rete, individuo e comunità (2008), Il cielo incarnato. L’epistemologia del simbolo di Pavel Florenskij (2013), Il nodo Borromeo. Corpo, mente, psiche (2015), La divergenza nella rivoluzione. Filosofia, scienza e teologia in Russia (1920–1940) (with G. Rispoli, 2016), Oltre il muro di pietra. La concezione antinomica della verità in Florenskij alla prova delle neuroscienze (2017), Lo sguardo e l’ombra (2017), Placido Cherchi: la cultura dell’ologramma (2018), Il paesaggio che siamo e che viviamo (2018), Metamorfosi. Cervello in divenire, benessere psicofisico e nuove strategie terapeutiche (with G. Biggio and D. Sirigu, 2019), Per una filosofia del tra. Pensare l’esperienza umana sulla soglia (with P. Bartolini, 2020), Ritornare a Ippocrate. Riflessioni sulla medicina di oggi (with E. Facco, 2020), Come in uno specchio. Il cervello e il suo ambiente (2020), Il paesaggio: glossario (2021), Come leggere Florenskij (2021), Dal caos al cosmo. Introduzione al cosmismo russo (2021), Chiralità: la vita e l’antinomia. Gli eroi dei due mondi (2021), L’arte e l’immaginazione produttiva. L’opera di Pinuccio Sciola (2022), and Metaverso e gemelli digitali. La nuova alleanza tra reti naturali e artificiali (2022). In the field of Jungian studies, he also co-authored, along with Angelo Malinconico, the volumes Pauli e Jung. Un confronto su materia e psiche (2011), Jung e il Libro Rosso. Il Sé come sacrificio dell’Io (2014), and Tempo e sincronicità. Tessere il tempo (2018). For the “Saggi di Eranos” series, he wrote Catastrofi dell’immediatezza (with F. Merlini, 2016). On February 6, 2021, President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella awarded him the title of Grand Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic.

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To mark the 90th anniversary of the Eranos Conferences (1933-2023), the Foundation wanted to question some leading figures in today's cultural world, asking them to present the projects and issues on which they are working. The idea is to bring into dialogue at a distance qualified gazes on the nodes of our present, to highlight their risks, opportunities, and prospects. Not, of course, to listen to the last word on what is happening today, but rather to enter their laboratories of thought and try to focus on a kind of ongoing geography of the present time: to orient ourselves, to find ourselves, to map out possible virtuous paths-despite the disorientation and uncertainty that characterizes us, in an age that is very rich in technological resources, but very poor in future perspectives. Rather than inviting them to reflect on a guiding theme, as is the Eranos-Jung Lectures usual practice, we wanted to offer the lecturers the chance to present to the audience the issues they are working on, to see how the gaze on an object is constructed, through what sensibility, what concerns, what desire for understanding, and what method. And, of course, what passion. It will be a journey that will allow us to visit some “great worksites of contemporaneity” dedicated to different thematic areas: i.e., the state of health of our democracies; the fate of the “book” object and interiority in the time of endless distraction and social media; the reality of the metaverse, the overcoming of the human, and the resources of mysticism; the sonic perceptive in a society that continually solicits the sense of hearing; the solitude of the artist in the glittering world of the commodification of creativity; the drifts of the divine; and the meaning of making culture. In essence: a journey outside and inside ourselves.