The years around 1936 witnessed an intense intellectual production in all fields of knowledge. All those contributions had a common denominator: the reorganization of their fields around a formal conception of language, which changed our linguistic practices both in science and in everyday life. This seminar proposes a comparative reading of those texts, to understand that transformation.

The invention of Boolean logic in the middle of the 19th century is considered a major event in the history of modern thought. However, Boole’s original system does not correspond to what we came to understand as Boolean logic.We will study the early history of Boolean logic in relation to the mathematics of its epoch, in search of an alternative philosophy of formal knowledge for the present.

This seminar will explore different areas of our social and scientific life where computational practices have a critical impact. The goal is to provide a pluralistic conception of computing based on what computing looks like when dealing with topics as diverse as climate, law, art, or war. The lectures are delivered by researchers from ETH and abroad, with different disciplinary backgrounds.

Students will be made acquainted with the understanding of the conception and practice of language in different fields of knowledge, and how they are being transformed in the context of new digital practices. The lectures will be given by members of ETH with different disciplinary backgrounds, such as computer science, architecture, physics, history and literary studies.

This seminar will explore the multiple transformations of the conception of the “human” in the face of the current scientific, social and technological challenges, focusing on those related to recent digital technologies and practices. The lectures will be delivered by researchers from ETH and abroad, with different disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and the social sciences.

Understand the philosophical underpinnings of language-based artificial intelligence.

Several researchers from the humanities will propose a critical yet not partisan approach to AI, aiming at elaborating a common perspective on this phenomenon. Sessions will delve into aspects of the way in which AI challenges our understanding of the human, such as “Knowledge”, “Learning”, “Language”, “Freedom” or “Justice”.

Formal knowledge, such as mathematics and logic, has a singular capacity to resist historical critique. But what if formality itself had a history - a recent birth and a foreseeable decline? In this course, we will explore this hypothesis by critically assessing the novel relationship between mathematics and logic that emerged in the 19th century, forging our notion of formal.