Agenda

27 Jun 2024 17:00

AIMODELS Workshop - The Mismeasure of Mind: Models of Intelligence and the Politics of Madness

26 June - Palazzo Malcanton Marcorà - Aula Valent (4° piano) / 27 June - NICHE (Ca' Bottacin)

Workshop series
Language in Minds, Machines, and Milieus: A Modern Perspective on AI
Workshop series June-July 2024

The ERC project AIMODELS at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice organises a series of workshops to explore the intellectual and social history that prefigures the rise of AI in the 21st century.

All workshops are also part of the activities of the Political Epistemology Research Network and in collaboration with other research groups. For proposing a paper or registering write to Prof. Matteo Pasquinelli matteo.pasquinelli@unive.it.

Workshop III - 26-27 June 2024

What are the rights of ‘mental disability’ and the ‘abnormal mind’ in the age of AI, that is in an age obsessed with computational rationality? The workshop compares the intellectual milieu from which AI emerged and the critical theories and practices of mental health care since the 20th century. The history of philosophy, the history of AI, and the “history of madness” (Foucault 1961) display continuous and mutual influences that are often forgotten, for instance around the notion of neuroplasticity (Goldstein 1934) in cybernetics (Wiener 1948), the techniques of psychometrics (Gould 1980) in the early projects of artificial neural networks (Pasquinelli 2023), and the role of information theory in psychoanalysis (Schmidgen 1997). In general, it is observed that the rise of AI models would not be possible without the policing of intelligence models (Goodey 2011). Neuronormativity and its economic implications (Basaglia 1968, Chapman 2023) emerge then, as a pre-condition of the project of AI, not as a secondary and external factor. At the culmination of a long historical process of labour automation, AI systems happen to be promoted even for the automation of psychotherapy itself. The workshop revives traditions of critical psychotherapy to question together AI and madness as problems of mental normativity. 

26th June 2024, 10.00-13.00 and 15.00-17.00
Ca' Foscari University of Venice - Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage (DFBC)
Malcanton Marcorà - Aula Valent, Dorsoduro 3484/D, 30123 Venice - Italy

Chair: Matteo Pasquinelli, Ca’ Foscari University
Franco Basaglia, Franco Basaglia Archive, ‘Class, Labour, and Radical Psychotherapy’
Robert Chapman, Durham University, ‘Neuronormativity, Labour, and Machines in Post-Fordism’  
Elena Vogman, Weimar University, ‘Fanon and Decolonial Thinking: The Case of the Blida Clinic’
Carles Guerra, independent curator, ‘The Clinic of Saint-Alban and Its Legacy in Contemporary Art and Thought’
Discussants: Charles Wolfe, Toulouse University; Giulia Gandolfi, Ca’ Foscari University
Visit to the Franco Basaglia Archive happens the same day after fixing catalogue issues

27th June 2024, 17.00-19.00
Ca' Foscari University of Venice - THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE)
Ca' Bottacin, Dorsoduro 3911, Calle Crosera, 30123 Venice - Italy

Presentation of the book ‘The Empire of Normality’ with the author Robert Chapman (Durham University).
Introduction and discussion with Francesca Tarocco, Matteo Pasquinelli, Carles Guerra, and Franco Basaglia.

Language

The event will be held in English

Organized by

Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali - ERC Project AIMODELS, in collaboration with Franco Basaglia Archive - Venice and THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) - Ca' Foscari University of Venice

Downloads

Poster 591 KB

Search in the agenda