Limit Decision Problems: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives

How does change work? If a thing moves from one state to another, when does it exactly start being in its new state, and when does it cease being in its former one? Should one consider that there is an instant at which change takes place? And if one does, in what state should the thing be at that moment: the former one, the new one, neither, both? The first two options seem arbitrary; the third goes against the law of excluded middle; the forth against that of contradiction. And if one doesn’t, if there is no moment of change, how can there be change?
What is sometimes called the “limit decision problem” has its roots in Aristotle and has been intensely debated by late medieval philosophers, who explored the four options. It became popular again in the second half of the twentieth-century when, once more, each option was considered – as well as the possibility that there is no such thing as a moment of change.
The workshop will provide the occasion of a dialogue between medieval and contemporary perspectives and shall result in a volume on the instant of change in medieval and contemporary philosophy.

Program