Michele Pavan

This paper examines the various functions of the imaginary starting from the case of Jeanne d’Arc. Assuming Castoriadis’ conception that the imaginary, in its ultimate and radical dimension, is the place of creation, I will explore in the lived experience of young Jeanette the alternation of what Margaret Boden distinguishes as three peculiar forms of creativity (combinational, explorative and transformative). In the first part, we will identify in Jeanne’s attachment to the religious and political tradition of her people the enactment of reproductive-combinatorial functions of the imaginary, while in the second part, we will seek to demonstrate how her voices and visions imply the creation of a new imaginary reality.

This paper examines the materialism of Lucretius and Spinoza as a perspective oriented toward the problem of the event. The first part focuses on the physical and ethical dimensions of the Lucretian concept of clinamen, understood as the expression of an event that interrupts the uniform and rectilinear motion of matter. In the second part, the analysis turns to Lucretius’s theory of simulacra, seeking to trace a path toward the emancipation of our imaginative capacity, modeled on Spinoza’s theory of knowledge in the Ethics. The paper ultimately aims to articulate a conception of vision as an event in which the viewer emerges in tandem with what is seen.

This paper explores the relationship between inference, creation, and institution in the formation of habit. In the first part, drawing on Hume’s philosophy, we examine the skeptical view that inference arises more from habit than from reason. Building on this, and following Bergson’s critique of associationist theories, we argue that the habit of inferring does not result from mere mechanical attraction, but rather involves the continuous creation of general ideas and the active engagement of the spirit. In the final section, we introduce the concept of institution as a generative act that, by establishing an association—and thus a general idea—simultaneously delivers what it creates to future repetitions.

The main goal of this essay is to demonstrate the creativity of computational systems (both living and non-living) through a philosophical interpretation of Alan Turing's halting theorem. The first part consists of a brief genealogy of studies focused on the analogy between humans and machines, with a specific focus on the issue of creativity. It aims to show how, since the publication of Turing's 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a subjectivist approach has become dominant in these studies—namely, the tendency to shift the locus of inquiry into machine intelligence and creativity from the machines themselves to their observers, inferring the potential of the former from the latter’s reactions of surprise. We will demonstrate how this approach has, over time, downplayed the question of whether machines are genuinely creative (as explored by Boden) and has instead anchored research on the premise that creativity lies in the eyes of the beholder (as proposed by Ritchie. As an alternative to this approach, the second part will attempt to revive an objectivist perspective, showing how it is possible—once again drawing on Turing—to argue for the real creativity of machines. However, this will be done by leveraging the important philosophical implications of the logical-mathematical results Turing achieved in his 1936 paper on computable numbers. In the conclusion, the essay will propose identifying the equivalent of real machine creativity in the human ability to take one thing for another—a concept described by Cornelius Castoriadis as a quid pro quo intrinsic to language understood as a code. This ability enables individuals to consistently align experiential data with their own rules.