New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Hypatia Open Forum on Climate Change, Aug 18-22, 2014

At the request of the folks over at Hypatia, we're helping to publicize the open online forum they will be hosting in conjunction with their recently published special issue on Climate Change.  

Here's the description the editoral staff at Hypatia provided for the event: 

Policy makers have recently begun to acknowledge the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women and disadvantaged communities, but feminist analyses of the complex epistemic and political dimensions of climate change, as well as its causes and effects, are urgently needed. Hypatia recently published a special issue on Climate Change that initiates a necessary conversation that will deepen our understanding and help identify promising opportunities for positive change. Feminist philosophers Chris Cuomo (author of Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing) and Nancy Tuana (author of Feminism and Science) have invited scholars and activists working at the forefront of feminist climate justice to share their perspectives.

Watch the interviews online, and join the co-editors in an open forum on their special issue of Hypatia (29.3) on Climate Change on August 18-22, 2014. Please join: http://thephilosopherseye.com/phileye/online-events/hypatia-symposium-2/

Call for Collaborators: Minorities And Philosophy

In order to examine and address issues of participation faced by minority and underrepresented groups in academic philosophy (e.g. gender, race, native-language, sexual orientation, class, and disability minorities), a number of UK departments have recently started to build a UK network of chapters of MAP ( www.mapforthegap.com ). 

With 24 active chapters to date, MAP (Minorities And Philosophy) is already a successful and widespread organization in the US and elsewhere. If you would like to have a MAP chapter at your own institution, this Call For Collaborators is for you. MAP chapters are generally run by graduate students (typically 3 or 4 per department), with some help from academic staff members; undergraduate participation is also encouraged. 

At this stage we would be happy to hear especially from graduate students (groups or individuals) at UK Philosophy departments as well as from UK Philosophy academic staff who would like to coordinate graduate student interest in their institutions. Please contact Filippo Contesi (filippo.contesi at gmail dot com). 

 

 

CFP: Conference on Diversity in Philosophy

Over at Feminist Philosophers, they've posted the CFP for a conference on Diversity in Philosophy that, I'm proud to say, is being hosted and co-sposored by my alma mater, Villanova University, along with Hypatia and the APA's Committee for the Status of Women.  

The conference will be held at Villanova on May 28-30, 2015 and the deadline for submissions of 250-500 word proposals is January 1, 2015.

More info and the full CFP follows after the break. 

Summer School: Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (MCMP Munich)

The Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy is hosting a pioneer event: a summer school exclusively for female students. Summer schools for female students are now well established in mathematics, but to my knowledge this is the first summer school in philosophy geared explicitly towards female students. (In a similar vein, Rutgers hosts the wonderful Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy.) I am posting below the official announcement that has been circulated today. Please pass on the information to anyone you think may be interested, and do encourage your motivated female students to apply!

CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference (yes...white men welcome, too!)

CFP: Diversity in Philosophy conference!

Sally Haslanger writes:

Even more important, we would really like to encourage people - including WHITE MEN - to apply for the site visit training.  It is important that we have allies involved because having mixed teams will be more effective than just a group of women....who are feminists, besides!

Visit the Site Visit Program

A Celebration of the life of Ruth Barcan Marcus; September 29, 2012, at Yale.

More details here.

There is hope for women in formal epistemology

I probably don’t need to remind anybody of the bad press that 'formal philosophy'* has gotten as of recently along the gender dimension. More generally, the area has the reputation of having an even worse gender balance than other sub-areas of philosophy, and some even say a particularly bad climate for women. (I wouldn’t subscribe to the latter though, as I’m not under the impression that it is substantially worse than elsewhere – and I do hang out with ‘formal philosophers’ quite a bit! But that's obviously merely anecdotal.)

Summer school: Formal methods in philosophy

I just sent out the announcement for the summer school on formal methods in philosophy that I am organizing. It seems to me that more sustained methodological discussions of applications of formal methods in philosophy are at this point much needed. The summer school is an attempt to foster such debates and motivate students and young researchers to be attentive to the to methodological issues underlying their work. See below for the official announcement, and check the webpage of the summer school for further details.

CFA: Moral Psychology and Poverty Alleviation (ASAP)

Meena Krishnamurthy sent me this interesting call for papers for the Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) Anniversary Workshop at Yale this April.

CFP: Seeing Things Differently: Art, Philosophy, and the Futures of Feminism

Website here. Some details: 

Friday 30^th and Saturday 31^st March 2012 / University of Dundee & Dundee Contemporary Arts

Keynote Speakers:

• Dr Christine Battersby (Reader Emerita in Philosophy, University of Warwick)
• Professor Tina Chanter (Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago)
• Professor Kerstin Mey (Director of Research and Enterprise, University for the Creative Arts) 

The visual arts have a well-established history of engagement with feminism and gender issues. While artists have confronted such issues directly in their work, feminist theorists and philosophers have interrogated the gendering of vision as well as core aesthetic categories such as genius and the art/craft distinction. The ‘feminist’ label, however, can sometimes seem more of a trap than a call for liberatory practices.

This event takes as a starting point the idea that neither all artworks nor all theories informed by a gendered or feminist perspective will necessarily be focussed on what we might think of as ‘questions of gender’ or ‘women’s issues’. Where feminism succeeds is in making it harder to see women as simply determined by their sex or to reduce their work to a question of their gender. Many philosophers and practising artists who see their work as centrally informed by feminist or gendered concerns have moved beyond critique of masculinist traditions and paradigms to re-imagine bodies, identities, matter, space, time, ethics, power and freedom in radically new ways. 

Epictetus and Stoicism at RIT, April 2012

Rochester Institute of Technology Department of Philosophy announces a conference:

Epictetus and Stoicism: Continuing Influences and Contemporary Relevance

Thursday 26 April and Friday 27 April 2012

Keynote speaker: Katja Vogt (Philosophy, Columbia University)

Call for Papers: The RIT Philosophy Department invites papers that address any topic on or related to Epictetus and Stoicism, including, but not limited to: happiness, tranquility, detachment, reason, fate, volition, agency, what is (and is not) under our control, our moral purpose, virtue, cosmic order, divine providence, death, the Stoic sage, Epictetus as teacher, influence of earlier thinkers on Epictetus, Epictetus’s influence on later thinkers (including writers of our own time), the “practical” philosophy of Stoicism, and comparisons and contrasts with other traditions (such as Buddhism, Epicureanism, Christianity).

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2012. Papers should be 4,500–5,500 words in length (35–40 minutes reading time), and prepared for anonymous review. Please submit full papers as email attachments to (and direct inquires to): [email protected].

Philosophy and Its History A Workshop on Methods, Aims, and New Directions in the Scholarship of Early Modern Philosophy Concordia University, Montreal, Canada October 29-30, 2011

This should be great fun!

CFP: Spinoza, the Infinite, and the Eternal 11-12 May 2012, University of Dundee, Scotland

Keynote speakers: Clare Carlisle (King's College London) and Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) More info here.

PhD and post-doc positions in Groningen

In the context of my new research project The Roots of Deduction, two positions have just been advertised, one for a PhD student and one for a post-doc. Details on the two positions can be found here. The PhD candidate will reassess the literature on psychology of reasoning and mathematical cognition from the point of view of the dialogical, multi-agent conception of deduction underpinning the project, and the post-doc will work on the historical development of the deductive method in ancient Greece, again from a dialogical point of view.

Please help me spread the word, and do get in touch if you think you know of suitable candidates. Thanks!

CFP: NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF MORAL PSYCHOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM NOVEMBER 11-13, 2011

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: AUGUST 31, 2011

Cornell Society for the Humanities Fellowships 2012-2013

CORNELL SOCIETY FOR THE HUMANITIES FELLOWSHIPS 2012-2013

Six to eight Fellows will be appointed; the 2012-2013 research focal theme: "Risk @ Humanities."

Senior Scholars in Residence:

William Leiss: Scientist, McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, University of Ottawa, and Professor emeritus, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University

Michael Warner: Seymour H. Knox Professor of English, Yale University

RISK @ Humanities

The Society for the Humanities calls for scholarly reflections on risk.  We seek interdisciplinary projects that reflect on historical, theoretical, and global understandings of risk as a concept and a reality that lies at the heart of the humanities and the arts. The Society wishes to open the question of how risk shapes the humanities and how the humanities might dialogue with broader biological, ecological, economic, and technological approaches to risk.

CFP: HOPOS 2012, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, June 21-24, 2012

http://hopos2012.philosophy.dal.ca/

Keynote Speakers: Ian Hacking (University of Toronto) Penelope Maddy (University of California, Irvine) Heinrich von Staden (Institute for Advanced Study)

CFP: Different Art: New Essays on Disability and Arts

Different Art: New Essays on Disability and Arts (abstracts due October 1, 2011)

Edited by Christopher R Smit and Raphael Raphael

The editors of Different Art invite submissions for an innovative new book that explores the complex fusion of disability and artistic expression. This work seeks to investigate and muse on the varied and often contradictory ways that disability is created, contested and circulated in art and media (both in the visual and other forms). We encourage submissions of works that explore these issues from theoretical lens as well as writings from practitioners placing these concerns in dialog with their own practices as artists. This includes artist statements/essays and poetry/prose. In all contributions, we are especially interested in writing that is enriched by consideration of transnational concerns.

This book is already under contract with Intellect LTD, and will be distributed in the US by University of Chicago Press.

Essays may consider any and all forms of artistic expression. As cultural conceptions of disability have historically been wedded to the visual rhetoric of the body, we are especially interested in essays that consider visual media. At the same time, we feel strongly that essays that consider other forms are an important part of the work's scope. As such, the work is organized in six major sections:

CFP: Ontology and politics workshop

Call for Papers - Ontology and Politics Workshop / http://manceptworkshops.wordpress.com/

Despite its pervasiveness, the question of the relation between ontology and politics continues to be a crucial one for Continental philosophy.  While the place and status of the question of being in the realm of the political has occupied much of social theory in the past twenty or thirty years, we remain no closer to drawing any common ground on these themes. Post-structuralist or post-foundational political thought has insisted on the inherent contingency of any political ontology and has, from this notion, sought to draw out a framework for an emancipatory politics grounded
in the concepts of difference and otherness.

However, such a stance finds itself increasingly challenged today.  On the one hand, thinkers such as Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere call for the need to think a politics grounded in a conception of universality rather than alterity, while on the other hand, so-called speculative realism more fundamentally challenges the very notion of ontology as it has been conceived by the majority of Continental thinkers in recent decades.

This panel aims to explore the intersections of politics and ontology and the resulting implications for thinking both the political and the philosophical. We invite papers addressing the following and any other related themes:

• Is there a place for reflection on ontology in the theorisation and study of politics?
• Is there a necessary transitivity between the ontological and the political?  How should this relation be conceived?
• Is there a necessarily leftist or emancipatory ontology?
• Should the politics which has generally been thought to follow from post-foundational or post-structuralist ontologies be re-evaluated in light of recent critiques?
• Does a new and different relation between ontology and politics follow from recent speculative materialist ontologies?

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (or a full paper to Paul Rekret (Queen Mary) or Simon Choat (Kingston) by 15 June 2011.

CFP: The relation(s) between physics and metaphysics in the nineteenth century; Ghent, Belgium, 10-12 August 2011

Society / Forum for European Philosophy 2011 conference

The Society for European Philosophy and The Forum for European Philosophy Joint Conference 2011

York St John University, York, UK / 31^st August-3^rd September 2011 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Joan Copjec (University at Buffalo)
• Graham Harman (American University, Cairo)
• Michèle Le Doeuff (Centre National de la Recherche Scientific, Paris)

CALL FOR PAPERS/CONTRIBUTIONS

CFP: (post-) doctoral Spinoza workshop, June 8-9, 2011, Ghent University.

On June 8-9, 2011, with support of Ghent University's Doctoral School, the Philosophy & Moral Sciences Department at Ghent University, is hosting a (Post-)Doctoral workshop on Spinoza.

The workshop will explore Spinoza's philosophy in historic context. Susan James (Birkbeck), Beth Lord (Dundee), and Willem Lemmens (Antwerp) have agreed to lend their expertise to the workshop. 

CFP (Post-)Doctoral Workshop: Mandeville, Ghent University, June 28-29.

On June 28-29, 2011, with support of Ghent University's Doctoral School, the Philosophy & Moral Sciences Department at Ghent University, is hosting a (Post-)Doctoral workshop on Mandeville.

CFP: The Classical Model of Science II, VU Amsterdam 2-5 August 2011

The Classical Model of Science II
The Axiomatic Method, the Order of Concepts and the Hierarchy of  Sciences from Leibniz to Tarski

August 2-5, 2011  Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

It has a neat group of key-note speakers.

Extended cognition workshop – Amsterdam, June 27th-28th 2011

To mark the end of Catarina Dutilh Novaes’ VENI-project on formal languages and the new appointment of Julian Kiverstein at the philosophy department of the University of Amsterdam, a workshop on extended cognition will take place in Amsterdam on June 27th--28th (afternoon on the 27th, whole day on the 28th), in the Oudemanhuispoort building of the university (Room A 0.08). The focus will be on conceptions of extended cognition in the spirit of ‘second-wave EM’ (Sutton) or ‘cognitive integration’ (Menary). 

Invited speakers:

• Richard Menary (Wollongong), "Cognitive Transformations"
• Julian Kiverstein (Edinburgh/Amsterdam), "A social externalist account of cognitive agency, or why cognition isn't organism centred"
• Helen de Cruz (Leuven), "Extended cognition in mathematical practice: The case of Chinese algebra"
• John Protevi (LSU), "Extended Cognition, extended responsibility: cyborgs in modern warfare"
• Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Amsterdam/Groningen), "Formal languages in logic, and extended cognition"

Contributed papers:

• Bryce Huebner (Georgetown), "Responsibility for socially scaffolded minds"
• Joel Krueger (Copenhagen), "Extended cognition and shared emotions"
• Erik Myin (Antwerp), "Bound by parity?"
• Jurgis Skilters et al. (Latvia), "Extended selves in distributed social networks"
• Mirko Farina (Edinburg), "Finding my Mind: a Case for Extended Cognition"
• Pierre Steiner (Louvain), "Unhappy coupling: extended cognition with representationalism"

REGISTRATION: Registration is now closed. For those who have registered, please don't forget to bring EUR 10 for the registration fee (will be charged on the spot).

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM (subject to change):

Monday June 27th    

13.00 R. Menary, "Cognitive Transformations"

14.00 E. Myin, "Bound by parity?"

14.45 break

15.15 M. Farina, "Finding my Mind: a Case for Extended Cognition"

16.00 C. Dutilh Novaes, "Formal languages in logic, and extended cognition"

17.30 Reception (Café de Sluyswacht, Jodenbreestraat 1)

-----------------------------------------

Tuesday June 28th

9.30 J. Protevi, "Extended Cognition, extended responsibility: cyborgs in modern warfare"

10.30 break

11.00 B. Huebner, "Responsibility for socially scaffolded minds"

11.45 J. Krueger, "Extended cognition and shared emotions"

12.30 lunch (own arrangements)

14.00 H. de Cruz, Extended cognition in mathematical practice: The case of Chinese algebra"

15.00 J. Skilters, "Extended selves in distributed social networks"

15.45 break

16.15 P. Steiner, "Unhappy coupling: extended cognition with representationalism"

17.00 J. Kiverstein, "A social externalist account of cognitive agency, or why cognition isn't organism centred"

-------------------------------------------------------------

For further inquiries, contact Catarina Dutilh Novaes at cdutilhnovaes [youknowwhat] yahoo.com

Formal Epistemology Meets Experimental Philosophy in Tilburg

Stephan Hartmann & co in Tilburg are organizing yet another exciting conference, Formal Epistemology Meets Experimental Philosophy (September 2011). Last year I thoroughly enjoyed the Future of Philosophy of Science conference and the Descartes Lectures event with Ian Hacking, which were both awesome (except for the poor gender balance in the keynote speakers' lineup, but for once this is not what I want to talk about!). The CFP for the upcoming conference has been widely circulated in several blogs (It's only a theory, Choice and Inference), so it is not exactly lacking publicity, but it points in the direction of interesting new developments, so I would like to say a few words on it here.

Workshop program: discovery in the social sciences (Leuven, Belgium, March 22-23, 2011)

Here's the progam of a workshop in Leuven that the very talented philosopher of anthropology/social science, Helen de Cruz, is organizing (and I am co-sponsoring--proving that Leuven and Ghent are not only mortal rivals!).

CFP: Bodies of Thought: Fleshy Subjects, Embodied Minds, & Human Natures. Edinburgh 9-10 June

CALL FOR PAPERS: Bodies of Thought: Fleshy Subjects, Embodied Minds, & Human Natures.

9^th-10^th June 2011, Royal Society of Edinburgh

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Dr Christine Battersby (Reader Emerita in Philosophy, University of Warwick)
• Professor Susan Oyama (Professor Emerita in Psychology, John Jay College and CUNY Graduate Center, New York)
• Professor Michael Wheeler (Professor of Philosophy, University of Stirling).

The aim of this event is to foster a dialogue between researchers in feminist philosophy working on debates around the body, and researchers in philosophy of cognitive science with interests in embodied cognition and the extended mind. Many theorists of embodiment now think of mind and cognition as being continuous with life, in some theoretically significant way. Thus, contributions from those working in relevant areas of philosophy of biology will also form a natural part of this dialogue.