Professor Philip Kitcher (Columbia) will give a set of six lectures with the title “Reconstruction in Philosophy: A Deweyan Program for the Twenty-First Century” at the University of Helsinki in 9-11 May 2012.
The course is organized by the Nordic Pragmatism Network in cooperation with theoretical philosophy department at the University of Helsinki. For more information about enrolment, completion and course materials, please see Nordprag website.
Call for Papers: Has feminist philosophy changed philosophy?
Conference of the Nordic Network for Women in Philosophy at the University of Iceland (in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy and EDDA – Center of Excellence), September 7 and 8, 2012.
Feminist philosophy has emerged in the last decades as a vibrant field within Western philosophy. It has resulted in questioning canons of philosophy as well as core concepts of the philosophical curriculum. Feminist epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics have contributed to a richer understanding of the epistemic, ethical, perceiving and embodied subject. The past and the present of philosophy as an academic discipline appear in a different light. Despite this, philosophy still has one of the lowest proportion of women and minorities among students and faculty when compared to other disciplines within the humanities and the sciences as a whole. Does that have to do with the lack of acceptance of feminist work within philosophy? Or is it necessary to dig deeper in order to understand the resistance of philosophy towards change in this respect? The keynote speakers at this conference, Sally Haslanger and Linda Martín Alcoff, have gained widespread attention for their writings on the institutional culture, content and styles of philosophy, as well as for their initiatives on improving the situation of women and minorities in philosophy. The NNWP calls for papers that discuss if, and if so how feminist philosophy has changed philosophy.
Organizers:
Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir, University of Iceland
Ásta Sveinsdóttir, San Franciscso State University
Eyja M. Brynjarsdóttir, University of Iceland
Salvör Nordal, University of Iceland
Abstracts (max 200 words) are due by May 25, 2012. Please submit your abstracts to sigrthor@hi.is.
Replies to submissions will be sent out June 5th.
The journal Dialectica invites submissions for their 2012 essay prize: “Cognitive Penetration”.
Cognitive penetration refers to the influence of beliefs, expectations, moods, desires or background theories on the content of perceptual processes or conscious experiences. This phenomenon has been in the forefront of the philosophy of science, the philosophy of perception, and the foundations of cognitive science. Philosophers of science have warned that cognitive penetration might threaten the epistemic role of perception as an objective source of knowledge and have used it to explain radical paradigm shifts. Philosophers of perception have tried to characterize the various ways in which perceptual processes or conscious experiences can be altered by other mental states or activities. Cognitive scientists have exploited this phenomenon as a starting point to motivate claims on the architecture of the human mind, including modularity and plasticity.
We invite submissions on any aspect of this phenomenon. Possible questions include:
How is the influence of various mental states on perceptual processes or experiences to be characterized in psychological terms? Are there principled differences between the cognitive penetration of conscious experiences and that of subpersonal perceptual processes? What is the impact (if any) of cognitive penetration on the individuation of mental states? What kinds of cognitive penetration are there? Does cognitive penetration lend support to relativism? How does cognitive penetration relate to the confirmation of scientific theories by experience? Does cognitive penetration undermine (or support) some models of perceptual justification? Does the use of instruments to observe phenomena presuppose any form of cognitive penetration? What sorts of evidence can support or disconfirm claims about cognitive penetration?
Please send your submissions in pdf format to Philipp Keller, philipp.keller@unige.ch, by the 1st of November 2012.
The author of the winning entry will receive £1500. All papers submitted will be considered submissions to the journal and should not be published or under review elsewhere.
The New York Times is sponsoring an essay contest in search of the best defense of the ethics of eating meat. Winners to be published in the Times Magazine. Short time frame. No more than 600 words by April 8th. They are encouraging professional ethicists and students to send in submissions.
CLICK the link: NY Times Contest.
The New Left debate series are inviting to participate in the public discussion “Democracy versus Elite Rule: the Road from Serfdom”, which will take place on Wednesday, 21 March at 6:30 pm at “La Boheme” (White room), Šv. Ignoto g. 4/3, Vilnius.
The talk will be given in English with translation provided on site.
The speaker Mikael M. Karlsson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iceland, where he has taught for almost 40 years. His areas of particular interest include moral philosophy, philosophy of law, agency and motivation, and ancient philosophy. His chief sources of philosophical inspiration are Aristotle and Kant, but he has also been influenced by Hume, Descartes, John Stuart Mill and various contemporary philosophers. His political views are considered to be too radical and too unrealistic to be acceptable to any known political party or movement and are not likely to gain influence in the near future; his self-chosen description is “democratic anarchist”.
In this talk, it will be maintained that genuine democracy is incompatible with rule by political elites and that, therefore, none of the so-called modern democracies are genunely democratic—nor have any of the alternatives to modern parliamentary democracy, however idealistic, escaped elite rule.
Elite rule, no matter what its cover story may happen to be, invariably reduces the general population to effective serfdom. It will further be maintained that political parties and movements are inherently anti-democratic and perpetuate political elites.
In a so-called modern democracy, these institutions prevent reflective public discourse, limit popular participation in government, and serve as obstacles to the development of coherent, constructive public policy. It will be maintained that the best framework for honest, non-oppressive government is representative democracy.
The political problem of democracies is to reconstitute parliamentary democracy so as to prevent the capture of government by elites. The practical—and perhaps the only genuine—political problem of mature “democratic” polities is to reconstitute parliamentary democracy so as to prevent the capture of government by elites. For this purpose, the political process must be continuous, open and transparent, and must be institutionally protected against the well-known techniques of corruption and capture. No patent solutions to the problem will be offered, but some suggestions will be made.
The discussion will be chaired by Algis Davidavičius, the discussant – Andrius Bielskis.
Confirm your participation on Facebook. More info on Demos website.
The event is organised in cooperation with Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Holmes Rolston III Early Career Essay Prize in Environmental Philosophy – Second annual competition.
The International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) and the Center for Environmental Philosophy invite submissions for its annual essay prize for scholars in the early stages of their career. The prize is named in honour of Professor Holmes Rolston III, for his pioneering work in the field of environmental philosophy.
The Prize
Papers are invited on all aspects of environmental philosophy or environmental affairs (with a strong theoretical component). A prize of $500 will be awarded to the winning essay.
All submitted papers that qualify (see conditions) will be reviewed by an Essay Prize Committee in consultation with the Editorial Board of Environmental Ethics. The winning essay will be published in the journal, Environmental Ethics.
Submission guidelines and conditions
- Eligibility: Submissions are invited from scholars who already hold a PhD and have earned their doctorate no more than five years prior to the submission deadline. Submissions must be accompanied by a one-page CV to provide evidence of early career status.
- Closing date for submissions: *June 1st, 2012*
- Word limit: 60,000 characters (including spaces), including notes and references. An abstract of 100-150 words should also be included.
- Style: consult the Chicago Manual of Style or any recent issue of Environmental Ethics.
- Essays must be prepared for blind review (cover page with contact information and email on a separate page).
- Submissions should be emailed to: emily.brady@ed.ac.uk. Please put *Essay Prize* in the subject line of the email submission.
- The essay should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere, and should not be submitted to any other journal until the outcome of the competition is announced.
- The decision of the committee will be final. There is only one prize per year and the committee reserves the right not to award the prize if submissions are not of an appropriate standard.
The weekly BBC podcast In Our Time recently broadcast a conversation titled The Continental-Analytic Split with Stephen Mulhall (New College, University of Oxford), Beatrice Han-Pile (University of Essex), and Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zurich). The program’s website also features a full archive — well worth browsing through — of podcasts on philosophical (Beauty,Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein) and literary (Psychoanalysis and Literature, Proust) topics might interest Balphin readers. To access the full archive, please click here.
Latvia offers scholarships to students, researchers and teaching staff from several countries for studies and research work in higher education institutions, as well as for participation in summer schools.
Only citizens from countries which have signed an agreement on co-operation in education and science can apply for the Latvian scholarship.
The scholarship is granted only for full-time studies in Latvia, it is not granted for part-time or extramural studies.
Scholarships are granted for the time period up to 10 months.
To find out more about these scholarships go here.
Two doctoral positions in Philosophy are available at one of the Balphin partner universities Södertörn University . The last date for sending the applications is 1st March 2012.
For detailed information please visit:
For specific questions contact:
marcia.cavalcante@sh.se.
Nomos Journal is an online journal, publishing a revolving array of material that engages the intersection between contemporary expressions of religion and popular culture. NJ considers articles that explore this particular intersection in an analytical and critical manner, but is further unique in that it accepts submissions of poetry, original artwork and photography, and reflective essays for review as well. The journal maintains the understanding that some of the best explorations of these cultural dimensions take place outside of a more traditional academic approach. The interdisciplinary nature of the journal results in an eclectic blend of material from such disciplines as religious studies, philosophy, cultural studies, psychology, anthropology, sociology, literary theory, and media studies, among others.
Please follow the link below for more information about the journal and guidelines for submission: