Summer Seminar Lecture Series: Foundations of Moral Deliberation: Advanced Theories in Ethics, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, Philippines

You are all invited to the second summer seminar for this year entitled, “Foundations of Moral Deliberation: Advanced Theories in Ethics.” In this seminar, our faculty will reflect on ethical theories and issues in a way that is meant to both introduce participants to the complexities of moral deliberation and challenge them to rethink traditional ethical frameworks.

This three week course if completed can be counted as three graduate units or participants can be awarded certificates. We also invite people to walk in and listen to particular lectures that might interest them. Fees are Php 200 per lecture and Php 1,800 for the whole seminar.

Thank you and see you there!

Click here to download the program poster.

* Many thanks to Ms. Rowena Azada-Palacios and Dr. Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez of Ateneo de Manila University

 

CONF CFP: Humanities and Technology Annual Conference, September 2009, University of Virginia, USA

CALL FOR PAPERS

Humanities and Technology Annual Conference

September 24-26, 2009

University of Virginia

Special Topic:

Technology, Democracy, and Citizenship

Democracy and democratic citizenship shape and are shaped by technology. Taking the broad approach, this conference invites papers and session proposals bringing insight to the important albeit complicated and intricate relationships among technology, democracy, and citizenship.

Besides scholars in Science and Technology Studies and the Humanities and Social Sciences, we hope to attract practitioners and researchers in engineering, science, public policy, architecture, government, and international development to engage in a series of wide-ranging conversations focused on three broad intersections of technology and democracy:

IDEALS–For example, how can technology be managed so that it promotes democratic ideals? How can technology undermine democratic ideals? Exactly what do we mean by “democracy” and “democratic citizenship”?

PROCESSES–This category includes socio-technical systems directly involved in democratic processes, such as voting machines and blogs, as well as broader questions of education, public discourse, deliberation, and decision-making.

DECISIONS–Perhaps the broadest category of all, this includes the full range of specific areas in which democracies must establish policy and make decisions–energy, the environment, national defense, transportation, homeland security, health care, regulation of business and entrepreneurship, genetic engineering, funding of research, and more.

To propose a paper, send an abstract of no more than 250 words. To propose a session, include a session title and rationale as well as an abstract for each paper. Include the affiliation and relevant contact details for all authors. Please direct electronic submissions and questions to Andreas.Michel@rose-hulman.edu, or write to Andreas Michel, HTA 2009 Program Chair, Humanities and Social Sciences, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 5500 Wabash Ave, Terre Haute, IN, 47803. We will begin reviewing proposals as soon as they are received.

Proposals are due no later than June 15, 2009

 

JRNL CFP: Public Reason, June Issue 2009

The second issue of the journal Public Reason is due to appear in June 2009. The issue will be a miscellaneous one. Therefore, we welcome papers concerning any topic on political and moral philosophy. All papers are to be submitted by e-mail as attachment, at brancoveanu@publicreason.ro by 15 May 2009. For more information about submission procedure please go to http://www.publicreason.ro/submission-info

Public Reason is an open access journal of political and moral philosophy, but it is also available in print (ISSN 2065-7285; EISSN 2065-8958).

Public Reason publishes articles, book reviews, as well as discussion notes from all the fields of political philosophy and ethics, including political theory, applied ethics, and legal philosophy. The Journal encourages the debate around rationality in politics and ethics in the larger context of the discussion concerning rationality as a philosophical problem.

Public Reason is committed to a pluralistic approach, promoting interdisciplinary and original perspectives as long as the ideal of critical arguing and clarity is respected. The journal is intended for the international philosophical community, as well as for a broader public interested in political and moral philosophy. It aims to promote philosophical exchanges with a special emphasis on issues in, and discussions on the Eastern European space.

Public Reason publishes three issues per year in February, June, and November. At least one issue per year is devoted to a particular theme.

Contents – Public Reason, Vol. 1, No. 1, February 2009:

Hillel Steiner: Left Libertarianism and the Ownership of Natural Resources

Reidar Maliks: Acting Through Others: Kant and the Exercise View of Representation

Timothy Waligore: Cosmopolitan Right, Indigenous Peoples, and the Risks of Cultural Interaction

Annabelle Lever: Is Compulsory Voting Justified?

Margaret Meek Lange: Exploring the Theme of Reflective Stability: John Rawls\u2019 Hegelian Reading of David Hume

Endre Begby & J. Peter Burgess: Human Security and Liberal Peace

András Miklós: Nationalist Criticisms of Cosmopolitan Justice

Sirine Shebaya: Global and Local Sovereignties

 

CONF CFP: 7th Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy, September 2009, Italy

CALL FOR PAPERS

7th Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy

24th and 25th September 2009

On the 24th and 25th of September 2009, the Human Development, Capability and Poverty International Research Centre at the Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia (Italy), under the joint patronage of the Italian Society for Political Philosophy and the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy, will host the seventh edition of the Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy. This two-day conference is meant to offer graduate students an opportunity to present papers, get helpful feedback in a friendly atmosphere, and exchange ideas both with peers and with leading academics in the field of political philosophy. In addition to parallel sessions devoted to students’ presentations, there will also be two plenary sessions. Plenary speakers in past editions have been: Hillel Steiner, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Peter Jones, Gianfrancesco Zanetti, Jonathan Wolff, Michele Nicoletti, Philippe Van Parijs, Sebastiano Maffettone, Giovanni Giorgini, Andrew Williams, David Miller and Alessandro Ferrara. This year’s keynote speakers will be:

Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University), speaking on “Unpolitical Democracy”

Michael Otsuka( University College of London ), speaking on “Risking Life and Limb”

Graduate students interested in giving papers should send their contributions (max 2500/3000 words – inEnglish) accompanied by a short abstract (max 300 words – in English), by Sunday 24th May 2009. Papers may focus on any area within political philosophy, and presentations should take no longer than twenty minutes to allow at least another twenty minutes of discussion. Please note that the 24th of May is also the deadline for registration for anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper.

Conference registration is free of charge. Paper givers will be offered accommodation in local university colleges. Accommodation fees and details will be arranged individually. Anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper can write to check availability. Details about meal arrangements and conference programme to follow.

Please address all correspondence (including paper submissions and additional inquiries) to the conference email address: graduate.conference@iuss.unipv.it

Updated information will shortly be available on the conference website:

www.iusspavia.it/hdcp

 

CONF CFP: Australasian Association of Philosophy, July 2009, Melbourne, Australia

Australasian Association of Philosophy Annual Conference 2009

AAP2009 Melbourne 5 – 10 July 2009

The deadline for registration for this year’s AAP Annual Conference is fast approaching. Don’t miss out on the fun of Melbourne in midwinter and the plenary speakers who include include Simon Blackburn, Ned Block, Kit Fine, Rae Langton, Jeff Malpas and Peter Menzies.

To be sure that your title and abstract are accepted, you must register on-line by 20 May. Thereafter a late-registration fee will apply. If you have not registered by the 20th May deadline, there is no guarantee that your paper will be included in the conference timetable.

For more information, please go to http://www.aap-conferences.org.au/

To go straight to registration, please go to http://www.aap-conferences.org.au/registration-form/

 

CFA: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Philosophy, Wuhan University, China

A Two-Year, Fixed Term Postdoctoral Fellowship in Philosophy at Wuhan

A fixed-term research and teaching postdoctoral fellowship in philosophy is available from September 2009 for two years in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University, China. The fellow will work in coordination with a faculty member at Wuhan. The successful candidate must have obtained his or her doctoral degree by May, 2009, no earlier than May, 2004. He or she will demonstrate potential for producing outstanding research in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, comparative philosophy, Chinese philosophy, phenomenology within the period of the Fellowship.  The candidate is expected to have an original, well-argued research proposal covering relevant topics, including publication plans for articles. Some knowledge of Chinese would be preferred, but not required. Considerations will be preferred to those candidates who obtained or will obtain their degrees at English-speaking universities.  All applicants will be informed of the result in the middle of July, 2009.

Job description:
(1) The fellow will teach one course per semester, two courses per academic year. The language of instruction is English. No knowledge for Chinese language is required.
(2) The fellow is required to be in residency for 2 years.
(3) The fellow should work to a goal of at least two articles accepted for publication by good journals and in press within the period of the Fellowship.
(4) At the end of the tenure, the fellow should finish a book-length work and defend it in front of the postdoctoral committee.

The grant consists of:
(1) A stipend of 3000 yuan per month for 24 months;
(2) A free housing;
(3) Health insurance (the same as faculty members’)
(4) Eligible for applying research fund in the amounts of 30,000-
50,000 yuan from the Ministry of Education of China.

Applications should include:
(1) Curriculum vitae with full information about degrees;
(2) Any publication or a writing sample;
(3) A 1500 word research proposal outlining the particular questions and issuesyou will address and your proposed lines of argument and methodology;
(4) Three reference letters sent or emailed directly from the referees. In your CV, please include the names and full contact details (including address, email and telephone) of 3 referees, who should be familiar with your academic work.

The deadline for the receipt of the application and references is June 1, 2009

Contact information:
Professor Changchi Hao,
School of Philosophy,
Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072,
China.
Email: changchi_hao@163.com

 

CONF CFP: Immanence and Materialism Conference, June 2009, University of London, UK

CALL FOR PAPERS: IMMANENCE AND MATERIALISM CONFERENCE

Date: 23 June 2009
Venue: Queen Mary, University of London
Call for papers deadline: 22 May 2009
All papers and enquiries to: s.j.choat@qmul.ac.uk
Keynote speakers:
Professor James Williams (University of Dundee)
Dr Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut)
Dr Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London)

The concepts of immanence and materialism are becoming increasingly important in political philosophy. This conference seeks to analyse the connections between these two concepts and to examine the consequences for political thought. It is possible, as Giorgio Agamben has done, to make a distinction within modern philosophy between a
line of transcendence (Kant, Husserl, Levinas, Derrida) and a line of immanence (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Foucault). If we follow this distinction, then ?the line of immanence? might include Spinozist interpretations of Marx, Althusser?s aleatory materialism, and Deleuze’s superior empiricism. But what is the value of this work and
is it useful to distinguish it from ‘transcendent’ Philosophies? Distinctions between materialism and idealism are equally complex: Derrida, for example, might as easily be classed a materialist as an idealist. And where can we place more recent work like the critiques of Deleuze by Badiou and Zizek, or Meillassoux’s speculative materialism?

Papers may wish to consider the following questions:

What is materialist philosophy? How can it be distinguished from idealist philosophy, and is it useful to do so? Are all philosophies of immanence necessarily materialist?

Is it legitimate or useful to make a clear distinction between philosophies of immanence and philosophies of transcendence?

How have the concepts of immanence and materialism traditionally been conceived within political philosophy?

What, if any, are the political consequences of pursuing a philosophy of immanence?

Paper titles and a 300-word abstract should be sent by Friday 22 May 2009 to Simon Choat at s.j.choat@qmul.ac.uk, Department of Politics, Queen Mary.

Graduate papers welcome.

 

JRNL CFP: Special Issue of Philosophical Papers, “Retributive Emotions”

Call for Papers: ‘Retributive Emotions’

Special Issue of *Philosophical Papers*
Guest Editor: Lucy Allais (Witwatersrand and Sussex)

Reactive attitudes are affective ways of viewing agents in response to the good or bad will that they demonstrate in their actions; retributive reactive attitudes, such as resentment, indignation, guilt, and contempt, are the subset of reactive attitudes that involve seeing the agent to whom they are directed as having done wrong. Philosophers have both defended and criticised the moral value of retributive reactive attitudes. Defenders have explored their intimate connections with self-respect, resistance to injustice, accountability, agency, and personhood, and some philosophers argue we cannot understand responsibility without these emotions. At the same time, both in philosophy and in popular culture it is often thought that dissolving or overcoming retributive emotions is both healthy and virtuous. Both views raise complex questions about the nature of retributive reactive attitudes. The aim of this special issue of *Philosophical Papers* is to explore this area, and with it, the complex role that the moral emotions play in our understanding of wrongdoing.

Possible topics for discussion include:

- Analyses of particular retributive attitudes.
- The intentional content of the retributive emotions.
- The significance and role of the ‘feeling’ part of retributive attitudes.
- The relation between retributive emotions and moral judgments.
- The relation between, on the one hand, having a particular emotional response to wrongdoing and, on the other hand, ‘properly’ grasping the wrongness of the wrong and the perpetrator’s culpability and ‘properly’ condemning this wrong.
- The relationship between retributive emotions and responsibility.
- The relationship between retributive emotions and punishment.
- The relationship between retributive emotions and forgiveness.
- The rational or moral culpability, if any, in not having retributive emotional responses, and whether there are differences between self-directed and other-directed retributive responses.
- The extent to which the retributive emotions are optional or avoidable.
- The possibility of having ‘positive’ reactive attitudes (e.g., gratitude) without having retributive reactive attitudes.

The deadline for receipt of submission is 30 June 2010. This special edition of *Philosophical Papers*, which will contain both invited and submitted papers, will appear in November of 2010.

Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts electronically, as a pdf or word-document attachment, prepared for blind review, emailed to <philosophical.papers@ru.ac.za>. Authors should include their full name, affiliation, and address for email correspondence with their submission.

Further enquiries can be addressed to Lucy Allais (Lucy.Allais@Wits.ac.za) or Ward Jones, Editor, *Philosophical Papers* (w.jones@ru.ac.za).

 

CONF CFP: International Darwin Conference, University of Bradford, UK

The University of Bradford, in conjunction with Bradford City Council, will hold an International Darwin Conference at the University’s Norcroft Centre, on September 24-26, 2009. Confirmed keynote speakers are Gerald Edelman, Steve Jones, Anthony O’Hear and Denis Walsh. This conference will focus on the following themes:

1.      Darwinism in Approaches to the Mind: Evolutionary Psychology, neural Darwinism, emergentist models of the mind.

2.      Darwinism in the Social Sciences: Darwinian approaches in economics, the evolution of social cooperation, social Darwinism, meme theory, ethics.

3.      Darwinism in the Life Sciences: the unit of selection problem, Darwinian methodology; human evolution, non-genomic inheritance.

4.      Reception of Darwinism: the reception of Darwinism in Britain and Europe today and in the 19th century.

The organizers invite all those interested in presenting a paper to submit an abstract (250-300 words). The deadline for abstracts is May 15, 2009. Please submit your abstracts to

Darwin2009@brad.ac.uk

Decision on acceptance: June 19, 2009

The full conference fee will be £85, which includes a conference pack and conference dinner. Details of how to pay will be announced by May 15. Concessions will be available.

The following website contains further information:

http://www.brad.ac.uk/ihs/Darwin2009/

Please circulate as widely as possible, if you can.

Please note also that Bradford City Council is holding a number of Darwin-related events throughout the year and there will be activities complementary to the conference (public lectures etc.) coinciding with this meeting. Further details of these will be announced separately.

 

BOOK CFP: Ethics: A University Reader, Progressive Frontiers Press

The Progressive Frontiers Press, the Publishing House of the Philosophical Frontiers Journal, is preparing a number of books for publication. We are currently inviting authors to contribute to our book ‘Ethics: A University Reader’ (Working Title). We have already secured authors for many of the chapters, but are still seeking suitably qualified individuals to write the following:

The History of Ethical Thought
Utilitarian Ethics
Ethics of Care
Rights
Contractualism

If you are interested in writing any of the above, then please contact me at contact@frontierspublications.com with a copy of your academic CV and a statement of interest.

Further details are available below.

Ethics: A University Reader (Working Title). Information and Guidelines.

Focus

The book is intended to serve as a core university reader, which will discuss key issues in ethics. Chapters will be non-biased discussions of various themes, which will introduce the reader to the key concepts, theories and thinkers that are specific to the theme of the chapter in question.

The chapters should be written for an audience that has some philosophical knowledge, but which is not extensive. Therefore, approximate what you think a second year undergraduate student would be able to understand and engage with.

Each chapter should “stand-alone” in the sense that it will be possible to read the chapter in isolation from the rest of the book.

Word Count

Chapters should be between 7500 and 9000 words in length (excluding references/bibliography).

Therefore, chapters should be concise and clearly structured.

Deadlines

The provisional deadline for proposals for an assigned chapter’s content is the 1st of May, with the completed draft of to be submitted by the end of August. This will ensure that the book can be brought to market by the end of the year.

Commitment

If you agree to write a chapter then it is essential that you meet the deadlines in question.

Copyright

The book will have an international copyright license. However, authors may reproduce their chapters, or portions thereof, elsewhere with the proviso that this book is referenced as the first version of the publication.

Distribution

The book will be distributed internationally. It will be made available through online retailers and in selected bookstores.

Proceeds

The first £6,000 generated from sales will be used to fund the Philosophical Frontiers Conference, which will take place in 2012. All subsequent post-production earnings will be evenly split between the contributors.

Queries

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact me at contact@frontierspublications.com

Other Contributors

Once the full list of contributors is finalised, this will be circulated to all contributors.