Evolution in Biology, the Human Sciences and the Humanities, St. Louis April 26-28

I am really looking forward to this conference here in St. Louis, particularly Patricia Churchland's talk on Saturday April 28.

Color & Philosophy Conference March 2-3, 2012

Organizer

Michael Watkins
Department Chair
Lanier Professor
Department of Philosophy
Auburn University



Speakers

Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art, Auburn University
David Hilbert, University of Illinois, Chicago
Diana Raffman, University of Toronto
Larry Hardin, Syracuse University
Brian McLaughlin, Rutgers University
Alex Byrne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jonathan Cohen, University of California, San Diego
Janet Levin, University of Southern California
Berit Brogaard, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Zed Adams, The New School for Social Research
Joshua Gert, The College of William and Mary
Michael Watkins, Auburn University

Sponsored by the Auburn Philosophy Department
With assistance from the Auburn Philosophy Club and the Auburn College of Liberal Arts

For more Information

Final Program for the 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association

Program, Moonrise Hotel, St. Louis, September 15–17

All talks will take place at (across the street from the Moonrise Hotel):

Regional Arts Commission
6128 Delmar Blvd.
St. Louis, MO. 63112

Plenary Sessions

September 15, RAC- Conference Room C

5:00 Keynote Address: John Doris, Washington University
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

September 16, RAC- Conference Room C

4:00 Business Meeting and Presidential Address: Berit Brogaard, UMSL
“Intellectual Flourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm”
Chair: Paul Weirich, University of Missouri

5:00-7:00 Reception, Moonrise Rooftop

September 17, RAC- Conference Room C

5:00 Keynote Address: John Hawthorne, University of Oxford
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room C, September 15

9:00 An Impasse over Epistemic Value - A Critique of Linda Zagzebski's Arguments Against Pure Reliabilism and Proper Functionalism
Speaker: Devon Bryson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Chair: John Greco, St. Louis University
Commentator: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University

10:00 The Value of Knowledge: A Primary Good
Speaker: Daniel Pilchman, University of California, Irvine
Chair: Heather Werner, UMSL
Commentator: Kristian Marlow, UMSL

11:00 Knowing Versus Knowledge - The Two Questions within the Secondary Value Problem
Speaker: Zack Robinson, UMSL
Chair: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Commentator: Trent Dougherty, Baylor University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Neo-Aristotelian Plenitude
Speaker: Ross Inman, Trinity College, Dublin
Chair: John Heil, Washington University
Commentator: Irem Kurtsal Steen, UMSL

2:00 Functions Must be Performed at Appropriate Rates in Appropriate Situations
Speaker: Gualtiero Piccinini, UMSL, and Justin Garson, Hunter College/City University of New York
Chair: Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Kraemer, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

3:00 Special Science Kinds - Property Clusters without Homeostasis
Speaker: Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University
Chair: Sarah Robins, Washington University
Commentator: Christopher Pearson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

4:00 Panel: Natural Kinds
Speakers: Daniel A. Weiskopf, The Human Stain - Concepts, Anthropic Kinds, and Realism, Georgia State University
Andrew McFarland, How are Kinds Individuated?, University of Kansas
Alexander Bird, The Ontology of Natural Kinds, University of Bristol
John Camacho, Natural Kinds and Scientific Practices, UMSL
Chair: Kent Staley, St. Louis University

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room B, September 15

9:00 Frankfurt Cases, Gettier, and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Speaker: Adam R. Thompson, University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Chair: Krista Hyde, UMSL
Commentator: Michael Neal, UMSL

10:00 Against Counterfactuals of Libertarian Freedom - There is Nothing I Would have Done if I Could Have Done Otherwise
Speaker: Paul C. Anders, Mount Marty College, and Joshua Thurow, College of Southern Nevada
Chair: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Commentator: Grant Sterling, Eastern Illinois University

11:00 Are There True Libertarian Action Counterfactuals?
Speaker: Daniel Rubio, Western Michigan University
Chair: Krista Wiley, UMSL
Commentator: David Killoren, University of Wisconsin – Madison

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Compositional Nihilism and the Puzzles of Coincidence: A Response to McGrath
Speaker: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Andrew McFarland, University of Kansas

2:00 Physical Causal Closure and Non-Coincidental Mental Causation
Speaker: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Andrew Melnyk, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Douglas Hiddleston, Wayne State University

3:00 Hume, Counterfactuals and Causation
Speaker: Joshua Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Dean Obermark, UMSL
Commentator: John Camacho, UMSL

4:00 Panel: Causation
Speakers: David Killoren, Moral Causation, Consequentialism, and the Hazards of Pure Metaethics, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Hannah Abigail Bondurant, Consciousness, Control, and Causation: Some Issues for the Cognitive Physicalist, UMSL
Nicholas K. Simmons, How Much Bearing Does the Correct Construal of 'Causation' Really Have on the Problem of Mental Causation?, University of Kansas
Andrew Ward, Causal Criteria, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Causal Inferences, University of Minnesota
Chair: Simine Vazire, Washington University

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room B, September 16

9:00 Rawls on Rectification
Speaker: Sarah Kenehan, Marywood University
Chair: Eric Wilcox, University of Missouri – Kansas City
Commentator: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa

10:00 Individual Rights and the Restrictive Force of Just Cause - A Response to Jeff McMahan
Speaker: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri
Chair: Bre'Anna Liddell, UMSL
Commentator: Eric Reitan, Oklahoma State University

11:00 Killing in Self-Defense and the Doctrine of Double Effect
Speaker: Phil M. Mouch, Minnesota State University Moorhead
Chair: David McGraw, UMSL
Commentator: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri

12:00 Lunch

1:00 From Insensitivity to Moral Debunking
Speaker: Matthew Braddock, Duke University
Chair: Dan Haybron, St. Louis University
Commentator: Brian Besong, Purdue University

2:00 Moral Perpendiculars
Speaker: Hallie Liberto, University of Connecticut
Chair: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Molly Gardner, University of Wisconsin – Madison

3:00 Moral Intuitionism and Fundamental Disagreement
Speaker: Brian Besong, Purdue University
Chair: Mylan Engel, Jr., Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brian Hutchinson, Metropolitan State College of Denver

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room C, September 16

9:00 Solving the Generality Problem for Reliabilism and Resolving the Internalist/Externalist Controversy
Speaker: Mylan Engel Jr., Northern Illinois University
Chair: Matthew Cashen, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Commentator: Matthew Braddock, Duke University

10:00 Against the Minimalistic Reading of Epistemic Contextualism - A Reply to Wolfgang Freitag
Speaker: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Jeff Dauer, Washington University
Commentator: Geoff Pynn, Northern Illinois University

11:00 Knowledge, Assertion, and the Belief that One Knows
Speaker: Dylan Black, Indiana University – Bloomington
Chair: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Options and Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Roy Sorensen, Washington University
Commentator: Wenwen Fan, University of Missouri

2:00 Epistemic Modals and Practical Reasoning
Speaker: Joshua S. Heter, St. Louis University
Chair: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Lisa Cagle, Washington University

3:00 Determining the Field of Concern with Knowledge
Speaker: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Chair: Jessica Wilson, UMSL
Commentator: John Pauley, Simpson College

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room C, September 17

9:00 On Hawthorne on Lewis on the Case for Modal Realism
Speaker: Robert William Fischer, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chair: Thomas Sattig, Washington University
Commentator: John Gabriel, Washington University

10:00 Cappelen, Content Relativism, and the “Creative Interpreter”
Speaker: Mark Criley, Illinois Wesleyan University
Chair: Nicholas Baima, Washington University
Commentator: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University

11:00 A Prosententialist Account of Vagueness
Speaker: Renee Jorgensen, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Ronald Glass, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Commentator: Nicholas Baima, Washington University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Simple Proof of Mind-Body Dualism
Speaker: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Chair: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Daniel Ryan Weed, UMSL

2:00 The Fact of Cartesian Qualia
Speaker: Brett Coppenger, University of Iowa
Chair: William Robinson, Iowa State University
Commentator: Donald Sievert, University of Missouri

3:00 The (One and Only) Argument for Physicalism about the Mind
Speaker: Jared Bates, Hanover College
Chair: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Commentator: Angie Harris, University of Utah

4:00 Panel: Physicalism
Speakers: William S. Robinson, The Poverty of Physicalism, Iowa State University
Andrew Melnyk, Pereboom on the Formulation of Non-reductive Physicalism, University of Missouri
Eric Kraemer, The Challenges of Non-Physicalism, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
Chair: Jared Bates, Hanover College

Concurrent Sessions, RAC- Conference Room B, September 17

9:00 Remembering Does Entail Knowing
Speaker: Andrew Moon, University of Missouri
Chair: Lisa Cagle, Washington University
Commentator: Zack Robinson, UMSL

10:00 Fallibilism and the Flexibility of Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Charity Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Amy Broadway, UMSL
Commentator: Andrew Moon, University of Missouri

11:00 Skepticism in the Problem of the Criterion
Speaker: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Chair: Mark Steen, UMSL
Commentator: Casey Swank, St. Cloud State University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Textualist Argument for a Living Constitution
Speaker: A. J. Kreider, Miami Dade College
Chair: Xiaofei Liu, University of Missouri
Commentator: John Collins, East Carolina University

2:00 Republican Political Justification and Unreasonable Citizens
Speaker: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College
Chair: Christian Richeson, UMSL
Commentator: Richard Lauer, University of Missouri

3:00 The Connection between Political Legitimacy and Justification
Speaker: Leo Yan, University of Missouri
Chair: Daniel Pilchman, UC Irvine
Commentator: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College

4:00 Panel: Risk
Speakers: Ashton T. Sperry-Taylor, Bounded Rationality, Risk, and Moral Heuristics, University of Missouri
Michael Neal, Epistemic Risk, Epistemic Peerage, and Rational Disagreement, UMSL
Chair: Kevin Lepore, UMSL

Program for the 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association in St. Louis

CSPA Program, Moonrise Hotel, St. Louis, September 15–17

Plenary Sessions

September 15

5:00 Keynote Address: John Doris, Washington University
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL

September 16

4:00 Business Meeting and Presidential Address: Berit Brogaard,
“Intellectual Flourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm”
Chair: Paul Weirich, University of Missouri

5:00-7:00 Reception, Moonrise Rooftop


September 17

5:00 Keynote Address: John Hawthorne, University of Oxford
Chair: Berit Brogaard, UMSL


Concurrent Sessions, Room 1, September 15
9:00 An Impasse over Epistemic Value - A Critique of Linda Zagzebski's Arguments Against Pure Reliabilism and Proper Functionalism
Speaker: Devon Bryson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Chair: John Greco, St. Louis University
Commentator: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University

10:00 The Value of Knowledge: A Primary Good
Speaker: Daniel Pilchman, University of California, Irvine
Chair: Heather Werner, UMSL
Commentator: Kristian Marlow, UMSL

11:00 Knowing Versus Knowledge - The Two Questions within the Secondary Value Problem
Speaker: Zack Robinson, UMSL
Chair: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Commentator: Trent Dougherty, Baylor University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Neo-Aristotelian Plenitude
Speaker: Ross Inman, Trinity College, Dublin
Chair: John Heil, Washington University
Commentator: Irem Kurtsal Steen, UMSL

2:00 Functions Must be Performed at Appropriate Rates in Appropriate Situations
Speaker: Gualtiero Piccinini, UMSL, and Justin Garson, Hunter College/City University of New York
Chair: Lynn Chien-Hui Chiu, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Kraemer, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

3:00 Special Science Kinds - Property Clusters without Homeostasis
Speaker: Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University
Chair: Sarah Robins, Washington University
Commentator: Christopher Pearson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

4:00 Panel: Natural Kinds
Speakers: Daniel A. Weiskopf, The Human Stain - Concepts, Anthropic Kinds, and Realism, Georgia State University
Andrew McFarland, How are Kinds Individuated?, University of Kansas
Alexander Bird, The Ontology of Natural Kinds, University of Bristol
John Camacho, Natural Kinds and Scientific Practices, UMSL
Chair: Kent Staley, St. Louis University

Concurrent Sessions, Room 2, September 15
9:00 Frankfurt Cases, Gettier, and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Speaker: Adam R. Thompson, University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Chair: Krista Hyde, UMSL
Commentator: Michael Neal, UMSL

10:00 Against Counterfactuals of Libertarian Freedom - There is Nothing I Would have Done if I Could Have Done Otherwise
Speaker: Paul C. Anders, Mount Marty College, and Joshua Thurow, College of Southern Nevada
Chair: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Commentator: Grant Sterling, Eastern Illinois University

11:00 Are There True Libertarian Action Counterfactuals?
Speaker: Daniel Rubio, Western Michigan University
Chair: Krista Wiley, UMSL
Commentator: David Killoren, University of Wisconsin – Madison

12:00 Lunch
1:00 Compositional Nihilism and the Puzzles of Coincidence: A Response to McGrath
Speaker: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Andrew McFarland, University of Kansas

2:00 Physical Causal Closure and Non-Coincidental Mental Causation
Speaker: Leigh C. Vicens, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Chair: Andrew Melnyk, University of Missouri
Commentator: Eric Douglas Hiddleston, Wayne State University

3:00 Hume, Counterfactuals and Causation
Speaker: Joshua Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Dean Obermark, UMSL
Commentator: John Camacho, UMSL

4:00 Panel: Causation
Speakers: David Killoren, Moral Causation, Consequentialism, and the Hazards of Pure Metaethics, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Hannah Abigail Bondurant, Consciousness, Control, and Causation: Some Issues for the Cognitive Physicalist, UMSL
Nicholas K. Simmons, How Much Bearing Does the Correct Construal of 'Causation' Really Have on the Problem of Mental Causation?, University of Kansas
Andrew Ward, Causal Criteria, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Causal Inferences, University of Minnesota
Chair: Simine Vazire, Washington University


Concurrent Sessions, Room 1, September 16
9:00 Rawls on Rectification
Speaker: Sarah Kenehan, Marywood University
Chair: Eric Wilcox, University of Missouri – Kansas City
Commentator: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa

10:00 Individual Rights and the Restrictive Force of Just Cause - A Response to Jeff McMahan
Speaker: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri
Chair: Bre'Anna Liddell, UMSL
Commentator: Eric Reitan, Oklahoma State University

11:00 Killing in Self-Defense and the Doctrine of Double Effect
Speaker: Phil M. Mouch, Minnesota State University Moorhead
Chair: David McGraw, UMSL
Commentator: Crystal Allen, University of Missouri

12:00 Lunch

1:00 From Insensitivity to Moral Debunking
Speaker: Matthew Braddock, Duke University
Chair: Dan Haybron, St. Louis University
Commentator: Brian Besong, Purdue University

2:00 Moral Perpendiculars
Speaker: Hallie Liberto, University of Connecticut
Chair: Holly Kantin, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Commentator: Molly Gardner, University of Wisconsin

3:00 Moral Intuitionism and Fundamental Disagreement
Speaker: Brian Besong, Purdue University
Chair: Mylan Engel, Jr., Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brian Hutchinson, Metropolitan State College of Denver


Concurrent Sessions, Room 2, September 16
9:00 Solving the Generality Problem for Reliabilism and Resolving the Internalist/Externalist Controversy
Speaker: Mylan Engel Jr., Northern Illinois University
Chair: Matthew Cashen, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Commentator: Matthew Braddock, Duke University

10:00 Against the Minimalistic Reading of Epistemic Contextualism - A Reply to Wolfgang Freitag
Speaker: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Jeff Dauer, Washington University
Commentator: Geoff Pynn, Northern Illinois University

11:00 Knowledge, Assertion, and the Belief that One Knows
Speaker: Dylan Black, Indiana University – Bloomington
Chair: Michael D. Ashfield, Northern Illinois University
Commentator: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Options and Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Roy Sorensen, Washington University
Commentator: Wenwen Fan, University of Missouri

2:00 Epistemic Modals and Practical Reasoning
Speaker: Joshua S. Heter, St. Louis University
Chair: Andrew Spear, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Lisa Cagle, Washington University

3:00 Determining the Field of Concern with Knowledge
Speaker: Seth Kurtenbach, University of Missouri
Chair: Jessica Wilson, UMSL
Commentator: John Pauley, Simpson College

Concurrent Sessions, Room 1, September 17
9:00 On Hawthorne on Lewis on the Case for Modal Realism
Speaker: Robert William Fischer, University of Illinois at Chicago
Chair: Thomas Sattig, Washington University
Commentator: John Gabriel, Washington University

10:00 Cappelen, Content Relativism, and the “Creative Interpreter”
Speaker: Mark Criley, Illinois Wesleyan University
Chair: Nicholas Baima, Washington University
Commentator: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University

11:00 A Prosententialist Account of Vagueness
Speaker: Renee Jorgensen, Northern Illinois University
Chair: Ronald Glass, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Commentator: Nicholas Baima, Washington University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Simple Proof of Mind-Body Dualism
Speaker: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Chair: Ronald Loeffler, Grand Valley State University
Commentator: Daniel Ryan, UMSL

2:00 The Fact of Cartesian Qualia
Speaker: Brett Coppenger, University of Iowa
Chair: William Robinson, Iowa State University
Commentator: Donald Sievert, University of Missouri

3:00 The (One and Only) Argument for Physicalism about the Mind
Speaker: Jared Bates, Hanover College
Chair: Marcus Arvan, University of Tampa
Commentator: Angie Harris, University of Utah

4:00 Panel: Physicalism
Speakers: William S. Robinson, The Poverty of Physicalism, Iowa State University
Andrew Melnyk, Pereboom on the Formulation of Non-reductive Physicalism, University of Missouri
Eric Kraemer, The Challenges of Non-Physicalism, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
Chair: Jared Bates, Hanover College

Concurrent Sessions, Room 2, September 17
9:00 Remembering Does Entail Knowing
Speaker: Andrew Moon
Chair: Lisa Cagle, Washington University
Commentator: Zack Robinson, UMSL

10:00 Fallibilism and the Flexibility of Epistemic Modals
Speaker: Charity Anderson, St. Louis University
Chair: Amy Broadway, UMSL
Commentator: Andrew Moon, University of Missouri

11:00 Skepticism in the Problem of the Criterion
Speaker: Brendan Murday, Ithaca College
Chair: Mark Steen, UMSL
Commentator: Casey Swank, St. Cloud State University

12:00 Lunch

1:00 A Textualist Argument for a Living Constitution
Speaker: A. J. Kreider, Miami Dade College
Chair: Xiaofei Liu, University of Missouri
Commentator: John Collins, East Carolina University

2:00 Republican Political Justification and Unreasonable Citizens
Speaker: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College
Chair: Christian Richeson, UMSL
Commentator: Richard Lauer, University of Missouri

3:00 The Connection between Political Legitimacy and Justification
Speaker: Leo Yan, University of Missouri
Chair: Daniel Pilchman, UC Irvine
Commentator: Christopher McCammon, University of Nebraska – Lincoln/Grand View College

4:00 Panel: Risk
Speakers: Ashton T. Sperry-Taylor, Bounded Rationality, Risk, and Moral Heuristics, University of Missouri
Michael Neal, Epistemic Risk, Epistemic Peerage, and Rational Disagreement, UMSL
Chair: Kevin Lepore, UMSL

More or Less: Varieties of Human Cortical Colour Vision

The schedules/programs are now up for the Vancouver conference on cortical color.

The 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association

The 2011 Meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association will take place September 15-17 at The Moonrise Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. The cut-off date for reserving a room at the group rate is August 14, 2011. The cost for the hotel rooms at the Moonrise Hotel are $139 or $149 (the latter is an extra large room for sharing). To get that rate you should mention that you are booking a room for the Central States Philosophical Association Conference. Make your reservations early as they only have 75 rooms at the conference rate.

The hotel has a rooftop bar, where we will socialize at night. The hotel is in one of the most active areas of St. Louis called "the University City Loop" or just the "The Loop" for short. There are dozens of restaurants and bars within walking distance, including Pi, the pizza restaurant where President Obama dined when he was in St. Louis. The conference rooms are across the street from the hotel.

Cheaper accommodation is available here. Rates Starting at $39.99.
www.motel6.com/Missouri
1405 Dunn Road, St Louis, MO
(314) 869-9400

This place will work great if you have a car. If you are looking for cheaper accommodation, you can also go to: http://www.hotels.com/.

You can take the metro link directly from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (STL) to University City, where the Moonrise Hotel is located. A taxi from the airport to the hotel will cost you between $30 and $40.

Central States Philosophical Association (CSPA) 2011. Second Call for Panel Proposals

The 2011 Central States Philosophical Association meeting, hosted by the University of Missouri–St. Louis, will take place at:

The Moonrise Hotel, 6177 Delmar, St. Louis, MO 63112
September 15–17, 2011

Keynote Speakers: John Hawthorne (University of Oxford) and John Doris (Washington University)

You need not be a member of an institution in the central states area to participate. The deadline for submission of colloquium papers has passed, however, the program committee still welcomes panel proposals and extends the deadline for them to June 30. During a panel's session, the panelists will make five-minute presentations on the panel's topic. After these presentations, there will be a discussion period. The whole session, presentations and discussion, will last an hour.

The program will include panels on these topics:
(1) Metaphysics: Natural kinds
(2) Mind: Physicalism vs. non-physicalism
(3) Causation
(4) Risk

To join a panel, submit a brief proposal of not more than 500 words that advances a point about the panel’s topic. Include a title page in a separate document with author information and the proposal’s word count, and submit both the proposal, prepared for blind reviewing, and the title page as RTF or PDF files.

The deadline for submission of panel proposals is: June 30, 2011.

Submissions should be sent to Leo Yan at: lhybnd@mail.mizzou.edu. Responses to submissions will be sent by July 31, 2011.

Suggestions for commentators and session chairs (including self-nominations) are welcome. Information about registration will be sent in July.

Suggestions and questions regarding the program should be directed to Paul Weirich at: weirichp@missouri.edu

Questions concerning local arrangements should be directed to Brit Brogaard at: brogaardb@gmail.com

Color Workshop and Conference

The deadline for early career participants in our deviant color workshop and conference in Vancouver in August has been extended. Go ahead and apply.

Don't be Nervous When You Present Your Ideas. They are NOT You

This advice from Kai Von Fintel is gold. I particularly love this statement:

That work was written by a previous time slice of myself that I do not anymore have any privileged access to or even a strong emotional bond with.

I'll second that. Here is another so-true statement -- this time from Geoff Pullum. He offers a good reason why you shouldn't be nervous when you present your ideas. This is a (re-)quote from Kai's site.

REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE AN ADVOCATE, NOT THE DEFENDANT. It’s your idea that’s being presented, not you. The reason for not feeling nervous is that you are not what’s up for consideration... This isn’t about you

Agreed. No skin in the game!

More or Less: Varieties of Human Cortical Color Vision

Philosophers, neurophysiologists, psychologists and researchers within the cognitive sciences are warmly invited to attend the conference and to submit posters. The conference will be held at Simon Fraser University Harbour Center in Vancouver on August 5-7, 2011.

The focus of this conference is "colour beyond the retina", both the normal neurophysiology of human cortical colour mechanisms and a variety of cortical color 'anomalies', in particular:

* Cerebral Achromatopsia
* Color Synaesthesias
* Color Blindsight
* Cortical Color Development

Early career researchers and graduate students are invited to apply for a two day intensive workshop held prior to the conference. The workshop will take place on August 4-5, 2011.

Confirmed Speakers and Workshop Leaders Include

Morten Overgaard (Aarhus University)
Fred Kingdom (McGill University)
Qasim Zaidi (SUNY State College of Optometry)
Charles Heywood (Durham University)
Bob Kentridge (Durham University)
Michael Tye (University of Texas, Austin)
Austen Clark (UConn)
Jon Opie (University of Adelaide)
Berit Brogaard (University of Missouri at St. Louis)
Tony Ro (CUNY)
Dan Smilek (University of Waterloo)
Julia Simner (University of Edinburgh)
Kathy Mullen (McGill University)
Alex Byrne (MIT)
Roy Sorensen (Washington University, St. Louis)

For a complete list of confirmed speakers, click HERE.

This conference is funded by The James S. McDonnell Foundation.

Call for Papers, Philosophy of Mind Graduate Conference

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

6th Annual Gateway Graduate Conference, April 8-10, 2011

The Philosophers’ Forum at the University of Missouri, St. Louis invites submissions of high quality graduate student papers to our 6th annual Gateway conference. This year’s topic is Introspection, broadly construed. Possible areas relevant to this topic include philosophy of mind, cognitive science, philosophy of science, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of religion.

Keynote Speaker:

Eric Schwitzgebel (UC-Riverside)

Extended Submission Deadline: March 1, 2011

Submission Guidelines:

Please prepare your paper for blind review by sending two separate attachments to 2011UMSLGRAD@GMAIL.COM:

First attachment, the cover letter:

author’s name
title of paper
institutional affiliation
contact information (email, phone number, mailing address)
word count
an abstract of the paper (less than 500 words)

Second attachment, the paper:

Suitable for a 25-30 minute presentation (less than 4,500 words, should not contain any personal information

Central States Philosophical Association 2010

The program and the registration form for the 2010 meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association in Detroit are now available for download. Here is a quick overview of the program:

Thursday Afternoon September 23, Values and Conventions

1:00 Iddo Landau (Haifa): Meaningfulness, Meaninglessness and Unmeaningfulness: Did Hitler Have a Meaningful Life?

3:00 Natasha N. Liebig (South Florida): The Flash of Being: Vision, Speaking, and Place in Process Ontology as Seen Through Foucault

4:00 Marija Jankovic (Indiana): The Intentional Underpinnings of Convention


Thursday Afternoon September 23, Epistemology

2:00 David Alexander (Iowa State): Inferential Internalism and the Argument from Responsible Belief

3:00 Jonathan Hecht (San Diego State): How Skeptics Live Their Lives
Commentator: Bruce Dutra (Mott)

4:00 Tim Kakos (Northern Illinois): Knowledge and Multi-Premise Closure


Thursday Afternoon September 23, Ethics

1:00 Robyn R. Gaier (Saint Louis): Autism and Moral Indifference: Uncovering a False Dichotomy

2:00 Bertha Alvarez Manninen (Arizona State West): What did "Octomom" do wrong?: Exploring the ethics of fertility treatments


3:00 Howard Nye (Alberta): Harming as a Side-Effect Versus Benefiting at Someone’s Expense

4:00 Eric Reitan (Oklahoma State): Avoiding the Personhood Issue: Abortion, Identity, and Marquis's 'Future Like Ours' Argument


Friday Morning September 24, Mind

9:30 Eric Hiddleston (Wayne State): A Counterexample to Kim’s Account of Reductive Explanation

10:30 Gordon Knight (Iowa State): Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Mind

11:30 Donald Sievert (Iowa): Witgenstein's Vexation with Color Incompatibility
David Stern


Friday Morning September 24, Epistemology

9:30 Brendan Murday (Ithaca College): The Problem of the Criterion: Methodism and Higher Order Epistemic Constraints

10:30 John Turri (Waterloo): Unreliable Knowledge

11:30 Kok Yong Lee (Missouri-Columbia): On the Distinctive Value of Knowledge


Friday Morning September 24, Rights and Values

9:30: Philip M. Mouch (Minnesota State University Moorhead): Open Adoption Records: Privacy Rights vs. Equal Rights?

10:30 Tyler Paytas (WashU): Locating Normativity in Human Rights: A Defense of Naturalistic Theories

11:30 Scott Forschler (Minneapolis): The Formula of Universal Law is Heteronomous


Friday Afternoon, September 24, Metaphysics

2:00 Valia Allori (Northern Illinois): Do Particles have Free Will?

3:00 David Goldman (UCLA): Modification of the Reactive Attitudes

4:00 William A. Bauer (North Carolina State): Priority Monism and Extrinsic Properties


Friday Afternoon, September 24, Epistemology

2:00 Peter Murphy (Indianapolis): Epistemic Descent Principles

3:00 Ted Poston (South Alabama): A Coherentist Account of Reasons

4:00 Michael Shaffer (St. Cloud): Pragmatic Encroachment Penalized: Five Yard Penalty ... Repeat First Down


Friday Afternoon September 24, Value and Deliberation

2:00 Amanda Roth (Michigan): Dynamic Deliberation of Ends

3:00 Kathleen Dougherty (College of Notre Dame of Maryland): Commitment, Identity and Risk

4:00 Hallie Liberto (Wisconsin): Organ Sales and the Commodification Objection


Evening: Bruce Russell's presidential address: In Defense of Non-doxastic, Deontic Foundationalism
Chair: Vice President Berit Brogaard (Missouri)


Saturday Morning September 25, Metaphysics

9:30 Majid Amini (Virginia State): Is the Maximal God Free of Paradox?

10:30 Eric Kraemer (Wisconsin, La Crosse) Proper Functions and their Natural and Divine Designers

11:30 Bruce Dutra (Mott): Theism and the Concept of the Greatest Possible Being


Saturday Morning September 25, Epistemology

9:30 Andrew Moon (Missouri-Columbia): Beliefs Do Not Come in Degrees

10:30 Shawn Graves (Cedarville): Defending the Equal Weight View from Some Problem Cases

11:30: Andrew Spear (Grand Valley State): Metajustification, Skepticism and the A Priori


Saturday Morning September 25, Language, Epistemology and Mind

9:30 Yu Izumi (Maryland, College Park): On a theory of descriptions in articleless languages

10:30 Ali Hasan (Iowa): Compassionate Phenomenal Conservatism

11:30 David G. Stern (Iowa): Wittgenstein and the Inverted Spectrum


Saturday Afternoon September 25, Mind

1:00 Irwin Goldstein (Davidson): The Mental is not Physical

2:00 Rocco Gennaro (Southern Indiana): Conceptualism and the Richness Argument

3:00 Mark Steen (Saint Louis): Jesus and Mary: Why Christians Should not Believe in Non-Physical Qualia


Saturday Afternoon September 25, Metaphysics

1:00 Molly Gardner (Wisconsin): Time Travelers Who Kill Their Younger Selves: They’re Closer Than You Think

2:00 Irem Kurtsal Steen (Missouri): Almost Ontology: Why Epistemicism Cannot Help Us Defend Restricted Composition

3:00 Ben Caplan (Ohio): Brutal Counting


Saturday Afternoon September 25, Metaphysics and Ethics

1:00 Jeffrey Snapper (Notre Dame): Why the Vagueness Argument is Unsound

2:00 Dustin Nelson (Tennessee – Knoxville): Character and Moral Luck

3:00 Matt Flummer (Missouri): If I were in the Shoes of a Non-Cognitivist, I would Plan on Being a Classical Expressivist: An Evaluation of Gibbard's Plans


4:40 Jim Pryor (Keynote Address): Hypothetical Oughts
Chair: President Bruce Russell

Call for Commentators CSPA

If you are interested in commenting on a paper or chairing a session at the 2010 meeting of the Central States Philosophical Association at Wayne State in Detroit on September 23-25, please drop me an email.

G. E. Moore Philosophy Music at Syracuse 2010

Kris McDaniel, Carrie Jenkins and Ben Bradley

Philosophy Music at Syracuse 2010

Ben Bradley, Kris McDaniel and Carrie Jenkins (Photographer: Bob Van Gulick)

Growing Up

Some people grow up a lot slower than others. I am one of them. But I am starting to grow up. I think growing up, in part, means learning not to do the things you just hate doing (and can easily avoid). I have always hated organized conference lunches. The super-amazing conference organizers here at the SPAWN conference have organized the most fantastic lunches at the most fantastic and damn tasty restaurants. For most people, that's heaven, true paradise. Who wouldn't want yummy food surrounded by the world's most brilliant minds and mind-blowing (literally) conversations about your favorite topics? Well, not me. Don't get me wrong. I want the conversations and the yummy food. But conference lunches generally irritate me. Like A LOT. You leave the conference site, hurry down to a great restaurant, start a rock-the-foundations-of-the-world conversation. Then 10 minutes into the conversation, food is served. You forget to eat because Kit Fine is in the middle of proving an incredible (and I mean "INcredible") result in his new semantics for counterfactuals. Then someone reminds you that the next session starts in 10 minutes. So, you never see the final steps of the proof, you stuff yourself quickly with half of the food on your plate (who would want to let great food go to waste, right?), and then you get a tummy ache and almost fall asleep in the next session because you over-stuffed yourself, or you can't concentrate on the talk, because that damn proof that seemed so irritatingly sound is running through your mind like a sprint runner at the Olympics. So, YES, I do know that today's lunch restaurant is AppeTHAIzing. This is the place that's supposed to serve this yummy, formidable, dynamite Thai food (I guess you got the point). But I am not going! Not today. I am growing up.

Pre-Central Workshop

The Philosophy Department at Northwestern will hold a one-day Epistemology conference, on the theme of the Epistemology of Testimony, on Northwestern’s Evanston Campus on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (just before the Central APA). The conference is free and open to the public.

The 2010 Synthese Conference: CFP

Two news items from Vincent Hendricks:

(1)
On April 15th and 16th of 2010, the Synthese Conference will take place at Columbia University. The 2010 edition of the Synthese Conference will focus on the theme of epistemology and economics. Recent years have seen an increasing amount of interaction between epistemology and economics: traditional topics in epistemology, such as the analysis of knowledge, have found a significant role in the study of interactive decision making, while traditional topics in economics, such as the analysis of rationality, now figure prominently into certain areas of epistemology. We anticipate that the conference program will include slots for five invited papers and at least five contributed papers. Every paper that is presented at the conference will be considered for the special issue of Synthese that will be based on the conference theme of epistemology and economics. The list of invited speakers is still being finalized. In the meantime, we encourage submissions for the contributed slots. Submissions should be relevant to the conference theme of epistemology and economics, broadly construed, and should satisfy the usual guidelines for submissions to Synthese. Submissions for the contributed slots must be received no later than February 1, 2010. Notifications of acceptance will be made by February 20, 2010. All submissions should be sent to synthese.conference.2010@gmail.com .

The Synthese Editors-in-Chief: Johan van Benthem, Vincent F. Hendricks and John Symons

The Local Organizing Committee: John Collins, Haim Gaifman, Jeff Helzner and Philip Kitcher

(2)
Vincent, who is Professor of Formal Philosophy at University of Copenhagen, has taken up a permanent position as Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York.

Truth Conference

There is a great-looking conference taking place right now at University of Connecticut. If you are in the area, you might want to check it out. Speakers include: Michael Lynch, Marian David, Crispin Wright, Max Kölbel, Gila Sher, and others (HT: Cory Wright).

Do they mean it?

A few pics from Vancouver here, here and here.