More Agency at the Pacific APA, March 27-30

For those attending the Pacific APA, there are loads of sessions on agency apart from the one mentioned by Joe that should be of interest to readers of this blog. Also, apart from the main program, the Experimental Philosophy Society group session (Wednesday, 6:00-9:00) includes papers on agency and there will be a Society for Philosophy of Agency group session on Thursday evening (details on the latter will be posted soon) 

For now, Roman Altshuler was kind enough to compile a list of sessions in the main program that deal with agency broadly (and not just the free will debate) or include papers on agency. I have pasted the list below. (Apologies to anyone whose session was overlooked.)

The fun commences with the session on free will Joe mentioned and ends with a session on "Agency and Pathologies of the Self" featuring Al Mele, Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, Jesse Summers, and David Shoemaker.

 

WEDNESDAY

Colloquium: Free Will

9:00-10:00 Joseph Campbell, “Problems for Classical Incompatibilism”/ Commentator: Michael Robinson

10:00-11:00 Christopher Franklin “If Anyone Should Be an Agent-causalist, Then Everyone Should Be an Agent-causalist”/ Commentator: Rebekah L. H. Rice

11:00-12:00 Alex Grzankowski “‘Can’ and the Consequence Argument” / Commentator: Mark Balaguer

Colloquium: Reasons to Act

9:00-10:00 Nathaniel Sharadin, “Reasons Wrong and Right”/ Commentator: Fred Schueler

10:00-11:00 Andrew McAninch, “Acting for a Reason and Following a Principle: A Dilemma for Korsgaard’s Constitutivism”/ Commentator: Charles Lang

11:00-12:00 Mary Clayton Coleman, “Exploring Metanormative Constitutivism”/ Commentator: Johnnie Pedersen

Colloquium: Agency and Responsibility

1:00-2:00 Mark Rosner, “The Rational Relations View Wide and Narrow”/ Commentator: Kyle Fritz

2:00-3:00 Andrew Eshleman, “Praiseworthiness and Phronesis-enhanced Freedom”/ Commentator: Greg Damico

3:00-4:00 Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, “Two Interpretations of Contractualist Moral Agency”/ Commentator: Adam Swenson

Symposium: From Passion to Action

4:00-6:00 Tamar Schapiro, “From Passion to Action”/ Commentators: Doug Lavin, Andrews Reath

Symposium: Compatibilism

4:00-6:00 Yael , “On the Direct Argument and the Burden of Proof: A Response to Schnall and Widerker”/ Commentators: Seth Shabo, David Widerker

 

THURSDAY

Colloquium: The Self

9:00-10:00 Roman Altshuler, “Free Will, Narrative, and Retroactive Self-constitution”/ Commentator: Tina Talsma

Symposium: Temptation

1:00-4:00 Speakers: Gideon Yaffe, “Disinhibition, Temptation, and Criminal Responsibility”, Richard Holton, “Temptation and Moral Resolution”/ Commentator: Sarah Stroud

 Colloquium: Sociality and Mind

1:00-2:00 Angelica Kaufmann, “Collective Intentionality: A Human—Not a Monkey—Business”/ Commentator: Bernard W. Kobes

2:00-3:00 Siwing Tsoi, “The Concept of a Composite Agent”/ Commentator: Bana Bashour

3:00-4:00 Mark Phelan, “Believing qua Member”/ Commentator: Kurt Sylvan

Colloquium: Actions and Rule-following

4:00-5:00 Nathaniel Bulthuis, “Rescuing Rule-following: How Dispositionalism Can Help with Rule-following Primitivism”/ Commentator: Jonathan Simon

5:00-6:00 Santiago Amaya, “Slip-proof Actions”/ Commentator: Andrei Buckareff

 

FRIDAY

Symposium: Agency and Commitment

9:00-Noon Michael Smith, “Constitutive Commitments”, Philip Pettit, “The Self-representing Agent”/ Commentator: Sarah Buss

Colloquium: Compatibilism

1:00-2:00 P. Roger Turner, “Haji on the Direct Argument”/ Commentator: Daniel Speak

2:00-3:00 Taylor Cyr, “Moral Responsibility, Luck, and Compatibilism”/ Commentator: Jordan Wolf

3:00-4:00 Justin Coates, “Manipulation and the Reactive Emotions”/ Commentator: Katherine Rickus

Invited Paper: Blame

4:00-6:00 Miranda Fricker, “What’s the Point of Blame?”/ Commentators: Rahul Kumar, Paul Russell

Symposium: Psychopathy

4:00-6:00 Matthew Talbert, “The Significance of Psychopathic Wrongdoing”/ Commentators: Kyle Adams, Gary Watson

 

SATURDAY

Colloquium: Moral Responsibility, Bias

9:00-10:00 Michael S. Brownstein, “Responsibility and Implicit Bias”/ Commentator: John Koolage

10:00-11:00 William Smith, “The Trouble for Strawsonians: Nazis in, Psychopaths Out”/ Commentator: Bruce Landesman

11:00-12:00 Alex Madva, “Implicit Bias, Moods, and Moral Responsibility”/ Commentator: Manuel Vargas

Symposium: Agency and Pathologies of the Self

1:00-4:00 Alfred Mele, “Delusions and Self-deception”,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Jesse Summers, “Scrupulous Agents”/ Commentator: David Shoemaker

 

 

Comments

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

I just realized that John's Presidential Address is missing from the list.

Presidential Address 6:00-7:00 p.m. Introduction:Terence Parsons (University of California, Los Angeles) Speaker:John Martin Fischer (University of California, Riverside) “The Path of Life”

Also, this session may be of interest to some (it is to me).
Symposium: Mental Causation 4:00-6:00 p.m. Chair: Glenn Ross (Franklin and Marshall College)
Speakers:Douglas Keaton (Flagler College) Thomas W. Polger (University of Cincinnati) “Exclusion, Still Not Tracted”
Commentators:Lenny Clapp (Northern Illinois University) Brian McLaughlin (Rutgers University)

[Josh Shepherd]

Hi Andrei,

Thanks for compiling this. I'll be giving a talk that is perhaps more phil mind than phil of agency (I don't think so, but what do I know), but some might find it interesting. Especially fans of zombie action. It's Friday at 5, as a part of the following session:

9F Colloquium: Consciousness 4:00-6:00 p.m.
4:00-5:00
Chair: Enrico Grube (University of Texas at Austin)
Speaker: Richard Brown (LaGuardia Community College) “The Phenomenology of HOT, or What Is It Like to Think That You Think That p?"
Commentator: Josh Weisberg (University of Houston)

5:00-6:00
Chair: Peter S. Fosl (Transylvania University)
Speaker: Joshua Shepherd (Florida State University) “Consciousness, Control, and Zombie Action”
Commentator: Wayne Wu (Carnegie Mellon University)

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

Thanks for this Joshua. Your paper topic is timely in light of the *Decomposing the Will* (Oxford UP 2013) volume that just came out.

[V. Alan White]

From the Presidential address on down FW and agency seem to have taken over the conference! Good for all involved!

[Andrei A. Buckareff]

Derk Pereboom reminded me about the author meets critics session on Michael McKenna's new book, *Conversation and Responsibility* (sorry, Michael).

Author-Meets-Critics: Michael McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility 9:00-Noon Chair: Kevin L. Timpe (Northwest Nazarene University)

Critics:Dana Kay Nelkin (University of California, San Diego) George Sher (Rice University) Holly M. Smith (Rutgers University)

Author:Michael McKenna (University of Arizona)

[Roman]

When I was compiling this, I had to make some judgment calls in order to keep the list manageable, so apologies for topics in phil mind and ethics that I left off (as well as John's presidential address, which will surely be a highlight); I also left out the book sessions, again for the same reason; I know a number of them are relevant. And, finally, sorry for leaving out chairs--again, I was trying to keep the list from becoming almost as long as the actual program itself.

[Kevin Timpe]

I know I'm partial, but I think the Pacific APA is great for the free will/agency/MR community.

After this year's conference, I'm coming off 3 years on the Pacific's program committee, though I'm program chair for the 2014 Pacific APA in SD. One of my first jobs is to replace the outgoing program committee members, myself included. So, among other things, I'm looking for person or persons to help in this capacity for free will/agency/MR. There are a number of other areas that I'm going to need to cover as well, but this is a large one for the Pacific, as you can imagine.

Program committee members typically serve 3 years, referee 12-18 papers per year, find commentators and chairs for papers accepted in their area, and put together 1 to 2 invited sessions.

If you're interested, please email me. Let's keep the Pacific APA a great palce for Flickerers. Thanks!

[John Fischer]

Thanks to Kevin for the great service and for all your support of our community and for, in the immortal words of Dan Speak, helping to fan the flickers of freedom!

[Kevin]

Thanks, John. You know me--I'm all for flickers!