Flickers of Freedom

Intellectual Humility: A Call for Proposals

Thanks to Ian Church for sending along the following Call for Proposals:

IH: Overview

This program will provide up to $4.0 million in research support for empirical work on the virtue Intellectual Humility. “How little we know, how eager to learn” is the slogan of the intellectually humble. Unfortunately, the vice of intellectual pride is commonly displayed by both the ignorant (who know little and don’t care that they don’t) and the knowledgeable (who know enough to presume to know it all). In areas where public discourse is shot through with intellectual pride at so many different levels, the topic of intellectual humility is of crucial practical importance.Although humility has received significant attention, its distinctively intellectual side needs much further exploration. Intellectual humility concerns how we come to hold and retain our beliefs. It is constituted by a state of openness to new ideas, receptivity to new sources of evidence and the implications of that evidence, and willingness to revise even deeply held beliefs in the face of compelling reasons.

This project thus seeks to:

1. Support research on some under-explored areas in the psychology and evolution of intellectual humility/arrogance;
2. Foster critical engagement between those who work in the cognitive and evolutionary sides of this topic;
3. Digest the results of work in the field in order to advance its philosophical and theological significance;
4. Assess the relevance of the results to determine the impediments to intellectual humility, and to identify concrete strategies for overcoming these native tendencies.

Investigators (individual or teams) from the psychological sciences and other relevant empirical sciences are invited to request from $50,000 up to $270,000 for a research project of up to two years in length. We anticipate making 16 awards. Award semi-finalists will be invited to participate in a “virtual” workshop in November 2012. Award winners will be invited to two conferences, one mid-project conference in May 2014 in Princeton, NJ, and one capstone conference in May 2015 in Los Angeles, CA. Inquiries should be directed to Rebecca Sok, at intellectualhumility@fuller.edu.

The complete call for proposals can be found here.  Note, the deadline for the 1,000 word LOI is July 1s5, 2012.!

Grad Student Conference on Free Will and Responsibility at FSU

The Philosophy Graduate Student Association (PGSA) of Florida State University is now accepting submissions for their graduate conference on free will and moral responsibility.

The conference will take place at Florida State University on September 28 and 29, 2012. Keynote speakers will be:

• Robert H. Kane, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
• Alfred R. Mele, William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University

Those interested in submitting high quality papers related to free will and moral responsibility (including papers on the wider notion of agency) should email their submissions to fsupgsa@gmail.com. Papers should fulfill the following criteria:

• Prepared for blind review
• No more than 4,000 words
• Suitable for 25-minute presentation
• Preceded by an abstract of 150-250 words

Along with the paper, please also submit a cover page with the following information:

• Presenter’s name
• Institutional affiliation
• Contact information (email address or phone number)
• Title of paper
• Abstract of the paper
• Word count

The deadline for submissions is July 1. We will notify those whose papers have been accepted by August 12.

For questions or further information, please contact Kyle Fritz (kgf10@fsu.edu), Dan Miller (djm09@fsu.edu), or Robyn Waller (rar09h@fsu.edu).  

 

Intentions: Philosophical and Empirical Issues

Call for papers: Topoi conference and special issue 
Intentions: Philosophical and Empirical Issues 
Rome, Italy, 29-30 November 2012

We are proud to announce that the first Topoi Conference will be held in Rome in November 2012. This will be the first in a series of conferences, to be held every 2 years, sponsored by Topoi: An International Journal of Philosophy (http://www.springer.com/philosophy/journal/11245).

In analogy with the journal format, each conference will focus on a specific theme (topos), and contributions presented to the conference will later appear in an issue of the journal dedicated to the same topic.

INVITED SPEAKERS 
Marcel Brass (Ghent) 
Cristiano Castelfranchi (Rome) 
Elisabeth Pacherie (Paris) 
Corrado Sinigaglia (Milan)

SUBMITTED PAPERS 
Submissions of unpublished papers are welcome on any topic relevant to the conference theme (see below). Submitted articles should be in English, not exceed 5.000 words in length (including references), and be prepared for blind reviewing. Only original papers (i.e., not published or submitted for publication elsewhere) will be considered, since the authors of accepted contributions will be invited to submit a revised longer version of their papers for a special issue of Topoi, edited by Markus Schlosser (Leiden) and Fabio Paglieri (Rome).

Submission of papers by e-mail to: Fabio Paglieri (fabio.paglieri@istc.cnr.it) 
Accepted file formats: .doc, .rtf., .odp, .pdf 
Deadline for submission (full papers): 31 August 2012

RATIONALE AND THEME 
Theorizing about human action has a long history in philosophy, and the nature of intention and intentional action has received a lot of attention in recent analytic philosophy. At the same time, intentional action has become an empirically studied phenomenon in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Many results obtained in these areas have been incorporated within the current philosophical debate, while at the same time scientists have often adopted in their experiments and models philosophical assumptions on the nature of intention and intentional action. As a result, the study of intentions is nowadays a thriving enterprise, where both conceptual and empirical issues are discussed in a dialogue across disciplines.

The Manipulation Argument Conference: Extended Deadline

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS HAS BEEN EXTENDED UNTIL 15
MARCH, 2012. 

This is a call for postgraduate respondents for an upcoming conference on
the Manipulation Argument.

The conference will be held in Budapest in early June 2012. Deadline for
applications: 15 March, 2012. Please find details below.

***

Conference Title: The Manipulation Argument
Place: Central European University (Budapest, Hungary)
Date: 7-9 June, 2012

Confirmed invited speakers:
- Ish Haji (University of Calgary)
- Michael McKenna (University of Arizona)
- Al Mele (Florida State University)
- Derk Pereboom (Cornell University)
- Paul Russell (University of British Columbia)

Organizers:    
- Michael McKenna & Andras Szigeti (Lund University/CEU)

Problems of the Self at CEU

Central European University’s summer school (http://summer.ceu.hu/self-2012) invites applications from graduate students, junior faculty and researchers from all over the world. 

The course aims to present the state of the art in research on the self from philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, sociology, and cognitive anthropology. Themes revolve around the nature of the self, as revealed through self-consciousness, body perception, action and joint action, and its embedding in society and culture. Historical and developmental perspectives provide other angles on the self. The course presents a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary discussion on the self from multiple perspectives. It is directed at advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty working in philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience and cognate disciplines.

Course Directors:
Natalie Sebanz, Cognitive Science Department, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary/Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Raboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Hong Yu Wong, Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Philosophy of Neuroscience Group, University of Tubingen, Germany

Faculty:
Peter Callero, Department of Sociology, Western Oregon University, Monmouth, USA; Guenther Knoblich, Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Budapest, Hungary; Beatrice Longuenesse, Department of Philosophy, New York University, USA; Christopher A. B. Peacocke, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, USA; Phillipe Rochat, Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, USA; Paul Snowdon, Department of Philosophy, University College London, UK; Manos Tsakiris, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK; 

Guest Speakers:
Maurice Bloch, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, UK; Gyorgy Gergely, Department of Cognitive Science/Cognitive Development Centre, CEU, Budapest, Hungary

The application deadline is February 15, 2012 (late applications will be reviewed until all course places have been filled).

Financial aid is available.

CEU Conference: The Manipulation Argument

This a call for postgraduate respondents for an upcoming conference on the Manipulation Argument.

The conference will be held in Budapest in early June 2012. Deadline for applications: 29 February, 2012. Please find details below.

***

Conference Title: The Manipulation Argument
Place: Central European University (Budapest, Hungary)
Date: 7-9 June, 2012

Confirmed invited speakers:
- Ish Haji (University of Calgary)
- Michael McKenna (University of Arizona)
- Al Mele (Florida State University)
- Derk Pereboom (Cornell University)
- Paul Russell (University of British Columbia)

Organizers:    
- Michael McKenna & Andras Szigeti (Lund University/CEU)

The event forms part of 'What it is to be human?' project (http://humanproject.ceu.hu/) hosted by the Philosophy Department of Central European University (http://philosophy.ceu.hu/) and funded by the National Development Agency/MAG Zrt.

OSM Younger Scholars Prize

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize

Sponsored by the Ammonius Foundation (http://www.ammonius.org/) and administered by the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, the 2012 Younger Scholar Prize annual essay competition is open to scholars who are within ten years of receiving a Ph.D. or students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program. (Independent scholars should enquire of the editor to determine eligibility.) The award is $8,000. Winning essays will appear in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, so submissions must not be under review elsewhere.

Essays should generally be no longer than 10,000 words; longer essays may be considered, but authors must seek prior approval. To be eligible for the 2012 prize, submissions must be electronically submitted by 30 January 2012 (paper submissions are no longer accepted). Refereeing will be blind; authors should omit remarks and references that might disclose their identities. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail. The winner is determined by a committee of members of the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, and will be announced in early March. At the author’s request, the board will simultaneously consider entries in the prize competition as submissions for Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, independently of the prize.

Previous winners of the Younger Scholar Prize are:

Thomas Hofweber, “Inexpressible Properties and Propositions”, Vol. 2;

Matthew McGrath, “Four-Dimensionalism and the Puzzles of Coincidence”, Vol. 3;

Cody Gilmore, “Time Travel, Coinciding Objects, and Persistence”, Vol. 3;

Stephan Leuenberger, “Ceteris Absentibus Physicalism”, Vol. 4;

Jeffrey Sanford Russell, “The Structure of Gunk: Adventures in the Ontology of Space”, Vol. 4;

Bradford Skow, “Extrinsic Temporal Metrics”, Vol. 5;

Jason Turner, “Ontological Nihilism”, Vol. 6;

Rachael Briggs and Graeme A. Forbes, “The Real Truth About the Unreal Future”, Vol. 7;

Shamik Dasgupta, “Absolutism vs Comparativism about Quantities”, forthcoming, Vol. 8.

 

Enquiries should be addressed to Dean Zimmerman:

dwzimmer@rci.rutgers.edu

 

Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy

Oxford University Press has started up the new series Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy. Each volume will consist of a series of new papers in the field of experimental philosophy. 

The Call for Abstracts for the first volume is now available. So if you are interested in contributing, all you need to do is send in a brief (less than 1,000 word) abstract by Dec. 15. Papers can present new experimental findings or examine the philosophical implications of existing studies. Criticisms of experimental philosophy are always welcome. 

Existing research in experimental philosophy has often focused on questions about free will (see this quick bibliography), and it would be great to have some submissions from Flickerers in this new volume! 

Basic Desert

Call for papers for a special issue of Philosophical Exploration on Basic Desert:

http://www.maureensie.info/Website_Maureen/BasicDesert.html

Time and Agency CFP

Roman Altshuler asked if I could post this. 

CALL FOR PAPERS — TIME AND AGENCY

George Washington University

November, 18-19  2011

Invited Speakers:

●      J. David Velleman, New York University

●      Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

●      Shaun Gallagher, University of Central Florida

Actions have a duration, they sometimes follow on intentions directed toward the future and are themselves sometimes directed toward bringing about future events. They may also be caused by past events, or be brought on by motives or reasons. Actions are also individuated from within a temporally extended continuous stream of activity. They are performed by agents, whose selves or practical identities may or may not be unified through psychological continuity, through their standing plans for the future, or through narratives. Agents inhabit a world that is temporally ordered, and that ordering is reflected in action. In seeing themselves as standing under an obligation, agents recognize reasons for future actions, and in judging them responsible for those actions we in turn trace their agency to past decisions on their part.

Whatever perspective one takes on the above issues, it is clear that action and agency cannot be understood apart from time. We are soliciting strong papers in both the analytic and continental traditions. Papers will ideally be written in a manner that will be clear and accessible to scholars from different backgrounds working on the philosophy of action.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

●      Causal and teleological theories of action.

●      Action individuation within a stream of activity.

●      Future-directed intention, intention in action, and the temporality of directions of fit.

●      Plans, personal policies, and other diachronic volitional states.

●      Diachronic personal identity, practical identity, continuity, and narrative.

●      Historical and time-slice views of moral responsibility.

●      Temporality, movement and the life world.

●      Temporal aspects of free will, determinism, and fatalism.

●      Narrative time and the explanation of action.

●      Retention and protention in agency.

●      Heidegger on conscience, being-toward-death, or the relation between mood and action.

●      Ricoeur on birth, life, character, habit, and consent to the involuntary.

●      Psychoanalysis on deferred action.

Please send papers or abstracts for a talk of approximately 40 minutes. Ideally, submissions should not be under review for publication. Abstracts should be around 1,500 words, although complete papers (with a brief abstract) will receive priority in consideration. Please include a short CV or author bio (these will be used to interest possible publishers and will not be involved in selection of papers for the conference). Abstracts, papers, bios, and correspondence should be sent to the conference organizers, Michael Sigrist, msigrist@gwu.edu and Roman Altshuler, raltshul@ic.sunysb.edu. Please indicate with your submission whether you would be willing to serve as a commentator.

Deadline for submissions: July 1

Decisions will be sent out by: August 31

Sponsored by The George Washington University Department of Philosophy