Some folks who weren't going to be attending the Pacific APA asked me to post my SPA Meeting remarks on the future of the free will debate (thanks Andrei and Luca for organizing that session!). For those interested, here were the core of those remarks:
- The past 40 years of work on free will work has been dominated by philosophers working out the consequences of a problematic given to us by the Great Trinity
- We’re approaching Event Horizon for that work, i.e., the point where that work will have significantly less visible influence on subsequent generations.
- What comes next is hard to see, and indeed, it is entertaining but Ultimately Fruitless to speculate about what comes next.
- However, since reality is no constraint on The Provocative, I’ve made some prognostications that are at least as plausible as any random selection of theses
For the details, read on.
Continue reading "After the Free Will Renaissance" »
I'll be participating in the Society for the Philosophy of Agency group meeting at the APA in Seattle. Following Manuel Vargas's lead, I'm asking for a little help. Below are some questions I'll be asked. What would you say?
Q. What are some of the central issues in action theory and what strikes you as the most interesting recent research development in the field?
Q. What do you see emerging as a potential hot research topic in action theory in the next 5 years? Beyond 5 years?
Other people will be talking about the X-phi of agency, moral psychology, free will, and science & human agency. So I think my topic is everything else in action theory (a.k.a. philosophy of action, philosophy of agency).
Thanks in advance for your advice.
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Submissions of unpublished papers are welcome on any topic relevant to the conference theme (see below).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.
Continue reading "Intentions: Philosophical and Empirical Issues" »
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