The 2013 UT Philosophy Graduate Conference will be held on April 5 and 6, 2013 at the University of Texas at Austin. Keynote Speakers:Tim Crane (Cambridge)Richard Feldman (Rochester)We are now accepting submissions from graduate students. The submission deadline for papers is January 5, 2013. Papers should not exceed 4,000 words in length (excluding notes and bibliography). We welcome papers on any topic in analytic philosophy. Submission guidelines are below.Please the following two documents to UT.Philosophy.Conference@gmail.com:
- Your paper, including title and abstract, prepared for blind review.
- Please use your paper title as the name of your document.
- A cover page, including the following:
- Paper title
- Author’s name
- Author’s institutional affiliation
- Author’s email address
- Word count
- Abstract (not exceeding 250 words
Monday, November 19, 2012
UT Grad Conference
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
9th Annual Wisconsin Metaethics Workshop
UW-Madison is hosting yet another Metaethics Workshop this weekend. The schedule and other information can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/wiscmew/
The keynote address will be given by Jonathan Dancy (Reading and Texas) on Saturday, 9/29, from 3:20 until 4:50. His talk is entitled "From Thought to Action." There are a number of other great philosophers giving talks. If you're in the area, I encourage you to come.
If you can't make it, consider coming to next year's workshop. If you're interested in presenting a paper, abstracts will likely be due in June for the workshop in September 2013.
The keynote address will be given by Jonathan Dancy (Reading and Texas) on Saturday, 9/29, from 3:20 until 4:50. His talk is entitled "From Thought to Action." There are a number of other great philosophers giving talks. If you're in the area, I encourage you to come.
If you can't make it, consider coming to next year's workshop. If you're interested in presenting a paper, abstracts will likely be due in June for the workshop in September 2013.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
WMU Graduate Philosophy Conference
Call for Papers
6th Annual Western Michigan Graduate Philosophy Conference
Date: December 7, 8, and 9, 2012
We invite work by current graduate students in any broadly analytic area of philosophy. Papers should be approximately 3000 words in length and should be prepared for blind review. A 250-word abstract should precede the paper. Presentations will be twenty-five minutes, with a ten minute commentary to follow. Response will be five minutes, followed by twenty minutes of discussion.
Keynote speakers this year will be Geoffrey Sayre-McCord from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Hilary Kornblith from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Acceptances will be announced on Friday, October 26, 2012.
See http://homepages.wmich.edu/~
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Undergraduate Journal - Arete
Arete, The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Rutgers University, is now accepting paper submissions for publication in its Spring 2013 issue. On the order of 3 papers will be published, digitally and in print (limited run).
Traditionally only work from college upperclassmen is encouraged. Analytic rigor is prerequisite for publication. Papers from any field of philosophy are welcome.
Submissions should not exceed 8,000 words, with a cover page, abstract, and citations in APA format. Do not include information in the text of your paper that identifies the author or the institution you attend. Submit papers by attachment, (from an email address we can use to correspond with you) in Word document or PDF format, to rundergrad.philo.journal@
We will email you on or shortly after that date to confirm our receipt of your paper. Based on the number of submissions we have received in the past, it will take us some time to read all the papers submitted for this issue. Consequently the authors of papers accepted for publication will be notified in December.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Biology, "Legitimate" Rape, and the Morality of Abortion
As you've probably heard, the GOP has officially taken a strong stance against the moral permissibility of abortion. The party's position is that a woman should not be able to abort a fetus, even if the fetus is the product of rape or incest.
Representative Akin's comments have received quite a bit of attention recently. In discussing pregnancy resulting from rape, he remarked: “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
The majority of the controversy over Akin's comments revolve around: (a) biology and whether a raped woman is more or less likely to get pregnant than a woman that engages in "normal" intercourse; and (b) his use of the phrase 'legitimate'. I don't think either of these is where oppenents should really direct their ire.
Regarding (a), it appears that Akin is incorrect about his biological claim. A number of professional medical associations have disputed his remarks. But, even if he's right, I don't see why this is relevant to the discussion. Suppose that it is extremely unlikely that a woman becomes pregnant after rape. Imagine that merely 1% of cases of rape result in pregnancy and the chances of getting pregnant from "normal" intercourse is significantly greater than this. What's the argument that gets one from this (dubious) biological point to the conclusion that it is wrong for a woman to abort a fetus after being raped? I don't see why the probabilities matter here.
Regarding (b), I can certainly see why people think that Akin is implying that some (many?) cases of purported rape are not legitimate (where this is read: actual cases of rape). If this is Akin's position, there may be cause to be upset. And we can have a very interesting discussion about what counts as rape and what exactly it is to give consent. But, again, I don't see anything in what Akin says that has anything to do with whether women that have been raped and become pregnant ought to be allowed to have abortions. And that's the issue at hand. That's a major part of the official platform of the GOP. A quick look at the GOP website and interviews with the major players in the Republican Party yields little by way of actual arguments for this controversial position.
We need to engage in a debate about the issue and this requires wrestling with premises that are actually relevant. Unfortunately, it seems the bulk of politicians (on both sides of the aisle) and members of the media (liberal and conservative alike) are guilty of failing to do this. This, I think, is deserving of our ire.
Representative Akin's comments have received quite a bit of attention recently. In discussing pregnancy resulting from rape, he remarked: “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
The majority of the controversy over Akin's comments revolve around: (a) biology and whether a raped woman is more or less likely to get pregnant than a woman that engages in "normal" intercourse; and (b) his use of the phrase 'legitimate'. I don't think either of these is where oppenents should really direct their ire.
Regarding (a), it appears that Akin is incorrect about his biological claim. A number of professional medical associations have disputed his remarks. But, even if he's right, I don't see why this is relevant to the discussion. Suppose that it is extremely unlikely that a woman becomes pregnant after rape. Imagine that merely 1% of cases of rape result in pregnancy and the chances of getting pregnant from "normal" intercourse is significantly greater than this. What's the argument that gets one from this (dubious) biological point to the conclusion that it is wrong for a woman to abort a fetus after being raped? I don't see why the probabilities matter here.
Regarding (b), I can certainly see why people think that Akin is implying that some (many?) cases of purported rape are not legitimate (where this is read: actual cases of rape). If this is Akin's position, there may be cause to be upset. And we can have a very interesting discussion about what counts as rape and what exactly it is to give consent. But, again, I don't see anything in what Akin says that has anything to do with whether women that have been raped and become pregnant ought to be allowed to have abortions. And that's the issue at hand. That's a major part of the official platform of the GOP. A quick look at the GOP website and interviews with the major players in the Republican Party yields little by way of actual arguments for this controversial position.
We need to engage in a debate about the issue and this requires wrestling with premises that are actually relevant. Unfortunately, it seems the bulk of politicians (on both sides of the aisle) and members of the media (liberal and conservative alike) are guilty of failing to do this. This, I think, is deserving of our ire.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Grad Conference Announcement
We invite graduate students to submit papers to the Sixth Annual Graduate
Conference in Philosophy co-hosted by Arché, Philosophical Research Centre
for Logic, Language, Metaphysics and Epistemology, and CSMN, Centre for the
Study of Mind in Nature. Papers should be no longer than 4,200 words, and
should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. Papers that make a
contribution to contemporary debates in philosophy and that focus on the
research interests of Arché and CSMN are particularly welcome.
Keynote speakers: John Hawthorne, Delia Graff Fara
Deadline for submissions: September 1st, 2012.
Notification of acceptance by 1st October.
The conference will be held November 17th/18th 2012 at the, University of Oslo, Norway.
ACCOMMODATION AND TRAVEL EXPENSES FOR ALL SPEAKERS WILL BE COVERED, and all
talks will have a respondent from an Arche or CSMN faculty member.
Please visit the conference websight: http://www.st-
Conference in Philosophy co-hosted by Arché, Philosophical Research Centre
for Logic, Language, Metaphysics and Epistemology, and CSMN, Centre for the
Study of Mind in Nature. Papers should be no longer than 4,200 words, and
should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. Papers that make a
contribution to contemporary debates in philosophy and that focus on the
research interests of Arché and CSMN are particularly welcome.
Keynote speakers: John Hawthorne, Delia Graff Fara
Deadline for submissions: September 1st, 2012.
Notification of acceptance by 1st October.
The conference will be held November 17th/18th 2012 at the, University of Oslo, Norway.
ACCOMMODATION AND TRAVEL EXPENSES FOR ALL SPEAKERS WILL BE COVERED, and all
talks will have a respondent from an Arche or CSMN faculty member.
Please visit the conference websight: http://www.st-
Friday, August 10, 2012
Conference for Grad Students
Virginia Tech is
now
accepting submissions for the 9th annual Virginia Tech Graduate
Philosophy
Conference. This year’s conference will be on Topics in
Philosophy of Science
and will be held on November 2-3, 2012. The keynote address will
be given by
Anjan Chakravartty (Notre Dame) and the faculty address will be
given by
Benjamin Jantzen (Virginia Tech).
Submissions must be
a
maximum of 3500 words and suitable for a 25-minute presentation.
Papers must be
prepared for blind review and sent as PDF or DOC attachments
with no
identification of authors or affiliations. Please include a
separate cover
sheet with title, author name(s), 150-200 word abstract,
institutional
affiliation, e-mail address, and phone number. All submissions
must be sent to vt.gradphilclub@gmail.com by
September 6, 2012.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Getting Settled
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Rationality and Thinking Fast vs. Slow
I just listened to an interview with Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. He made a remark about an interesting case. Suppose that a person is informed that a loved one needs immediate surgery in order to save her life, and that this surgery has a 99% success rate (i.e., only 1% of patients do not survive the surgery). Kahneman suggests that this is one of many cases in which people behave irrationally. Most people, he suggests, would be very nervous and fearful that the person they love would die. He points out that this is irrational because there is but a very small percentage of people that do not survive the surgery. This verdict doesn't seem right to me. To call such people irrational or to say that such emotions aren't apt for the situation strikes me as a mistake. It seems to me that because the stakes or so high (a person's life is on the line) the 1% chance is rather significant. If the situation involved something with lower stakes, then I'd be prepared to say of such a person that she were irrational or not appreciating the statistical facts in forming her beliefs, emotions, etc. Consider a different case: Suppose that I have a cold and my physician says that such-and-such a treatment has a 99% chance of substantially reducing my symptoms and a 1% chance of exacerbating them. In this sort of case, it seems right to say that I would be irrational in believing that my condition would get worse upon taking the medication. It would be strange for me to feel afraid of taking it. It seems to me that the statistics matter and must inform our beliefs, guide our emotions, etc. But it also seems understandable that the stakes/severity of the possible consequences matter and can help explain why a person might think or feel certain things; indeed, such considerations might even justify what would otherwise be a bad inference/ill-formed reaction.
What do you think of all this?
(I should confess that I haven't read his book yet. Maybe he offers some replies to my worry. It's on my list for summer reading and hope to get to it soon.)
What do you think of all this?
(I should confess that I haven't read his book yet. Maybe he offers some replies to my worry. It's on my list for summer reading and hope to get to it soon.)
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