CFP: Society for the Metaphysics of Science (1st Annual Conference)

The Society for the Metaphysics of Science will be holding its first annual conference on September 17-18, 2015 at Rutgers University – Newark.  As well as various presentations, the conference will also feature the first organizational meeting of the Society which will elect officers, begin to make various policies, plan future conferences, etc. Both those interested in presenting papers and/or participating in the Society are invited to the conference. (For more information on the society, see the Society for the Metaphysics of Science web page.)

At the conference, presentations will be 40 minutes.  Submissions should be on a topic in the metaphysics of science broadly construed, of no more than 6,000 words and should include an abstract of ~150 words and a word count.  All papers must employ gender-neutral language and be prepared for blind review. 

Submissions must be made using the Easychair online submission system at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sms2015.  The submission deadline is March 1, 2015.  Notifications of acceptance will be delivered by May 15, 2015.  The conference will have a $50 registration fee.  (The fee will be waived for graduate students.)

Our keynote speaker will be Barry Loewer, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and all other sessions will comprise submitted papers.

Questions may be gmailed to ken.aizawa.

Program Committee:

Ken Aizawa, Rutgers University, Newark, Chair

Carl Gillett, Northern Illinois University

Alyssa Ney, Rochester University

Thomas Polger, University of Cincinnati

Jessica Wilson, University of Toronto

CFP: Society for Exact Philosophy Annual Conference

CFP: Society for Exact Philosophy Annual Conference
The 39th annual meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy will be held at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. May 26-28, 2011. Conference organizers: Chris Tillman and Esa Diaz-Leon.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Society for Exact Philosophy invites submissions for its 2011 meeting. Paper submissions in all areas of analytic philosophy are welcomed. A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a special volume of Synthese, guest edited by Marc Moffett. Keynote speakers to be announced.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 8th, 2011.

Submission Instructions

Authors are requested to submit their papers according to the following guidelines: 1) Papers should be prepared for blind refereeing, 2) put into PDF file format, and 3) sent as an email attachment to the address given below -- where 4) the subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase "SEP submission", and 5) the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including i) return email address, ii) author's name, iii) affiliation, iv) paper title, and v) short abstract.

Electronic submissions should be sent to societyexactphilosophy2011@yahoo.ca

Nota Bene: All submissions will receive email confirmation of receipt. If your submission does not soon result in such an email confirmation, please send an inquiry either to the above address or to the local organizer.


More Information--

For more information on the conference, please visit the conference web site at: http://www.phil.ufl.edu/SEP/meeting/2011/
Or contact the conference organizers:

Chris Tillman chris.tillman@gmail.com
Esa Diaz-Leon esadiazleon@gmail.com

Information on the Society and its previous meetings is on the web at http://www.phil.ufl.edu/SEP.

"The SEP is dedicated to providing sustained discussion among researchers who believe that rigorous methods have a place in philosophical investigations."

CfP: Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference 2011

The call for papers is here.

Structure and Identity

The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Foundations of Structuralism Project will host a major international conference this Summer that may be of interest to many subscribers to this blog (and please forward and post elsewhere as appropriate).

Structure and Identity

July 23rd-25th 2010, University of Bristol
Confirmed speakers include:
John Burgess
Katherine Hawley
Fraser MacBride
Charles Parsons
Simon Saunders
Stewart Shapiro

There will also be a programme of contributed papers. If you are interested in giving a paper please send a title and abstract of 500 words by 10th April 2010 to James Ladyman (james.ladyman@bristol.ac.uk)

To book your place please email Jess Dunton (j.dunton@bristol.ac.uk)

Questions to be addressed include:

• How is structuralism best characterised?:
  
• In terms of incompleteness (objects lack certain kinds of properties)?
  
• In terms of dependence (objects depend on each other or their structure for their existence and/or identity)?
• In terms of contextual individuation (objects are individuated relationally rather than intrinsically)?
• How are these characterizations related?
• Are structuralist views in metaphysics, for example, concerning properties and dispositions, justified?
• Does a structuralist view of mathematics provide the best account of mathematical practice and the ontology and epistemology of mathematics?
• Are elementary particles individuals? Do they satisfy the principle of the identity of indiscernibles?
• What are criteria of identity, and what adequacy conditions are appropriate for them?
• Should we be committed to some form of predicativity requirement and/or some form of identity of indiscernibles? What is individuation?
• Do we need a substantive account of how objects are individuated?
• How should the various metaphysical notions of dependence be analysed? What role will the notions of individuation and criteria of identity play in this analysis?
• What are the relations between notions of entity, object, individual, and substance? What implications would structuralism have for these notions?
• How does structuralism relate to ontological holism and to the thesis that there is no fundamental level to reality?
• What is the relationship between primitive identity or haecceity and haecceitism about worlds?

It is anticipated that a volume of papers from the conference will be published.


http://www.bristol.ac.uk/structuralism/conference-july10.html

CfP: The Architecture of Reality

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Architecture of Reality

Deadline for submissions: April 30, 2010

Advisory Editor: Matthew H. Slater (Bucknell University)

Humans are dividers and systematizers, confidently wielding the classificatory knife in the natural sciences and in metaphysics alike. But are we carving nature at its joints? We can identify distinct ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ components to this basic question. Horizontal: Is the world ‘intrinsically jointed’? Are there natural properties or natural kinds? Are there natural units which instantiate these properties and kinds? Vertical: Is reality divided into levels? If so, is there a fundamental level comprising reality’s ultimate furniture? If not, what? Presumably, these two sets of questions intersect. But how, precisely? What, in short, is the architecture of reality? Might we require multiple ‘architectural plans’ to describe nature correctly, or would just one do? We invite contributions on both the ground- level metaphysical issues (proposals for particular architectures or particular approaches to plan-drawing) and to methodological issues concerning these efforts.

http://monist.buffalo.edu/callsforpapers.html#Architecture

CFP: Special Issue of The Monist on Powers

The Monist

"Powers"

Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2010
Advisory Editor: Neil Williams, University at Buffalo (new [at] buffalo.edu)

A sewing needle is swiped across a bar magnet, then pushed through a piece of cork and dropped into a glass of water. The needle will point immediately to the nearest pole. A female moth releases a small trace of sex pheromone; immediately males of the species up to two miles away will be attracted to her. The evidence for such causal powers is all around us. And as is shown in the response to the work of authors such as George Molnar and C. B. Martin, the thought that objects might be inherently powerful is on the rise. What is the nature of such causal powers? How are they to be characterised? What place do non-powers have within power-based ontologies? To what extent can powers be explanatory? Can powers exist entirely ungrounded? Contributions are invited addressing these and connected issues about the role and nature of powers.