Another interesting conference coming up: Because II organised by the Phlox research group in Berlin and the eidos research group in Geneva (where I was visiting in November-December 2009). The first Because conference was organised in Geneva in 2008. I submitted a paper, but unfortunately didn’t get to go. I’d love to go to this one, as the keynote speaker is Kit Fine once again. However, this conference focuses specifically on grounding and other forms of non-causal explanation, and I don’t really have a paper on this topic at the moment. We’ll see if I can come up with something before the deadline of June 6th. The conference itself takes place in Berlin between August 30th and September 1st. The original call for papers follows:

Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder, together with the research groups phlox and eidos, invite submissions on grounding and non-causal explanation for the conference Because II. The con­fe­rence is a follow-up to Because, which took place in Geneva in 2008. The keynote lecture will be given by Kit Fine. Further invited speakers will be announced in due course.

Issues that may be addressed include, but are not limited to:

* Accounts of Grounding
* Varieties of Non-causal Explanations
* The Semantics of ‘Because’
* Applications of Notions of Grounding and Non-causal Explanation (e.g. in the Debates on Dependence, Truthmaking, Constitution)
* General Issues About Explanation

Submissions should consist of longer abstracts, not exceeding 1.000 words. The abstract should outline the topic and the main arguments of the paper. The deadline for submissions is the 6th of June 2010. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the 4th of July 2010. From the submissions, six papers will be selected for the conference. The accepted papers should be made available (through the conference webpage) to all participants two weeks before the conference. Presentations should not take longer than 40 minutes.

Phlox will provide accommodation for the selected speakers; additionally, they will receive a mo­de­rate travel grant.