This looks quite interesting, nice set of plenary speakers too. Ladyman is generally a great addition to these types of conference, dealing with the interface between philosophy of science and metaphysics and/or the rest of philosophy. Note that they accept proposals for symposia as well. I’m almost tempted; I successfully organised a symposium at the European Philosophy of Science Association conference in 2009, featuring Alexander Bird, Robin Hendry, and Paul Winstanley. If I were to organise one, it would probably be something on philosophy of physics, as I’ve been recently thinking about the relevance of scientific discovery for philosophy and most interesting cases come from particle physics. I dealt with this with my popular post on the Higgs ‘discovery’. I’m thinking of following up on this with a post on the philosophical relevance of Standard Model more generally, and the ‘discovery’ of particles which the SM regards as fundamental in particular. Anyway, it’s always a bit of work to plan something like this, and I’m rather busy at the moment (but if you’re reading this and think you’d have something great to contribute to such a symposium, do let me know).

GWP.2013 Call for Papers – Call for Symposia

First International Conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science

“How Much Philosophy in the Philosophy of Science?”

Leibniz University Hannover, Germany

March 11–14, 2013

In September 2011 the German Society for Philosophy of Science (Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie – GWP) was founded with the aim to better integrate the community of philosophers of science and scientists interested in philosophy of science in Germany and thereby to promote the field at a local as well as an international level. The GWP aims to organize an international conference every three years. The first conference will take place in Hannover with the overarching theme “How much philosophy in the philosophy of science?” (See www.wissphil.de/gwp2013 for aims and scope of the conference.)

The conference is open for contributions on any topic within the philosophy of science, construed broadly, and contributed papers will be clustered into parallel sessions focusing on a particular theme or special science. The overarching theme of the conference will explicitly be addressed in the plenary lectures as well as a number of parallel sessions. Contributed papers that address the conference theme are therefore particularly encouraged. Plenary lectures will be given by:
Peter Godfrey-Smith (New York)
Stephan Hartmann (Tilburg)
James Ladyman (Bristol)
Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (Athens)
Sandra D. Mitchell (Pittsburgh)
Margaret Morrison (Toronto)
Wolfgang Spohn (Konstanz)

We welcome proposals for individual papers (30 min plus 15 min discussion) or symposia (3 speakers in a total 2-hour session). Graduate students are especially encouraged to submit proposals for either individual papers or symposia. All submissions will be subjected to a blind refereeing procedure. Proposals for papers should include the title and abstract (up to 500 words), but no personal information. Please attach a second file with your name, affiliation, contact details, and the title of the submitted paper. Symposia proposals should include the symposium title, a description of the symposium’s rationale (up to 500 words) and for each of the 3 speakers the title and abstract (up to 500 words), but no names. Please attach a second file with names, affiliations, contact details of the symposium organizers and speakers, and the title of the proposed symposium. If your paper/symposium addresses the overarching conference theme, please indicate this in the attached file where names etc. are specified. If you or (one or more of) the speakers in your symposium are graduate students, please indicate this, too.

For submission via EasyChair see: www.wissphil.de/gwp2013

The deadline for all submissions is: 30 September 2012.

Organization: Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Dietmar Hübner, Meinard Kuhlmann, Holger Lyre, Thomas Reydon, Torsten Wilholt

www.wissphil.de

Make note of this major conference in London, October 2012. It’s organised by Anna Marmodoro’s ‘Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies’ project and it features a very impressive list of speakers!

The Metaphysics of Relations

International conference organised by the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies project

3rd – 5th October 2012

Institute of Philosophy

Senate House, Room 349, third floor
London

Invited Speakers

Jeff Brower (Purdue University)
Maureen Donnelly (SUNY at Buffalo)
Mauro Dorato (University of Rome)
John Hawthorne (University of Oxford)
John Heil (Washington University at St Louis)
Jon Jacobs (St. Louis University)
James Ladyman (University of Bristol)
Jonathan Lowe (University of Durham)
Fraser MacBride (University of Cambridge)
Stephen Mumford (University of Nottingham)
Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers University)
Peter Simons (Trinity College Dublin)
Jessica Wilson (University of Toronto)

Registration & accommodation

Registration is £15, but free for graduate students.
Registration will be available shortly via the on-line registration system.

The President Hotel, in Russell Square, has 20 rooms provisionally on hold for those attending the conference. The rate is £81 per night (single occupancy), £108 (double); this rate is not discounted from the hotel’s normal rates, but does allow attendees the opportunity to stay in the same place. These pre-booked rooms will be allocated on a first come first served basis. It is possible that the Hotel will have additional rooms available but this cannot be guaranteed. In order to make a booking please use the conference’s on-line registration system or contact directly the Central Reservation Office quoting reference ‘Philosophy Conference’. Contact details are as follows:

Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7278 7871/2/3
Email: info@imperialhotels.co.uk
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7837 4653

We also hope to offer several student bursaries; details of these will follow.

Just under a week left to submit to this metaphysics conference in Paris. Impressive speaker list, including E. J. Lowe and James Ladyman. The conference looks very interesting, and Paris in May is bound to be lovely. Unfortunately I’m unable to attend as I’m in the US at the time.

Call for abstracts:
“Individuals Across Sciences: A Revisionary Metaphysics?”
Paris, Paris-Sorbonne University, May 18-19, 2012

Organized by Alexandre Guay & Thomas Pradeu
with the support of Paris-Sorbonne University, the Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques (IHPST) and the Institut universitaire de France (IUF)

This conference will gather metaphysicians, philosophers of biology and philosophers of physics to offer a reflection on criteria of individuality in different sciences and to try to develop a unified account on the notion of what an individual is.
The conference will welcome ten invited speakers, and a selection of submitted papers.
The language of the conference is English.

Information, submission of abstracts: http://individuals2012.sciencesconf.org/

Deadline for the submission of abstracts: December 15, 2011

Please submit a short (maximum 200 words) and a long (maximum 1000 words) abstract.

Argument:
The question of knowing what individuals are and how they can be identified has been recurring throughout the history of philosophy. It was, for example, pointedly studied by Aristotle and Leibniz. Most contemporary philosophers consider the problem from a general, metaphysical, point of view, as is the case for Peter Strawson in his landmark book Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Strawson 1959). On the other hand, in philosophy of science, the preferred approach aims to define the ontological status of this or that individual, or this or that class of individuals, typically in the fields of physics (French & Krause 2006, Ladyman & Ross 2007, Morganti 2009) and biology (Hull 1978, Hull 1992, Dupré & O’Malley 2009, Godfrey-Smith 2009). Today, many consider that the approach used in philosophy of science has obviously been more precise and globally more fruitful than the purely metaphysical approach, often thought as excessively general (for example, see Ladyman & Ross 2007). The project of this conference stemmed from two observations. First, the recent developments on the notion of individual in physics or in biology are most certainly fascinating, but are still “regional”, by which we mean that practically no transversal reflection, comparing different scientific criteria of individuation and conceptions of individuality, has been done. Thus, we believe that a dialogue between philosophers of physics and philosophers of biology on this question is of crucial importance. Second, since it isolates a relatively small field of study, regionalism undoubtedly has the advantage of precision. However, it too often lacks ambition compared to the metaphysical approach, which tries to find the general conditions to individuate an object. We are convinced that philosophers of science must interact with metaphysicians, in order to determine in which way the focused ontological questioning of the former can contribute to the latter legitimate project of renewing general metaphysics. In bringing together specialists on metaphysics and on physical and biological ontologies, we hope to further define the difficulties that hold back the construction of a general conception of the individual that would be adequate for both physics and biology, and perhaps even beyond.

Invited speakers:
Ellen Clarke (All Souls College, Oxford University, UK)
Steven French (University of Leeds, UK)
Peter Godfrey-Smith (City University of New York, USA)
Alexandre Guay (University of Burgundy & IHPST, France; CIRST, Canada)
James Ladyman (Bristol University, UK)
Jonathan E. Lowe (Durham University, UK)
Matteo Morganti (Roma 3 University, Italy)
Samir Okasha (Bristol University, UK)
Thomas Pradeu (Paris-Sorbonne University, IHPST & IUF, France)
Simon Saunders (University of Oxford, UK)

Program committee:
Daniel Andler (Paris-Sorbonne University & IUF, France)
Alexander Bird (Bristol University, UK)
Mauro Dorato (Roma 3 University, Italy)
Jean Gayon (Panthéon-Sorbonne University, IHPST & IUF, France) (Head of committee)
Max Kistler (Panthéon-Sorbonne University, France)
Tim Lewens (University of Cambridge, UK)
Jean-Baptiste Rauzy (Paris-Sorbonne University, France)
Claudine Tiercelin (Collège de France, France)
(The PC will review the abstracts and select the most promising ones.)

Organizing committee:
Alexandra Arapinis (IHPST, France)
Isabelle Drouet (Paris-Sorbonne University, France)
Alexandre Guay (University of Burgundy & IHPST, France; CIRST, Canada)
Pascal Ludwig (Paris-Sorbonne University, France)
Thomas Pradeu (Paris-Sorbonne University, IHPST & IUF, France) (Head of committee)

Contact: thomas.pradeu@paris-sorbonne.fr ; alexandre.guay@u-bourgogne.fr

This conference will no doubt be monumental, with an impressive list of speakers including Tim Crane, James Ladyman, David Papineau, and many others. I have a great interest in these metaphilosophical themes, such as the use of intuitions in philosophy, although I’ve focused more on detailed questions concerning the methodology of metaphysics (such as modal epistemology). So, I’m not that familiar with all of the ‘experimental philosophy’ literature, even though I try to keep roughly up to date about it. No doubt this conference would be the perfect way to do that, but unfortunately I’ve got a previous commitment in the US around this time (The Carolina Metaphysics Workshop, of which more information in due course).

Philosophical Insights

June 21-23, 2012, Senate House, University of London

Conference announcement and CALL FOR PAPERS

http://www.uea.ac.uk/phi/research/conferences/philinsights

Since its inception, modern philosophy has had to compete with science. This competition has given rise to the question of what distinctive contribution philosophy can make to human knowledge. The conference will examine the genesis, nature and status of philosophical insights. It will bring together leading exponents of (post-)analytic, experimental and naturalistic philosophy, to develop and explore fresh answers, and address the issue of what kinds of contribution philosophy has made and can make to human knowledge – in particular in those areas in which it appears to compete with science.
Confirmed Speakers

David Papineau (King’s College London): “The Importance of Armchair Analysis”

Tim Crane (Cambridge): “Philosophical Insights from History”

Jennifer Nagel (Toronto): “Armchair-friendly experiments”

Hilary Kornblith (Amherst): “Naturalistic Defenses of Intuition”

Jonathan Weinberg (Arizona): “Humans as Instruments: Or, The Inevitability of Experimental Philosophy”

Eugen Fischer (UEA): ” Philosophical Intuitions, Heuristics, and Metaphors ”

Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh): “Toward an Experimental Philosophy of Language”

John Collins (UEA): “An Appropriate Naturalisation of the Philosophy of Language”

James Ladyman (Bristol): “Is the Concept of Ontological Dependence a Distinctively Metaphysical One about which Only Philosophical Insight Can Deliver Knowledge?”

Download the Provisional Programme (20KB) with abstracts of invited talks.
Aims

The conference will bring together philosophers who have participated, on different sides, in three related key debates.

1. Some distinguished philosophers (incl. David Papineau and Timothy Williamson) have attempted to formulate realistic self-images for post-analytic mainstream philosophy. In particular, they seek to show how ‘armchair philosophy’ which makes substantive use of thought experiments can contribute as autonomous discipline to empirical knowledge.

2. The movement of ‘experimental philosophy’ has engendered a lively debate about the nature, genesis and evidentiary value of philosophical intuitions, which have been regarded as a central source of philosophical insight, both in classical analytic and in contemporary philosophy.

3. Philosophers of various naturalist persuasions have questioned the autonomy of philosophy and sought to make substantive use of results from empirical disciplines in addressing philosophical questions. E.g., some sought a properly ‘naturalized’ metaphysics, which takes physics rather than intuition as its guide, and much recent work in the philosophy of concepts calls upon developmental psychology to shed light on the philosophically fraught concepts of number and natural kind.

Proceeding mainly from case-studies on particular philosophical practices, intuitions and relevant empirical research, contributors will contribute to these inter-connected debates and develop and explore partially complementary, partially competing answers to the guiding questions:

· Are there genuinely philosophical insights?

· How are they gained?

· What kind of knowledge do they yield?

· How do they compare with apparently similar kinds of scientific insights?

· How do they complement such insights?

Call for Papers

The organisers invite papers that contribute to the debates indicated with a view to answering some of these questions. Preference is given to papers that proceed from case-studies on particular philosophical practices, intuitions and relevant empirical research. Papers should be suitable for 40-minute presentation and subsequent publication. The Mind Association Occasional Series, published by OUP, has first refusal on the planned conference volume. For further information please contact Eugen Fischer.

Complete draft papers should be submitted along with 500-word abstracts, by April 1st, 2012, to Eugen Fischer. Decisions by April 20th, 2012.
Organisers: Eugen Fischer and John Collins, University of East Anglia, in collaboration with the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, with support from the Mind Association.

Another interesting workshop in Cologne. This one is organized by the DFG Research Group on Causation, Laws, Dispositions, and Explanation, involving Andreas Hüttemann, Markus Schrenk, and many others. Speakers include Helen Beebee, Jonathan Jacobs, James Ladyman, among others.

Call for Participation

D I S P O S I T I O N S, C A U S E S, M O D A L I T Y
Workshop in Cologne
7-9 March 2012

DFG Research Group Causation | Laws | Dispositions | Explanation

Convenors: Arno Goebel, Andreas Hüttemann, Alexander Reutlinger, and Markus Schrenk

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Helen Beebee: Against Dispositional Essentialism
Ralf Busse: Existence, Essence, and Law
Richard Corry: Powers take the Field
Jonathan Jacobs: How to be an Aristotelian and a reductionist about modality
James Ladyman: Dispositions and Forces
Olivier Massin: ‘When forces meet each other’
Barbara Vetter: How to be a dispositionalist about possibility
Daniel von Wachter: Causes do not necessitate their effect
Neil Williams: The Significance of Causal Relevance

IMPORTANT DATES:
7-9 March 2012 Workshop
31 January 2012 Registration

REGISTRATION
Please send an email to arno.goebel@gmx.de by the end of January to express your interest to participate. We can unfortunately offer only a limited number of places.

TOPIC OF THE WORKSHOP | ABSTRACT
Dispositionalists are philosophers who defend the view that many or all properties have an irreducible dispositional nature. Some dispositionalists have recently claimed that causal powers, capacities, tendencies, etc. bring their own kind of modality to the world which is neither eliminable by counterfactual conditionals nor reducible to natural or metaphysical necessity. Forces or vectors sometimes serve as a preliminary characterization of a disposition?s sui generis modality. However, such a theory of dispositional modality has yet to be spelled out in detail. It would also have to reveal how dispositions and causation are related. This workshop wishes to investigate into the possibility (or impossibility) of such a project.

TRAVEL GRANTS
We will be able to offer a restricted number of travel grants (up to 250 Euros each). PhD students and advanced M.A. students are encouraged to apply for these grants by submitting a short letter of motivation (200 words) and a short CV. The deadline is 4 December 2011. Please send the applications to Alexander.Reutlinger@uni-koeln.de.

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE RESEARCH GROUP
http://www.clde.uni-koeln.de/

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact one of the organisers:
arno.goebel@gmx.de
Alexander.Reutlinger@uni-koeln.de
markus.schrenk@uni-koeln.de