This looks nice, but too far away for me! Fraser Macbride as the invited speaker. Here is the CFP, not much time left though:

The Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy (SSHAP) will be meeting in Minneapolis during the Central APA (March 30-April 2, 2011). SSHAP wishes to invite members and non-members to submit contributions on the following topic:

Truth in Analytic Philosophy

Invited speaker: Fraser MacBride (University of Cambridge)

The nature of truth is a perennial topic for philosophy, but the advent of analytic philosophy seems to have put debates about truth on a new course. Initially writers such as Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein tried to distinguish themselves by arguing that their views of truth were considerably clearer than their predecessors. Later Tarski’s seminal writings on truth forced a reevaluation of some earlier approaches and also led to some new theories as in the work of Carnap, Quine and Davidson. These debates continue into the present where philosophers combine issues from logic, semantics, metaphysics and epistemology in order to articulate and defend their preferred proposals. The questions this raises include the following: Is there anything distinctive about the way analytic philosophers have approached truth historically? What lessons can we learn about current debates on truth by considering earlier analytic philosophers? What have been the neglected trends in the history of analytical philosophical thought about truth?

CALL FOR PAPERS

A limited number of papers will be selected for presentation at the meeting. Time allowed for presentations is 60 minutes including discussion. Submitted papers should have a maximum of 4000 words and should be accompanied by a 200 words abstract.

All submitted papers should be PREPARED FOR BLIND REVIEW, and should be sent electronically to:

bolzano@ksu.edu

EXTENDED DEADLINE: 1 September 2010. Authors will be notified shortly thereafter.

In addition to individual papers, the scientific committee will be considering PROPOSALS FOR SYMPOSIA. Time allowed for symposia is 3 hours (including discussion). Symposia should include a minimum of three and a maximum of four contributions. Submissions should be clearly identified as “Symposium proposal” and include:

1) The title of the symposium
2) A brief description of the topic and its relevance to the conference (200 words)
3) The name, affiliation and academic status (student, lecturer, assistant professor, etc.) of each participant
4) The title of each contribution as well as an extended 500-1000 word abstract.
5) The name, affiliation and academic status of the person who will be chairing the symposium

Symposium proposals should be sent electronically to:

bolzano@ksu.edu

EXTENDED DEADLINE: 1 September 2010. Authors will be notified shortly thereafter.

This looks like a great conference for those who are interested in the interface between metaphysics and science. The topic has been hot for a good few years already, but it shows no signs of cooling down! I’d love to go, but not sure if I could justify spending the money to get to Toronto…

Here is the official call for papers, still plenty of time to write that paper:

METAPHYSICS & THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE CONFERENCE

Presented by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science
and Technology, University of Toronto and the Fishbein Center for the
History of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago

13-15 May 2011, University of Toronto

The philosophy of science has an illustrious history of attraction and
antipathy towards metaphysics. The latter was famously exemplified in
the Logical Positivist contention that metaphysical questions are
meaningless, but in the wake of the demise of Positivism, metaphysics
has found its way back into the philosophy of science. Increasingly,
questions about the nature of natural laws, kinds, dispositions, and
so on have taken a metaphysical cast. The metaphysics of science
commands significant attention in contemporary philosophy.

While many philosophers embrace the increased contact between
metaphysics and the philosophy of science, others are wary. Should
science (and its philosophical study) lead us into doing metaphysics?
If so, which metaphysical issues are genuine and which are illusory,
and how might we tell? Such questions dovetail with similar soul-
searching in metaphysics proper (sometimes under the banner of “meta-
metaphysics”, sometimes simply as methodology).

This conference will examine ground-level debates about metaphysics
within the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology, and
broader methodological questions about the role of metaphysics in the
philosophy of science. Participation is open and welcome from all
parties to these questions: from those who hold that metaphysics must
have a place within the philosophy of science, to those who hold it
should not.

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Craig Callender (University of California, San Diego)
Anjan Chakravartty (University of Toronto)
Katherine Hawley (University of St. Andrews)
Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona)
James Ladyman (University of Bristol)
Kyle Stanford (University of California, Irvine)
Michael Strevens (New York University)
Robert Wilson (University of Alberta)
C. Kenneth Waters (Minnesota)

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Essays of 4,000-5,000 words (30 minutes allotted for presentations)
concerning any aspect of metaphysics and the natural or social
sciences will be accepted for review until January 10, 2011. Please
include a short abstract (200 words or so), a few keywords, prepare
your essayfor blind review (do not include your name or other
identifying references in the document), and submit it in PDF format
here: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mpsc2011

Notification by early February 2011.

If you are planning to attend the conference and would like to
identify yourself as a potential chair, please email the conference
address .

ORGANIZERS
Chris Haufe (University of Chicago)
Matthew H. Slater (Bucknell University)
Zanja Yudell (California State University, Chico)

Please direct general conference inquiries to mpsc2011@gmail.com

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.

The Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (SIFA) are organising their 9th conference in Padua, which I visited last summer. It’s a lovely old city. The conference is themed ‘Truth, Knowledge, and Science’, but I believe that they take this quite liberally: as long as it’s analytic, it goes. I’ll probably submit something to this, I wouldn’t mind going to Padua again! Although my September may be quite busy anyway, we’ll see. The list of invited speakers looks pretty good too. Here is the actual call for papers:

CALL FOR PAPERS

TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, AND SCIENCE

9th National Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: June 21st 2010

The 9th National Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy
(SIFA) will be held in Padova from the 23rd to the 25th of September 2010.
The Conference offers an occasion for discussion of various themes of
research in analytic philosophy. We invite submissions on the following
areas:

1. Philosophy of logic
2. Philosophy of language
3. Metaphysics
4. Epistemology
5. Philosophy and History of science
6. Practical philosophy (Ethics, Political philosophy and Philosophy of law)
7. Philosophy of mind
8. Aesthetics

INVITED SPEAKERS

- John Dupré (University of Exeter)
- Elisabetta Galeotti (University of Eastern Piedmont)
- Wolfgang Künne (University of Hamburg)
- Theo Kuipers (University of Groningen)
- Paolo Leonardi (University of Bologna)
- Stathis Psillos (University of Athens)
- Timothy Williamson (University of Oxford)

INVITED DISCUSSANTS

Mauro Dorato (University of RomaTre)
Roberto Festa (University of Trieste)

and more to be confirmed.

SUBMISSIONS

Contributors will have 40 minutes, ideally divided into 30 minutes of
exposition and 10 minutes of discussion. The languages of the conference
will be English and Italian.
Those wishing to make a presentation should submit:

1. A short abstract (about 200 words)
2. A long abstract (1000-1500 words)

Long abstract should be thoroughly prepared for blind refereeing, with any
and all revealing references to the author removed, including personal
acknowledgments.

Both short and long abstracts should be submitted electronically using the
EasyChair submission page at:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sifa2010

The creation of an EasyChair account will be required. For any problems,
please refer to:

http://www.filosofia.lettere.unipd.it/analitica/sifa2010/SIFA2010-easyguide.pdf

Abstracts will be subject to double blind refereeing and acceptance will be
notified by July 19th.

Deadline for submissions: June 21st 2010.

REGISTRATION

Participation in the conference is subject to a registration fee.

If paid before August 10th:

– 50 euros: permanent faculty, post-doc, teachers
– 25 euros: SIFA members, graduate, undergraduate students

If paid after August 10th:

– 70 euros: permanent faculty, post-doc, teachers
– 35 euros: SIFA members, graduate, undergraduate students

Early registration will be open on March 15th. Check the Conference website
– from March on — for details:

http://www.filosofia.lettere.unipd.it/analitica/sifa2010

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

- Andrea Bottani
- Massimiliano Carrara
- Mario De Caro
- Michele Di Francesco
- Pierdaniele Giaretta
- Vittorio Morato
- Elisa Paganini
- Andrea Sereni

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

- Massimiliano Carrara
- Pierdaniele Giaretta
- Vittorio Morato
- Marzia Soavi
- Giuseppe Spolaore

IMPORTANT DATES

- Registration opens: March 15th 2010
- Deadline for submissions: June 21st 2010.
- Notifications of acceptance: July 19th 2010
- Deadline for early registration: August 10th 2010
- Conference dates: September 23rd-25th 2010

Anne Meylan is editing a special issue of dialectica on justification. It’s a topic that I don’t specifically work in, but I have some interests towards it, and in fact I’ve just given a lecture on justified true belief and will give another one on the Gettier cases next week. I don’t suppose that I will have anything to submit, but you never know… Here is the actual call for papers:

Call for Papers

Special Issue of dialectica

Justification Today

Guest editor: Anne Meylan

Post-Gettier epistemology and the difficulty of analysing knowledge have often led to scepticism about the notion of justification. It has been suggested that one should either move beyond justification or simply get rid of this notion within epistemology. But is the notion of justification really useless if knowledge turns out to be unanalysable ? Is the debate between internalist and externalist conceptions of justification still relevant ? How should we view the relationships between epistemic justification and other kinds of justification (in particular in the ethical case)? Is justification subjective? The aim of this special issue is to help to clarify the seemingly new role that the notion of justification plays in contemporary epistemology by answering these questions.

To do so, dialectica invites submissions for publication in a special issue on the topic of Justification Today.

Please send a pdf prepared for blind reviewing to anne.meylan@unige.ch

Deadline for submission: July, 1. 2010

Notification of acceptance, resubmission, rejection: September, 1. 2010

Final version due: December, 1. 2010

Jon Kvanvig at Certain Doubts recently announced this new $8000 prize for Younger Scholars working in Philosophical Theology, supported by the Ammonius Foundation. You have to be within ten years of getting your Ph.D. to enter. The winning essays will be published in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. The essays should be between 7,500 and 15,000 words in length, and the deadline for the first prize is 31 August 2010.

I’ve never written anything on Philosophical Theology, so I’ve got nothing to submit, but I thought that such a substantial prize for younger philosophers is worth advertising.

There are still a few more days before the deadline to submit abstracts for a workshop on Scott Soames’ philosophy in Cologne, Germany this May. The conference is aptly titled Meaning, Modality and Apriority, and involves both a Graduate Conference with a keynote from Soames as well as a research workshop with Soames. The call for the graduate conference has passed some time ago, but the deadline for the research workshop is 15th March. There are only four slots though, so I expect that there will be a bit of competition for those. Anyway, since I have commented on Scott Soames’ work before, for instance in my paper ‘On the Modal Content of A Posteriori Necessities’, I thought that I should submit something. I’ve come up with an abstract for a paper in which I plan to show that Soames’ case against the linguistic account of modality supported by people like David Chalmers, Frank Jackson and Alan Sidelle suffers from the fact that his own, supposedly metaphysical story about modal statements, is remarkably close to the one offered by deflationists such as Sidelle. My abstract follows, but please don’t steal it!

The Metaphysical Status of Modal Statements
ABSTRACT

In his Reference and Description: The Case Against Two-Dimensionalism (2005), Scott Soames puts forward an influential critique of the framework of two-dimensional modal semantics and the interpretation of a posteriori necessities proposed by proponents of the framework, especially Frank Jackson (1998) and David Chalmers (1996). While I agree with much of what Soames has to say about the topic, I am concerned that ultimately both Soames and the two-dimensionalists fail to see the fine-grainedness of the metaphysical status of modal statements. This is partly due to the short-comings of Kripke’s (1980) original treatment of a posteriori necessities, and partly due to the contemporary deflationist trend, which takes modality to reduce fully to linguistic or conceptual content. The latter is familiar especially from the work of Jackson and Chalmers, as well as Alan Sidelle (2002).

On the face of it, Soames is clearly opposed to this trend, as he thinks that Kripke’s most important achievement was to break the illusion that the a priori can be identified with the analytic, and that modality is merely linguistic (Soames 2006: 307). Soames claims that any kind of interesting philosophy will not fit into this deflationary, linguistic model. I very much sympathise with this idea, but it seems to me that Soames fails to fully commit to it himself. E. J. Lowe (2007a, 2007b) has raised similar concerns about the shortcomings in Soames’ metaphysical story, but so far Soames has not replied to them in any detail (cf. Soames 2007). The closest that Soames comes to addressing the metaphysical status of modal statements are the last three chapters of his earlier book, Beyond Rigidity (2002, ch. 9-11). We are especially interested in his analysis of the difference between the following identity sentences:

[1] For all x, x is a drop of water iff x is a drop of a substance molecules of which contain two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
[2] For all x, x is a drop of water iff x is a drop of the substance instances of which fall from the sky in rain and fill the lakes and rivers. (Soames 2002: 272.)

Presumably, (1) is metaphysically necessary, while (2) is contingent. Soames takes a point from Nathan Salmon (2005), which I believe to be of crucial importance for this analysis: what makes (1) a metaphysical necessity, if anything, is the underlying assumption concerning chemical substances, namely, that they have their molecular structures essentially (Soames 2002: 273). Now, Soames goes on to ask ‘What exactly are substances, and how do we arrive at our modal intuitions (pretheoretic beliefs) regarding them?’ (ibid.). This is of course where one ought give the metaphysical story, but the story that Soames gives is remarkably close to the one familiar from the deflationists. Soames describes how we introduce a natural kind term such as “water” with the intention that it is a ‘substance term’, i.e. applies to everything that shares the molecular structure in the original sample that we decided to call “water”. However, we do not need to know what that structure is when we introduce the term, all that matters is that we intend to use the notion in a way that respects the original intuition. We may subsequently learn more about the substance in question, e.g. that water is H2O, but this is the point where the metaphysical story about (1) ends (cf. Soames 2002: 273-275).

Soames goes on to refine the account somewhat, but this picture is effectively what he ends up with. Now, it seems that we could sum up Soames’ account roughly as follows: ‘Nothing counts as water in any situation unless it has the same deep explanatory features (if any) as the stuff we call “water”’, which I have quoted from Sidelle (2002: 319). But as Sidelle argues, this is an analytic principle concerning the linguistic usage of the the term “water” rather than a metaphysical a priori truth! The way Soames sometimes puts this is almost exactly as in the passage quoted from Sidelle:

‘”Water” was stipulated to designate whatever underlying physical characteristic it is that is shared by (nearly) all members of the class of paradigmatic water-samples that explains their most salient features – the fact that they boil and freeze at certain temperatures, that they are clear, potable, and necessary to life, etc.’ (Soames Forthcoming: 7).

According to Soames, when this stipulation is combined with our empirical information about water, it follows that water is necessarily H2O. So, it seems that Soames has given us little more than what the deflationary picture offers, and hence we are still at risk of identifying the a priori with the analytic and reducing modality to linguistics. In fact, Soames explicitly opts for a linguistic analysis rather than a metaphysical one, although he claims that this helps us to narrow down ‘the range of feasible ontological alternatives’ (ibid., 1).

In addition to an inquiry into Soames’ account of modal statements, I will offer a more detailed analysis of the metaphysical assumptions associated with modal statements and argue that the metaphysical story is much more fine-grained than Soames suggests. The elements of the metaphysical story are indeed already familiar from Salmon (2005), but there is much more to be said about e.g. the status of chemical substances, and it seems to me that Soames does not do justice to Salmon, who did recognize the complexity of the underlying metaphysical story (p. 176 ff.). Relying on recent work in the philosophy of chemistry (e.g. Hendry 2006, Needham 2008), I will attempt to give a more satisfactory account about the underlying metaphysical assumptions concerning chemical substances. We will see that there are some good reasons to think that the assumption according to which chemical substances have their molecular structures essentially may even be mistaken.

The upshot is that although Soames is on the right lines in challenging the deflationary approach to modal statements, his own account fails to fully accommodate their metaphysical status.

References:

• Chalmers, D. (1996) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Hendry, R. F. (2006) ‘Elements, Compounds, and Other Chemical Kinds’, Philosophy of Science 73, 864–75.
• Jackson, F. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Lowe, E. J. (2007a) ‘Does the Descriptivist/Anti-Descriptivist Debate Have Any Philosophical Significance?’, Philosophical Books 48, 27-33.
• Lowe, E. J. (2007b) ‘A Problem for A Posteriori Essentialism Concerning Natural Kinds’, Analysis 67.4, 286-92.
• Needham, P. (2008) ‘Resisting Chemical Atomism: Duhem’s Argument’, Philosophy of Science 75, 921–31.
• Salmon, N. U. (2005) Reference and Essence, 2nd ed. (New York: Prometheus Books).
• Sidelle, A. (2002) ‘On the Metaphysical Contingency of Laws of Nature’, in Conceivability and Possibility, ed. T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 309-336.
• Soames, S. (2002) Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Soames, S. (2005) Reference and Description: The Case Against Two-Dimensionalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
• Soames, S. (2006) ‘The Philosophical Significance of the Kripkean Necessary Aposteriori’, Philosophical Issues 16: Philosophy of Language.
• Soames, S. (2007) ‘The Substance and Significance of the Dispute Over Two-Dimensionalism’, Philosophical Books 48: 34–49.
• Soames, S. (Forthcoming) ‘What are Natural Kinds?’, Philosophical Topics.

So far I haven’t really used this blog to publicize conferences or events, as I figured that most people who are interested follow the major blogs and mailing lists that list these events anyway. However, I figured that I might as well do it when I come across something interesting and worth publicizing. I believe that this conference might be such a case: Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. June 30 – July 3 2010, Prague, Strahov Monastery (Czech Republic). Prague is a lovely city, and a great place to have a conference.

The primary reason why I chose to publicize this event is my forthcoming volume on Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics. The idea is of course that this is the perfect event to publicize my book. In fact, two of the contributors, E. J. Lowe and David Oderberg, are among the keynote speakers. Michal Loux has also been invited, and I should’ve really asked him to contribute to my volume as well. Unfortunately I already had too many people when that occurred to me.

Here is the actual CFP:

Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, both in the analytic and continental traditions, metaphysics was deemed to be passé. The last few decades, however, have witnessed a remarkable growth of interest among analytic philosophers in various traditional metaphysical topics, such as modality, truth, causality, etc. which resulted in the emergence of various forms of analytic metaphysics. The new forms of metaphysics differ from its traditional forms mostly in their methodology (we may notice various applications of contemporary formal logical techniques) and in the range of proposed solutions to particular problems. Besides these and other differences, however, there are also many similarities and there are even some who intentionally develop traditional metaphysical themes using the contemporary analytical methods. All these developments call for detailed exploration, which is the general goal of the conference Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. The conference aims to bring together leading analytic philosophers working in metaphysics and willing to explore relations between the traditional and contemporary concerns. The specific focus of the conference is a re-examination of Aristotelian-Scholastic metaphysics in contemporary setting. It is organized by the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University under the auspices of the Czech Academy Foundation. It takes place in the historical parts of the Strahov monastery near the Prague castle from June 30 to July 2, 2010.

CALL FOR PAPERS

* Papers are welcome on any of the topics indicated below.
* A short abstract of cca. 2500-3500 characters should be submitted to the Organizing Committee by April 15, 2010, by e-mail (if possible – see contacts above). The Peer-Review Board will select the papers to be presented at the Conference.
* Papers should be written in the English (preferred) or German language.
* The length of a paper should not exceed 25 minutes of reading time.

Papers selected by the Peer-Review Board will be edited and published as a supplement volume of the journal Studia Neoaristotelica.

TOPICS

* being and existence
* realisms vs. antirealisms
* truth, truthmaking, predication
* particulars and universals
* hylemorphism vs. mechanicism
* persistence through time
* the necessary and the possible
* the actual and the potential (powers, dispositions)
* propositions and states of affaires
* causes and explanation
* God

I do have one reservation about this conference: it is organized by the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University, and the peer review borad as well seems to consist of people working in theology departments. The suggested topics are clearly good though, and the keynote speakers are excellent, so I’m willing to give it the benefit of doubt. Anyway, I’ll probably submit something, if for no other reason then because it will be a great chance to let people know that there is a volume dedicated to this type of metaphysics coming out.