Several epistemologists will be contributing to the program, including (among others) Linda Zagzebski, Wayne Riggs, Emily Robertson, Harvey Siegel, Heather Battaly, and Kate Elgin. The program also includes papers by leading scholars in the philosophy of education (Hugh Sockett, David Carr, Randall Curren, Ben Kotzee), character education (Marvin Berkowitz), and educational psychology (Shari Tishman).

More info here.

Registration is only $25 and includes two lunches, a dinner, and reception. So if you’re in the Southern California area, or want an excuse to be, please consider attending! Pre-registration is strongly encouraged.

The conference is part of the Intellectual Virtues and Education Project housed at Loyola Marymount University and sponsored by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

EUT is organized by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol and coordinated by Richard Pettigrew, Jason Konek, and Ben Levinstein.

Speakers:

Jim Joyce
Katie Steele
Rachael Briggs
Branden Fitelson
Kenny Easwaran
Deadline for registration is July 15, 2013. Grad Student Paper CfP deadline: July 5, 2013.

For details, visit https://sites.google.com/site/bristolsummerschool.

[Cross posted at Choice and Inference]

This year’s festival featured 50 events over 5 days, including 10 premier events that were broadcast live online. Below are video links to five philosophically themed programs.

• The Whispering Mind: The Enduring Conundrum of Consciousness, with Mélanie Boly, Kristof Koch, Colin McGinn, and Nicholas Schiff. Moderated by Terry Moran.
• Architects of the Mind: A Blueprint for the Human Brain, with Douglas Fields, Kristen Harris, Murray Shanahan, and Gregory Wheeler. Moderated by Bill Weir.
• Infinity, with Raphael Bousso, Philip Clayton, Steven Strogatz, Hugh Woodin. Moderated by Keith Devlin.
• Multiverse: One or Many?, with Andreas Albrecht, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, and Neil Turok. Moderated by John Hockenberry.
• A Matter of Time, with Paul Davies, Craig Callender, Tim Maudlin, Max Tegmark. Moderated by Ira Flato.

Cross-posted at Choice and Inference

This project will fund a variety of activities, including a competition for up to 16 research grants in philosophy and theology, for research between June 2014 to May 2015.

Additional funding opportunities include:

• Two one-semester visiting faculty research fellowships at SLU, for one term in the 2014-15 academic year.
• Four one-year postdoctoral fellowships at SLU for the 2014-15 academic year.
• Four one-year dissertation research fellowships at SLU for the 2014-15 academic year.
• Five external cluster groups: interdisciplinary discussion/reading groups for regular conversation on the topic of intellectual humility during the 2014-15 academic year.
• Summer Seminar on Intellectual Humility, for 10 to 12 advanced graduate students and junior faculty (no more than 10 years past the Ph.D.) in philosophy and theology, to be held in Los Angeles, CA in the summer of 2015.

For more information on these funding opportunities, together with instructions for submitting proposals and applications, please visit The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility at Saint Louis University.

The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility project complements the activities and research occurring under Templeton’s Science of Intellectual Humility project at Fuller University.

The project is directed by John Greco and Eleonore Stump, both at the Philosophy Department at Saint Louis University.

Submitted essays must report original research in epistemology. Essays should generally be between 7,500 and 15,000 words; longer essays may be considered, but authors must seek prior approval by providing the Editors with an abstract and a word count prior to submission. Since winning essays will appear in Oxford Studies in Epistemology submissions must not be under review elsewhere. To be eligible for this year’s prize, submissions must be received, electronically, by 15 July 2013. Authors should include with their submissions an abstract of no more than 500 words. Refereeing will be blind; authors should omit remarks and references that might disclose their identities. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail. The winner will be determined by a committee of members of the Editorial Board of Oxford Studies in Epistemology or by a committee deputized by them for this purpose and will be announced in September 2013. (The Editorial Board reserves the right to extend the deadline further, if no essay is chosen.) At the author’s request, the Board will simultaneously consider entries in the prize competition as submissions for publication in Oxford Studies in Epistemology, independently of the prize.

Inquiries and submissions should be directed to ose.editorial@gmail.com, or by post through regular mail at:

Professor Tamar Gendler
OSE Sanders Prize
Philosophy Department
Yale University
P.O. Box 208306
New Haven, CT 06520-8306

She begins by claiming that “it is axiomatic in analytic philosophy that all (or virtually all) knowledge is knowledge that something or other is the case.” (p. 48) A startling remark, one that I don’t recognize as true. The parenthetical phrase is footnoted, so I thought, “maybe the footnote will make sense of this,” but the footnote says that the qualification is needed because of Russell’s distinction between knowledge by acquaintance vs. knowledge by description. But that doesn’t help: it’s simply false that epistemology of the last 100 years assumes that knowledge is either by acquaintance or de dicto.

Explanation below the fold.

What is true is that the kind of knowledge epistemologists tend to focus on is propositional knowledge. But it is not true that epistemology assumes that all knowledge other than knowledge by acquaintance is de dicto.

A better taxonomy here would begin by distinguishing practical from theoretical knowledge. For those linguistically-minded folk, we can distinguish, as the literature does, between knowing-that and knowing-how (which Eleonore notes as well), and between each of these and knowing-wh (knowing who what where when). Perhaps knowledge-wh can be analyzed in terms of propositional knowledge, but even given this reduction, there’s lots more in conceptual space than knowing how and knowing that.

Why? Because it is clearly a major part of epistemology of the last 100 years to distinguish between knowledge de dicto and other types of knowledge, such as knowledge de re and knowledge de se. While some have held that each of the latter two can be explained in terms of de dicto knowledge, that position looks mistaken to me and is not widely (or axiomatically) assumed to be true. In fact, I’d bet the majority of epistemologists think as I do, that there is no reduction possible here.

If we distinguish knowledge de dicto from knowledge de re and knowledge de se, we might try to fit Russell’s knowledge by acquaintance into the de re category. And once we get this far, we can see why a defense of Franciscan knowledge can’t be simply a matter of claiming that there is knowledge that isn’t propositional knowledge. Of course there is: there is objectual knowledge and self-knowledge, at the very least.

Categorized in this way, we can see what is required for a defense of Franciscan knowledge. We can think of de dicto knowledge as different from a linguistically-minded set of distinctions between first-, second-, and third-person awareness. De se knowledge is first-person knowledge, and de re knowledge is third-person knowledge. What is left is second-person knowledge, which is just the category it looks like Eleonore is targeting.

If so, however, it isn’t enough to rely on the variant of the Mary case that she uses to defend the possibility of Franciscan knowledge. (She changes the Mary case so that Mary has never had personal contact before, but only knows all the facts about persons; on leaving the enclosure, she meets her mother for the first time, and obtains knowledge she couldn’t have had by just knowing all the facts.) Even if persuaded by this variant of the Mary case that what Mary comes to know isn’t propositional in character, one also must show that it can’t be accounted for in terms of de se or de re knowledge (and one shouldn’t try to limit the de re category to what Russell describes as knowledge by acquaintance–that’s too restrictive).

Ruling out these other categories is much more difficult. It requires a defense of the claim that there is, in addition to de dicto, de se, and de re knowledge, something we might refer to as “de te knowledge”.

Registration for the University of Edinburgh’s 3rd Annual Graduate Epistemology Conference is now open. The conference will comprise presentations on a range of epistemological issues from eight graduate speakers as well as two keynote addresses:

Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern University)
Linda Zagzebski (University of Oklahoma)

There is a £5 registration fee, which includes lunch and refreshments on both days. There will also be a conference dinner on Friday 31st for an additional £20. Please register online (and select the appropriate option if you would like to join us for dinner).

For further details on the conference, including the programme of talks, please visit our conference webpage. For further information, including accessibility requirements, please email Lani Watson at
L.H.M.Watson@sms.ed.ac.uk.

This conference is generously sponsored by the Scots Philosophical Association, the Mind Association, the Analysis Trust and the Eidyn Research Centre, and supported by the Edinburgh Women in Philosophy Group.

Finding Foundations for Bounded and Adaptive Rationality

Minds and Machines
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Deadline May 15, 2013
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Minds and Machines is pleased to invite extended abstracts for “Finding Foundations for Bounded and Adaptive Rationality,” a special issue edited by Ralph Hertwig and Arthur Paul Pedersen of the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

The special issue shall focus on philosophical issues related to research on bounded and adaptive decision making, inference, and belief, broadly construed.  The editors invite submissions addressing a wide range of issues which henceforth have received inadequate treatment or no treatment despite their significance for the foundations and methodology of research programs in normative and descriptive decision making, inference, and belief. The editors especially encourage submissions addressing issues arising for research programs which aim to rationalize decision strategies or inference patterns ostensibly violating putative norms of strategic or epistemic rationality.

For example, the editors encourage submissions concerned with whether and to what extent criteria can be delineated by which decisions, inferences, and beliefs are to be evaluated as rational in relation to an actor’s environment.  More generally, can a descriptive theory of bounded and adaptive decision making, inference, and/or belief be reconciled with a normative theory thereof? Conceptual clarity shall be especially encouraged (e.g., about an actor’s environment and the sense and scope of evaluations of rationality).

Anyone interested in contributing to the special issue must submit an extended abstract of one to three pages by  **May 15, 2013**.  The abstract is a *proposal* for a *full paper* the author thereby agrees to submit by  **January 15, 2014**  if his or her proposal has been approved by the editors of the special issue.  Each full paper will thereupon undergo peer review.

To encourage quality submissions and critical discussion, a workshop is to be held at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development prior to the submission deadline for full papers.  In addition to inviting scholars to speak at the workshop, some authors among those who have prepared approved proposals will be invited to deliver a lecture on his or her proposal.

A primary goal of the special issue is to foster exemplary critical interdisciplinary discussion about bounded and adaptive rationality serving a renewed and sustained philosophical interest from exceptional thinkers in an influential area of scientific inquiry.

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*Deadline* for extended abstracts:  May 15, 2013.

To submit an extended abstract, follow the instructions at the website for submissions:

www.editorialmanager.com/mind

When prompted to choose an article type, select “SI: Finding Foundations.”

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Inquiries may be directed to the e-mail address for the special issue:

FindingFoundations2014@gmail.com
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Guest Editors.

Ralph Hertwig (www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/staff/ralph-hertwig)

Arthur Paul Pedersen (www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/staff/arthur-paul-pedersen)

October 4-5, 2013
Oklahoma State University, Tulsa Campus
Tulsa, OK 74106

Keynote Speaker: Professor Alison Jaggar (University of Colorado)

Colloquium papers in any area of philosophy are welcome. Submissions dealing with aspects of Profesor Jaggar’s work are encouraged. Papers are limited to 3,000 words. All submissions must be prepared for a blind review and include a word count fin addition to an abstract (not longer than 150 words).  Submissions should be sent by e-mail, using the subject heading “CSPA submission,” to me at s-goldberg@northwestern.edu. Responses to submissions will be sent by July 31, 2013.

The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2013.

Suggestions for commentators and session chairs (including self-nominations) are welcome.

Questions about local accommodations can be addressed to Professor Eric Reitan at [eric.reitan@okstate.edu].

Suggestions and questions regarding the program should be directed to me at s-goldberg@northwestern.edu