Christopher Michael Cloos » Special Topics

Links: Workshop, Society, Project, Journal

Christopher Cloos — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:50:54 +0000

Below are some great developments and opportunities in the world of philosophy.

2011 Normative Ethics Workshop
- This conference will be held at the University of Arizona, January 6-8 2011. The program looks very interesting. It includes keynote talks by Robert Audi, Julia Driver, and Thomas Hurka.
North Carolina Philosophical Society 2011 Meeting
- I attended this conference last year. I recommend it because it is well-organized and features a number of interesting tracks and papers. This society and its South Carolina counterpart are model philosophical societies that foster lively research and opportunities for feedback. The keynote speaker is Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
The Character Project
- Much congratulations to Christian Miller and all involved in securing this grant. This project will look at issues related to the study of character from three domains of inquiry: psychology, theology, and philosophy.
New Skepticism Journal
- Duncan Pritchard has announced the launch of a new journal. This journal is called the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism. Further details are forthcoming.

Filed under: CFP, Conferences

Metaethics and Epistemology Workshops

Christopher Cloos — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:54:00 +0000

There are a few workshops I thought I’d flag. The first is the Metaethics Workshop at University of Wisconsin, Madison. It runs from September 24-26 and the keynote speaker is Stephen Darwall. The second workshop is the epistemology workshop prior to the 2010 Nature of Knowledge lecture at Edinburgh. Robert Audi is giving the lecture on ‘Testimony as a Social Foundation of Knowledge’. The last workshop is the Midwest Epistemology Workshop, October 8-9, at Purdue. Jason Stanley is the keynote speaker and a tentative schedule can be found here.

Filed under: Conferences, Epistemology, Metaethics

LaTeX for Philosophers

Christopher Cloos — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:29:06 +0000

Confession: I’m dissatisfied with writing philosophy using Word. My latest struggle involved using Word 2007 to create a document containing math/logic symbols then having to save the document as Word 2003 to submit to a journal. This resulted in Word taking a picture of the equations, which pixellated them. I had to redo the equations in Word 2003 mode using the Windows Character Map to plug-in the logical symbols.

Enter: LaTeX. A solution, yes. Something that takes a while to figure out, yes. But, now, a user’s guide for philosophers to help us navigate the waters of LaTeX. Thanks to Charlie Tanksley for creating an intro to LaTeX for philosophers. I hope to read the guide and discover a solution to my Word-woes. Below are links to his guide.

On Charlie’s Website: Click here.
In PDF Format: Click here.

Filed under: Research Tools

Links: Reasons Workshop and Most-cited Philosophers

Christopher Cloos — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:47:41 +0000

There are a couple of pointers I’d like to provide. The first is a workshop at Leeds University on theoretical and practical reasons June 24-25. Click here for details. Second, Eric Schwitzgebel over at The Splintered Mind is doing some interesting work using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). One interesting set of results is a list of the 200 most-cited authors in the (SEP). Click here to access that list.

Filed under: Conferences, Philosophers

CFP: Justification for Dialectica

Christopher Cloos — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:43:57 +0000

There’s a CFP for a special issue of the journal Dialectica. The issue is on the current state of justification. The submission deadline is 7/1/2010. Click here to access full details of the CFP at the Certain Doubts blog.

Filed under: CFP, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology

Conference on Epistemic Evaluation

Christopher Cloos — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:52:57 +0000

Here’s a pointer to an interesting conference entitled The Point and Purpose of Epistemic Evaluation. This conference explores one idea in the methodology of epistemology. The idea is that, “the point(s) and purpose(s) of epistemic evaluation ought to significantly constrain and inform substantive accounts of knowledge and knowledge-related phenomena.”

The conference description mentions Craig’s Knowledge and the State of Nature as an example of instantiating this idea. I also think Alston’s Beyond Justification is an example of this approach.

Filed under: Conferences, Epistemology, Methodology

Updated Paper: Against the Total Evidence Requirement

Christopher Cloos — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:30:25 +0000

I just updated my Papers page with a revised version of a paper arguing Against the Total Evidence Requirement. Here’s the abstract.

ABSTRACT. The Requirement of Total Evidence (RTE) asks an agent to make her confidence in a belief proportional to the support it receives from her total evidence. This paper examines (RTE) as a norm of epistemic rationality and argues that it is problematic. Looking at the work of Peter Achinstein (2001) on the notion of evidence it becomes clear that (RTE) endorses a view of the constitution of evidence that is neither necessary nor sufficient for something to count as evidence. To overcome this and other deficiencies associated with (RTE) a move is made to an objective view of evidence. This move aligns epistemic rationality with scientific rationality in seeking to capture veridical evidence. It also leads to a new norm of epistemic rationality—the Proper Subset Evidence Requirement (PSER).

Click on the following link to access a presentation on the paper.

Filed under: Confirmation Theory, Epistemic Rationality, Evidence, My Papers, Probability

2010 Episteme Conference

Christopher Cloos — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:09:50 +0000

Registration is now open for the Episteme conference in Edinburgh (6/2-6/4). Access the conference website here, and access a draft of the conference program here. The program itinerary is very helpful because it provides not only the title of the talks but also the abstracts of the papers the talks are based on.

Filed under: Conferences, Epistemology

Epistemology @ Pacific APA

Christopher Cloos — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:26:13 +0000

Over at the Certain Doubts blog Clayton Littlejohn has provided a list of epistemology events at the APA Pacific. Access this list by clicking here.

There are additional symposia on Friday that may interest epistemologists. The first is the Judith Jarvis Thomson session on her book Normativity. Other events of interest are the “Experimental Philosophy” symposium and ”The Use of Intuitions in Philosophy” symposium. Details about these events are listed below.

Friday Morning, April 2
VI-A. Author-Meets-Critics: Judith Jarvis Thomson, Normativity
9:00-Noon
   Chair: Niko Kolodny (University of California–Berkeley)
   Critics: Gilbert Harman (Princeton University)
   Thomas Scanlon (Harvard University)
   R. Jay Wallace (University of California–Berkeley)
   Author: Judith Jarvis Thomson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

VI-C. Invited Symposium: Experimental Philosophy
9:00-Noon
   Chair: Ryan Nichols (California State University–Fullerton)
   Speakers: Bertram F. Malle (Brown University)
   Ron Mallon (University of Utah)
   Commentators: Anand Vaidya (San Jose State University)
   Jen Cole Wright (College of Charleston)

Friday Afternoon, April 2
VII-E. Invited Symposium: The Use of Intuitions in Philosophy
1:00-4:00 p.m.
   Chair: Krista Lawlor (Stanford University)
   Speakers: George Bealer (Yale University)
   Brian Talbot (University of Colorado–Boulder)
   Jonathan M. Weinberg (Indiana University–Bloomington)
   Commentator: Thomas Nadelhoffer (Dickinson College)

Filed under: Conferences, Epistemology

St. Andrews/Rutgers – Evidence Conference

Christopher Cloos — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:58:15 +0000

I’m pleased to provide this pointer to the Evidence Conference May 29 – May 30, 2010. This marks a new partnership between St. Andrews and Rutgers. This is the start of many great events to come.

Looking at the lineup, hopefully the talks on Saturday target the concept of ’evidence’. The topics relate to evidence, but they are more meta-topics that range over evidence. I’m sure Neta, Goldman, and Siegel will target ‘evidence’ as they discuss, for example, higher-order reasons, reliabilism and evidentialism, and cognitive penetration. Either way, this should be a great conference. You can apply to attend the conference from the conference website. Unfortunately, I’m unable to attend the conference, but the conference organizer (Yuri Cath) mentioned here that there might be audio from the conference. I will keep you informed if a link to the audio surfaces.

Filed under: Conferences, Epistemology, Evidence