Calendar

Conceptions of unstructured content take contents to be sets of possibilities, or circumstances, or conditions (or functions from such things to truth values). In recent years, a great variety of new conceptions of unstructured content have been developed and applied, often with great formal ingenuity. Debates on relativism and context-sensitivity more generally, on expressivism, de se attitudes, counterfactual attitudes, vagueness, truthmaker semantics, and many more bear witness to these developments. At the same time, not as much attention has been paid to the philosophical foundations of unstructured conceptions.

In sharp contrast, proponents of structured propositions have recently spent a great amount of their time developing and clarifying the foundations of their conceptions in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. This conference encourages new reflexion on the foundations of unstructured conceptions of content, the availability of existing foundational stories to new technical conceptions, the competitiveness of unstructured conceptions vis-a-vis structured conceptions as well as the relationship between the two conceptions. It also aims to establish renewed dialogue between, on the one hand, proponents of structured conceptions and of unstructured conceptions and, on the other hand, between proponents of the various conceptions and applications of unstructured content.

Speakers:

In addition to invited talks, there will be a CFA for 2-4 further talks.

(Non-exhaustive) list of topics:

• Foundations in philosophy of mind of conceptions of unstructured content
• Kinds of unstructured content \& the nature of representation
• Philosophical and / vs formal motivations for unstructured content
• What are the relationships between structured and unstructured conceptions of content? Competition? Complementation?
• Promiscuity on permissible sets of n-tuples: anything goes? (worlds-hyperplans, worlds-languages, worlds-standards of taste, …)
• What is it that gets characterised, or modelled, by a set of possibilities, or circumstances, or conditions?
• What are outstanding problems of fineness of grain?
• What progress has been made on the the problems of deduction / logical omniscience as they arise for unstructured content?
• The role of (unstructured) content in semantic theory
• Truthmaker semantics
• Notions of hyperintensionality with unstructured content
• Mental fragmentation/compartmentalisation
• Metaphysical foundations of unstructured content
• Possible worlds/points in the possibility-space: primitive or construed (e.g. out of structured things/sentences)?

Organisers: Andy Egan (Rutgers), Dirk Kindermann (University of Graz)

Please direct all queries to dirk.kindermann@uni-graz.at. If you’d like to attend the event, please informally register at dirk.kindermann@uni-graz.at.

Monism Conference

Organized by Jonathan Schaffer
for November 11-12, 2016
at Rutgers University

Friday November 11th
9:30 – 10:00     Breakfast
10:00 – 11:15     Terry Horgan, “The One is Real but the Many are Transcendentally Ideal”
11:30 – 12:45     Dean Zimmerman, “Arguments for Monism from Internal Relations”
12:45 – 3:00      Lunch
3:00 – 4:15        Ricki Bliss, “Monisms East and West”
4:30 – 5:45        Mark Johnston, “How the One Contingently Gave Rise to the Many”

Saturday November 12th
9:30 – 10:00     Breakfast
10:00 – 11:15     Kelly Trogdon, “Sparse Ontology beyond the Concrete”
11:30 – 12:45     Elizabeth Miller, “Collectivism”
12:45 – 3:00      Lunch
3:00 – 4:15        Ted Sider, “Monism, Ground, and Structuralism”
4:30 – 5:45        Michael Della Rocca, “Monism of Knowledge”

This conference is free and open. No advanced registration or anything else is needed to attend.
We are grateful to the Marc Sanders Foundation for their generous support.

The last two decades have seen a significant outpouring of criminal law reform efforts throughout the English-speaking world and beyond – including in the U.S., England  and Wales, Scotland, Australia, the Balkans, Georgia, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Rwanda. Despite, or possibly because of, all this activity, there has been relatively little consideration of the underlying theoretical issues that such reform raises. And there has been even less dialogue among criminal law reformers across jurisdictions. This project will seek to fill these voids by bringing together some of the leading figures in contemporary criminal law reform, as well as younger scholars and law reformers, to participate in an international workshop on the subject.

The idea of “criminal law reform,” as we conceive of it, entails not just any change to the criminal law, but rather an intentional process of revising, reordering, and reformulating a substantial area of the criminal law in some systematic way. Our interest here is not in the particular reforms one might think worthy in, say, the law of homicide in Argentina or the insanity defense in Greece. Rather, we are interested in the possibility of identifying and analyzing the kinds of general principles that underlie, or should underlie, the process of criminal law (or criminal procedure) reform across jurisdictions and subject matters.

Among the issues that we hope to see addressed are the following:

• How should a given jurisdiction determine that reform is needed? What kinds of concerns – whether arising from perceived social problems, international obligations, regime change or political revolution, structural inconsistencies and formal defects in the law, or short-term political ends – constitute appropriate justifications for reform?

• What makes for successful (or unsuccessful) criminal law or procedure reform? What are the formal attributes of good criminal law reform? Is reform best achieved in a comprehensive code, or in a more piecemeal manner? What is the proper scope of a criminal code? How does the process of criminal law reform differ depending on the part of the criminal law being considered, whether general principles or particular offenses? How accessible should criminal codes be to the general public? How should criminal law reformers deal with gaps and redundancies? How important is comprehensiveness?

• Who should be engaged in the process of law reform? What kinds of pre-legislative bodies should be created to assess needs for reform and to propose reforms, and with what kind of remit? To what kind of scrutiny, by what kind of body, should proposed reforms be subjected? How should criminal law reform bodies be constituted? What relationship should they have to legislatures, courts, prosecutors, and other constituencies?

Different jurisdictions approach criminal law reform in different ways: Some use  government-appointed law reform bodies; others rely on private, self-appointed expert bodies. Some rely on a “civilian”-type approach to codification; others on a common law-inspired one. By drawing on the experience conference attendees might have had participating in, or observing, the process of criminal law reform in their own or other jurisdictions, we hope to be able to find what general lessons (if any) can be learned about the principles, methods, and problems of systematic criminal law  reform.

Participating in the conference will be a collection of leading authorities in criminal law reform and criminal law theory, some of whom will present papers, and others of whom will serve as commentators. Confirmed participants (so far) include Vera Bergelson, Roger Clark, Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Pamela Ferguson, Stuart Green, Adil Haque, Jeremy Horder, Tatjana Hörnle, Douglas Husak, Jørn Jacobsen, Margo Kaplan, Karl Laird, Paul Robinson, Alec Walen, and Gideon Yaffe.

Submission of abstracts and papers

Our aim is to feature a total of twelve short papers of approximately 5,000 words each. Approximately half of these will come from invited participants. The other half will come from this Call for Papers.

Interested parties are invited to submit an abstract of approximately 500 words describing the paper they would like to write and have discussed at the conference, along with a CV. Abstracts and CVs are due by May 15, 2016, and should be sent, in Word or PDF format, to Ms. Mimi Moore (mmoore@kinoy.rutgers.edu).

Applicants will be advised by June 30, 2016 whether their abstract has been accepted.

Successful applicants will then have until February 15, 2017 to submit a full, original draft of approximately 5,000 words. We hope you will consider publishing your contribution in a book of journal symposium that would come out of the conference, though you would not be obligated to do so, and we will not decide what the next steps in the process should be until we have had a chance to confer with attendees and to work out how the project can best be developed.

Each draft will have a commentator assigned to it. Workshop attendees will be expected to read the drafts in advance.

We invite submissions from both younger and older scholars and law reformers from diverse backgrounds and with diverse perspectives on, and experience, in the field.

Funding

We have secured initial funding sufficient to pay hotel and other local costs for all  participants whose papers are selected. We hope that participants will be able to find their own funding for travel, but we will do what we can to help with the travel costs of those who cannot find funding themselves.

Stuart Green (Rutgers Law) – sgreen@kinoy.rutgers.edu
Alec Walen (Rutgers Law and Philosophy) — awalen@law.rutgers.edu
Antony Duff (Stirling Philosophy) – r.a.duff@stir.ac.uk
Jeremy Horder (LSE Law) — J.Horder@lse.ac.uk

CEU-Rutgers Philosophy Conference, April 6-7.

Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) is designed to promote critical engagements and constructive dialogues between scholars of Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy with the hope of bringing the study of Chinese philosophy into the mainstream of philosophical discourses within the Western academy. It is run every other April. The workshop is co-directed by Tao JIANG (Religion), Ruth Chang (Philosophy) and Stephen Angle (Wesleyan).

The theme and format of the fourth RWCP workshop is “Engagements with Western Philosophers.” Thirteen invited scholars will participate in the workshop, including seven experts on Chinese philosophy (one presentation will be jointly offered by two speakers) and six leading voices in the Western analytic philosophy.

Scholars of Chinese Philosophy:
Yong Huang (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
Chenyang Li (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
Li Kang (Vassar College)
JeeLoo Liu (California State University, Fullerton)
Justin Tiwald (San Francisco State University) and Bradford Cokelet (University of Kansas)

Scholars of Western Philosophy:
Elizabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
Johann Frick (Princeton University)
Stephen Macedo (Princeton University)
Peter Railton (University of Michigan)
Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers University)
Jennifer Whiting (University of Pittsburgh)

RSVP is required for attendance. Further information will be forthcoming in the spring of 2018.

The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Bldg, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor.

• 2/27/18 Goldman Lecture, 4pm
• 3/1/18 Mesthene Lecture, Prof. Miranda Fricker (GC-CUNY), 3:00-6:30 pm
• 3/22/18 RU Climate Lecture, Prof. Sally Haslanger (MIT) 3:00-5:00 pm
• 4/8/18 Karen Bennett (Cornell University)
• 4/12/18 Sanders Lecture, Prof. Linda Zagzebski (University of Oklahoma)
• 4/13/18 Rutgers Chinese Philosophy Conference, 9:30 am-6:30 pm
• 4/13-4/14/18 Marilyn McCord Adams Memorial Conference
• 4/14-4/15/18 Rutgers-Columbia Undergraduate Philosophy Conference (held at Columbia University)
• 4/17/18 Class of 1970’s Lecture, Prof. Jeremy Waldron (NYU), Alexander Teleconference Lecture Hall, 4:30-7:30 pm
• 5/21-5/25/18 Metaphysical Mayhem
• 6/8-6/9/18 Pantheism Workshop
• 7/8-7/15/18 Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy (held at the Rutgers University Inn and Conference Center)

Over the course of his 49 year career (48 years of which were spent at Rutgers), Peter established himself as a giant in the field of aesthetics, especially in the philosophy of music. Sadly, Peter passed away in 2017.  To honor his memory, the Rutgers Philosophy Department is hosting a one-day conference on October 26, 2018, celebrating his life’s philosophical work.

The Conference will include talks by Christy Mag Uidhir (Houston), Jenefer Robinson (Cincinnati), Jerrold Levinson  (Maryland), and David Davies (McGill).  In addition, Aaron Meskin (Leeds) will introduce and read Peter Kivy’s unpublished ‘The Case of (Digital) Wagner.’ Finally, there will be a time set aside for remembrances from Peter’s friends and colleagues.

All are welcome to attend the conference. There is no registration fee; however, attendees are encouraged to pre-register (so that we have an accurate headcount for the lunch and reception). To pre-register, please email us at kivymemorial@philosophy.rutgers.edu

Conference Information
October 26, 2018
9:30 am – 5:00 pm – Conference
5:00 am – 6:15 pm – Reception

The conference and reception will take place at the Teleconference Room on the 4th Floor of Alexander Library (169 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ).  In addition to the reception at the close of the conference, a catered lunch will be served.

The exact conference schedule will be posted soon.
Questions can be directed to kivymemorial@philosophy.rutgers.edu

Perceptual Capacities and Pyschophysics

Saturday, October 26-27, 2018, 09:30am – 06:00pm

Location Rutgers Philosophy Department, 106 Somerset St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA