"The accident of where one is born is just that, an accident; any human being might have been born in any nation"
Martha Nussbaum, 'Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism' in For Love of Country (Beacon Press, 2002)

Wednesday 26 November 2008

ECPR 2009

Further to yesterday's CFP for a particular panel at the 2009 ECPR General Conference, here are details of the conference more generally:

The 5th ECPR General Conference will be held at Potsdam Universitat from 10-12 September 2009. The Academic Convenors for the conference are Professor Luciano Bardi (ECPR Executive Committee) and Professor Martin Bull (ECPR Academic Director).
There are 57 sections, with several accepted panels in each section. The deadline for paper proposals is 1st February 2009. 


Tuesday 25 November 2008

CFP: Cosmopolitan Ethics and Climate ...

Interesting CFP for a panel at the 2009 ECPR...
CFP: Cosmopolitan Ethics and Climate Change Panel at 2009 ECPR

ECPR 2009 Potsdam, Germany

Panel: "Improving the Climate Regime: Cosmopolitan Solutions" 

The latest science of climate change shows that massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will be needed by mid-century to avert extreme, possibly catastrophic, harm to Earth?s climate system. Yet, despite ongoing and sometimes intense diplomatic efforts over two decades, governments of the world have been unable to agree to anything near the kind of regulation of pollution that would be required to achieve these cuts. This failure can be attributed to the nature of the climate change regime, which is premised on negotiations among states seeking to protect or promote their relatively narrow national interests. An alternative (or at least a supplement) to this interstate approach can be found in cosmopolitan conceptions of world affairs. 
Cosmopolitanism offers politically viable alternatives to the status quo regime that are just, practical and efficacious. This panel aims to highlight these alternatives, focusing especially on how cosmopolitan ideas might be moved from the realm of philosophy to the practical politics and policies of climate change. My aim in proposing this panel is to bring together people who believe that cosmopolitan philosophy and ethics can offer practical and workable alternatives to the prevailing state-centric climate change regime. I hope that we can gather a collection of papers, and have a lively discussion, on how cosmopolitanism can inform the climate change regime generally and policies and behaviors in particular. Put another way, the objective is not to develop cosmopolitan philosophy related to climate change as much as it is to enhance policies and practices through (practical) cosmopolitan ethics.

We can have up to seven papers in the panel comprising up to five presenters and two additional 'tabled' papers (the tabled papers can be discussed during the panel but the authors would not actually do a presentation; I'm assuming this limitation is simply to avoid having too many speakers using the allotted time, which seems a reasonable requirement). If we are fortunate enough to have seven quality papers,
it is my hope that we can collect them together in a book manuscript for submission to a university press and/or as a special issue of a scholarly journal. With this in mind, I hope the papers can be well-developed, in the range of 9,000-12,000 words (and possibly a bit longer if authors feel the need).

Please do consider proposing a paper for the panel. For guidelines on how to submit a paper proposal, please go to this website: 
http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/howtosubmit.asp. The SECTION is "Green Politics" (no. 13). The PANEL is "Improving the Climate Regime: Cosmopolitan Solutions" (no. 210). More information for paper givers can be found here: 
http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/files/paper_proposals_guidelines_and_deadlines.pdf
Please note that the DEADLINE for paper proposals is 1 February 2009


CFP: 3rd London Forum in Moral and Political Philosophy

CALL FOR PAPERS

3rd LONDON FORUM IN MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

27th March 2008

STEWART HOUSE, LONDON

Supported by the Institute of Philosophy and UCL Philosophy Department

Following the success of the previous two years of the London Forum in Moral and Political Philosophy, graduate students working in any field within moral and political philosophy are invited to submit papers for the 2009 meeting. This will be held on 27th March at Stewart House, Bloomsbury, London.

The Forum aims to provide a friendly and supportive atmosphere in which graduate students can present their work and receive constructive feedback from their peers.

Submissions should be in the form of abstracts of 300-400 words, and should be sent to LFIMPP@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions  is 15th February 2009.

Paper selection will be by the Organisation Committee and Prof. Veronique Munoz-Darde.

This years keynote speaker is Dr. Thomas Pink (Kings College London)
*** correction: date is 27th March, not 9th as previously advertised ***

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Graduate Journals

The comments are fairly unanimous in response to this question on the merits of publishing in graduate journals - basically, 'don't do it'. Reading the comments, I ended up wondering why graduate journals are published in the first place - that's presumably a fair amount of time and effort going to waste if the comments are correct. It seems like there are at least some potential benefits to publishing in such a forum - peer feedback and experience of the publishing process are two that come to mind. Perhaps these journals would be appreciated slightly more if these aims were stated more clearly? If they are distinguished from 'proper' (I'd prefer 'professional') journals as serving different purposes then I'd hope people would not be held to account for articles published in such a way before their career had even begun. 

megankime.net

I've finally finished my new website, which has details of my research and other related things. It's now (hopefully) live - take a look at www.megankime.net

Monday 17 November 2008

CFP: Northwestern Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy

CALL FOR PAPERS
FROM FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENTS

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL THEORY AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE
APRIL 23–25, 2009

KEYNOTE ADDRESSES:

Samuel Scheffler (NYU), “The Normativity of Tradition”
Seana Shiffrin (UCLA), “Inducing Deliberation”

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: The deadline for submission is February 15, 2009. We welcome submissions from both faculty and graduate students, as some sessions will be reserved for graduate student presentations. Please submit an essay of approximately 4000 words and an abstract of not more than 150 words. Essay topics in all areas of ethical theory and political philosophy will be considered, although some priority will be given to essays that take up themes from the works of Samuel Scheffler and Seana Shiffrin (such as autonomy, distributive justice, legal philosophy, the morality of association, and responsibility). Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in word, rtf, or pdf format. Graduate submissions should be sent by email to leegoldsmith2012@u.northwestern.edu; faculty submissions should be sent by email to garthoff@northwestern.edu. Notices of acceptance will be distributed no later than March 31, 2009. For more information, please contact Jon Garthoff at the email address above or visit the conference website.

Constructivism Project at Sheffield

An exciting new AHRC project is taking place at Sheffield in 2009, details below...

The Department of Philosophy of the University of Sheffield supported by the
Arts and Humanities Research Council will be hosting a series of events in 2009
devoted to the theme of Constructivism in Practical Philosophy.

7th February 2009
Workshop: Constructivism in Political Philosophy
Speakers
Kirsten Budde (University of Sheffield)
Aaron James (University of California at Irvine)
Miriam Ronzoni (European University Institute, Florence),
Andrew Williams (University of Warwick)

28th March 2009
Workshop: Constructivism and Normative Epistemology
Speakers
Simon Blackburn (University of Cambridge)
Matthew Chrisman (University of Edinburgh)
James Lenman (University of Sheffield)
Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota)

20th June 2009
Workshop: Constructivism and Practical Reason
Speakers
Carla Bagnoli (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
Michael Ridge (University of Edinburgh)
Yonatan Shemmer (University of Sheffield)
Jussi Suikkanen (University of Leeds)

14th-16th August 2009
Conference: Constructivism in Practical Philosophy
Speakers
Michael Bratman (Stanford University)
Dale Dorsey (University of Kansas)
Nadeem Hussein (Stanford University) 
Aaron James (University of California at Irvine)
James Lenman (University of Sheffield)
Michael Ridge (University of Edinburgh)
T. M. Scanlon (Harvard University)
Yonatan Shemmer (University of Sheffield)
Sharon Street (New York University)
Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota)
Jay Wallace (University of California at Berkeley)
Andrew Williams (University of Warwick)

Project Coordinators
James Lenman (j.lenman@sheffield.ac.uk)
Yonatan Shemmer (y.shemmer@sheffield.ac.uk)

Administrative Assistant
Heather Arnold (h.e.arnold@sheffield.ac.uk)

Steering Committee
James Lenman, Yonatan Shemmer, Michael Ridge, Valerie Tiberius

Further details are or will be posted here:

http://constructivism09.wordpress.com/

Tuesday 11 November 2008

Ratio Special Issue: Justice, Equality and Constructivism

The new issue of Ratio is a special issue* on Justice, Equality and Constructivism, containing articles by Richard Arneson, Michael Otsuka, Thomas Pogge, and Andrew Williams, amongst others. Well worth a read.

*access to full text for subscribers only

Friday 7 November 2008

Sheffield Doc/Fest

The Sheffield International Documentary Festival, or Doc/Fest as it's more commonly known, is being held at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield this weekend. 

One of the films in the festival is 'Examined Life' which features a series of conversations with leading philosophers, including Peter Singer, Martha Nussbaum, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Slavoj Zizek. It's being screened at 2.30pm on Sunday afternoon (9th Nov).

Monday 3 November 2008

New Public Reason Podcast Symposium

Following on from this year's successful series of podcasts, Public Reason are hosting another symposium in the Spring. The CFP can be found here

Problems

I've been having several problems with updating my blog - posts that I thought had been uploaded have instead apparently been disappearing into the ether. However, all seems to be working again as normal now, and some of the older posts have re-appeared. Hopefully things will remain working smoothly....

New Features on Academia.edu

Academia.edu has had another update - there are several improved features, and now users can have blogs on the site. Check it out here

New BPPA website launched

The new British Postgraduate Philosophy Association website has been launched. Check it out here