BSET 09

Registration for this year's British Society for Ethical Theory conference is now open.

BSET 2009 -- a three-day residential conference
University of Reading: 13 - 15 July 2009.

Keynote Addresses

"Pleasure, Desire, and Practical Reason"- James Lenman (Sheffield)
"Intention, Permissibility, Terrorism, and War"- Jeff McMahan (Rutgers)

Submitted Papers

"Objective versus Subjective Moral Oughts"- Krister Bykvist (Oxford)
"Practical Bracketing"- Garrett Cullity (Adelaide)
"Truth and Error in Morality"- Dale Dorsey (Kansas)
"Moral Blameworthiness and the Reactive Attitudes"- Leonard Kahn (Calgary)
"Owning Up and Lowering Down: The Power of Apology"- Adrienne Martin (Pennsylvania)
"Shapelessness and the Thick"- Deborah Roberts (Reading)
"Second-Order Equality and Levelling Down"- Re'em Segev (Hebrew, Jerusalem)
"Non-monotonicity and Moral Particularism"- Alan Thomas (Kent)
"Cynicism and Morality"- Samantha Vice (Rhodes)

CFP: Manchester Green Political Theory Workshop

Workshops in Political Theory Sixth Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
2-4 September 2009

Workshop on GREEN POLITICAL THEORY
Conveners: Stijn Neuteleers (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), Corey MacIver
(University of Oxford, UK)

The management of environmental problems and the rise of the environmental movement pose significant challenges for contemporary political philosophy. These challenges can be found both on a global level and on a local level. At the global level, for instance, climate change is one of the major issues in real-life international politics and has induced a growing debate on the ethics of climate change (global distributive justice, intergenerational justice, etc.). At the local policy level, we are confronted, on the one hand, with the conflict of environmental values with other values such as economic growth and justice. On the other hand, we have to deal with conflicts among environmental values themselves (biodiversity, restoration, wilderness, etc.). Our political and economic instruments and theories have difficulties to cope with these challenges e.g. cost-benefit analysis, value of privacy, discount rates, aggregative models of democracy, etc. The broad field of political philosophy and the environment tries to provide answers to these challenges.
The workshop aims to cover a broad range of green political theory topics such as:
- Ethics and politics of climate change
- Democracy and the environment
- Public policy and the environment
- Environmental citizenship
- Environmental justice
- Green economics
- Environmental decision-making

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (or a full paper) to stijn.neuteleers@econ.kuleuven.be and corey.maciver@nuffield.ox.ac.uk by April 30, 2008.

Practical information (registration, fees, etc.) can be found on the conference website.

Carnegie Council Video Webcasts

The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs have announced that they will be making their upcoming events available as live video webcasts. The programme for April is as follows:

April 2, 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
Dambisa Moyo

April 6, 8:00-9:15 AM EST
God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World
John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

April 7, 8:00-9:15 AM EST
The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing
Ian Bremmer

April 9, 12:00-2:00 PM EST
Restoring Trust in the Global Financial System
Thomas Donaldson, Neal Flieger, Stephen Jordan, Seamus McMahon, Christian Menegatti

April 20, 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Prospects for U.S.-Russia Relations
H.E. Mr. Sergey Kislyak

April 22, 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Economic Crisis: A National and International Perspective
Ray Epping, Steven Greenhouse

April 29, 8:00-9:15 AM EST
The Crisis of Islamic Civilization
Ali A. Allawi

If you cannot watch these events live, go to the Carnegie Council website for videos, audios, and transcripts of past events, or download them as podcasts.

CFP: The Ethics of Climate Change

Call For Papers:

The Ethics of Climate Change: Intergenerational Justice and the Global Challenge

October 30th-31st, 2009, Clayton Hall, University of Delaware.

Deadline for submissions: June 15th 2009.

Keynote Speakers:

John Broome, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University

Kristin Shrader-Frechette, O'Neill Family Professor, Notre Dame University

Robert L. Nadeau, Professor of English, George Mason University

For further information see detailed CFP here

Open University Ethics Centre Public Lectures

The Open University Ethics Centre Public Lectures 2009

Integrity in Public Life

6th May - Dr John Githongo: The Paradox of Two Recessions
John Githongo, the Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner now working as Senior Advisor - Advocacy, World Vision UK, will consider some of the scandals that have come to light as the economic tide has gone out in European business. He will compare the apparent paradox whereby economic upturn and democratic recession have gone together in Africa.

20th May - Lord Butler of Brockwell: Integrity and Politics
Robin Butler will draw on his experience as a previous head of the Civil Service, and lead author of the Butler Report, to discuss the ethical pitfalls facing politicians and civil servants, and how to avoid them.

27th May - Professor John Cottingham: Integrity and Fragmentation
Professor John Cottingham (University of Reading) will argue that we are harmed by living in a compartmentalised culture. Our institutions are manned by specialists who have mastered a particular field, but are not expected to form a view of the whole. Yet the classical ideal of the unity of the virtues suggests that people cannot live well unless their activities are integrated into a meaningful structure, informed not just by narrow technical expertise but by an overall vision of the good for humankind. We need this idea today.

17th June - Baroness O'Neill: Trustworthiness, Accountability and Character
Onora O'Neill, cross-bench peer and President of the British Academy, focuses on the place of trust in public life, and explores what we should take as evidence of trustworthiness. Character, codes of conduct and formal systems of accountability can all be helpful for judging trustworthiness, but what can we do when they don't provide enough evidence?

These free lunchtime lectures are open to all and will be hosted at St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, London from 12.50 - 2pm. Click here for directions.

Admission is free but demand may be high for seats: please contact m.leroux@open.ac.uk to reserve your place at the lecture(s) you wish to attend.

Further inquiries to t.chappell@open.ac.uk

Goodin Lecture

The 2009 Edmund Burke Lecture in Practical Philosophy
"GLOBAL DEMOCRACY: IN THE BEGINNING"
delivered by Prof. Robert E. Goodin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Social & Political Theory at the Australian National University
with a response by Dr. Cillian McBride, Lecturer in Political Theory at Queen's University Belfast

Date and Time: Wednesday 22nd April, 6pm
Venue: J.M. Synge Lecture Theatre, Arts Building (TCD, College Green)

The lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.

For further information download the poster or contact jurgen.dewispelaere@tcd.ie

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Jurgen De Wispelaere
Editor, Basic Income Studies
Department of Philosophy
School of Social Sciences and Philosophy
Trinity College
Dublin

College Green, Dublin 2, IrelandTel.: +353 1 896 3136, URL
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ALSP
BIEN
BIS
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Guardian Human Rights Series

I've just come across an interesting series of essays on the Guardian website: 'Deconstructing rights' by Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law at Birkbeck College:

"Are human rights a barrier against domination and oppression or the ideological gloss of an emerging empire? Law professor Costas Douzinas traces the history and theory of rights, probing the paradoxes they offer in contemporary debates, including the questions of universalism, humanitarianism and individual versus collective rights."

International Encyclopedia of Ethics

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics will be a comprehensive, authoritative print and electronic Ethics resource. Its entries will discuss topics, movements, arguments, and figures in Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Practical Ethics. It will cover major philosophical and religious traditions; entries will be written by highly respected thinkers from around the world. In its electronic form, each entry will be hyperlinked internally to other entries and externally to electronic editions of the renowned Blackwell Companions and Guides, in all, more than 1500 scholarly articles. The electronic version will be regularly updated, making IEE the preferred resource for any professional, layperson, or student wanting to know more about Ethics. The print edition will be 9-12 volumes. Work on the Encyclopedia is shepherded by an Editor-in-Chief and two Associate Editors. Its content is shaped by the distinguished members of the international Editorial Board. All entries will be reviewed by an independent Review Board. We currently settled on more than 400 topics for entries. We will be adding another 400-500 topics before we are done. From the IEE site (www.hughlafollette.com) you can see the current list of topics, as well as 500+ more topics that the Editorial Board is considering. Feel free to suggest additional topics and potential authors. Follow the link from the bottom of the IEE page.
Hugh LaFollette: hughlafollette@tampabay.rr.com, Editor in Chief

CFP: Climate Change

Call for Papers

What: Climate Change: A Conference on Politics, Policy, and Justice
Where: Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
When: August 19-21, 2009

Please send abstracts (500-800 words) for paper proposals to climateandjustice@gmail.com no later than May 1st. Applicants will know of their acceptance by May 15th. Quality papers will be invited to contribute to an edited collection of the conference proceedings. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals, as travel funding has been set aside to aid exemplary graduate student presenters. For more information, please see the conference website: www.climateandjustice.org. The site will be continually updated with travel and lodging information, the conference schedule, and other useful information as it becomes available. If you have further questions, please contact Sarah at sbkenehan@gmail.com.

Keynote speakers:
Simon Caney, Oxford
Lukas Meyer, Graz University
Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington

Conference Abstract: Since the late 1980s climate change has been centre-stage in the international policy arena. However, as of yet, little has been done to incorporate all global players while at the same time catalysing the type of action that must be taken in order to combat this problem. There are likely many reasons for this current inaction, including but surely not limited to: questions surrounding climate science and predictions; questions concerning the most effective way to cope with the problem; and questions relating to the fair distribution of the burden of dealing with climate change. The focus of this conference will be to discuss the latter issue, i.e. the role of justice as it arises in the context of climate change. Justice related issues emerge in the debate over climate change policy on many levels. First, and probably most obviously, it must be determined what role each global actor will play in any coordinated effort to mitigate climate change. The answer to this question is not straightforward, as there are numerous factors that must be considered, including whether rights to emit greenhouse gases (GHG) should be divided equally among all nations, or whether rights to emit should be a function of the geographical placement of a nation, the population of a nation, the level of development of a nation, or even perhaps some combination of these elements. Second, and intimately related to the first issue, it has to be decided to what degree (if any) a nation’s historical emissions ought to be considered. As with the first issue, there is no clear-cut way to work through this problem, since there are seemingly justifiable reasons for engaging in all of the following: severely limiting the largest historical emitters’ claims to present and future emissions, considering only the historical record from the point in time in which a nation could reasonably have known of the harm it was contributing to, or, alternatively, agreeing that historical emissions should have no weight in the discussion, but rather all nations should agree on a fair emissions target from the present forward. Third, it must be determined to what degree (if any) future people ought to be taken into consideration when establishing climate change policy, since it has been predicted that the effects of climate change will stretch far into the future. Addressing this question requires having discussions on how future people can have justice claims on current people, what those justice claims might be, and how far into the future these claims reach. Fourth, it must be determined what types of entities have viable justice claims. Is it only individual persons that can make coherent justice claims? Or can nations, industries, businesses, non-human animals, species, ecosystems, and the like have and make meaningful justice claims? Finally, we must determine the level of responsibility individual actors have in mitigating and adapting to climate change, since it is not evident whether this responsibility falls only on nations, or whether it also rests with individuals, businesses, and industries, as well. Clearly then, the issue of justice and climate change is both complex and requires immediate attention.

Academic Earth

Via Virtual Philosopher, I've come across 'Academic Earth', a site devoted to video lectures from lecturers at some of the world's top universities. Of particular interest to me are Steven B Smith's  (Yale) 'Introduction to Political Philosophy' course, and Paula Goldman's (Berkley) 'Current Issues in International and Area Studies'. An amazing resource. 

Philosophers' Carnival

The 88th Philosophers' Carnival is here (I especially enjoyed the post on non-ideal political theory here).

Research Diaries

As part of the assessment for the political philosophy course that I will be teaching in the Autumn, we will be asking the students to complete a research project instead of an exam. This project will be based around a case study relevant to a particular problem or issue covered during the course. Because this will be a new form of assessment for many of the students, and also because we want them to actively reflect on their learning methods, we are going to ask them to keep research diaries during the module, and then to submit a sample or summary of the diary to be marked along with the project.
We will most likely be using the Blackboard system for our online content, and within this there is the capability to set up a diary for each student. These can be completely private, be only viewable by the student and us as course lecturers, or visible to all members of the module. There are of course advantages and disadvantages to each of these options - privacy encourages honesty, and some students will be less productive on a public forum than they will be when they are not worrying about other people's views. On the other hand, the module is trying to encourage collaborative learning, and allowing students to read and comment on each other's diaries would be one route toward this. I am however sceptical whether many level three students would take the time to do this productively.
In order to puzzle some of these issues out I've set up an online research diary for myself as a trial. I'm using Blogger at first because it is so simple to use and I already have an account. I'm going to keep it private to begin with, but I might change this later on depending on how it goes. I do already keep a research diary of sorts, in that I write dated notes to myself when I'm reading or working, and also through my record of supervision meetings. But this will be a way to keep all of these things in one place, that is accessible from both home and University (and on the move via my mobile). Hopefully it will therefore not only help with some of the teaching issues that I'm looking into but benefit my research as well!
If anyone has any thoughts about the usefullness of research diaries and the best format or location for them I'd be interested to hear them.

Fiona Robinson Interview

Interesting interview with Fiona Robinson about the ethics of care on the Carnegie Council's website here (the link is to the transcript, but there is video and audio also).

Brian Barry

As reported here and here, Brian Barry has died. As regular readers will know, my thesis attempts to defend a version of cosmopolitanism based on Barry's theory of justice. This is sad news for political philosophy.

CFP: Valencia -Ethics and International Development

Call for Papers:
Ethics of Human Development and Global Justice: Responsibilities of
Institutions and Citizens for Action on Poverty
Valencia, Spain,
30 November to 2 December, 2009

Contributions are invited for the *Eighth International Conference on Ethics and International Development*
The conference will focus on how various social actors can and ought to take responsibility for acting on poverty and expanding human development. Thus contributions are especially welcome on:
A. Responsibilities of business, political, and civic organizations
B. Responsibilities of active citizenship
C. Grounds of such responsibilities in the ethics of human development
D. Grounds of such responsibilities in theories of global justice
For elaboration of conference themes, see www.development-ethics.org
Proposals (including an abstract of 500 words, author's name, affiliation, contact information, and a biography of under 100 words) should be sent by June 1 to eticadesarrollo@uv.es.

Emotion, Value and Desire Workshop

Two Day Workshop: Emotion, Value and Desire
*07-08 May 2009*
*Thursday 07 May: Room G.019, Arthur Lewis Building*

10.00 - 11.15: Joel Smith (Manchester),"The Unity of Emotion"
11.15 - 11.30: Break
11.30 - 12.30: Gayle Impey (Manchester), "Motivating Imaginative Engagement"
12.30 - 13.30: Lunch (own arrangements)
13.30 - 14.30: Eva Düringer (York), "Care as the Link Between Emotions and Values"
14.30 - 15.30: Rebecca Reilly Cooper (Manchester), "The Role of Emotions in Democratic Deliberation"
15.30 - 15.45: Break
15.45 - 17.00: Michael Brady (Glasgow), "Attention and Emotional Motivation"

*Friday 08 May: 2nd Floor Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building*
10.00 - 11.15: Sabine Döring (Tübingen), "Emotional Motivation: Beyond the Humean Theory"
11.15 - 11.30: Break
11.30 - 12.30: Chloë Fitzgerald (Manchester), "Emotion and Intuition"
12.30 - 13.30: Lunch (own arrangements)
13.30 - 14.30: Mar Cabezas (Salamanca), "Emotions Through Another Lens: A Critique of 'The Logic of Domination'"
14.30 - 15.30: Rory Donaldson (Manchester), *tba*
15.30 - 15.45: Break
15.45 - 17.00: Peter Goldie (Manchester), "What is the Source of Emotional Motivation?"

The workshop is free but space is limited, so please register your intention to attend by emailing Joel Smith
Location: *Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester* (Getting here)
Manchester Centre for Emotion and Value

Conference: Critique and Crisis

CRITIQUE AND CRISIS
Call for registration: Social and Political Thought Graduate Forum
28 March 2009, Institute of Advanced Study, University College London
-N336, Senate House North, Malet St, WC1

One-day Philosophy and Social Sciences Conference addressing the role of critique with respect to current economic and environmental crises.

Keynote: Raymond Geuss - 'On Bourgeois Philosophy and the Concept of Criticism'.

Interested graduate students are invited to register at:http://cli.gs/NNsqNe
-registration is free of charge

Programme:
Rodrigo Cordero Vega - Warwick - 'Crisis and Critique in Social Theory'
Matthew Bennett - Warwick - 'On the Validity of a Theory of Crisis'
Lorna Finlayson - Cambridge - 'Constructiveness in Political Criticism'
Nicholas Gray - Sussex - 'Two Aspects of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy'
Sara Wolcott - Sussex - 'Koselleck’s Critique-Politique and Global Governance'
Allen Radtke - Essex - 'Assigning Moral Responsibilities to Collective Entities'
Tom Stern - Cambridge - 'Nietzsche, Adorno, Substitution, Criticism'
Matthew Astill - Essex - 'Seeking the Right to Name'
Christian Hermansen - Warwick/Copenhagen - 'Winch, Wittgenstein, and Critical Social Science'

Re-engaging Citizens in Democratic Politics

Details of an upcoming event in Sheffield...

ESRC Festival of Social Science Event

As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science (6-15 March 2009), the Politics Department will be hosting the following event. Re-engaging Citizens in Democratic Politics - Thursday 12 March, 6-7:30pm.
This event brings together Professor Colin Hay (University of Sheffield, author of Why We Hate Politics) and Professor Gerry Stoker (University of Southampton, author of Why Politics Matters) to discuss the sources of political disaffection and what might be done to re-engage citizens in democratic politics in Britain today.
Venue: Showroom Cinema (Cinema No. 3), Paternoster Row, Sheffield.
The event is ticketed, but tickets are free. Tickets available from: Margaret Holder, Deparment of Politics, University of Sheffield (m.holder@sheffield.ac.uk).
Full details of the University's contribution to the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences can be found at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/icoss/whatson/esrcfest.html

IBL Module

I've recently been working with a fellow PhD student on an exciting proposal for a new third-year inquiry-based learning political philosophy module in the department. The module aims to explore the gap between theory and practice in political philosophy, and to equip students with the skills to engage with real-world political problems. We're hoping to engage with different methods of learning and teaching, and to integrate new uses of IT into the learning experience. To this end, we've been awarded some development money from the university's Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sociences (CILASS). This money allows us to spend a considerable amount of time researching and developing both the content of the module and the methods of learning and teaching that we will be employing. We'll also benefit from the invaluable advice of CILASS staff.

CFP: Pavia Graduate Political Philosophy Conference

CALLFOR PAPERS
7th Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy
24TH and 25TH September 2009

On the24th and 25th of September 2009, the Human Development, Capability and Poverty International Research Centre at the Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia (Italy), under the joint patronage of the Italian Society for Political Philosophy and the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy, will host the seventh edition of the Pavia Graduate Conference in Political Philosophy. This two-day conference is meant to offer graduate students an opportunity to present papers, get helpful feedback in a friendly atmosphere, and exchange ideas both with peers and with leading academics in the field of political philosophy. In addition to parallel sessions devoted to students' presentations, there will also be two plenary sessions. Plenary speakers in past editions have been: Hillel Steiner, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Peter Jones, Gianfrancesco Zanetti, Jonathan Wolff, Michele Nicoletti, Philippe Van Parijs, Sebastiano Maffettone, Giovanni Giorgini, Andrew Williams, David Miller and Alessandro Ferrara.

This year's keynote speakers will be:
Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University), speaking on 'Unpolitical Democracy'
Michael Otsuka ( niversity College of London), speaking on 'Risking Life and Limb'

Graduate students interested in giving papers should send their contributions (max 2500/3000 words in English) accompaniedby a short abstract (max 300 words in English), by Sunday 24th May 2009. Papers may focus on any area within political philosophy, and presentations should take no longer than twenty minutes to allow at least another twenty minutes of discussion. Please note that the 24th of May is also the deadline for registration for anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper. Conference registration is free of charge. Paper givers will be offered accommodation in local university colleges. Accommodation fees and details will be arranged individually. Anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper can write to check availability. Details about meal arrangements and conference programme to follow. Please address all correspondence (including paper submissions and additional inquiries) to the conference email address: graduate.conference@iuss.unipv.it
Updated information will shortly be available on the conference website: www.iusspavia.it/hdcp

CFP: York Postgrad Political Philosophy Conference

University of York Political Philosophy
Postgraduate Conference
29-30
May 2009
Legal, Political and Moral Rights: What are the Limits?

Plenary Speakers:
Professor Attracta Ingram (UCD)
Professor Simon Caney (Oxford)

In legal, political and moral spheres rights serve as a justification for actions and institutions. In each of these spheres, to claim the existence of a right is to claim the existence of something that we should value and respect. Rights, consequently, shape theway we conceive our relationships with others, the way we build our institutions and also the manner we direct our own lives. However, what are the limits, if any, of what we call rights? This question becomes especially relevant when we notice the emergence of an extraordinary number of right-claims in increasingly diverse forms: rights to silence, rights to disobey, rights not to be punished, rights to be punished, rights to life, rights to die, rights to be left alone, and so on.
The York Political Philosophy Conference 2009 invites research students in Politics, Law and Philosophy to present papers on rights and their limits.
Each paper will have a discussant and will be followed by an open floor discussion.
The deadline for abstract submission (400 words) is the 1st of March (please refer to the guidelines in the website).
The Conference Fee (including lunches and conference dinner is £30)
For further details please visit:
http://yorkpoliticalphilosophy2009.googlepages.com/home
Or e-mail: ad546@york.ac.uk

CFP: War and Self-Defence (Sheffield)

Details of a future conference at Sheffield, part of Helen Frowe's Levehulme Project on War and Self-Defence...

Conference: War and Self-Defence – First Call for Papers
August 25th – 27th, 2010
University of Sheffield, UK

Keynote Speakers:
Frances Kamm (Harvard)
Jeff McMahan (Rutgers)
David Rodin (Oxford)

Recent years have seen a rapid growth of interest in just war theory. The current political climate has confronted us with important and difficult questions about, amongst other things, the moral status of combatants, the moral status of non-combatants, the possibility of wars waged by non-state actors, and the conditions under which one can be said to have a just cause for war. Many writers take the answers to these questions to be based, at least in part, on considerations about what individuals may do in self-defence, or other-defence. Others have denied the existence of any substantive relationship between the ethics of self-defence and the ethics of national-defence. This conference, hosted by the Sheffield Philosophy department, will bring together leading researchers in the field, and offer an opportunity for scholars to present recent research in this area. Submissions from those working in related fields, such as Law, Politics and International Relations, are also welcome. There will be a number of parallel sessions held during the conference. Those wishing to present should submit a paper of no more than 3000 words, suitable for a 30 minute presentation, along with an abstract of 150 words, to H.Frowe@sheffield.ac.uk by the 1st of December 2009. Please note that papers should be prepared for blind review and that only electronic submissions will be accepted. Suggested paper topics include:- The relationship between war and self-defence- The ethics of self-defence- Wars of humanitarian intervention- The moral status of combatants- Killing non-combatants- Just causes for war- The idea of legitimate authority- The moral status of terrorists- The moral wrongness of terrorism.
There are plans to put together an edited volume of a selection of the conference papers. Those authors who would like to have their paper considered for inclusion in this collection should mention this in their submission email. Authors of the selected papers will be notified shortly after the conference. This conference is generously sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust and the Mind Association.

MacIntyre Lecture

European Journal of Philosophy Annual Lecture
The Mark Sacks Lecture for 2009 will be on Friday 5th June at 5.30pm, in Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1, Gower Street, University College London. The lecture will be given by Alasdair MacIntyre and is entitled 'Danish Ethical Demands and French Common Goods: Two Moral Philosophies'.

Abstract: The claims of two seemingly incompatible moral philosophies, one developed in Denmark in the decades after World War II and one defended in France during the same period, are counterposed. The first is K.E. Logstrup's account of the ethical demand, the second the Thomistic conception of natural law. The questions asked about them are whether they are deeply incompatible and what light is thrown on them by the social histories of their respective national cultures.

All are welcome to attend the lecture, which will be followed by a drinks reception hosted by Wiley-Blackwell. Details of this event can also be found here.

Hillel Steiner Conference

THE ANATOMY OF JUSTICE
A Conference in Honour of Hillel Steiner
20-21 November, 2009
University of Manchester

The Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) is delighted to announce a conference celebrating the career of our distinguished colleague, Professor Hillel Steiner. Professor Steiner’s pioneering work on freedom, rights, exploitation, and justice has profoundly influenced moral, political, and legal philosophy over the last forty years. This conference will bring together scholars from around the world to discuss some of the central themes from Professor Steiner’s work.
Participants will include:
Ian Carter (University of Pavia)
G.A. Cohen (University of Oxford & University College London) (provisional)
Eve Garrard (Keele University & University of Manchester)

Alan Hamlin (University of Manchester)
Matthew Kramer (University of Cambridge)
William Lucy (University of Manchester)
Eric Mack (Tulane University)
David Miller (University of Oxford)
Serena Olsaretti (University of Cambridge)
Michael Otsuka (University College London)
Jonathan Quong (University of Manchester)
Zofia Stemplowska (University of Manchester)
Peter Vallentyne (University of Missouri)
Philippe Van Parijs (Université catholique de Louvain)

Further details regarding registration and accommodation will be forthcoming later this spring. For more details regarding MANCEPT please visit us here.

The Politics of Space and Place Conference

CAPPE Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
University of Brighton, UK
4th International Interdisciplinary Conference
The Politics of Space and Place
Wednesday 16th - Friday 18th September 2009
Keynote speaker: Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter, UK

Having now accepted about 60 proposals in response to our first call for papers we would particularly welcome contributions in the following areas, while nevertheless not excluding others:
* political and philosophical aspects of space and place
* sexual space and place
* space, place and globalisation
* current affairs

Final Call for Papers

In a world where inequality and poverty are growing remorselessly, where you are, and where you happen to have been born, continue to determine, how, and in indeed whether, you live. From the urbanization of the human species and the burgeoning of slums to the rise of the modern gated community; from 'Fortress Europe' and the Israeli 'security wall' to land reform in South Africa; questions of space and place are central to some of today's most bitterly contested political issues. What might an analysis of politics which focuses on the operation of power through space and place, and on the spatial structuring of inequality, tell us about the world we make for ourselves and others? How is power structured and brought to bear on people through space and place? How does power operate locally, nationally and globally and in both its soft and hard forms? How does it operate through urban planning, architecture, housing policy, immigration policy and national borders? How does it work to discipline and exclude some, while insulating others from the excesses of inequality and degradation? How and in whose interests do these divisions function as they pit against each other not only people who live in different parts of the world but also those who live just a few metres apart? What might an analysis of politics through questions of space and place indicate about how power, injustice and inequality could be better understood and more effectively contested?

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be emailed to Nicola Clewer AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AS NUMBERS ARE LIMITED - and by 30 April 2009 at the very latest: nicolaclewer.hughes@ukonline.co.uk Decisions will be communicated by 8 May. The conference fee is £210. This includes refreshments, lunch on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and a buffet dinner on Thursday in a local pub. There remain a few places for graduate students and for people who have no institutional affiliation at the reduced price of £105. Please indicate if you wish to be considered for one of these when sending your abstract; or contact Nicola Clewer: nicolaclewer.hughes@ukonline.co.uk as soon as possible. Please note: the conference fee does not include accommodation. Reasonably priced en-suite accommodation in student halls of residence will be available on a first come, first served basis for a minimum of three nights. (Further information regarding university accommodation will be provided at the registration stage.) Otherwise delegates are welcome to make their own arrangements. Please note: unfortunately we are unable to offer travel grants. For updates and further information about the centre please visit the CAPPE website: www.brighton.ac.uk/CAPPE

Aspiring Academics Event

Details of an interesting free event for postgrads and early career academics...

Tuesday 19th May 2009, Woburn House, London(http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/view.html/prsevents/429)

This one day event is aimed at those who are relatively new to teaching, or those who are planning to begin a career in academia in the UK, working in philosophy, HPS and theology and religious studies. Speakers will include: Professor Jonathan Wolff, Dr Joe Cain, Dr Mathew Guest and Dr David Mossley

This workshop offers an opportunity for aspiring academics to gather and share information and advice, and to develop the skills necessary for a successful academic career. The event will be useful both for those already teaching and researching in departments, and those hoping to start their academic careers soon. It will also provide a chance to meet fellow academics from all over the country. Topics covered will include:
* Views of the 21st century research landscape
* Subject specific approaches to curriculum design
* Career planning

The event, including lunch and refreshments, is provided at no charge. The sessions will begin at 11:00 and finish by 16:00. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. For more information and to register, please visit the event webpage

Danielle Lamb
Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies
School of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
0113 343 8756
http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk

Liberalism and Realism Conference

Forthcoming Conference: May 7th 2009, University of Birmingham, UK
Should Political Theory Get Real? Liberalism and the Challenge of Political Realism

Keynote Speakers:
Professor William Galston (The Brookings Institution),
Professor John Horton (Keele University),
Professor Richard Bellamy (University College, London),
Dr. Adam Swift (Oxford University),
Dr. Mark Philp (Oxford University),
Professor Glen Newey (Keele University)

For full conference details go here.
Registration/attendance is free.
Please register at: www.bhamonlineshop.co.uk/events/

Conference Theme
Drawing on Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche and Arendt, a number of otherwise disparate thinkers advocate a view of politics that is broadly ‘realist’. This view argues that contemporary liberal political philosophy misrepresents ‘the political’ because it fails to appreciate the depth of conflict and disagreement in modern societies. Political realists call for a re-engagement with the political as a distinct sphere of human activity in which vice, conflict, and competition for power are ineradicable. The purpose of this one-day conference is to bring together leading political theorists who share an interest in the nature of the political. It will provide a platform for discussing the merits of the realist critique of liberalism across a diversity of perspectives.

Schedule
10.15-10.45am Coffee/Welcome

Panel 1:
11.00 – 11.30 Prof. John Horton (Keele University) - 'Modus Vivendi and the Question of Political Legitimacy'
11.30 – 12.00 Prof. Richard Bellamy (University College London) - 'Private Virtue, Public Vice: On the Nature of Political Morality'
12.00 – 12.30 Q & A

Panel 2:
1.30 – 2.15 Prof. William Galston (Brookings Institution, USA) - 'Realism in Political Theory'
2.15 – 2.30 Dr. Adam Swift (Oxford University) Discussant
2.30 – 3.15 Q & A

Panel 3:
3.45 – 4.15 Prof. Glen Newey (Keele University) - 'Two Dogmas of Liberalism'
4.15 – 4.45 Dr. Mark Philp (Oxford University) - 'What is to be Done?
Political Theory and the Place of Realism'
4.45 – 5.30 Q & A

For further information please contact:
Dr. Steve Buckler and Dr. Richard North at: ejpt@contacts.bham.ac.uk.
Department of Political Science and International Studies,
University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston,
Birmingham,
B15 2TT

Peter Singer

Peter Singer
Solving World Poverty/Darwin and the Animals
2 April 09, 18.00-20.00
In association with Explore-At-Bristol, Bristol

A rare opportunity to see the internationally renowned speaker, philosopher and author Peter Singer in a special evening devoted to his work. His new book, The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, discusses the moral implications of greed and poverty. Extreme poverty could be abolished if the world's wealthiest ten percent of people donated a fraction of their income. Following a discussion of his book, Peter will deliver a keynote Bristol Festival of Ideas lecture, 'Darwin and the Animals', as part of Darwin 200.

How to book: BOOKING FOR THIS EVENT OPENS ON FRIDAY 6 FEBRUARY. Price: £10.00 / £8.00. Contact Explore-At-Bristol on: 0845 345 1235 (local rate calls) or 0117 915 5000 (9.00-17.00, Mon to Fri). Book in person at Explore-At-Bristol daily (10.00-17.00 on weekdays; 10.00-18.00 on weekends, bank holidays and daily during local school holidays). A recorded information line is available at weekends.

http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/

Conference: Global Justice in the 21st Century

Conference Announcement
"Global Justice in the 21st Century"
Interdisciplinary Conference
Program on Values in Society and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (USA)
17-18 April 2009

The Program on Values in Society and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities invite you to a conference on "Global Justice in the 21st Century". In the twenty-first century, the world will continue to become more inter-connected. Health care, environmental degradation, political violence, human rights, and world poverty are global issues requiring global solutions. These issues will be addressed at a conference on "Global Justice in the 21st Century" to be held at the University of Washington on April 17-18, 2009.T he conference will bring together scholars at the forefront of research on these issues to consider such questions as: What kind of international legal order should we work for inthe 21st century? How should human rights be understood in the 21st century? How should intellectual property rights be balanced against the need for life-saving drugs? What rights should poorer countries have against wealthier ones? How should the international community address global warming? What rights should the world's poor have to be protected from the effects of global warming? How should medical research be done to protect the world's poor from exploitation? The conference is free and open to the public.

Conference Schedule

Keynote Address: 7 pm, Friday, April 17, 2009, Kane Hall, Room 210 (Reception to follow in Kane 245) - Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, with a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Philosophy and in the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University - "The Health Impact Fund: Boosting Innovation Without Obstructing Free Access"

Daily Schedule (all in Kane Hall, Room 245)

Friday, April 17, 2009:
8:45 am: Nicole Hassoun, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and International Relations at Carnegie Mellon University - "Libertarian Welfare Rights?"
10:30 am: Dan Wikler, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard University - "Single vs. Multiple Standards in Health Care and Research: An Issue of Global Justice"
1:30 pm: Allen Buchanan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and James B. Duke Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University - "Innovation and Inequality"
3:15 pm: Angelina Godoy, Helen H. Jackson Chair in Human Rights and Associate Professor in the Law, Societies & Justice Program and in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington - "Intellectual Property, Medicines, and the Right to Health: A View from Central America"

Saturday, April 18, 2009:
8:45 am: Brad R. Roth, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Law School at Wayne State University - "Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement: Premises of a Pluralist International Legal Order"
10:30 am: Joel Ngugi, Associate Professor of Law and Chair of the African Studies Program at the University of Washington - "The Corrosive Effects of Neoliberal Legal Thought on Global Human Rights Discourse"
1:30 pm: Mathias Risse, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Philosophy at the John F. Kennedy School of Justice, Harvard University - "Who Should Shoulder the Burden? Global Climate Change and Common Ownership of the Earth"
3:15 pm: Stephen Gardiner, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Professor in the Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington - "Geoengineering the Climate in a Perfect Moral Storm"

The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability accommodation contact the Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance at: 206.543.6450/V,206.543.6452/TTY, 206.685.7264 (FAX), or e-mail at:dso@u.washington.edu

The conference is co-sponsored by the Graduate School and College of Arts & Sciences; the Law, Societies, and Justice Program; the Law School; the Treuman Katz Center forPediatric Bioethics; the Center for Global Studies; the Department of Bioethics & Humanities; the Department of Philosophy; the Department of Political Science; and the Program on the Environment.

More information is available on the conference website

Contact: Prof. Bill Talbott, Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, 511 Condon Hall 1100 NE Campus Parkway, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. Phone: +1 206 543-5095. Fax: +1 206 685-8740. Email: wtalbott@u.washington.edu

Institutional Cosmopolitanism Workshop

Cosmopolitanism in a world of interconnected threats and challenges: From a world of states to a world state?

A one-day workshop on moral and institutional cosmopolitanism.
Friday March 6, 2009
Centre for Philosophy of Law, Radboud University Nijmegen

Programme:
9.45-10.15 Coffee

10.15-11.45 First session: Global democracy without exclusion?
10.15 Lecture: Hans Lindahl (University of Tilburg)
10.45 Reply: Wouter Veraart (VU University Amsterdam)
11.00 Discussion

11.45-13.15 Second session: Democratic representation within a globalizing world
11.45 Lecture: Stefan Rummens (Radboud University Nijmegen)
12.15 Reply: Roland Pierik (Radboud University Nijmegen)
12.30 Discussion

13.15-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.00 Third session: World peace through world law
14.30 Lecture: Stanley L. Paulson (Washington University/University of Kiel)
15.00 Reply: Thomas Mertens (Radboud University Nijmegen)
15.15 Discussion

16.00-17.30 Fourth session: The state of nature and the world of states
16.00 Lecture: Hauke Brunkhorst (University of Flensburg)
16.30 Reply: Sylvie Loriaux (Radboud University Nijmegen)
16.45 Discussion

17.30-17.45 Closing remarks

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. If you are interested in attending, please contact: r.tinnevelt@jur.ru.nl

CFP: Brave New World 2009

I've been asked to post this CFP for the upcoming Brave New World conference hosted by MANCEPT. BNW is a well-established annual postgraduate conference in political theory which always manages to attract high-profile keynote speakers (this year being no exception):

CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline for submission of abstract: March 31st 2009

Brave New World 2009, the Fourteenth Annual Postgraduate Conference organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory(MANCEPT), will take place on Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th June 2009 at the University of Manchester.

We are pleased to announce that our guest speakers this year are:
Professor Chandran Kukathas (London School of Economics)
Dr Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen)

The Brave New World conference series is now established as a leading international forum exclusively dedicated to the discussion of postgraduate research in political theory. The conference offers a great opportunity for postgraduates from many different countries and universities to share experiences, concerns and research interests, to exchange stimulating ideas and to make new friends - all in a financially accessible and highly informal setting. Participants will also have the chance to meet and talk about their work with eminent academics, including members of faculty from the University of Manchester as well as our guest speakers, who will deliver keynote addresses at the event.
Guest speakers in previous years have included Brian Barry, Simon Caney, G.A. Cohen, Cecile Fabre, Jerry Gaus, Peter Jones, Susan Mendus, David Miller, Onora O'Neill, Michael Otsuka, Bhikhu Parekh, Carole Pateman, Anne Philips, Thomas Pogge, Henry Shue, Quentin Skinner, Adam Swift, Philippe Van Parijs, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff. Papers focusing on any area of political theory or political philosophy are welcome. If you would like to present a paper, please send a 300-word, anonymised abstract, including the title of the paper, to Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk, no later than 31st March 2009. Please also include in your email your name and institutional affiliation. Please note that the conference is self-financed and participants are responsible for seeking their own funding. For further details please contact David Birks at Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk. Further details to follow here.

Gateway to Philosophy

There seems to been a flurry of new internet resources for philosophers recently (see previous post on the Phil Papers project), and here is another...

Gateway to Philosophy

Based at Boston University, the Gateway to Philosophy project provides users with access to papers presented at the World Congress of Philosophy, as well as other initiatives of a philosophical nature. The site is divided into five primary sections, including "Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy","Existenz", and "Paideia". Visitors may wish to start their journey through the site by clicking through the World Congress section, where they can read all of the papers presented at the World Congress of Philosophy and learn about the media coverage of this event. Moving on, "Existenz" contains the full-text of their online journal, which is inspired by the writings of Karl Jaspers and his "notion of philosophizing on the grounds of possible Existenz, by which he meant philosophical thinking that might elucidate the meaning of human experience and existence." Additionally, visitors also have access to a detailed search engine on the site and information about their upcoming conferences and publications.

Buchanan Lectures

*Allen Buchanan: Leverhulme Lectures 2009 'Ethics in Political Reality'*

We are pleased to announce Professor Allen Buchanan's Leverhulme Lecture Series 'Ethics in Political Reality'. Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor Philosophy at Duke University. His research is in political philosophy, with a focus on international issues, and bioethics, with a focus on the ethics of genetic interventions with human beings. He is visiting Oxford as Leverhulme Visiting Professor for four months, and will be giving the 2009 Uehiro Lectures. The lectures are open to all including the public and there is no need to book. For further information, please email ethics@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Tuesday 17 February 2009, 12.30 - 2.00 p.m.
*Leverhulme Lecture 1: What Conservatism and Liberalism Have to Say About the Biomedical Enhancement Project--and Vice Versa*
Professor Allen Buchanan
Venue: Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, Broad St (on Corner with Catte St), Oxford (Map)

Tuesday 3 March 2009, 12.30 - 2.00 p.m.
*Leverhulme Lecture 2: The Social Ethics of Believing: Why Practical Ethics Needs Social Moral Epistemology *
Professor Allen Buchanan
Venue: Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, Broad St (on Corner with Catte St), Oxford (Map)

Tuesday March 17 2009, 12.30 - 2.00 p.m.
*Leverhulme Lecture 3: The Egalitarianism of Human Rights*
Professor Allen Buchanan
Venue: Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, Broad St (on Corner with Catte St), Oxford (Map)

Tuesday April 28 2009, 12.30 - 2.00 p.m.
*Leverhulme Lecture 4: Fidelity to Constitutional Democracy and to a Robust International Legal Order.*
Professor Allen Buchanan
Venue: Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, Broad St (on Corner with Catte St), Oxford (Map)

Phil Papers

Extended details from David Chalmers of a very exciting new online resource...

PhilPapers

http://philpapers.org/

I'm pleased to announce the launch of PhilPapers, a virtual environment for philosophical research. PhilPapers has been developedat the ANU Centre for Consciousness by David Bourget and me, with significant help from Wolfgang Schwarz. PhilPapers is an outgrowth of the MindPapers project in the philosophy of mind, but it is much greater in scope and ambition. PhilPapers encompasses all areas of philosophy, and it has many features that MindPapers lacks.

The core of PhilPapers is a database of close to 200,000 articles and books in philosophy, concentrating especially although not exclusively on items that are available online. Around this database, the site has all sorts of tools for accessing the articles and books online wherever possible, for discussing them in discussion forums, for classifying them in relevant areas of philosophy, for searching and browsing in many different ways, for creating personal bibliographies and personal content alerts, and much more. The best way to get an idea of what PhilPapers can do is to go to http://philpapers.org and try it yourself. A casual browser can browse listings for new and old papers, search for papers in a given area or by a specific author, read the discussion forums, and so on. However, we encourage you to create a user account, which enables many more sophisticated features. If you do this, you'll have a profile page from which you can set up personal research tools such as bibliographies, filters, and content alerts (via RSS or email). Your profile page will include a list of your own work (compiled via name matching), which you can edit where appropriate. With a user account, you can also submit new entries (giving publication information and/or a link, and optionally uploading a paper to our repository), edit and categorize existing entries, and contribute to discussion forums.

At the moment, the PhilPapers database includes entries for 188,000 articles (typically via publication information and/or links, with full papers stored elsewhere). The database has been compiled mainly through automatically harvesting many Internet sources. It includes entries for
(i) 124,000 journal articles harvested from the websites of more than 200 philosophical journals,
(ii) 33,000 books harvested from the Library of Congress database,
(iii) 18,000 books and articles from the MindPapers database,
(iv) 7000 papers harvested from more than 1000 personal websites,
(v) 5000 papers harvested from Internet archives,
(vi) 1300 historical e-texts from the Episteme Links database, and
(vii) a few hundred user submissions.
About 95% of thearticles are available online (via links to journal sites, personal sites, archives, and so on), while about 17% of the books are available online (typically via a Google Books preview). The database itself is growing fast. For example, the addition of books has just started and is still in progress (so far we have only added books published after 1970).

A key feature of PhilPapers is a fine-grained category system for philosophical areas. The system is an extension of the MindPapers category system, and now has about 3000 categories under five main clusters with 6-8 main areas each. Of course the category system is still very tentative and is subject to ongoing refinement. To date, there has been only very partial categorization of papers, through limited automatic and manual classification, and through inheriting categories from MindPapers. However, we have developed a number of categorization tools (e.g., a "categorize" link under each paper) that users can use to classify entries themselves. Our hope is that over time, in a Wiki-like way, this will lead to every entry being categorized in 1-3 categories, with resulting dynamic bibliographies for all sorts of areas of philosophy. If you have relevant expertise, please contribute by categorizing papers. The PhilPapers site has much more information under the "help" menu.

Discussion forums are another key feature of PhilPapers. These are devoted to discussing the papers and books in PhilPapers, as well as to discussing other philosophical and professional issues. By clicking "Discuss" under a paper or book, you will be given the opportunity either to create a discussion forum for that item, or to contribute to an ongoing discussion. Each such forum will be included in turn in encompassing forums for associated areas of philosophy, where these encompassing forums can also include other discussion threads, not associated with papers and books. There are also forums for general philosophical discussion, for discussion of professional issues, and for discussion of PhilPapers itself. These forums are something of a grand experiment, but we encourage users to use them, in the hope that these might become a central locus for discussion among philosophers.

PhilPapers is primarily intended for professional philosophers and graduate students, although anyone interested in the field is welcome to use it. Non-professionals are subject to some restrictions in contributing articles (contributions are possible, but they won't be included in the default "professional authors only" filter for listing entries), and in contributing to the discussion forums (for which they are subject to a daily posting limit). We hope that this arrangement strikes a reasonable balance between keeping the site accessible to all, and maintaining a high quality that will maximize the value ofthe site to researchers in the field.

PhilPapers has been through a month or so of beta testing with a limited number of users, who have uncovered various bugs and other issues, but there are certainly many problems that remain. For now,the site remains in "beta" mode, and we encourage all users to report any bugs that they encounter, via the bug report link at the top of every page, or through the bug report forum. (So far we've mainly optimized the site for recent versions of Firefox and Explorer, and there may be problems with other browsers.) There are also numerous glitches in the database, especially for articles harvested from personal websites. In these cases, we encourage users who know the correct information to correct the entries themselves, using the"edit" link under each entry. We'll monitor edits, but we hope that the editing functionality will lead to a self-correcting system over time. (Users might start by correcting any errors in the listings for their own articles.) More generally, we encourage you to give feedback and suggestions in the forums dedicated to discussion of PhilPapers.

Finally, I should say that this site is largely a product of the programming and design genius of David Bourget, who had the idea for the project in the first place and who has done most of the hard work. He has done this in the middle of writing his Ph.D. thesis and having articles published in Nous, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and the Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. (My own role has mainly been limited to designing the category system and to endless discussion.) A major role has also been played by Wolfgang Schwarz, who designed the system for harvesting papers from individuals' websites, and who has contributed some very useful Javascript features to the site.
--David Chalmers.

Greenpeace Airplot

Greenpeace activists have purchased a plot of land within the area proposed for the third runway at Heathrow - they are planning to resist the expansion as much as possible, and are going to use their ownership of the land as an obstacle to the development.

Further details can be found here.

Join the plot and help stop airport expansion.

Scanlon Conference - Manchester

Justice, Rights and Institutions: Themes from the Political Philosophy of T. M. Scanlon
Friday 22 - Saturday 23 May 2009
Time: 9am - 6pm each day
Venue: The Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester

Speakers:
T. M. Scanlon (Harvard University)
Waheed Hussain (University of Pennsylvania)
Rahul Kumar (Queen's University, Canada)
A. J. Julius (University of California at Los Angeles)
Véronique Munoz-Dardé (University College London)
Serena Olsaretti (University of Cambridge)
Martin O'Neill (University of Manchester)
Michael Otsuka (University College London)
Mathias Risse (Harvard University)
Zofia Stemplowska (University of Manchester)
Leif Wenar (Kings College, London)
Andrew Williams (University of Warwick)
Jonathan Wolff (University College London)

The event is co-sponsored by MANCEPT (the Manchester Centre for Political Theory) and by the Philosophy Discipline Area of the School of Social Sciences at Manchester, and is financially supported by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. The conference website (with links to the registration and accommodation form) is available here. The conference fee for participants is £60 per person (this price includes tea/coffee, refreshments and lunch on both days).

Further details: This conference will take advantage of Tim Scanlon's presence in the UK to give the 2009 Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford, in order to bring him to Manchester for an intensive two-day exploration of themes from his political philosophy. Although Scanlon's contractualist moral philosophy has received a significant degree of critical attention, there has perhaps not been the same degree of attention given to the distinctively political aspects or implications of Scanlon's project. The conference will aim to remedy this gap through a detailed exploration both of Scanlon's work in political philosophy, and of the implications for political philosophy of other aspects of Scanlon's work on topics in moral philosophy. Papers at the conference will thus be of two broad types:
(a) papers relating to Scanlon's treatment of issues such as freedom of expression, human rights, equality, punishment, contract, and the idea of tolerance, as collected in his book The Difficulty of Tolerance (Cambridge: CUP, 2003); and
(b) papers that address the connections between issues in political philosophy and Scanlon's treatment of topics such as choice, responsibility, blame, intention, value, promising, and well-being in his books What We Oweto Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: HUP, 1998) and Moral Dimensions (Cambridge,Mass.: HUP, 2008).

Full details

Constructivism in Political Philosophy

Details of the upcoming constructivism workshop at Sheffield:

Workshop: Constructivism in Political Philosophy
University of Sheffield,
7th February, 2009

10.00 - registration and coffee
10.30 - Kerstin Budde (University of Sheffield): "What do we need Political Constructivism for?"
11.45 - coffee
12.15 - Aaron James (University of California at Irvine): "Political Constructivism: Foundations and Novel Applications"
1.30 - lunch
2.30 - Andrew Williams (Universty of Warwick): "Constructivism and Publicity"
3.45 - coffee
4.15 - Miriam Ronzoni (European University Institute): “Constructivist Justice as a Problem-solving Concept"
5.30 - end of workshop

Each session will consist of a 45 minute talk and a 30 minute discussion

Information about registration and prices is here. The workshop will take place in the Humanities Research Institute of the University of Sheffield. Directions are here. Any inquiries please direct to Heather Arnold: H.E.Arnold@sheffield.ac.uk

This is the first of four events at Sheffield that will comprise the AHRC-funded project on Constructivism in Practical Philosophy. For details of the rest of the project see our main website.

85th Philosophers' Carnival

The 85th Philosophers' Carnival is here.

Just Prices and Fair Trade Workshop

"Just Prices and Fair Trade"
A Day-Workshop
Saturday 14 March 2009, from 1000 - 1730 hrs.
Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied CETL, University of Leeds.

WORKSHOP DETAILS
The idea that the price at which goods are sold might be "unjust" or "unfair" to one of the parties in the exchange seems very natural. Indeed, some such notion seems required to underpin contemporary demands for fair trade, and the criticism of some trade for being exploitative. Nevertheless, the theories of the "Just Price" that might give substance to such demands and criticisms are generally considered a discredited relic of Medieval philosophy. The workshop is intended as a contribution to building an understanding of the proper grounds on which prices can be assessed as just or unjust.

The Just Prices Workshop, 14th March 2009, at the IDEA CETL, Leeds is a research workshop brings together 3 prominent scholars engaged separately in research on justice issues as they relate to pricing. Prof. Hillel Steiner (Manchester) has a Leverhulme Trust major research fellowship on 'The Just Price'. Prof. John O'Neill (Manchester) is currently engaged in research on political economy and the moral limits of markets. Dr Arne Moritz (Halle-Wittenberg) is involved in research directly on theories of the just price.

The workshop is likely to be of particular interest to Moral / Political Philosophers and Ethicists, and those with interests in Business Ethics and the ethics of Sales and Marketing or Fair Trade. We thank the Society for Applied Philosophy and the IDEA CETL (University of Leeds) for their financial support for this event.

BOOKING
There is no charge, but numbers will be restricted. Those interested in attending are invited to book a place by sending an email to Liz Pollard (e.v.pollard@leeds.ac.uk) enclosing the following information: name, job title, department/institution, email address and contact telephone number.

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
1030 hrs Coffee
1100 hrs Prof. Hillel Steiner (University of Manchester) 'The Just Price and the Moral Limits of the Market'
1230 hrs Lunch (own arrangements)
1400 hrs Arne Moritz (Martin Luther Universität, Halle-Wittenberg) 'Just Prices - Still a good buy?'
1530 hrs Tea / Coffee
1600 hrs Prof. John O'Neill (University of Manchester) 'Price and the Claims of Need'
1730 hrs Close

LOCATION
The IDEA CETL is located within the main campus area of the University of Leeds, about 15 minutes' walk from Leeds railway station. Directions are available on request from Liz Pollard (email above). 8-12 Fenton Street, University of Leeds, Leeds. LS2 9JT

ENQUIRIES
For booking, see above. For other inquiries, contact Jamie Dow(j.dow@leeds.ac.uk).

84th Philosophers' Carnival

The 84th Philosophers' Carnival is here.