Call for Philosophy Papers SSPP

I'm the philosophy program chair for the 104th annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, to be held March 22-24, 2012 in Savannah, GA. SSPP meetings feature concurrent programs in philosophy and psychology, as well as plenary sessions jointly sponsored by the philosophy and psychology program committees. The deadline for all submissions is November 1, 2011.

Invited Speakers:

David Rosenthal (CUNY Graduate Center)

William Bechtel (UC San Diego)

Jesse Prinz (CUNY Graduate Center)

Invited Symposia:

Cognition and the Social: Carrie Figdor, Bryce Huebner, Anthony Chemero

Perplexities of Perception: Brian Keeley, Robert Briscoe, Berit Brogaard

Fictionalism, Falsehood and the Epistemic Value of Truth: Anthony Dardis, Chase Wrenn, Tad Zawidzki

Explaining Consciousness: Richard Brown, Josh Weisberg, Kenneth Williford

The Philosophy Program Committee encourages the submission of papers and symposium proposals.  Their selection will be based on quality and relevance to philosophy, psychology, and other sciences of the mind.  The aim of the committee is to present as balanced a program as the quality of submissions in each area permits.

Papers:  Submissions exceeding 3,000 words will not be considered. Submissions should include a word count and an abstract of no more than 150 words.  Self-reference should be deleted to permit blind reviewing; authors should indicate their identity only on the cover letter that accompanies their submission.  All papers submitted and presented should employ gender-neutral language.  Please submit file as lastname.firstname.doc or lastname.firstname.rtf or lastname.firstname.pdf.

Papers, along with the Abstract Submission Form on the website, should be submitted electronically to: 

Dr. Pete Mandik  petemandik@gmail.com

Certain papers may be selected for commentary depending on overall programmatic considerations.  People who wish to comment on a paper or to chair a session may volunteer by sending a short version of their curriculum vitae directly to the program chairperson at the above address.

Please specify ‘SSPP Submission' in the subject line.  If the paper is being submitted in consideration of a Graduate Student Travel Award, please specify ‘SSPP Submisson– GSTA.’  If the paper should be considered for the Griffith prize, please specify ‘SSPP submission - Griffith.’

Further info can be found at the SSPP website and especially in the SSPP August Newsletter.

xphi of zombies

ScienceDirect - Cognition : More dead than dead: Perceptions of persons in the persistent vegetative state:

Patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS) may be biologically alive, but these experiments indicate that people see PVS as a state curiously more dead than dead. Experiment 1 found that PVS patients were perceived to have less mental capacity than the dead. Experiment 2 explained this effect as an outgrowth of afterlife beliefs, and the tendency to focus on the bodies of PVS patients at the expense of their minds. Experiment 3 found that PVS is also perceived as “worse” than death: people deem early death better than being in PVS. These studies suggest that people perceive the minds of PVS patients as less valuable than those of the dead – ironically, this effect is especially robust for those high in religiosity.

Ross on Macpherson on the Senses

From NDPR: Peter Ross reviews Fiona Macpherson's new collection on the senses (a collection containing a piece by my good buddy Brian Keeley).

This collection makes it clear that philosophical issues about the sensory modalities deserve attention. It comprises eleven 'classic' works, eight previously unpublished papers, and a substantial introduction by Macpherson. All of the classic works (with the exception of a selection from Aristotle's De Anima) were published in the past 50 years. Some of these selections -- in particular, De Anima and H. P. Grice's 1962 essay "Some Remarks about the Senses" -- are classic in any context. However, the other classic selections have been underappreciated until recently, when the philosophical literature on sensory modalities started gaining more attention. Together the classic works demonstrate the challenge, complexity, and sheer (philosophical) fun of issues having to do with senses. The previously unpublished papers, most of which originated as invited papers for a 2004 conference titled "Individuating the Senses" at University of Glasgow, largely build on the classic works.

This is Quiet Karate Reflex

Thanks for voting, but we decided to go with "Quiet Karate Reflex." Here we are, playing Aristotelian Eye Jelly:

You can follow us on Google+ (until we get thrown off).

CUNY Kripke Conference

Conference, September 15-16, 2011: Celebrating the publication of Saul A. Kripke, Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers, Volume 1, Oxford University Press

Click Here for Schedule and Registration Information