Certain Doubts

Northwestern’s Epistemology Brownbag series will be in its fourth year in Academic Year 2012-13.  For those epistemologists whose plans take you to Chicago on a Wednesday during the academic year, consider coming to present an epistemology paper of yours at our brownbag series.  If you are interested, please contact Northwestern epistemologist and graduate student Amy Floweree [AmyFlowerree2011@u.northwestern.edu] to let her know of your interest and your Chicago plans.

On behalf of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern, I want to offer my most sincere thanks to Matthew Mullins, who has been at the center of the Northwestern Epistemology Brownbag series from the very start.  Matthew will be handing over the administration of the series to Amy in AY 2012-13.  His tireless outreach efforts have enabled us to have many excellent epistemologists, from all over the world, present papers at our workshops in the past three years (see the schedules of the first year and the second year).  For this the Northwestern philosophical community and the Chicago-area epistemology community owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

Shaun Nichols and Ron Mallon are again running an NEH Summer Institute in Experimental Philosophy this July in Tucson. Details are here: http://epi.arizona.edu/. Applications are due March 1st.

Institutes are designed for teachers of American undergraduate students. Because of recent changes to the program, now up to three spaces may be awarded to graduate students in the humanities.

Concerning his new book defending a responsibilist virtue epistemology, at Philosophy News.

The interview lasts about an hour, and provides a nice overview of the book. The interview is available here.

Since there are wicked rumors out there that Chicago is not a place to visit in February, below the fold I have collected the various epistemology-relevant goings-on at the 2012 APA Central Division meeting, which is taking place Feb 15-18 in Chicago.  And if that is not enough, keep in mind that Northwestern is hosting a one-day pre-APA Central conference on topics in philosophy of language.  (Those interested in attending can email Fabrizio Cariani [f-cariani@northwestern.edu] or Michael Glanzberg [m-glanzberg@northwestern.edu] for details.)

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UPDATE 12/15  Thanks so much you guys!!  I left some close friends off that list for crying out loud!  Like I said, sometimes the most obvious things are the most likely to get overlooked.  I get grad school apps today, so I’ll be unable to update the spreadsheet anytime soon.  However, if someone can tell me how to post an editable Google Spreadsheet, I’d love to crowdsource this.  When I looked it appeared that one had to have a Google Apps acct to do that, but I’m skeptical about that.

I suspect that one of the most common sources of women being under-represented (even at a rate lower than their under-representation in the field) at conferences and in edited volumes (full disclosure: one of my three edited volume projects has no women in it) is the “comes to mind” bias.  One way to counteract this is to “double check.”  But that will not be equally easy for everyone and may have pitfalls of its own.

So I’ve made a list of the first three dozen or so women in epistemology that I can think of.  Now that method is already going to reflect a certain set of biases, so I would really appreciate it if you would support this project by posting below people I’ve missed, along with the relevant data.  Also, there may be errors in this quite hasty rough draft (and I have not used “nicknames” for the people I’m closer to personally, in case it seems overly formal).

I also issue a call to those in other sub-disciplines to do the same (I might even be late to the party for all I know, but a quick web search didn’t turn up much).

Finally, there may be any number of issues I’m blind to regarding the formation and propagation of this list.  I have run the idea by a number of trusted advisors (all on this list) and so far no one has a problem with it.  Still, I welcome any suggestions about better or worse ways to maintain such a list.  And, please, remember that I did this really fast, so there might be egregious errors or omissions (and I think one is often most likely to omit the most obvious).

http://bit.ly/tjA1be

This is just to announce the 2012 Episteme conference that will be hosted by the Delft University of Technology and the 3TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology (www.ethicsandtechnology.eu).

The theme of the conference is ‘Epistemological Problems of Privacy and Secrecy’, and the conference will take place June 8-June 10, 2012, in The Hague (the Netherlands). Confirmed speakers for this conference are:

• John Hardwig
• Alvin Goldman
• Klemens Kappel
• Peter Ludlow
• Duncan Pritchard
• Martijn Blaauw

The conference commentator-at-large is

• Brian Leiter

 There is a call for papers (300 word abstracts) with a deadline of March 1st 2012. More information on the conference and the call for papers can be found on the conference homepage http://www.ethicsandtechnology.eu/subsite/epistemological_problems_of_privacy_and_secrecy/

If you have any queries, please email the conference organizer, Martijn Blaauw: privacyandsecrecy2012@tudelft.nl