Certain Doubts

This is a really big deal: just heard that Volume 1 of this 2-volume project is now under contract with Oxford. I don’t know the production schedule, but given usual schedules, I’d expect to see it early next year sometime. Keith has a website about the project here, a good motivational tool to help see the project through!

Congratulations to Keith, and to Oxford (and Peter Momtchiloff in particular) as well–gonna be some acquisition editors elsewhere kicking themselves over this one! To keep things realistic, though, I have advised Keith not to quit his day job just yet…

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln will be hosting the second annual Midwest Epistemology Workshop. The workshop is an annual event where epistemologists present and discuss recently completed work or work in progress that is close to completion. All epistemologists (regardless of geographical location) are welcome to attend.

It will take place October 17-18, 2008, on the campus of UNL. Tyler Burge (UCLA) will be giving the keynote address.

The second workshop will consist of eight nonconcurrent sessions, each involving a presentation of approximately 40 minutes followed by 40 minutes of discussion. Workshop papers will be made available to participants in advance of the workshop. Other than Burge, this year’s presenters will include Mike Bergmann (Purdue), Andy Egan (Michigan), Adam Leite (Indiana), Peter Markie (Missouri), Brit Brogaard (Missouri-St. Louis), Jonathan Weinberg (Indiana), Juan Comesaña (Wisconsin).

MEW2 is supported by the Chambers Research Fund, the UNL College of Arts and Sciences, the UNL Philosophy Department, and the Cedric Evans Memorial Lecture Fund.

The conference website can be found here.

Information from the first MEW (which took place November 2007 at Northwestern University) can be found here. (A forthcoming edition of Philosophical Studies is being devoted to the talks given there.)

Well, perhaps only maybe, but I’m in a bold mood, so here it is: pragmatic encroachment–where, when, how, why, and what the hell it is.

Been thinking about it lately because of a draft chapter from Keith on what he (from Jason) terms “Intellectualism.” Matt and Jeremy call it “epistemic purism,” which has nice moral overtones that Jane Austen would approve of. Here I want to address the “what the hell it is” question a bit, which I think is a bit harder than has been realized to this point.

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EPISTEME: A Journal of Social Epistemology will hold its sixth annual conference at Northwestern University on June 26-27, 2009. The 2009 meeting will focus on the epistemological significance of disagreement.

Confirmed participants include: Michael Bergmann (Purdue), Stewart Cohen (Arizona State), Richard Feldman (Rochester), Sherrilyn Roush (Berkeley) and Roger White (MIT).

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Papers should be no more than 5,000 words, including notes and references, and should be prepared for blind review. Electronic submissions should be sent to David.Christensen(at)Brown.edu by January 15, 2009. Approximately four papers will be selected from the submissions for presentation at the conference. The selected papers will also be published, along with the papers of the confirmed participants above, in a special issue of Episteme, with David Christensen as the Guest Editor.

Conference organizers are: Alvin Goldman (Rutgers), Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern) and David Christensen (Brown).