In March 2027, the first “Complutense Workshop on Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy” will take place at the Facultad de Filosofía of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, with keynotes by María José Frápolli Sanz and James Andow.
Abstracts can be submitted until November 1, 2026. The call reads:
Submission deadline: 1 November 2026
Notification of acceptance: 15 December 2026
Conference date(s): March 2027
Workshop Venue: Facultad de Filosofía, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
Details
Intuitions are a source of evidence that many people use to a greater or lesser extent. We rely on them to investigate a wide variety of issues, for example, moral, mathematical, or religious questions, or to examine other people’s opinions on a host of different topics. Although there is debate about what is an intuition, appealing to intuitions has been one of the most widely used methods in many areas within analytic philosophy. The accepted view (see Goldman, 2007; Weinberg, 2007; Williamson, 2007, p. 2; Baz, 2012, p. 87; Koopman, 2012; Kornblith, 2014) is that intuitions play a fundamental evidential role.
Besides, there has been a dispute within analytic philosophy between three different groups of philosophers during the last decades. First, the “autonomists” (see, e.g., Bealer, 1998; Liao, 2008; Sosa, 2013; Chalmers, 2014; Devitt, 2015) defend that introspection and appeal to intuition can be used to answer many philosophical questions. Second, those who defend that analytic philosophers do not employ intuitions as evidence in philosophical practice. Following Nado (2016, p. 782), we can call them “intuition deniers” (see, e.g., Williamson, 2007; Deustch, 2009; Cappelen, 2012). Third, those who think that analytic philosophers use intuitions as evidence but doubt this method, arguing instead for the need to apply more rigorous methods drawn from scientific disciplines such as psychology, the social sciences, or linguistics; we can call them “experimental philosophers” (see, for example, Machery et al., 2004; Knobe and Nichols, 2007; Mallon et al., 2009; Alexander et al., 2010).
This workshop aims to include presentations addressing the relationship between intuitions and experimental philosophy. The presentations accepted are expected to develop novel perspectives or adopt novel approaches that shed light on traditional problems associated with intuitions in analytic philosophy. Both experimental and theoretical papers will be accepted, as well as explicit defenses of any of the above positions, papers that point out desiderata that all three should fulfill, or papers dealing with other issues related to intuitions and experimental philosophy.
Some possible topics that presentations may address are:
- Intuitions and mental experiments.
- Conflicting intuitions in questionnaires.
- Intuitions and justification.
- Calibration of intuitions.
- Differences in the use of intuitions in different areas of analytic philosophy.
- Empirical or theoretical analyses of the role of intuition talk in the arguments of analytic philosophers.
- Empirical or theoretical analyses of philosophical practices making use of intuitions.
- Using intuition in conceptual engineering.
Submission
Please submit an abstract including:
- Title of the paper.
- Abstract (400–500 words) clearly presenting the research question, theoretical framework, and main argument (in English or Spanish).
- Institutional affiliation.
The deadline for submitting abstracts is 1 November 2026. Abstracts must be anonymized (also anonymize self-citations) and must have a section including the bibliographic references (not included in the word count). Abstracts should be sent to the following email: davbordo@ucm.es, specifying the following subject: 1st Workshop on Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy.
For any questions, please write to davbordo@ucm.es.
Confirmed Keynote Speakers
María José Frápolli Sanz (Universidad de Granada, Spain; Institute of Philosophy. School of Advance Study, University of London, United Kingdom).
James Andow (University of Manchester, United Kingdom).
Organizers
David Bordonaba-Plou (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).
Martín Capece del Toro (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).
Scientific Committee
Asier Arias Domínguez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), Filippo Batisti (), Antonio Blanco Salgueiro (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), David Bordonaba-Plou (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), Esteban Céspedes (Instituto de Sistemas Complejos de Valparaíso, Chile), Antonio Duarte Calvo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), María Dolores García Arnaldos (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), Krzysztof Sękowski (University of Warsaw, Poland).
