Category: Academia

Conference: “Basel-Oxford-NUS BioXPhi Summit”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The 2025 “Basel-Oxford-NUS BioXPhi Summit,” organized by Tenzin Wangmo, Brian D. Earp, Carme Isern, Christian Rodriguez Perez, Emilian Mihailov, Ivar Rodriguez Hannikainen, and Kathryn Francis, will take place from June 26 to 27 at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

The program consists of 15 talks and seven posters, framed by two keynotes.

June 26, 8:30–17:30 (UTC+2)

  • Matti Wilks (University of Edinburgh): “Who Has an Expansive Moral Circle? Understanding Variability in Ascriptions of Moral Concern”
  • Eliana Hadjiandreou (University of Texas at Austin): “The Stringent Moral Circle – Self-Other Discrepancies in the Perceived Expansion of Moral Concern”
  • Daniel Martín (University of Granada): “Mapping the Moral Circle with Choice and Reaction Time Data”
  • Neele Engelmann (Max Planck Institute for Human Development): “Understanding and Preventing Unethical Behavior in Delegation to AI”
  • Yuxin Liu (University of Edinburgh): “An Alternative Path to Moral Bioenhancement? AI Moral Enhancement Gains Approval but Undermines Moral Responsibility”
  • Faisal Feroz (National University of Singapore): “Outsourcing Authorship – How LLM-Assisted Writing Shapes Perceived Credit”
  • Jonathan Lewis (National University of Singapore): “How Should We Refer to Brain Organoids and Human Embryo Models? A Study of the Effects of Terminology on Moral Permissibility Judgments”
  • Sabine Salloch (Hannover Medical School): “Digital Bioethics – Theory, Methods and Research Practice”
  • Markus Kneer (University of Graz): “Partial Aggregation in Complex Moral Trade-Offs”

June 27, 8:30–16:30 (UTC+2)

  • Federico Burdman (Alberto Hurtado University) and Maria Fernanda Rangel (University of California, Riverside): “Not in Control but Still Responsible – Lay Views on Control and Moral Responsibility in the Context of Addiction”
  • Vilius Dranseika (Jagiellonian University): “Gender and Research Topic Choice in Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine”
  • Jodie Russell (University of Birmingham): “Sartre and Psychosis – Doing Intersectional, Phenomenological Interviews with People with Experience of Mental Disorder”
  • Aníbal M. Astobiza (University of Granada): “Spanish Healthcare Professionals’ Trust in AI – A BioXPhi Study”
  • Nick Byrd (Geisinger College of Health Science): “Reducing Existential Risk by Reducing the Allure of Unwarranted Antibiotics – Two Low-Cost Interventions”
  • Rana Qarooni (University of Edinburgh; University of York): “Prevalence of Omnicidal Tendencies”
  • Lydia Tsiakiri (Aarhus University): “Responsibility-Sensitive Healthcare Allocation – Neutrally or Wrongfully Discriminatory?”
  • Edmond Awad (University of Exeter; University of Oxford): “Online Serious Games as a Tool to Study Value Disagreement”

For more information about the conference, visit https://ibmb.unibas.ch/en/public-outreach/projects-to-the-public/basel-oxford-nus-bioxphi-summit-2025/.

Talk: “Creativity in Taboo Terms in Sign Languages” (Donna Jo Napoli)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, May 26, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Donna Jo Napoli’s talk “Creativity in Taboo Terms in Sign Languages” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

Deaf signing communities share many of the same language taboos that hearing speakers observe. Still, there are areas that are sticky in sign that are not in speech and vice versa. We will take a peek at how signers create taboo signs, looking at ASL and DGS (the sign language of Germany) and perhaps a couple of other languages, noting primarily morphological creativity but also syntactic creativity.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Call: “Cognitive Tools in Action”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Valentina Cuccio and Francesco Parisi will organize the conference “Cognitive Tools in Action” in Messina, Italy, from May 28 to 30. Marianna Bolognesi, Anna Ciaunica, Elena Cuffari, Lambros Malafouris, Erik Myin, Gerard Steen, Vittorio Gallese, and Michele Cometa have been confirmed as keynote speakers.

Abstracts can be submitted until March 30. The call reads:

The conference “Cognitive Tools in Action” aims to explore the diverse ways in which cognition is both shaped by tools and manifests itself as a dynamic interplay of strategies and embodied actions.

The term “cognitive tools” encompasses both external instruments (e.g., artworks, technologies, artifacts, and media) that modulate cognitive processes, and internal strategies (e.g., metaphor) employed in cognitive processing. By emphasizing “in action,” we seek to foreground the deeply embodied, sensorimotor, and interactive nature of cognition.

This conference invites scholars from a range of disciplines (including but not limited to anthropology, arts, literature, neuroscience, performance studies, philosophy, psychology), to reflect on the reciprocal relationship between cognitive tools and the environments, bodies, and contexts in which they operate.

Talk: “Derogatory Speech – Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners” (Claire Horisk)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, March 10, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Claire Horisk’s talk “Derogatory Speech – Conversations, Hearers, and Listeners” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

In discussions of how to mitigate political and cultural polarization, we are often told that we should listen to our opponents. But should we listen regardless of what they say – even to derogatory speech? From the standpoint of philosophy, the prescription to listen lacks subtlety, and we cannot reach greater subtlety without a philosophical account of listening itself. In my recent work, I distinguish between listening and hearing and argue that listening to derogatory speech in the context of a conversation is sometimes morally wrong. In this talk, I expand my account, particularly with respect to how power dynamics affect who counts as a conversational participant.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Call: “ESPP 2025”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The 2025 conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology will take place in Warsaw, Poland, from September 2 to 5, hosted by the Polish Academy of Sciences. As keynote speakers, Emma Borg, Cameron Buckner, Nora Newcombe, and Petra Schumacher are confirmed.

Abstracts for papers, posters, and symposia can be submitted until March 3. The call reads:

The Society invites the submission of papers, posters and symposia. Submissions are refereed and selected on the basis of quality and relevance to psychologists, philosophers and linguists. If you have any questions, contact us by writing an email to espp2025@gmail.com.

Travel scholarships for PhD Students

Thanks to support from IFiS/GSSR, via the NAWA grant PROM Short-term academic exchange (in Polish, PROM Krótkookresowa wymiana akademicka; BPI/PRO/2024/1/00020/DEC/1), we can award up to 10 travel grants for PhD students at universities outside Poland to attend the conference and present a talk or poster. Please see the Call for Applications for these scholarships, which promotes equal opportunity for people with disabilities, and adequate gender representation. Successful applications will be selected on the basis of: (i) quality of the proposed talk or poster, as judged by the ESPP expert reviewers’ report on the anonymised abstract you submit when applying to present at the conference; (ii) NAWA PROM’s eligibility rules (see the Call for Applications).

Submission instructions for papers, posters and symposia

The deadline for all submissions is 3rd March 2025. Submissions should be made online via EasyChair.

Papers should be designed to be presentable within 20 minutes (for a total 30 minutes session). Submissions should consist of a long abstract of up to 1000 words (excluding bibliography). If required, an additional page of tables and/or graphs may be included. A submission for a poster presentation should consist of a 500-word abstract.

When submitting your paper or poster online, please first indicate the primary discipline of your paper (philosophy, psychology, or linguistics) and whether your submission is intended as a paper or a poster. Submitted papers may also be considered for presentation as a poster if space constraints prevent acceptance as a paper or if the submission is thought more suitable for presentation as a poster. All paper and poster submissions (whether abstracts or full papers) should be in DOC or PDF format and should be properly anonymized in order to allow for blind refereeing.

Each person may present only one paper during the conference’s parallel sessions, though you may be a co-author of more than one paper. If you submit multiple single-authored papers only one will be accepted. This includes contributions to submitted symposia.

Symposia are allocated a two-hour slot and consist of a set of four linked papers on a common theme or three linked papers with an introduction. Symposia should include perspectives from at least two of the three disciplines represented in the society (philosophy, psychology and linguistics). Submissions should be made by symposium organizers (not speakers).

When submitting a symposium proposal online, your submissions should include the following three elements in a single PDF:

  1. A list of 3 or 4 speakers which indicates representation of at least two disciplines (individual speakers may also represent multiple disciplines).
  2. A general abstract of up to 500 words, laying out the topics to be addressed and indicating connections among the talks.
  3. Individual abstracts of up to 500 words and provisional titles for each talk. Please do not submit more than one PDF file per symposium.

General Aim

The aim of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology is to promote interaction between philosophers and psychologists on issues of common concern. Psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, computer scientists and biologists are encouraged to report experimental, theoretical and clinical work that they judge to have philosophical significance; and philosophers are encouraged to engage with the fundamental issues addressed by and arising out of such work. In recent years ESPP sessions have covered such topics as theory of mind, attention, reference, problems of consciousness, introspection and self-report, emotion, perception, early numerical cognition, spatial concepts, infants’ understanding of intentionality, memory and time, motor imagery, counterfactuals, the semantics/pragmatics distinction, comparative cognition, minimalism in linguistic theory, reasoning, vagueness, mental causation, action and agency, thought without language, externalism, hypnosis, and the interpretation of neuropsychological results.

Talk: “Expressivity in Georgian and other Caucasian Languages” (Thomas Wier)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, February 10, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Thomas Wier’s talk “Expressivity in Georgian and other Caucasian Languages” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

Expressive and ideophonic constructions conveying “marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2012) are frequently found in the languages of all regions of the world, but their distribution, use and functioning across languages of the Caucasus has never been documented from a regional perspective. This talk will give you a brief taste of the various kinds of expressive language present in the three autochthonous Caucasian families: Abkhaz-Adyghean, Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian. It will also look at greater length at the specific morphological and syntactic peculiarities of expressives in Georgian, which exhibit exuberant consonant clusters, processes of reduplication uncharacteristic of the language as a whole, as well as specific morphosyntactic alignment splits between different classes of expressive.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Talk: “How Language Supports the Acquisition of Predicates of Mental States and Emotions” (Kristen Syrett and Misha Becker)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Monday, January 20, from 14:30–16:00 (UTC+1), the “Slurring Terms Across Languages” (STAL) network will present Kristen Syrett and Misha Becker’s talk “How Language Supports the Acquisition of Predicates of Mental States and Emotions” as part of the STAL seminar series. The abstract reads:

As children acquire adjectives, they must tackle the challenge that while some properties denoted by these predicates are stable and visually salient (e.g., color, shape), others (e.g., emotions and mental states like happy, sad, or confident) lack a reliable physical correlate, and are typically only inferable via second order characteristics. How, then, do children master the meanings of adjectives that label these fleeting, internal, abstract states? One answer may lie in the very linguistic environment in which these adjectives appear. Previous work in language acquisition has documented the power of the frame and complementation patterns for verb learning, subject form for control and raising verbs, count syntax for acquiring nouns, and adverbial modification for different types of gradable adjectives. In this talk, I draw on this prior work to lay a foundation for a series of experiments investigating how children might recruit both syntactic and semantic cues in the input to narrow the hypothesis space for emotion/mental state adjective meaning. I begin by presenting extensive evidence from CHILDES corpora showing that while these adjectives are relatively infrequent in the input, they diverge from other adjectives (e.g., those of color, shape, size, or multidimensional subjective adjectives) in their preference of syntactic position, their requirements on subject animacy, and their syntactic complementation patterns. Next, I present data from a set of word guessing studies using scripted dialogues that both adults and older children (age 5–8) recruit the type of subject and syntactic complement to constrain adjective meaning. Finally, I present a set of binary forced-choice word learning studies putting emotion/mental state against color and shape showing once again, that the presence of an animate subject and syntactic complement points to an emotion/mental state adjective meaning, this time for preschoolers. Taken together, these experiments – the first to document the combined power of syntax and semantics for acquiring abstract adjective meaning – make connections between emotion/mental state adjectives and mental state verbs in word learning, thereby further demonstrating the potential universality of syntactic bootstrapping, and the role of language itself in focusing young word learners’ attention on mental aspects of the situation that are not readily observable.

The talk can be joined using Zoom. Please write an email to stalnetwork@gmail.com for the invitation link.

Call: “EPSA25”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The 10th biennial meeting of the European Philosophy of Science Association will take place at the University of Groningen from August 27 to 30.

Abstracts for presentations, symposia, and posters can be submitted until January 31. The call reads:

Call for papers, symposia and posters

The European Philosophy of Science Association invites submissions for its 10th biennial meeting, EPSA25, to be held in Groningen (Netherlands) on 27-30 August 2025.

The conference will feature contributed talks, symposia, and posters covering all subfields of the philosophy of science and will bring together a large number of philosophers of science from Europe and overseas.

We also welcome philosophically minded scientists and investigators from areas outside the philosophy of science, for example, as symposium participants; and we particularly welcome submissions from women, ethnic minorities, and other under-represented groups in the profession. Childcare facilities will be provided.

The conference has ten sections:

  1. General Philosophy of Science
  2. Philosophy of the Physical Sciences
  3. Philosophy of the Life Sciences
  4. Philosophy of the Cognitive Sciences
  5. Philosophy of the Social Sciences
  6. Philosophy of Technology and Philosophy of Interdisciplinary Research
  7. Philosophy of Science in Practice
  8. Formal Philosophy of Science
  9. Ethical and Political Issues Concerning Science
  10. Integrated History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science

The EPSA25 Programme Committee, headed by Marie I. Kaiser (Bielefeld) and Olivier Sartenaer (Namur), will strive for quality, variety, and diversity on the programme. A selection of accepted contributed and symposium papers will appear in the European Journal of Philosophy of Science (EJPS).

Submission Categories

We invite submissions in any of the following three categories:

1. Contributed Papers

Submissions of proposals for contributed papers to be presented at the conference must contain a short abstract (max. 1000 characters) as well as an extended abstract (max. 1000 words).

The short abstract must be copied or typed into the abstract field in the conference management system EasyChair (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=epsa25). The short abstract will be used for assigning reviewers. Please include the number and title of the most relevant section at the end of the abstract. In addition, please tick up to 4 sections that apply to the submission in the topic section of the submission form in EasyChair. This information will be used to optimize the schedule of the conference.

The extended abstract must start with the title of the paper as it is also typed into the submission form. The extended abstract serves as the basis for the review. Please prepare it for blind review and submit it as a PDF file.

Please tick whether you want your submission to be considered for the poster session in case of non-acceptance as a talk, or whether the submission should be considered only as a talk.

The allocated time for delivering contributed papers as talks at the conference will be 30 minutes, including discussion. Presenters are expected to be present at the conference.

2. Symposia

Submission of proposals for symposia to be presented at the conference must contain a short abstract (max. 1000 characters) as well as a full proposal (max. 3000 words).

The short abstract must be typed into the abstract form in the conference management system EasyChair (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=epsa25). The short abstract will be used for assigning reviewers. Please include the number and title of the most relevant section at the end of the abstract. In addition, please tick all sections that apply to the submission in the topic section of the submission form in EasyChair. This information will be used to optimize the schedule of the conference.

The full symposium proposal must start with the title of the symposium as it is also typed into the submission form. In addition, it must include the contact details of the organizer(s), who may or may not be speaker(s), the names and short CVs of all speakers (max. 1 page in total), a general description of the topic, its significance and how the individual talks contribute to the topic and relate to each other (max. 1500 words), as well as titles and abstracts of all talks (max. 300 words for each). The full symposium proposal serves as the basis for the review. Please submit it as a PDF file.

Accepted symposia will be allocated 120 minutes, including discussions. They can have any format, but the maximum number of speakers is five. If a symposium has a classical format (successive talks & discussions) we encourage the organizers to include four talks (each 30 min) to fall in with the rhythm of contributed talks.

Symposium proposals that explore connections between different areas or research programmes in philosophy of science or between philosophy of science and sciences are especially encouraged. Online presentation will be allowed in symposia, but they should be exceptions and well justified. Plans for online presentation must be described in the symposium proposal.

3. Posters

We invite contributions of posters, which will be presented in a dedicated poster session. Posters can be submitted either specifically for the poster session or as a second option for papers that are also submitted as contributed talks.

Submissions of proposals for posters must contain a short abstract (max. 1000 characters) as well as an extended abstract (max. 1000 words). For poster submissions, please follow the guidelines for contributed papers and select the submission category “poster” (or “contributed paper” and poster option “yes”).

Submission Guidelines and Rules

The deadline for all submissions is by 31 January 2025, 11.55pm GMT.

All submissions should be made through the conference management system EasyChair at https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=epsa25

Authors can simultaneously make one submission for each of the three above types (contributed paper, symposium, poster), but any author can appear on the programme only once as a presenter. In case of acceptance of multiple submissions by one author, the programme committee will give symposium participation priority over contributed talks and contributed talks over posters.

For co-authored contributed papers, symposium papers, and posters, only one presenter of the paper or poster must be chosen and identified as such in EasyChair. Accordingly, authors presenting at EPSA25 may also appear as co-authors of other papers that are part of the programme, but not as first author/presenter.

Decisions on the acceptance of submissions will be made by the end of April 2025.

To present at the conference, the conference fee must be paid before 31 May 2025. In addition, presenters must be active and paying members of the EPSA.

The final program of the conference will be released in June 2025.

Contact us

For all enquiries related to EPSA25 submissions, please contact the following mailbox: epsa.pc@philsci.eu

Job: “PhD Scholarships in Neurophilosophy” (Munich, Germany)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The Graduate School of Systemic Neuroscience (GSN) at the University of Munich offers PhD scholarships in neurophilosophy.

Applications are possible until November 25. The job announcement reads:

PhD scholarship at GSN

You can apply for a neurophilosophy PhD scholarship in an annually recurring call for scholarships (application period from early December to mid-February). The GSN offers a structured doctoral program with an independent PhD (GSN Doctoral Program), in which you can choose from a wide range of interdisciplinary courses together with your TAC (Thesis Advisory Board) to put together an interdisciplinary study program tailored to your individual research interests. This gives you a sound neuroscientific insight into the (natural) scientific contexts that are important for your neurophilosophical doctoral project. In addition, there is an extensive range of “soft skills” and an attractive social program.

Call for PhD scholarships in Neurophilosophy

The application round for 2024/25 is now open and will close on 17 February 2025 (12:00 noon CET).

The Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN) at LMU Munich invites applications for several PhD scholarships in Neurophilosophy. The GSN is the teaching entity for the Munich Center of Neurosciences – Brain & Mind (MCN). By creating an interdisciplinary network of research, the GSN provides a stimulating environment for students and faculty to produce novel formulations of current concepts and theories. Successful applicants will be affiliated with the Research Center for Neurophilosophy and Ethics of Neurosciences at the GSN.

Projects in the research center fall in the following areas:

  • philosophy of cognitive neuroscience (explanation, reduction)
  • philosophy and cognitive science of agency (mental causation, free will, moral psychology, abilities)
  • philosophy and cognitive science of reasoning (e.g. deductive and non-deductive reasoning, logic and neural networks, decision making)
  • ethics of neuroscience (research ethics, enhancement)
  • philosophy of perception
  • philosophy and social cognition

In the new application round we encourage applications in smaller focus areas in order to build research groups. In the 2024/25 round the focus areas are:

  • human agency (esp. mental causation, complex action, multi-tasking, attention, reductive and non-reductive explanation of agency)
  • metacognition (esp. metacognition in perception, self-evaluation and sense of self)
  • group cognition (group epistemology, collective decisions and group responsibility)

However, single exceptional and independent projects in one of the other areas are also encouraged.

Applicants should have advanced training in philosophy (typically a Master’s degree in philosophy) and a genuine interest in the neurosciences. This includes the willingness to acquire substantial knowledge of empirical work relevant to their philosophical project. Cooperative projects with empirical scientists in the network of the MCN are strongly encouraged.

The application period will open on 1 December 2024 and will close on 17 February 2025 (12:00 noon CET). Please check our website and the GSN website for details concerning the application procedure. The application includes an outline of your proposed research project, a CV, an official transcript of your academic work (list of attended courses; grades), diplomas and two separate academic reference letters. Please also name two potential supervisors (possibly including one non-philosopher) from the core or affiliated neurophilosophy faculty of the GSN.

How to apply for a GSN PhD scholarship

Please follow the standard application process for GSN PhD applications:

In addition to the application form, please submit a short exposé (max. 3000 words) that

  • gives an outline of your main project
  • explains how your project fits with the focus topic or one of the other topics listed in the call for applications
  • names two or three potential supervisors (at least two in the GSN faculty)
  • sketches an interdisciplinary cooperation project (an empirical study that relates to your theoretical work)

Call: “Concept Formation”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The Italian journal Arkete – Rivista annuale di studi filosofici is planning a special issue on “Concept Formation,” also taking empirical perspectives into account.

Abstracts for articles can be submitted until March 31. The call reads:

The nature and structure of concepts have been a central focus of philosophical inquiry for centuries. Understanding how humans develop and apply concepts is essential for various fields, including language, cognition, and reasoning. In recent times, advancements in cognitive science have revitalized these discussions by providing philosophers with empirical tools to more thoroughly investigate and refine these debates. This blend of philosophical theories and empirical findings has led to new insights and perspectives, deepening the understanding of conceptual structures and how they are formed.

Historically, the study of concepts has evolved through diverse philosophical lenses. From the abstract Forms of Plato to Aristotle’s empirical categorization, through the rationalist and empiricist debates of Descartes, Locke, and Hume, to Kant’s synthesis of innate structures and sensory experiences, each era has reshaped the discussion. In modern philosophy, thinkers such as Wittgenstein further transformed the understanding by linking concepts closely to language and its use within social practices.

In the current context, numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain the essence and mechanisms of concepts. Philosophers have integrated findings from fields such as experimental psychology, cognitive anthropology, neuroscience, linguistics, and ethology to develop and test these ideas.

The Special Issue of Arkete 2024 aims to enrich this ongoing conversation by presenting diverse research and analyses.

Key questions for exploration in this issue include:

  • How does concept formation occur?
  • What are the primary characteristics of concept formation?
  • What role do empirical findings play in shaping our understanding of concept formation?
  • How does concept formation occur?
  • What are the primary characteristics of concept formation?
  • What role do empirical findings play in shaping our understanding of concept formation?
  • Identifying attributes
  • Grouping objects/events based on similarities and differences
  • Generalization and abstraction
  • Testing and refining hypotheses about categories
  • Impact of linguistic labels on concept acquisition
  • Cross-cultural variations in concept formation
  • Role of memory in concept learning
  • Neural networks and brain regions involved (e.g., prefrontal cortex, hippocampus)
  • Connectionist models
  • Misconceptions and cognitive biases
  • Influence of prior knowledge
  • Difficulty with abstract or counterintuitive concepts

Contributors are invited to submit articles for consideration. Submissions should be in English and must not exceed 40,000 characters, including notes and spaces.

Articles should be sent to: osservatorio.ethos@unisi.it.