Category: Ethics and Morals

Call: “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On September 8, 2026, the satellite workshop “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice” will accompany the 6th European Experimental Philosophy Conference at the University of Cagliari, Italy.

Proposals for talks can be submitted until May 1, 2026. The call reads:

The Conference will be accompanied by a Satellite Workshop on “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Linguistic Justice” (IPLJ), to be held on 8 September 2026. The IPLJ Workshop will be held in collaboration with the Linguistic Justice Society (LJS). The IPLJ Workshop welcomes experimental and empirically informed contributions on linguistic justice broadly construed, to include linguistic diversity, accent bias and related topics. For the Workshop, we welcome only contributions in the form of talks. There will be no fees for those wishing to take part in the IPLJ Satellite Workshop, which will also be online-accessible.

Deadline: May 1st, 2026

https://openreview.net/group?id=EXPhi/2026/Conference/Workshop/IPLJ

Decisions expected by June 1st, 2026

Submitting authors will have or create a profile on OpenReview. Whereas new profiles with an institutional email will be activated automatically, new profiles created without an institutional email will go through a moderation process that can take up to two weeks. Abstracts for talks should be anonymized for review and not exceed 500 words. References and figure captions do not count towards the word limit. Please make sure all materials for review are anonymized.

Talk: “Normality and Norms” (Josh Knobe)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The Center for Philosophy and the Health Sciences at Aarhus University is hosting a lecture by Joshua Knobe. It will take place on Thursday, January 29, 15:15–16:45 (UTC+1) via Zoom. The abstract reads:

The notion of normality plays a role in the way people understand many different scientifically important concepts. For example, normality figures in people’s understanding of what it is for a trait to be innate, what it is for one event to cause another, and what it is for the state to count as a disease. I will be presenting a theory about ordinary attributions of normality and then exploring the application of this theory to all three of these types of judgments. The theory is that ordinary attributions of normality involve a mixture of statistical judgments (how frequent something is) and evaluative judgments (how good something is). Thus, the key claim is that both statistical and evaluative judgments play a role in people’s ordinary understanding of innateness, causation and disease.

Hot Off The Press: “The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

In “The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts,” Matt Lindauer argues for a strong connection between philosophical theory and its real-world applicability, also drawing on moral psychology and adjacent fields. The book’s summary reads:

Can philosophical concepts do real work in improving our world? Should we, when evaluating competing understandings of concepts like “justice,” “empowerment,” and “solidarity,” take into account whether these different understandings can actually help us to fight injustice, empower the oppressed, and promote solidarity between people? The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts is the first book-length attempt to argue that the answer to both of these questions is an emphatic “yes.” In doing so, it provides a bold new defense of a tight relationship between philosophical theory and practice. The book advances the view that moral and political philosophers should be interested in the “fruitfulness” of normative concepts – how well they help us to solve practical problems that we inevitably face as human beings interacting with one another. This view has broad implications for a number of important contemporary philosophical debates that the book examines, including debates over the nature of moral motivation, the duties of the global affluent to the global poor, the nature of justice in diverse multicultural societies, ideal versus non-ideal theory in political philosophy, and conceptual engineering. Drawing on cutting-edge research in moral psychology and adjacent fields, the book also demonstrates that we now have the scientific tools to concretely evaluate the practical value of moral and political concepts. It issues an important call to continue developing the use of these tools and methods to produce more philosophically and scientifically significant work on the distinctive value of normative thought and practice.

Workshop: “XPHI UK Work in Progress Workshop Series”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

James Andow and Eugen Fischer have announced the first talks for this season’s “XPHI UK Work in Progress Workshop Series.” Talks will be held on Microsoft Teams. Anyone interested in joining can email james.andow@manchester.ac.uk.

November 26, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Qianyi Qin (CUNY Graduate Centre): “Imaginative Tendencies and Virtuality Tolerance – Re-Examining the Experience Machine”
  • Jumbly Grindrod (University of Reading): “Word Meanings in Transformer Language Models”

December 10, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Juan-Pablo Bermúdez (University of Southampton) and Gino Carmona (Universidad Externado de Colombia): “Goals and Plans in the Wild – The Effects of Poverty on Planning Agency”
  • Miklós Kürthy (University of Graz): “Care for Consistency”

January 14, 16:00–18:00 (UTC±0)

  • Monika Jovanović and Andrija Šoć (University of Belgrade): “A Matter of Taste? Toward Deliberative Experimental Aesthetics”
  • Markus Werning (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): t.b.a.

Talk: “Philosophical Arguments Can Boost Charitable Giving” (Eric Schwitzgebel and Kirstan Brodie)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

On Thursday, October 30, the first talk in the Experimental Philosophy Journal Series will take place on Zoom.

Celso de Oliveira Vieira, Alex Wiegmann, and Rodrigo Díaz write:

We are pleased to invite you to the first talk in the Experimental Philosophy Journal Series, the new journal dedicated to X-Phi.

In this session, Eric Schwitzgebel (California) and Kirstan Brodie (Cornell) will present their paper, “Philosophical arguments can boost charitable giving,” co-authored with Nemirow and Cushman. The preprint, in which the authors identify the elements of a range of philosophical arguments that boost charitable giving, is available here. The presentation will be followed by a commentary from Rodrigo Díaz (CSIC). He wrote “Do Moral Beliefs Motivate Action?,” accessible here. After that, the floor will be open for discussion. The authors will speak first, but the audience will be able to participate as well.

The session will take place online on October 30th at 10 AM PDT/6 PM CET.
Here is the Zoom link: http://tiny.cc/xphij1
For inquiries, please contact Celso Vieira at celso.deoliveiravieira@rub.de.

See you soon,
Celso, Alex, and Rodrigo

Call: “Valence Asymmetries”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The Valence Asymmetries project, led by Isidora Stojanovic at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, is looking for expressions of interest from people who would like to join. The call reads:

We are interested in including new team members in our project. Before opening a new position, we are inviting those interested in joining us to express their interest.

The new team member(s) should have research interests that align directly with the objectives of the project, broadly understood. They will already have a very solid publication track, will cherish interdisciplinary research, and will want to combine theoretical and empirical methodology.

We are particularly interested in the following research profiles:

  • Decision theory, philosophy of rationality & framing effects
  • Formal value theory & formal semantics
  • Philosophy of emotions & social and/or moral psychology
  • Moral cognition & philosophy of well-being

Additionally, any other research profile that offers a novel perspective on the project’s objectives is potentially welcome.

The duration of the contract will depend on the range of project tasks that the new team member will be hired to work on, and in any case cannot exceed the duration of the project (i.e. July 2029).

In addition to prospective candidates who would like to join us for a longer duration, we are also inviting tenured faculty who have a demonstrably heavy teaching load to consider joining us for a one year period (assuming that they can get a leave of absence from their home institution) that they can devote to research.

The expected gross salary is approx. 31.000 gross per year (negotiable for senior and/or already tenured faculty).

NB: The project’s team members must live in Barcelona (region), they regularly meet in person, attend seminars and conduct in-person research. The position is incompatible with living and/or spending considerable periods of time elsewhere.

If you are interested in joining the project, please send an email to Isidora Stojanovic (PI), explaining your motivation and interests, together with a complete CV.

Hot Off The Press: “Empirical Studies on Questions of Need-Based Distributive Justice”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

In “Empirical Studies on Questions of Need-Based Distributive Justice” (the English translation of last year’s “Empirische Studien zu Fragen der Bedarfsgerechtigkeit”), I recap a series of vignette studies that examine the role that needs play in dealing with problems of distributive justice. As I summarised in last year’s post:

Among other things, the following becomes clear:

  1. Impartial observers make gradual assessments of the fairness of distributions.
  2. These assessments depend on how well an individual is supplied with a relevant good.
  3. If information on a need threshold is given, these assessments are made relative to this reference point. (Bauer et al. 2023a [later published as Bauer et al. 2025])
  4. Impartial decision-makers consider need, productivity, and accountability when making hypothetical distribution decisions.
  5. If an individual’s productivity is not sufficient to cover their needs, these higher needs are partially compensated for (at the expense of other individuals who are not so badly off)
  6. Willingness to compensate decreases if an individual is accountable for having produced less or for needing more. (Bauer et al. 2022)
  7. Both impartial observers and impartial decision-makers attribute different levels of importance to different kinds of needs.
  8. This reveals a hierarchy of needs in the following order: Survival, Decency, Belonging, Autonomy. (Bauer et al. 2023b)

Literature

Bauer, Alexander Max, Frauke Meyer, Jan Romann, Mark Siebel, and Stefan Traub (2022): “Need, Equity, and Accountability. Evidence on Third-Party Distribution Decisions from a Vignette Study,” Social Choice and Welfare 59, 769–814. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max, Adele Diederich, Stefan Traub, and Arne Robert Weiss (2023a): “When the Poorest Are Neglected. A Vignette Experiment on Need-Based Distributive Justice,” SSRN Working Paper 4503209. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max, Jan Romann, Mark Siebel, and Stefan Traub (2023b): “Winter is Coming. How Laypeople Think About Different Kinds of Needs,” PLoS ONE 18 (11), e0294572. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max (2024): Empirische Studien zu Fragen der Bedarfsgerechtigkeit, Oldenburg: University of Oldenburg Press. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max (2025): Empirical Studies on Questions of Need-Based Distributive Justice, Paderborn: mentis. (Link)

Bauer, Alexander Max, Adele Diederich, Stefan Traub, and Arne Robert Weiss (2025): “Thinking About Need. A Vignette Experiment on Need-Based Distributive Justice,” The Journal of Economic Inequality 23 (3), 667–693. (Link)

Call: “Moral Epistemology and Social Progress”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Antonio Gaitán Torres and Hugo Viciana organize a workshop on “Moral Epistemology and Social Progress – Experimental and Philosophical Perspectives,” which will take place at the Universidad de Sevilla from November 4 to 5.

Abstracts for presentations can be submitted until September 17. The call reads:

This focused workshop explores the intersection of empirical research on moral cognition and philosophical theories of social and moral progress. We bring together experimental philosophers and moral epistemologists to examine how empirical findings about moral intuitions, attitude change, and intellectual virtues inform our understanding of moral improvement at both individual and societal levels. The workshop features invited speakers alongside selected contributions from an open call for abstracts, fostering intimate discussion among researchers working at the forefront of experimental and theoretical approaches to moral progress. Submissions addressing experimental studies of moral judgment, philosophical accounts of moral progress, or the epistemology of moral improvement are particularly welcome.

We welcome submissions for 3–4 additional presentations at this workshop. Interested researchers should submit an abstract of 350–750 words addressing topics at the intersection of moral epistemology, experimental philosophy, and social progress. Abstracts might explore empirical studies of moral cognition, philosophical theories of moral improvement, experimental metaethics, intellectual virtues, the psychology of moral change, or related themes in moral epistemology. Please send your abstract to both hviciana@us.es and agaitan@hum.uc3m.es with the subject line “November Workshop.” The deadline for submissions is 17 September 2025. Selected presenters will have approximately 30 minutes for their presentation followed by discussion.

Call: “Laws Many Users”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Alex Davies and Nikolai Shurakov organize a conference on “Law’s Many Users – Legal Interpretation Within and Beyond Legal Institutions,” which will take place at the University of Tartu from November 12 to 14.

Abstracts for presentations can be submitted until August 12. The call reads:

Law is interpreted and implemented by many hands. Some of them belong to judges, legislators, or lawyers – but many belong to nurses, teachers, municipal officials, or department heads: professionals who encounter law not in courtrooms or casebooks, but in institutional documents, contracts, checklists, and internal protocols. These actors do not interpret law as legal theorists or as abstract “laypeople,” but as role-bound individuals embedded in specific organizational contexts. Their understanding of legal norms is shaped by institutional incentives, bureaucratic hierarchies, resource constraints, inherited routines, and pressures to defer to internal authorities. They are interpreters, but also implementers – conduits through which law acquires practical meaning.

While experimental jurisprudence has deepened our understanding of how legal concepts like causation, intention, or rights are grasped by legal experts and ordinary citizens, it has rarely focused on this middle terrain: how individuals interpret legal rules as part of their job, within the constraints and affordances of organizational life.

This conference is an occasion for exploring that terrain.

Call for Abstracts (submission deadline: August 12, 2025)

We invite submissions from scholars across disciplines interested in how laws and regulations are interpreted, implemented, and transformed in real-world institutional settings.

Legal meaning is shaped not only in courts or legislatures, but in offices, classrooms, clinics, and council chambers – by actors whose interpretations are framed by professional roles, organizational logics, and institutional incentives. This conference invites reflection on the interpretive practices that emerge in such contexts, and how these practices affect what law becomes in use.

We welcome work from experimental jurisprudence, philosophy of language, linguistics, law & economics, public administration, and related fields. Contributions may be theoretical, empirical, or methodological.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Studies of how non-lawyers interpret and apply legal or regulatory texts
  • Experimental investigations of interpretation in institutional settings
  • Pragmatic and semantic analysis of policy and legal communication
  • Incentive structures and role-based reasoning in interpretation
  • Legal meaning as mediated through contracts, guidelines, or protocols
  • Interpretive drift and discretion in organizational environments
  • Extensions or critiques of experimental jurisprudence beyond traditional contexts
  • Interdisciplinary methods for studying law “in the wild”

Abstracts are applications for either 30-minute slots (20 minute talk + 10 minute discussion) OR 1-hour slots (30–40 minute talk + 30–20 minute Q&A). Abstracts (max. 600 words – excluding a list of references) should: (a) make clear the line of argument for the conclusion defended; (b) make clear the relevance of the envisioned talk to the conference theme; (c) make clear whether your applying for a 30-minute or 60-minute slot; and (d) be prepared for anonymous review.

Submitting Abstracts: Abstracts should be submitted with a separate coversheet (author, email, institution) to laws.many.users@gmail.com.

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/.