On-line Philosophy Conference (OPC)

Winding Down...

Well, it appears that the first OPC is slowly coming to a close.  In order to give everyone the chance to post a final comment or remark, we will leave the comment threads open for another two weeks.  After that, you will be able to view the comment threads but not participate in them.  So if you have been meaning to make a final point or put forth yet another objection, make haste!  In the meantime, we just wanted to thank everyone once again for playing along.  As we mentioned before, we have already received several helpful suggestions concerning ways to improve the conference.  Hopefully, more of you will send your ideas along. 

For now, we are tentatively planning to have OPC 2 just before the upcoming winter break.  Improvements will include: (a) direct links to html versions of all papers, (b) links to authors' and commentators' homepages in the posts, (c) webcast (or at least audio/video file) of keynote paper being read (and hopefully a few others as well), and (d) a maximum of ten papers which will be uploaded five per week for two weeks.  There are a few other ideas we are flirting with as well. We are committed to making sure future installations of the OPC are even more enjoyable and beneficial than the first one.  Suggestions can either be posted as comments to this post or sent to
the OPC email address.

Best wishes,
Thomas, Eddy, and Adam

Week Four

It's the fourth and final week of the OPC.  The first three weeks have been pretty successful with nearly 20,000 page views and several very active and productive exchanges of ideas.  This week we have even more papers than in the previous weeks, so surely there will be a few papers that catch your eye.  We look forward to once again hearing from everyone in the comment threads!  For now, we wanted to thank you for playing along in this on-line experiment.  We are well aware that things could have been both easier to navigate and more sophisticated technologically speaking.  Next year we hope to have fewer papers--so that each paper gets the attention it deserves--and perhaps some audio and audio/video files for people to download.  Minimally, we would like to kick off the conference with a web-cast of a paper being read.  For now, we are open to suggestions concerning how to improve things in ways that maximally utilize the on-line format.  A number of people have already given us some good ideas (e.g., using links to message boards, papers all converted to html, audio-video files, chat rooms, and webcam chats, to name a few).  We look forward to hearing more suggestions.  In the meantime, we wanted to thank you once again for playing along.  Hopefully, it's been both fun and beneficial to everyone.

Week Four:

Thom Brooks (Newcastle University), “On Retributivism,” with commentary by Michael David (Illinois Institute of Technology)

Tyler Doggett (University of Vermont) & Andy Egan (University of Michigan & ANU), "Imagination, Desire, Affect and Action,” with commentary by Tamar Gendler (Yale University)

R.A. Duff (University of Stirling), “Virtue Jurisprudence,” with commentary by Lawrence Solum (University of Illinois—Law)

Elizabeth Harman (Princeton University), "The Mistake in "I'll Be Glad I Did It" Reasoning:  The Significance of Future Desires,” with commentary by Brook Sadler (University of South Florida)

Terence Horgan (University of Arizona), “Materialism: Matters of Definition, Defense, and Deconstruction,” with commentary by Thomas Polger (University of Cincinnati)

Adam Pautz (University of Texas—Austin),  “Externalist Intentionalism and Optimal Conditions: A Comment on Byrne and Tye,” with commentary by Bill Lycan (University of North Carolina)

Susanna Siegel (Harvard University), “The Visual Experience of Causation,” with commentary by Sarah McGrath (Brandeis University)

Sharon Street (New York University), “Evolution and the Schizophrenia of Quasi-Realism About Normativity,” with commentary by David Enoch (Hebrew University)

Jason Turner (Rutgers University), “On How Things Are,” with commentary by David Manley (University of Southern California)

Brian Weatherson (Cornell University), “Conditionals and Relativism,” with commentary by Gillian Russell (Washington—St. Louis)

Kit Wellman (Washington-St. Louis), “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” with commentary by Fernando Teson (Florida State University—Law)

Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks (Newcastle University), “On Retributivism,” with commentary by Michael David (Illinois Institute of Technology).  The paper, commentary, and reply can be found here.

Tyler Doggett and Andy Egan

Tyler Doggett (University of Vermont) & Andy Egan (University of Michigan & ANU), "Imagination, Desire, Affect and Action,” with commentary by Tamar Gendler (Yale University). The paper and commentary can be found here.

R.A. Duff

R.A. Duff (University of Stirling), “Virtue Jurisprudence,” with commentary by Lawrence Solum (University of Illinois—Law).  The paper can be found here.

Elizabeth Harman

Elizabeth Harman (New York University), "The Mistake in "I'll Be Glad I Did It" Reasoning:  The Significance of Future Desires,” with commentary by Brook Sadler (University of South Florida). Both the paper and the reply can be found here. 

Terence Horgan

Terence Horgan (University of Arizona), “Materialism: Matters of Definition, Defense, and Deconstruction,” with commentary by Thomas Polger (University of Cincinnati).  Both the paper, commentary, and reply can be found here.

Adam Pautz

Adam Pautz (University of Texas—Austin),  “Externalist Intentionalism and Optimal Conditions: A Comment on Byrne and Tye,” with commentary by Bill Lycan (University of North Carolina).  The paper, commentary, and response can be found here.

Susanna Siegel

Susanna Siegel (Harvard University), “The Visual Experience of Causation,” with commentary by Sarah McGrath (Brandeis University).  The paper can be found here.

Sharon Street

Sharon Street (New York University), “Evolution and the Schizophrenia of Quasi-Realism About Normativity,” with commentary by David Enoch (Hebrew University).  Both the paper and commentary can be found here.

Jason Turner

Jason Turner (Rutgers University), “On How Things Are,” with commentary by David Manley (University of Southern California).  Both the paper and commentary can be found here.

Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson (Cornell University), “Conditionals and Relativism,” with commentary by Gillian Russell (Washington—St. Louis).  Both the paper and commentary can be found here.

Kit Wellman

Kit Wellman (Washington-St. Louis), “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” with commentary by Fernando Teson (Florida State University—Law).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Justin Fisher

Justin Fisher (University of Arizona), Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis,” with commentary by Frank Jackson (Australian National University).  The paper and commentary can be found here.

Josh Gert

Joshua Gert (Florida State University), “Irrationality and Harm,” with commentary by Jussi Suikkanen (University of Reading).  The paper, commentary, and reply can be found here.

Joshua Knobe and Erica Roedder

Joshua Knobe (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Erica Roedder (New York University), “The Concept of Valuing: Experimental Studies,” with commentary by Antti Kauppinen (University of Helsinki).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Jon Kvanvig

Jonathan Kvanvig (University of Missouri-Columbia), “Coherentism and Justified Inconsistent Beliefs,” with commentary by Michael Bishop (Northern Illinois University).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Neil Levy

Neil Levy (University of Melbourne), “Why Frankfurt Style Cases Don’t Help (Much),” with commentary by Kevin Timpe (University of San Diego).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Graham Priest and Neil Thomason

Graham Priest &  Neil Thomason (both from University of Melbourne), “Lakatos, Paradox, and Paraconsistency” with commentary by Stuart Shapiro (Ohio State University).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Manuel Vargas

Manuel Vargas (University of San Francisco), “Building a Better Beast,” with commentary by Eddy Nahmias (Georgia State University).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

David Chalmers

David Chalmers (Australian National University), “Probability and Propositions,” with commentary by David Braun (University of Rochester).  The paper and commentary can be found here.  Chalmers' reply can be found here.

John Fischer

John Fischer (University of California-Riverside) “Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Frankfurt: A Reply to Vihvelin,” with commentary by Kadri Vihvelin  (University of Southern California).  The paper and commentary can both be found here.

Brie Gertler

Brie Gertler (University of Virginia), “A Fregean Argument against Externalism,” with commentary by Sanford Goldberg (University of Kentucky).  The paper and commentary may both be found here.

Benj Hellie

Benj Hellie (University of Toronto) “That Which Makes the Sensation of Blue a Mental Fact,” with commentary by Adam Pautz (University of Texas—Austin).  The paper, commentary, and author's reply can be found here.

Thomas Hurka

Thomas Hurka (University of Toronto), “Value and Friendship: A More Subtle View,” with commentary by David McNaughton and Piers Rawling (Florida State University).  The paper and commentary can be found here.

Uriah Kriegel

Uriah Kriegel (University of Arizona), “Real Narrow Content."  The paper can be found here.

Swain, Alexander, and Weinberg

Stacey Swain, Joshua Alexander, and Jonathan Weinberg (Indiana University), “The Instability of Philosophical Intuitions,” with commentary by Adam Feltz (Florida State University). The paper, commentary, and authors' reply can be found here.

Amie Thomasson

Amie Thomasson (University of Miami), “Answerable and Unanswerable Questions,” with commentary by Jason Turner (Rutgers University).  The paper, commentary, and author's reply can be found here.

Participating in the Online Philosophy Conference

We hope you enjoy the first ever Online Philosophy Conference (OPC 2006).  Here, you can enjoy some excellent philosophical presentations from the comfort of your home, office, coffee shop... anywhere but the cold confines of a hotel conference room.  We hope this will be one of the best attended philosophy conferences in history.  Please tell your colleagues, students, friends about it to help make that happen.

The first set of seven papers and commentaries below will remain active until Sunday, May 7, when the next set of papers will go up.  During the week, participate by posting any comments or questions by clicking on the "Comments" link below the relevant paper.  Comments will be visible for at least the week the papers are up (inappropriate comments and spam will be deleted).  Authors and commentators will post responses as they can. 

Mary Coleman

Mary Coleman (Bard College), "Holistic Directions of Fit and Smith's Teleological Argument," with commentary by Michael Smith (Princeton).  The paper, commentary, and reply can be found here.

Julia Driver

Julia Driver (Dartmouth), "Luck," with commentary by Hans Maes (The University of Kent).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Noa Latham

Noa Latham (University of Calgary), "Fundamental Laws," with commentary by Cei Maslen (Victoria University). Both the paper and commentary can be found here.

Alfred Mele

Alfred Mele (Florida State University), "Practical Mistakes and Intentional Actions," with commentary by Jing Zhu (Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of the Sciences) & Andrei Buckareff (Franklin and Marshall). The paper, commentary, and reply can be found here.

Stephen Stich and Daniel Kelley

Stephen Stich (Rutgers) and Daniel Kelley (Rutgers), "Two Theories about the Cognitive Architecture Underlying Morality," with commentary by Michael Cholbi & Peter Ross (Cal State Polytechnic).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Jessica Wilson

Jessica Wilson (University of Toronto), "Non-reductive Physicalism and Degrees of Freedom," with commentary by Michael Strevens (New York University).  The paper, commentary, and response can be found here.

Andrew Bailey

Outstanding Undergraduate Paper:

Andrew Bailey (Biola University), "Some Unsound Arguments for Incompatibilism," with commentary by John Martin Fischer (University of California-Riverside).  Both the paper and the commentary can be found here.

Fits and Starts

The on-line conference has now officially begun.  In a few minutes I will post links to the first seven papers.  Each post will have a designated comment thread--each of which is tentatively set to close after one week.  So, hurry up and download the papers that interest you, spend a few days trying to digest them, and join the fray in the relevant comment threads.  Hopefully, you all enjoy yourselves.  As a reminder, here is the schedule:

Week One:
Sunday April 30th:
   
1. Mary Coleman (Bard College), “Holistic Directions of Fit and Smith’s Teleological Argument,” with commentary by Michael Smith (Princeton).   

2. Julia Driver (Dartmouth), “Luck,” with commentary by Hans Maes (The University of Kent).   

3. Noa Latham (University of Calgary), “Fundamental Laws,” with commentary by Cei Maslen (Victoria University).   

4. Alfred Mele (Florida State University), “Practical Mistakes and Intentional Actions,” with commentary by Jing Zhu (Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of the Sciences) & Andrei Buckareff (Franklin and Marshall).   

5. Stephen Stich (Rutgers) and Daniel Kelley (Rutgers), “Two Theories about the Cognitive Architecture Underlying Morality,” with commentary by Michael Cholbi & Peter Ross (Cal State Polytechnic).   

6. Jessica Wilson (University of Toronto), “Non-reductive Physicalism and Degrees of Freedom,” with commentary by Michael Strevens (New York University).   

7. Outstanding Undergraduate Paper: Andrew Bailey (Biola University), “Some Unsound Arguments for Incompatibilism,” with commentary by John Martin Fischer (University of California-Riverside).

Week Two:
Sunday May 7th:
   
1. David Chalmers (Australian National University), “Probability and Propositions,” with commentary by David Braun (University of Rochester).   

2. John Fischer (University of California-Riverside) “Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Frankfurt: A Reply to Vihvelin,” with commentary by Kadri Vihvelin  (University of Southern California).   

3. Brie Gertler (University of Virginia), “A Fregean Argument against Externalism,” with commentary by Sanford Goldberg (University of Kentucky).

4. Benj Hellie (University of Toronto) “That Which Makes the Sensation of Blue a Mental Fact,” with commentary by Adam Pautz (University of Texas—Austin).   

5. Thomas Hurka (University of Toronto), “Value and Friendship: A More Subtle View,” with commentary by David McNaughton (Florida State University).   

6. Uriah Kriegel (University of Arizona), “Real Narrow Content".   

7. Stacey Swain, Joshua Alexander, and Jonathan Weinberg (Indiana University) “The Instability of Philosophical Intuitions,” with commentary by Adam Feltz (Florida State University).   

8. Amie Thomasson (University of Miami), “Answerable and Unanswerable Questions,” with commentary by Jason Turner (Rutgers University).

Week Three:
Sunday May 14th:    

1. Justin Fisher (University of Arizona), "Pragmatic Conceptual Analysis,” with commentary by Frank Jackson (Australian National University).   

2. Joshua Gert (Florida State University), “Irrationality and Harm,” with commentary by Jussi Suikkanen (University of Reading).   

3. Joshua Knobe (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Erica Roedder (New York University), “The Concept of Valuing: Experimental Studies,” with commentary by Antti Kauppinen (University of Helsinki).   

4. Jonathan Kvanvig (University of Missouri-Columbia), “Coherentism and Justified Inconsistent Beliefs,” with commentary by Michael Bishop (Northern Illinois University).   

5. Neil Levy (University of Melbourne), “Why Frankfurt Style Cases Don’t Help (Much),” with commentary by Kevin Timpe (University of San Diego).   

6. Adam Pautz (University of Texas—Austin),  “Externalist Intentionalism and Optimal Conditions: A Comment on Byrne and Tye,” commentator to be announced.   

7. Graham Priest &  Neil Thomason (both from University of Melbourne), “Lakatos, Paradox, and Paraconsistency,” with commentary by Stuart Shapiro (Ohio State University).   

8. Manuel Vargas (University of San Francisco), “Building a Better Beast,” with commentary by Eddy Nahmias (Georgia State University).   

9. Kit Wellman (Washington-St. Louis), “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” with commentary by Fernando Teson (Florida State University—Law).

Week Four:
Sunday May 21st:   

1. Thom Brooks (Newcastle University), “On Retributivism,” with commentary by Michael Davis (Illinois Institute of Technology).   

2. Tyler Doggett (University of Vermont) & Andy Egan (University of Michigan & ANU), "Imagination, Desire, Affect and Action,” with commentary by Tamar Gendler (Yale University).   

3. R.A. Duff (University of Stirling), “Virtue Jurisprudence,” with commentary by Lawrence Solum (University of Illinois—Law).   

4. Elizabeth Harman (New York University), "The Mistake in "I'll Be Glad I Did It" Reasoning:  The Significance of Future Desires,” with commentary by Brook Sadler (University of South Florida).   

5. Terence Horgan (University of Arizona), “Materialism: Matters of Definition, Defense, and Deconstruction,” with commentary by Thomas Polger (University of Cincinnati).   

6. Susanna Siegel (Harvard University), “The Visual Experience of Causation,” with commentary by Sarah McGrath (Brandeis University).   

7. Sharon Street (New York University), “Evolution and the Schizophrenia of Quasi-Realism About Normativity,” with commentary by David Enoch (Hebrew University).   

8. Jason Turner (Rutgers University), “On How Things Are,” with commentary by David Manley (University of Southern California).   

9. Brian Weatherson (Cornell University), “Conditionals and Relativism,” with commentary by Gillian Russell (Washington—St. Louis).

Conference Update

The program is now tentatively set for the first annual Online Philosophy Conference (OPC), and I hope you will find that it offers an impressive line-up of excellent philosophers presenting cutting-edge work in many different areas of contemporary philosophy.  We offer this conference as a way for you to engage these philosophers and this work from the comfort of your own home, office, coffee shop, park ... anywhere but the cold confines of a hotel conference room.  We hope that you will spread the word, especially among your undergraduate and graduate students who may not have the opportunity to attend such a conference in person and see philosophers presenting their work and responding to the comments and questions of their audience.  Please consider sending an email to your students (or relevant listserv) and your colleagues to publicize this event. Given that the OPC is open to anyone in the world with access to the internet, it could be the largest philosophy conference in history. It's success will depend entirely upon how many people participate.  So, anything you can do to help promote the conference would be greatly appreciated. The plan is to post a set of papers (usually 8), along with commentary, each week in May.  We've tried to offer a diverse line-up each week.  "Attend" whichever "talks" look interesting to you and post comments or questions as you please (comments will be moderated for relevance, appropriateness, and length).  The authors will be encouraged to respond to the commentator's remarks and to the thread of questions and comments at several points during the week, though they cannot be expected to address every question and comment.  So, OPC will fill the month of May with exciting (and free) philosophical action.  We hope you will be part of it.

Extended Deadline

The deadline for paper submissions for the 1st Annual OPC has been extended to January 31st, 2006. 

Call for Papers

We would like to take this opportunity to announce the 1st Annual On-line Philosophy Conference (OPC), which is tentatively to begin on Friday, April 7th (2006). The first installment of OPC will be hosted on the newly created On-line Philosophy Conference Blog and will include invited papers by some of today's top junior and senior philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, Jonathan Kvanvig, John Martin Fischer, Alfred Mele, Julia Driver, Terence Horgan, Graham Priest, R.A. Duff, Thomas Hurka, David Chalmers, Susanna Siegel, Brian Weatherson, Uriah Kriegel, Manuel Vargas, Kit Wellman, Joshua Gert, Joshua Knobe, Brie Gertler, Jessica Wilson, Benj Hellie, Amie Thomasson, Elizabeth Harman, Noa Latham, Andy Egan, and Neil Levy (with a few more in the works). 

Our goal is to give scholars a much wider audience for their working papers, while at the same time saving everyone (both individuals and departments) the cost of travel stipends, etc.  Moreover, we humbly believe that hosting an on-line philosophy conference would be an excellent way of fostering philosophy's growing presence on the web.  Originally, we wanted to include a number of contributed papers in addition to the invited papers, but the surprising level of interest that the conference has already generated convinced us to make the first OPC a mostly invited affair.  We nevertheless decided that we should solicit contributed submissions from junior philosophers (i.e., philosophers who have yet to receive tenure) and graduate students.  The deadline for contributed submissions is January 15th, 2006. 

All of these submissions will be blind-reviewed with an eye towards selecting the three most outstanding papers by junior philosophers as well as the two most outstanding papers by graduate students (see below for instructions for paper submissions).  The topic for the first installment of OPC is open.  Indeed, we welcome papers from areas as diverse as (but not limited to) metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and value theory (all broadly construed).  The format of the conference will tentatively be as follows: 

First, once we have selected papers for on-line "presentation," they will each be sent to one or two scholars in the relevant field for invited comments (the number of commentators per paper will depend on how many papers we end up with as well as how many people are generous enough to offer their philosophical services).  Second, once we have received all of the invited comments, we will forward them to the original authors of the papers, who will have the chance to write responses if they wish.  Finally, once we have the papers, invited comments, and responses in hand, we will divide them into three groups.  All of the papers, commentaries, and responses from each respective group will be posted on a Friday (April 7th for Group 1, April 15th for Group 2, and April 22nd for Group 3)--and while the public will be able to download all of this material to read over the weekend, the comment threads will not open until Monday (April 10th for Group 1, April 18th for Group 2, and April 25th for Group 3).  The comment threads will be closely monitored for relevance, and they will only remain open for a week (unless the original authors specifically request that the comment threads on their papers remain open).  By having a relatively small window for commenting on the threads, we hope to encourage the public to participate in a timely manner.  When all of the comment threads close, i.e., once the on-line conference is over, the authors will have one last opportunity to post responses to all of the comments they found particularly helpful or interesting (for an example of how this might work, see the blog run by Richard Posner and Gary Becker, here).   

We hope a number of you are as excited (and intrigued) by this as we are.  Unfortunately, we will likely need a lot of help along the way--especially when it comes to having qualified people to referee the papers (and depending on how many submissions we get, there could be A LOT of papers to wade through) as well as qualified people to comment on them.  If you are interested in submitting a paper, helping with the review process, or commenting on the work of others, please drop us a line. 

That's it for now.  Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.  Since this is something entirely new--or at least new for philosophy--we expect to hit a few small bumps in the road along the way.  So, we ask for your patience as well as your insight into how to make things run smoother in the future.  Once we have selected the two papers from the at-large submissions, we will post the schedule for the conference here on this blog. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

P.S. If you have comments or suggestions, now would be the perfect time to see how the comment threads for the conference "presentations" are going to work!

The Instructions for Submissions are as follows:

Each submitted paper should (a) be no more than 4,000 words, (b)  be accompanied by an abstract of less than 250 words, (c) be set up for blind review, (d) be sent either as a MS word document or as an Adobe pdf document, and (e) be sent via email to here.  Please let us know in the email whether you are also interested in being a commentator, a referee, or both, and specify in the subject line of the email whether you are a junior philosopher or a graduate student.