Call for Papers

The MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group, Budapest,
the University of J. E. Purkyně, Ústí Nad Labem,
and the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague

will be hosting conferences on

Metaphilosophy in History

The first conference will take place in Prague between the 4th-5th of June, 2020.

The second conference will take place in Budapest, between the 29th-30th of October, 2020.

Organizers: Tamás Demeter, Catherine Dromelet, James Hill, Josef Moural

Call for Papers:

What is philosophy? How a philosopher proceeds and what goals he or she pursues, how he or she distinguishes between good and bad philosophy? Being interested in such questions is sometimes labeled as metaphilosophy, and while much of metaphilosophical work so far was concerned with 'systematic' issues, our aim is to turn our metaphilosophical gaze onto the history of philosophy.

We shall have two conferences, gathering people interested in the self-conception of philosophy up to the very recent past. The chronological dividing line between them will be roughly 1725, for we beleive that the emergence of successful Newtonian science was a serious blow to the preceding self-conception(s) of philosophy, and that philosophy had to reinvent itself afterwards.

Some of the questions we are interested in are: Did metaphilosophy play an important role in the past philosophers' agenda? If they held metaphilosophical views, did their philosophical practice follow them? Was there more agreement on the metaphilosophical level than in argumentative practice, or vice versa?

We are inviting submissions on individual philosophers and/or schools, as well as of a comparative kind (within the chronological limits of each conference).

Abstracts for the first conference of about 500 words should be sent to:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. until the 1st of March 2020.
(There will be a further call for the second conference.)

Call for Papers for a Synthese special issue on

The Value of Truth

Deadline for submissions: the 30th of April 2019

Guest Editors
Luca Moretti (Aberdeen and MCMP),
Peter Hartl (Hungarian Academy of Sciences),
Akos Gyarmathy (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

Special Issue Description
The volume aims to investigate the epistemic, practical and social value of truth.

The problem of the value of truth comprises at least two basic questions:
(1) is truth the sole or fundamental epistemic value?
(2) Is the value of truth exclusively or fundamentally epistemic?

Veritism answers (1) affirmatively. Answering (1) negatively implies acknowledging that other values –– such as understanding or alternative intellectual virtues –– are (also) epistemically fundamental. Addressing question (1) implies investigating the relation existing between truth and other epistemic values.
Answering question (2) leads to the issue of the possible instrumental value of truth. Giving (2) a negative response implies conceding that truth has also non-epistemic values, such as social, practical or moral.
All these questions about the value of truth are interwoven with the general theme of instrumental values versus non-instrumental values, as well as the problem of describing the complex relations between epistemic and practical rationality. All these issues are investigated by diverse disciplines and philosophical streams, including, general epistemology, social epistemology, pragmatism, ethics and decision theory.
The contributions to this special issue are meant to advance the debate on these topics.

The special issue is meant to include, among other contributions, papers presented the conference The Value of Truth, which took place on the 22nd-23rd of November 2018 at the Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. The conference and also this Synthese special issue are financially supported by the MTA - BTK - Lendület Morals and Science Research Group.


Submissions
Contributions must be original and not under review elsewhere. Each submission should include a separate title page containing the contact details for the author(s), an abstract and list of keywords. All papers will be subject to double-anonymous peer-review.

Manuscripts should be submitted online through the Synthese Editorial Manager:

https://www.editorialmanager.com/synt/default.aspx

When the system asks you to “Choose Article Type”, please scroll down in the pull-down menu to S.I.: Value Of Truth.

For further details on how to prepare the manuscripts, please follow the instructions for authors available on the Journal’s website:

https://www.springer.com/philosophy/epistemology+and+philosophy+of+science/journal/11229?detailsPage=pltci_3398559

For further information, please contact the guest editors:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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The Philosophy of Ian Hacking

Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Dates: 29th and 30th of March, 2019.

Organizer: The MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group

Ian Hacking’s thought has contributed highly original insights to the philosophical landscape of the late 20th and early 21st century. His interests in the history and philosophy of mathematics and the natural sciences in general (The Logic of Statistical Inference, Representing and Intervening, Why is There Philosophy of Mathematics at All?); in the concept of probability in particular (The Emergence of Probability, The Taming of Chance); and in the metaphysical and social scientific implications of human (or interactive) kinds (Rewriting the Soul, Mad Travelers, The Social Construction of What?) all provide significant additions to the canon of analytic philosophy.

This conference aims to engage all aspects of Ian Hacking’s philosophy, bringing together scholars working in the fields touched upon by Hacking’s body of work in the philosophy of logic, the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of the social sciences. Contributions from all areas of philosophy and scientific thought are welcome, aiming to address the questions including, but not limited to the following:

General assessments:

-          How does Hacking’s philosophy relate to its influences in both the analytic and the continental traditions? How did it influence philosophy in the 21st century?

-          What connections are there between the main areas of interest in Hacking’s philosophical body of work?

Specific topics:

-          What role does the concept of probability play in scientific reasoning, and how did the concept emerge to fulfill that role?

-          What is the relation of language to philosophical thought in the early 21st century?

-          How does experimentation influence theory choice (and vice versa) in scientific thinking?

-          What are the peculiar characteristics of human (or interactive) kinds contrasted with natural kinds?

Abstracts of about 500 words should be sent to Dr. Akos Sivado, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Speakers include:

Rachel Cooper (Lancaster University)
Janette Dinishak (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Axel Gelfert (Technical University of Berlin)
Mark Risjord (Emory University)
Paul A. Roth (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Luca Sciortino (University of Leeds)
Jonathan Tsou (Iowa State University)

The deadline for submissions is 1st December 2018.