February 2012

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CUNY Graduate Center Postdoc

Tuesday, 28 February 2012 in Fellowships, Notices by Simon Cabulea May | No comments

CUNY Graduate Center 2012-23 | Deadline: 12 April 2012

This looks like a great postdoctoral fellowship associated with the Center for Global Ethics and Politics at CUNY GC:

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the Ph.D. granting institution of CUNY, announces a postdoctoral fellowship for the academic year 2012-13 in the Political Science and/or Philosophy Ph.D. Program. The fellow’s area of research should be broadly related to the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series to be held at the Graduate Center during that academic year on the theme “Democratic Citizenship and the Recognition of Cultural Differences.”

The Sawyer Seminar Series, to be directed by Professors Carol Gould, Ruth O’Brien, Richard Wolin, and Omar Dahbour, will address the question of how democratic societies can be inclusive of a wide range of cultural practices and forms of expression while maintaining a commitment to respecting a secular public sphere, universal human rights, and women’s equality.  It is expected that the postdoctoral fellow will help to organize and lead the seminar series and will bring a relevant background in political theory, social and political philosophy, feminist theory, American political thought, and/or cultural studies.  The fellow will also have ample opportunity to pursue individual research related to one of the fields above.

The position will begin on September 1, 2012.  Candidates must have a Ph.D. in one of the disciplines in the humanities or humanistic social sciences. Candidates who received the Ph.D in 2009 at the earliest, or who have completed the requirements for the Ph.D. by the application deadline, are eligible to apply.

To apply, please email a letter of application, curriculum vitae, one sample publication or dissertation chapter, and the names and contact information for at least three references to sawyerpostdoc [at] gc.cuny.edu. The deadline for receipt of applications is April 12, 2012. Salary: $59,608 plus benefits.

Research Lectureships at the University of York (incl. political philosophy & political theory)

Monday, 27 February 2012 in Jobs, Notices by Martin O'Neill | No comments

Following the success of our recent 50th Anniversary Chair and Reader appointments, the University of York intends to create up to twenty new Anniversary Research Lectureships. These posts are aimed at providing outstanding researchers with an opportunity for an extended period of research and a permanent career path.

Anniversary Research Lecturers will spend a three year period strengthening their research profile, followed by a transfer to an established academic post, comprising teaching and research.

These posts are open to all who hold a PhD in a relevant discipline, regardless of whether or not they already hold an established post elsewhere.

Posts are available in a variety of departments, including Politics and Philosophy.

Details are available via the University of York website here: http://bit.ly/ApynSh

Any political philosophers or political theorists interested in applying for one of these positions is welcome to get in touch with Professor Matthew Festenstein (matthew.festenstein@york.ac.uk) and/or Dr Martin O’Neill (martin.oneill@york.ac.uk) to discuss the positions, and any questions they may have.

CFP (extended deadline): Society for the Theory of Ethics and Politics (Northwestern)

Thursday, 16 February 2012 in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Notices by Helga Varden | No comments

CALL FOR PAPERS

From faculty and graduate students

SOCIETY FOR THE THEORY OF ETHICS AND POLITICS

Northwestern University, 6th Annual Conference, May 17–19, 2012

Keynote speakers:

  • Harry G. Frankfurt (Princeton)
  • T. M. Scanlon (Harvard)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: We welcome submissions from faculty and graduate students, as some sessions will be reserved for student presentations. Please submit an essay of approximately 4000 words and an abstract of at most 150 words. Essay topics in all areas of ethical theory and political philosophy will be considered, although some priority will be given to essays that take up themes from the works of Harry Frankfurt and T. M. Scanlon. Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in word, rtf, or pdf format.

Graduate submissions should be sent by e-mail to Carlos Pereira Di Salvo<pereira.disalvo [at] u.northwestern.edu>; faculty submissions should be sent by e-mail to Kyla Ebels-Duggan <kebelsduggan [at] northwestern.edu>.

EXTENDED DEADLINE: The deadline has been extended to March 1, 2012. Notices of acceptance will be sent by March 30, 2012. For more information, please contact Kyla Ebels-Duggan at the e-mail address above or visit the conference website: http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/conferences/moralpolitical/

Call for Papers – Workshop: The procedural dimension of justice

Tuesday, 14 February 2012 in Calls for Papers by Emanuela Ceva | No comments

MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory – Ninth Annual Conference

Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), University of Manchester, 5th – 7th September 2012

WORKSHOP ON THE PROCEDURAL DIMENSION OF JUSTICE

Convenor: Emanuela Ceva (University of Pavia)

Can the procedures through which a society is structured be considered as inherently valuable as just? Or is justice to be thought to reside in their outcomes, to the achievement of which procedures are merely subservient? The workshop is designed to take issue with the widespread wariness of proceduralism as a justice-relevant approach to normativity. It has often been argued that procedure-related considerations are in fact reducible to outcome-related concerns – so procedures only have instrumental value depending on the qualities of the outcomes they produce. Failure to recognize this point would lead proceduralists, so the critique goes, to give no independent standard through which to assess the quality of outcomes, thus condemning agents to a ‘deaf and blind’ acceptance of any outcome and fostering an ‘anything goes’ attitude towards justice.

Interestingly, such a generalized disregard of the inherent value of procedures in matters of justice does not seem to be matched by an equal lack of interest when the normative regard, as it were, moves from the justice of a polity to its legitimacy. Indeed, a number of studies defend procedural approaches to legitimacy, especially when it comes to accounting for the justification of authority in a democracy. The thought underlying such a double attitude towards proceduralism may be summarized as follows: whilst legitimacy has to do with the processes through which coercive political decisions are made, justice is more a ‘substantial’ matter concerning the moral justification of the terms of social cooperation, against which the qualities of the decisions made by those who have the authority to make them are to be evaluated. Accordingly, the argument goes, theorization about procedures seems to be more appropriate for issues of legitimacy than for those of justice.

Is this really the only role that proceduralism may play in a normative theory of the social order? This workshop aims to investigate this general question by addressing such issues as:

  • Does it make any sense to theorize about the justice of procedures independently of the qualities of their outcomes?
  • Can procedures only have an instrumental value?
  • What is the relation between outcome-oriented theories of justice and procedural theories of legitimacy?
  • Should proceduralism about justice be understood as an alternative to outcome-theories or should it be viewed as a complement to them?

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please send a 500-word abstract (or a full paper) to emanuela.ceva@unipv.it by 15 May 2012.

Contributions are welcome from the fields of ethics, political philosophy/theory, history of political thought and legal philosophy.

Conference website: http://manceptworkshops2012.wordpress.com/

CFP: MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, Session on “Ideal and Nonideal Theory”

Monday, 13 February 2012 in Notices by Marcus Arvan | No comments

9th Annual MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory

CFP: session on “Ideal and Nonideal Theory”

Where: Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of Manchester

When: September 5-7, 2012

Conference Organizers: Chris Mills (workshop administrator), Thomas Porter, Jonathan Quong, James Pattison, Stephen De Wijze

Session Organizer: Marcus Arvan

Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2012

The MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory is an annual conference at the University of Manchester on selected topics in political theory. Each session will consist of a reading and discussion of 3-12 selected papers.  The present CFP invites full paper submissions for a session on “ideal” and “nonideal theory.” Potential paper topics include (but are by no means limited to) the following: What is the proper role of “ideal theorizing” in political theory?  How well do existing ideal theories apply to nonideal conditions?  Should nonideal theory be guided by, or independent of, ideal theory?  If nonideal theory should be guided by ideal theory, how?

If you would like to present a paper in this session, please submit a full paper and abstract to marvan@ut.edu no later than June 1st, 2012. Please also include a separate cover sheet indicating your name, professional status (faculty, graduate student, independent researcher, etc.), and institutional affiliation. Papers may be of any length suitable for a peer-reviewed journal article. Please note that participants are responsible for seeking their own funding for travel/lodging/etc. For further details or questions, please contact marvan@ut.edu. Decision notices will be emailed by June 14th, 2012.

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Political Philosophy in Istanbul

Sunday, 12 February 2012 in Notices by Jon Mahoney | No comments

Greetings,

Kansas State and Bogazici University are hosting a summer event on political philosophy this summer.  Graduate students and advanced undergraduates are invited to apply.  

2012 International Summer School in Political Philosophy at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey 

July 9 to July 20, 2012 

Liberalism, Libertarianism, and Democracy: Theory and Practice 

This program will cover themes from contemporary liberal political philosophy. The first week will have a more theoretical orientation and the second week will have a more applied orientation. Topics will include: egalitarianism, classical liberalism, and libertarianism; desert and distributive justice; reparative justice and collective responsibility; non-ideal theory; constitutional reform in Turkey; secularism and political legitimacy; banning political parties; and more. Each instructor will offer multiple seminars and workshops, providing participants many opportunities to engage with instructors. Since some instructors will present work in progress for book projects, participants will be working through some of the most current topics in political philosophy. Participants will also have the opportunity to present their own work in progress. 

Course Instructors: 

Sam Freeman (University of Pennsylvania) 

Erin Kelly (Tufts University) 

Peter Niesen (TU Darmstadt) 

David Schmidtz (University of Arizona) 

Course Coordinators: 

Amy Lara (Kansas State University) 

Jon Mahoney (Kansas State University) 

Lucas Thorpe (Bogazici University) 

For more information, go to http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~alara/Turkey2012.html or email Jon Mahoney at jmahoney@ksu.edu 

Henle Conference on Happiness and Well-Being

Friday, 10 February 2012 in Conferences, Notices by Dan Haybron | No comments

The Department of Philosophy at Saint Louis University will be hosting the Henle Conference on Happiness and Well-Being on March 30-31, 2012. A tentative schedule appears below.

SCHEDULE

Friday, March 30

1:00 pm     Welcoming Remarks

1:15 pm     Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota)
“Right in the Middle: Normativity and Idealized Subjective Theories of Well-Being”
Comments: David Sobel (University of Nebraska)

2:55 pm     Coffee

3:15 pm    Wade Memorial Lecture
Richard Kraut (Northwestern University)
“The Requirement of Neutrality and the Nature of Well-Being”

5:00 pm     Reception

6:00 pm     Dinner

Saturday, March 31

9:00 am     Tobias Hoffmann (Catholic University of America)
“The Pleasure of Life and the Desire for Non-Existence: Some Medieval Theories”
Comments: Chris Heathwood (University of Colorado)

10:40 am    Coffee

11:00 am    Peter Railton (University of Michigan)
“Subjective Well-Being as Information”
Comments: Michael Bishop (Florida State University)

12:40 pm    Lunch

2:40 pm      Nicole Hassoun (Carnegie Mellon University)
“A Basic Needs Account of Human Rights?”
Comments: Jennifer Hawkins (Duke University)

4:20 pm     Coffee

4:40 pm     Erik Angner (George Mason University)
“Subjective Well-Being: When, and Why, It Matters”
Comments: Laura Sizer (Hampshire College)

6:20 pm     Free time

7:00 pm     Dinner

For details contact Dan Haybron (haybron@gmail.com). The conference website is: https://sites.google.com/site/danhaybron/henle-conference-on-happiness-and-well-being.

The conference is free and open to the public, and will take place at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis. No registration is required. (But we’d be happy to learn in advance if you are planning to come.)

CFA: Moral Psychology and Poverty Alleviation

Thursday, 2 February 2012 in Notices by Meena Krishnamurthy | No comments

Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) Anniversary Workshop
Where: New Haven, Yale University
When: April 13, 2012

Deadline for submission: March 2, 2012

Sponsored by the Global Justice Program of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Centre for International and Area Studies, Yale University and the Program in Cognitive Science, Yale University

Keynote Speakers: Paul Slovic, University of Oregon and Nicole Hassoun, Carnegie Mellon University

The call
Many individuals in affluent nations are aware that a vast number of people live in conditions of severe poverty. Yet they are more likely to go to the movies or to buy an expensive sweater than they are to give their money to humanitarian aid. The question arises, how can individuals be motivated to act on their duties to aid the global poor?

The Global Justice Program and the Department of Cognitive Science invite the submission of 350-500 word abstracts for 25-minute presentations on the subject of “Moral Psychology and Poverty Alleviation” for their upcoming workshop. The conference aims to stimulate research that can be used to develop more effective means of motivating individuals to act on their moral obligations to alleviate global poverty. For more information about topics relevant to the conference click here.

Abstracts are invited from those working in cognitive science, moral philosophy, and political science and submissions are encouraged from all levels of academia. Submissions from those taking an experimental approach to the topic are especially encouraged. Abstracts should be sent as a PDF or Word document to asapmppa (at) gmail.com by 2 March 2012. The subject line of email should read “SUBMISSION [YOUR NAME]”. In the body of the email, please state your name, affiliation, and contact information.

The conference
The Moral Psychology and Poverty Alleviation workshop is part of a two-day conference marking the one year anniversary of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP). ASAP is an international network helping scholars, teachers, and students enhance their impact on global poverty. It does so by promoting collaboration amongst poverty-focused academics, helping academics reach out to broader audiences on issues of poverty, and helping them turn their expertise into impact through specific intervention projects (www.academicsstand.org).

The first day of the conference, April 12th, will be a symposium on the future of global poverty alleviation after the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. This symposium will bring together experts in development, aid, and global justice in a dialogue about next steps on global poverty alleviation. Speakers will examine the record on increasing global inequality, developments such as large-scale microfinance, and poverty measurement and trends. Each will offer crucial insights about what has been learned about reducing severe poverty, and which lessons must be highlighted in any MDG-replacement efforts.

Public Reason Graduate Tech Assistant(s)

Wednesday, 1 February 2012 in Blogosphere, Housekeeping, Notices by Simon Cabulea May | No comments

I’m looking for one or two graduate students to take over the technical nuts and bolts administration of the website, i.e., sign up new members, keep the site WordPress and theme up-to-date, fix broken links, keep a lookout for new plugins and capabilities that we could incorporate into the website, and the like. Such a person or persons should have the following qualities:

  • Relatively advanced technical competence regarding WordPress, blogging, the ability to write/fix code, etc.
  • Commitment to academic political philosophy/theory.
  • General togetherness, punctuality, reliability, etc.

There is little prospect of any meaningful remuneration, but it should provide the opportunity to become more involved in the political philosophy community and play an important role in interesting new initiatives. Since the website is international, you needn’t be located in the US. I’d be especially interested if some graduate students located at a single institution were to work together to keep things ticking along smoothly, although it shouldn’t be an onerous responsibility for a single person.

If you’re interested, please send me a CV, some evidence regarding your technical expertise, and any feasible ideas/thoughts you may have about how the website could be improved. Ideally, I’d like to sort this out by the end of the month.

Charles Taylor at 80: An International Conference

Wednesday, 1 February 2012 in Conferences, Notices by Pierre-Yves Néron | No comments

Registration is required and free of charge. To register, please send name, affiliation and contact information to: taylor.conference.2012 [at] gmail.com

Charles Taylor at 80: An International Conference

March 29-31 2012, Musée des beaux-arts, Montréal

Charles Taylor à 80 ans: un colloque international

29 au 31 mars 2012, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

PROGRAM

March 29
9 h Introduction : Daniel Weinstock, CRÉUM, Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Philosophy

  • 9 h 30 Epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language I

To follow a rule : Lessons from baby logic
Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis)

Self-Interpreting Animals
Evan Thompson (University of Toronto)

Taylor’s Situated Epistemology
Ian Gold (McGill University)

  • 13h30-16h00 Epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language II

Embodiment and Self-interpretation
Hubert Dreyfus (University of California at Berkeley)

Charles Taylor’s conception of language and the current debate about a theory of meaning
Hans Julius Schneider (University of Potsdam)

Taylor’s Engaged Pluralism
Richard Bernstein (New School for Social Research)

March 30

  • 9h30-12h00 Religion and modernity

Varieties of Religious and Secular Phenomenological Experiences
José Casanova (Georgetown University)

A Crisis of Secularism ?
Tariq Modood (University of Bristol)

Some (Banal and Boringly Familiar) Thoughts about Secularism
Ronald Beiner (University of Toronto)

TBA, Jeanne Bethke Elshtain (University of Chicago)

  • 13h30-15h00 Moral agency and the Self I

What is Wrong with Positive Liberty : The Struggles of Agency in a Non-Ideal World
John Christman (Penn State University)

What’s Right With Positive Liberty : Agency, Autonomy, and the Other
Nancy Hirschmann (University of Pennsylvania)

  • 13h15-16h30 The interpretation of modernity I

Social Imaginaries, Human Action, and History
Craig Calhoun (New York University/London School of Economics)

The Telos of Modernity
Jacob Levy (McGill University)

  • 16h30-18h00 The interpretation of modernity II

Whatever Happened to the Ontic Logos ?
Michael Rosen (Harvard University)

The Fragility of Things : Fullness, Vitality and the Contemporary Condition
William Connolly (Johns Hopkins University)

March 31

  • 9h30-12h00 Moral agency and the Self II

Self-creation or self-discovery ?
K. Anthony Appiah (Princeton University)

Reflective Equilibrium and Degrees of Abstraction in Moral Theory
Joseph Heath (University of Toronto)

Charles Taylor and ethical naturalism
Nigel DeSouza (University of Ottawa)

  • 13h30- 16h00 Political philosophy, recognition and multiculturalism

Protecting Freedom of Conscience in the Secular Age
Cécile Laborde (University College, London)

The Multiple Social Imaginaries of Modern Indian secularism
Rajeev Bhargava (Delhi/Center for the Study of Developing Societies)

“Exercises in Retrieval” : Taylor as a Thinker of Historical Transitions
Paolo Costa, (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)

TBA Michele Moody-Adams (Columbia University)

  • 16h15 -18h30 Canadian politics

Charles Taylor on Deep Diversity
James Tully (University of Victoria)

Cultural Differences, Languages, Perspicuous Contrasts, and Recognition
Jeremy Webber (University of Victoria)

Démocratie, diversité et inclusion
Dominique Leydet (Université du Québec à Montréal)

Charles Taylor: Closing remarks

March 30th (evening)Public event in honor of Charles Taylor as a public intellectual

Partenaires / Partners (provisional list):

  • Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CRÉUM)
  • Centre for Global Challenges / Centre sur les défis mondiaux, York University
  • Chaire de recherche du Canada en éthique et philosophie politique
  • Association des études canadiennes
  • Department of Political Science, McGill University
  • Dean of Arts Development Fund, McGill University
  • Fédération canadienne des sciences humaines/Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique (GRIPP)
  • Groupe de recherche sur les sociétés plurinationales (GRSP), UQÀM
  • Research Group on Constitutional Studies, McGill University
  • Secrétariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes (SAIC) du Québec
  • Vice-rectorat à la recherche, à la création et à l’innovation, Université de Montréal

Conference co-organizers: Daniel Weinstock (Montreal), Jocelyn Maclure (Laval), Jacob T. Levy (McGill), Pierre-Yves Néron (CRÉUM)

For more information: