The Centre for Practical Normativity will be hosting a conference on ‘The Future of Normativity’ to be held on the University of Kent on 28-30 June 2018, sponsored by The Analysis Trust, The Aristotelian Society, and the Mind Association.
The concept of normativity, especially work on reasons, has attracted a great deal of attention in recent philosophy. Work has focused on many interrelated topics and questions such as: Reasons and their Ground; Conceptual Priority; Reasons, Motivations and Actions: Reasons and Values; Reasons and Nature; The Moral and the Epistemic and Normativity elsewhere.
The conference will serve to reflect on much of this recent work in order to extend it in new directions. Abstracts are sought for the conference, asking central question: where do we go from here? The questions we aim to ask include:
- Has work in aesthetics or philosophy of action or philosophy of language anything to teach us about normativity?
- Does it make sense to think of aesthetic prescriptions, for example, and if so what does reflection on these demands tell us about normativity in general?
- Has recent work on group intention and action anything to teach us about normativity and reasons in general?
- Are certain, central notions – such as ‘standard’, ‘intention’, ‘demand’ – at all clear enough?
- How is the notion of normativity understood in recent social or cognitive science literature, including psychology, and does that have anything to teach us?
- In what ways can debates from the history of philosophy point us towards fruitful future explorations?
- Is the notion of normativity as important a framing device for thought and debates as current philosophical fashion assumes? How central to philosophical thought should the notion of ‘reason’ be?
We welcome thinkers who work across all areas of analytic philosophy and its history. It is our intention to have a number of open sessions at the conference. Speakers will be given 30 minute slots: a 20 minute presentation with 10 minute Q&A.
Abstracts should be 1,000 words in length and may be on any topic related to the conference theme.
Please email them to Dr Simon Kirchin, from the Department of Philosophy, at S.T.Kirchin@kent.ac.uk
The deadline for submission is Thursday 1 February 2018. We hope to advertise the full conference programme by late Spring 2018.
For further details about the conference, please see the page here:
www.kent.ac.uk/secl/researchcentres/practical-normativity/events/index.html?eid=26967