The Philosophy of David Hume

To one and all:

Just in case anyone is interested, there will be created soon a directed readings course on the philosophy of David Hume for this Winter term. Professor Stack and I will be meeting Mondays and Wednesdays from 12pm - 1:30pm in a location yet to be determined, and all are welcome!

We will be looking at two aspects of Hume's philosophy: his metaphysics and epistemology. In his metaphysics we will be asking, "what is his world view?", "what, according to him, is the nature of reality and the nature of the external world?", "what are his views on causality, i.e. cause and effect?", "what are his views on personal identity?", as well as "what are his views on space and time?". In his epistemology we will be asking "is Hume a skeptic?", and examining what grounds there are for thinking that he is or is not a skeptic.

If you're still interested, take a look at Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature" Book I Part III. This will be our preliminary reading. To anyone interested in Hume, Empiricism, or Skepticism, you are most welcome!

University of Guelph - Call for Papers

Call for Abstracts

“Bodies in the World”
3rd Annual Philosophy Graduate Students’ Association Conference

University of Guelph

March 13, 2010

Keynote Speaker: Professor Hasana Sharp (McGill)
“‘Men have nothing less in their power than their tongues’: On spoken passions”

The Philosophy Graduate Students’ Association at the University of Guelph is now accepting paper abstracts for its third annual conference on the theme of “Bodies in the World.” We welcome paper proposals concerning the body and its interactions with its environment from perspectives of perception, mind, identity, sexuality, community and politics, time and space, and normativity and difference. The theme of the body raises questions concerning how to situate and account for the body in our theorizing about the world. How do our worldviews, perceptions of objects, scientific practices, and theories of environment arise out of our embodied experiences, and reflect back into our conceptions of the body?
Questions of the body and embodiment are crucial to philosophical, feminist, legal, psychological, literary, and religious scholarship, as well as to research in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Moreover, they provide a meta-philosophical opportunity to reflect on the embodied character of our role as thinkers and academics and what that could mean for the future “embodiment of philosophy.” We encourage submissions from multidisciplinary perspectives on the ways we negotiate and theorise the relationship between body and world, widely construed.
Please send abstracts of approximately 600 words prepared for blind review to the PGSA’s conference committee via jmousie@uoguelph.ca by January 29, 2010. For more information, please contact us at the email address listed above or visit our website at .
Once an abstract is accepted we will request a final paper that must be suitable for a 20 minute presentation (approximately 2500 – 3000 words).

Call for Papers

2010 Syracuse Graduate Student Conference
April 16 & 17
Keynote Speakers: Ted Sider (NYU) & Ben Bradley (Syracuse)
Paper submission deadline: Jan 1, 2010
Send submissions to: suphilgradconf@gmail.com

Papers should be suitable for a 25-30 minute presentation (no more than 4000 words).

Submissions must be prepared for blind review and sent as either a PDF or Word file.

In the text of your email, please include your name, contact information, and short abstract (max 150 words).

We welcome submissions in all areas of philosophy.

Call for Papers

The 18th Annual Harvard-MIT
Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

Conference Date: Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Keynote Speaker: Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford

Commentary provided by Harvard and MIT faculty

Submission Deadline: Sunday, January 10th, 2010


We seek submissions from graduate students in any area of philosophy.
Submissions should be suitable for a 40-minute presentation. As guidance, a 4000-word paper usually takes about 40 minutes to read.

All submissions must be accompanied by an abstract of 400-500 words (roughly one single-spaced page). No identifying information should appear in the body of the paper or the abstract. Instead, please include a cover sheet with the submitter´s name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, name of his or her institutions, and title of the paper.

Please submit papers by e-mail to harvardmit2010@gmail.com in one of the following formats: .pdf, .rtf, .doc. We can only accept one submission per applicant.

If you have any questions, please contact us at harvardmit2010@gmail.com.

NYU/Columbia Grad Conference

The deadline for submissions is in a month. Looks like an awesome time!

Philosophical Friday

Esa Diaz Leon
University of Manitoba
Department of Philosophy

Will give a talk on

“How to Be a Realist about Race”


DATE: Friday, November 27th, 2009
LOCATION: 384 University College
TIME: 2:30 p.m.

* All are welcome *

Call for Papers

The School of Thought

The University of Western Ontario

Call for Papers

Undergraduate Philosophy Conference:

The Mind/Body Problem

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Frances Egan

March 12 & 13, 2010

Submission deadline: February 10, 2010

The mind/body problem can be summarized as the problem of how physical things like brains are related to sensations, concepts, intentions, desires, memories, and other psychologically characterized phenomena. The School of Thought is encouraging undergraduate students to submit essays written on any aspect of the mind/body problem. Papers in any other area of philosophy will also be considered.

Papers should not exceed 3000 words in length. Please do not include any personal identifiers immediately before or after your paper. Name, affiliation, and contact information should be included on a separate page at the end of the document (i.e. well below the body of your essay). Please include a 150 word maximum abstract of your paper. The authors of selected papers will receive $100.00 to present their work at the conference. Frances Egan will be presenting in the afternoon of the 12^th, and student papers will be presented throughout the 13^th.

Submissions are to be sent to think@uwo.ca in Word, RTF, PDF or Plain Text format.

Papers must be received by February 10, 2010.

Dylon McChesney, Adam Mantha

School of Thought Coordinators

Department of Philosophy

The University of Western Ontario