CFP: Forum for Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Please note the deadline is extended to December 31st.

The Jefferson Scholars Foundation at the University of Virginia is organizing the fourth Forum for Interdisciplinary Dialogue (FID) to be held on 10-11 April 2015 in Charlottesville, VA.

What is development? A variety of notions fall under this umbrella term: development as human flourishing, development as embryogenesis, development as technological progress, as optimization of resource allocations, and development in education and political organization and implementation, driven by replacement of the reign of force with the rule of law. These notions connect at a fundamental level; the reason they can all be classified as development is because we find them valuable for us as individuals, society, and species. But what are the structural relations between them? How do we determine the value of development in practice, what ethical considerations inform and constrain our decisions? The fourth Forum for Interdisciplinary Dialogue aims to address these questions in a focused and open-minded way.

Ethical codes of conduct already directly regulate the activity of scientists and engineers in fields ranging from particle physics to neuroscience to agricultural production, and they indirectly govern human activity in virtually all other fields, including the humanities and social sciences. What are the unifying ethical themes across these disciplines, and how will they evolve in light of continuing development and discovery? Is there more than one set of standards used when assessing which projects might benefit society and individuals? If so, is such pluralism a sign of intellectual chaos, or of reflective equilibrium?

FID 2015 invites abstract submissions addressing the topics of ethics and development , including but not limited to topics in the following subcategories:

• What is the connection between ethics and development? Do ethics determine and guide development, or is development the impulse that forms ethical theories?
• Education: depth and/or breadth
• Income distribution, structural, technological, directional development
• Agriculture and Consumption: polyphasic farming: questions of scale/lessons for industry
• Environmental conservation and development of natural resources
• Technology and Ethics; or Bioethics and the ethics of technology
• Human centered design
• Apocalypticism/Dystopianism in Literature and Film
• Big Data: use and abuse
• Religion's role in informing, implementing, and interpreting ethics: both generative and constraining

The abstracts should not be longer than 1000 words. Only one abstract per author. To submit an abstract, please fill in the presenter registration form (http://www.jsfconference.org/presenter_register.php). If you wish to attend the conference but not present, please fill in the non-presenter registration form (http://www.jsfconference.org/nonpresenter_register.php). Deadlines for registration and abstract submission can be found on the timeline. The forms are also available on the conference website: