The philosophy departments of Trinity College and University College Dublin \;will host the annual Dublin Philosophy Graduate Conference on the 5th and \;6th of April\, 2013. The theme will be &lsquo\;perception and understanding&rsquo\;\, and \;the keynote speakers will be Professor Kenneth Westphal from the University \;of East Anglia\, Norwich and James O&rsquo\;Shea from the University College Dublin. \; \;Graduate students working in relevant fields are warmly invited to submit \;their work for presentation during the conference.
The relationship between perception and understanding is crucial for our \;intelligent engagement in the world around us. Kant went further to say \;that we would have no self-conscious experience without the cooperation of \;our perceptual capacities and our conceptual capacities. \;For Kant and \;Hegel\, and more recently\, for Sellars and McDowell\, clarifying the \;relationship between our mutually dependent capacities for rational judgment \;and for sense perception is integral to understanding not simply how our \;categorial thought is rationally constrained\, but how we think determinately \;at all.
Would a satisfactory account of the relationship between our perceptual and \;judgmental capacities enable us to make sense of intentionality for rational \;subjects? \;Without such an account of intentionality\, are there alternative \;ways to explain thought&rsquo\;s answerability to the world? \;For sense experience \;to justify rather than merely cause belief\, for it to function normatively \;like this\, it seems that it must\, on the one hand\, be receptive so that it \;opens us up to the world\; and it must\, on the other hand\, be categorically formed\, i.e.\, formed in a manner that opens us as rational beings up to the \;world. \;In a word\, it seems that perceptual capacities and judgmental \;capacities must cooperate. \;So how does our embodiment shape our \;understanding? \;And in what ways does our understanding constitute our \;embodied experience?
We might\, nevertheless\, wonder whether the relationship between perception \;and understanding is as crucial as some have made it out to be. First\, if \;we uphold a broadly Kantian view\, then what should we make of the ability to \;respond intelligently to things without having the relevant concepts in play \;while doing so? \;Animals and children seem to do this routinely. \;Second\, it \;seems that hallucinations are cases of conceptually structured perceptual \;experiences in which we are not &lsquo\;open&rsquo\; to the world. Third\, maybe concepts \;can actually obscure what is given in experience. \;Even when one&rsquo\;s \;experience is shaped by the right concepts of what is given in experience\, \;one&rsquo\;s experience can be shaped like this for the wrong reasons\, such as\, \;irrational prejudices. \;
Given our intelligent engagement with the world around us\, it seems that \;perception and understanding must largely converge. But given (inter alia) \;that we can continually misunderstand and reinterpret what was anyway given\, \;what was anyway perceived\, and given that some individuals can be said to \;perceive without the relevant concepts at play and likewise without the \;capacity to make the relevant judgments\, it seems that perception and \;understanding must largely diverge.
Papers are invited from analytic\, continental\, and historical traditions on \;any philosophical problem relating to perception and understanding.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of suggested topics:
Papers must be around 3\,500 words long (suitable for a 30 minute \;presentation). \;Please submit the full paper (.doc or .pdf) together with \;a 200-word abstract\, omitting personal information\, and an additional cover \;letter with title of the paper\, affiliation and contact details to: \;dublingradconf@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is 1 December 2012. \;Authors will be notified by 15 December.
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