CFP: The Philosophy of Penelope Mackie: A Memorial Conference

Penelope Mackie (1953-2022) was a long-time member and former Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Her philosophical contributions span the areas of (1) essence, modality, identity; (2) philosophy of mind; (3) causation and counterfactuals; and (4) free will and determinism. A superbly perceptive critic, Penelope is best known for her 2006 book How Things Might Have Been in which she argued that our essential properties place little constraint on what we could have been. Hence, you could have been a poached egg. Her most recent work provides invigorating contributions to debates about neo-Aristotelian essentialism (in constructive opposition to the work of Kit Fine), Transworld identity, persistence, and the nature of perceptual experience.  

This conference will celebrate Penelope’s life and work. 

Penelope had an immense influence on generations of students. To celebrate this, we would like to include papers by current and recent PhD students (by 'recent' we mean less than 2-years post graduation). If you would like to be included in the programme, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words (for a paper that can be presented in 20 minutes) to Neil Sinclair ([email protected]) by 30th March 2024. 

Your paper must engage with some aspect of Penelope's work, and can fall under any of the four topics noted above. This call is open to all current and recent PhD students. 

(The conference has some limited funds to pay for UK-based travel and accommodation, and an option to present online will be available.)