Apophansis Journal Symposium

We are thrilled to announce our first-ever Symposium to mark the launch of the inaugural edition of Apophansis, a journal dedicated to showcasing the research and ideas of the graduate students at King's and students from across the country. 

Attendees: Although registration is not mandatory, for those interested in attending, please RSVP on Philevents or send us an email at [email protected]

Speakers: We will be hosting student speakers to deliver their papers as well as hosting two panel discussions.

For students interested in giving talks or participating in the panel discussion, please send your proposed paper with a short abstract and an academic CV. (for the Panel Discussion please also send a short personal statement).

The deadline for submissions: April 19th. Respondents will be notified by May 2nd. Submit these to [email protected]

For: Papers 

Papers should have a maximum word count of 4000 words, for a presentation of roughly 30-40 minutes (with 15-20 minutes for questions and answers). Papers can be on any topic within philosophy and/or suitably related fields. All submissions will undergo peer review by the journal committee.

For Panel Discussion:

We will also be hosting two panel discussions during the conference. For students interested in participating in the panel discussion, please submit an abstract of 500-1000 words summarising your response to one of the following prompts as well as a short personal statement (250-500words): 

Panel 1 Topic: Democracy and its Discontents:

It is often argued that we live in an age of political polarisation, where democracy itself is often cast under criticism. This concern returns us to some of the fundamental questions about the political theory of democracy and representative government. What does it take for a government to represent its people? Is democracy the best form of deciding political decisions? Why not govern through an educated elite? Is democracy the best form of social unity? Will democratic government give way to Plato’s worry of pleonexia and decline? How can democratic theory be defended?

Panel 2 Topic: ‘Determined to be Free? A discussion on the metaphysical possibility of free-will and its implications’.

There exist two compelling and yet seemingly contradictory intuitions which drive the free-will debate. On the one hand, humans seem to patently possess and experience free-will. Every day we seem to make decisions that we could have otherwise not made; we look forward to a future of open possibilities in which these considered decisions matter; and we are even comfortable normatively grounding our moral judgements in this apparent agency. And yet, the way we generally understand cause and effect to work seems to leave no space for this freedom. The near-future is caused entirely by the present which is caused entirely by the near-past. Furthermore, swapping this straightforward determinist picture of causality for a probabilistic or even random mechanism does not seem to salvage free-will, either. The will like anything else would still be caused by something anterior to it which is therefore outside its control. Is one view more compelling than the other? Can these opposing intuitions, instead, be reconciled? Or do such compatibilist views necessarily adulterate the concept of free-will to the point where it is nothing more than the apparent but illusory experience of free-will? And finally, if we do bite the bullet and accept determinism, are we left any worse because of it? Do we need to abandon or significantly rethink our conceptions of morality, for example?