The inaugural Moral Metaphysics at Maryland (MMaM) Workshop will be held at the University of Maryland, College Park, on Friday and Saturday, May 30-31, 2025.

We are seeking to showcase new work on the nature of morality and other apparently normative domains (such as rationality, epistemology, social and political, etc.). Work that approaches a normative domain's nature in the spirit of contemporary analytic metaphysics is especially encouraged. Scholars who, inter alia, are unapologetically interested in a normative domain's relationship(s) to essences, gunk, haecceities, difference makers, laws, powers, and other metaphysical exotica will be at home at this workshop.

Program

University of Maryland - John S. Toll Physics Building Room 2214

Friday, May 30

12:30pm: Coffee

1:00-2:20pm: Christopher Fruge (Oxford), ‘World Mirroring Mind’

Chair: Zach Thornton (Virginia Tech)

2:30-3:50pm Alisabeth Ayers (British Columbia), 'The Epistemic Pull of Affect: Why Affect is Not Mere Appearance'

Chair: Zach Barnett (Notre Dame)

4:00-5:30pm Oscar North-Concar & Kirk Surgener (Warwick), ‘Addressing Metaskepticism’

Chair: Joe Gurrola (Maryland)

6:30pm Dinner (for speakers and chairs)

Saturday, May 31

9:30am: Coffee

10:00-11:20am Singa Behrens (Bielefeld), ‘The Structure of Normativity or Why too Many Primitives Spoil the Broth’

Chair: TBD

11:30-12:50pm Rohan Sud (Virginia Tech), ‘Oughts and Coherence’

Chair: Lia Curtis Fine (Maryland)

12:50-2:00pm Lunch (catered)

2:00-3:20pm Billy Dunaway (Missouri-St. Louis), ‘The Prospects for Normative Metaphysics:Analyticity with Substantive Truth’

Chair: Pierce Neal (Johns Hopkins)

3:30-4:50pm Audrey Powers (Rutgers), ‘Moral Laws, Governance, and Contingency’

Chair: Shannon Chang (Michigan)

7:00pm Dinner (for speakers and chairs)

If interested in attending please let us know by email: [email protected]