Limits of Knowledge – Limits of Ignorance

The Fifth International Conference for Doctoral Students in Philosophy proposes a discussion concerning the boundaries and interactions between two epistemic states, ubiquitous experienced by human beings and differently construed by various philosophical traditions in their long historical development: knowing and being ignorant. Doctoral students are invited to explore problems related to the philosophical mapping of knowledge and ignorance through different historical stages, by investigating questions such as: what can different philosophical attitudes and theories teach us about human knowledge, its limitations and capabilities? how distinct philosophical traditions have accounted for the everyday ignorance and how ignorance has been reinvented as a philosophical concept? how knowledge or ignorance translates into action and how the fact of knowing or ignoring something has a normative effect? how can ethical and political decision-making processes be influenced when these two polarizing states are applicable on a macro-social level? why philosophical education can be seen as an appropriate tool against ignorance? what norms, principles and standards have been used or should be used for distinguishing between knowledge and ignorance?

Details

The Doctoral School of Philosophy, Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, invites submissions for the fifth installment of the International Conference for Doctoral Students in Philosophy that is going to take place on May 16-17, 2025. The event will be organized in a hybrid format. The conference is supported by three research centers of the Faculty of History and Philosophy: Center for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Center for Applied Philosophy and Department of Philosophy in Hungarian Language.

Official languages of the conference are: English, Romanian and Hungarian.

Besides the main topic of the event, we invite submissions of papers from all areas and subdomains of philosophy: phenomenology, semiology, hermeneutics, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of culture and communication, philosophy of science, logic, theories of language, history of philosophy, studies of ancient and medieval philosophy, Romanian philosophy, Hungarian philosophy, and P4C (philosophy for children). Celebrating 301 years since the birth of Immanuel Kant, we invite exploring his philosophical thought in relation to the Limits of Knowledge – Limits of Ignorance topic.

The conference will have thematic parallel panels organized according to the topics of the papers, in all the official languages of the conference. The presentations will be made either online or on site, at the Babeș-Bolyai University, depending on the availability of the participants. All the students affiliated to The Doctoral School of Philosophy are kindly asked to participate in situ. Participants should specify upon the submission of their abstract whether they wish to participate in presence or online. Participants are requested to send a draft version of their paper by the due date.

Abstract and paper submission

Abstracts should be up to 350 words, written in English and must contain: the title of the contribution, a short description of the main topic, thesis, purpose and argumentative unfolding of the paper. The draft papers should be ready for blind review, no longer than 10 pages (text body: Times New Roman, at 12 points, justified, paragraph spacing at 1,5 lines) and suitable for a 20 minutes talk followed by 10 minutes Q&A.

Deadline for abstract submissions: 25th of March 2025.

Communication of acceptance: 1st of April 2025

Deadline for paper submission (only for accepted proposals): 1st of May 2025.

For submissions, please send your work at [email protected], with the subject of the message PHILOSOPHY_2025. The author’s personal information (full name, affiliation, contact information, language of the presentation and attending method: online or on site) should be specified in the message and omitted from the attachment containing the abstract or draft paper in word format.

Please feel free to get in touch with Ile Vlad, the secretary of the Doctoral School of Philosophy ([email protected]), for any further questions you may have.

Opportunities for publication

The scientific committee of the conference will select a number of papers to be published in collective volumes hosted by Studia UBB Philosophia[1] and Revista de Filosofie Aplicată[2].

[1]https://studia.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/index.php/subbphilosophia/index

[2]https://filosofieaplicata.ro/index.php/filap/index