Workshop on Meaning, LLMs, and Experience

Philosophers are increasingly interested in the status of meaning in contemporary artificial intelligence—especially in Large Language Models (LLMs). This is true both for meaning in a broadly semantic sense (e.g., How should we analyze the meaningfulness of LLM outputs, given that LLMs are not agents and presumably do not themselves mean or understand?), and in the broader normative or ethical sense of their meaning or significance in our lives and practices. In both cases, little attention has thus far been paid to human experience as something that both presumably differentiates us from LLMs in meaning contexts, and that is a central component of our meaningful engagement with them. 

The goal of this workshop is to bring together scholars for in-depth engagement of work in progress on these issues from a variety of traditions and perspectives in and adjacent to philosophy, including analytic philosophy, phenomenology, history of philosophy, science and technology studies, and social theory. We are especially interested in work that makes connections between the semantic and ethical aspects of meaning in relation to experience and LLMs, and work that engages more than one of the above-listed traditions and perspectives.

A total of 6-8 participants will be selected on the basis of anonymized extended abstracts. Participants will be expected to distribute drafts of their work in progress to other members of the workshop four weeks in advance. Workshop sessions will take the form of extended, detailed discussions of each draft, rather than formal presentations, with the goal of helping authors to develop their work. There will also be ample time reserved for informal conversation. Others are welcome to attend the workshop as auditors.

The workshop will take place on 28 and 29 May 2026 at Paderborn University (Paderborn, Germany), a small historical German city about midway between Cologne and Hannover, easily reachable from either major city (and either city’s airport) by train or car. Paderborn also has an airport that is served by Munich. 

The workshop is organized in conjunction with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship of Jacob Rump, guest researcher at Paderborn University for 2025 and 2026, in collaboration with Paderborn philosophers Suzana Alpsancar and Sebastian Luft.

A call for abstracts has been posted separately (see link above). Inquiries may be directed to jacobrump[at]creighton.edu