CFP: Yale Teleology Conference

The Yale Teleology Conference will bring together philosophers, historians, and scientists to debate the role of purposes in our best accounts of human cognition, human action, and the non-human world. The conference will engage a wide range of approaches to teleological explanation and reasoning, with the aim of extending, enriching, and challenging familiar accounts of the roles that teleological thinking can play in the human and natural sciences. 

The conference will take place on May 5th and 6th, 2026, at the Humanities Quadrangle at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. The conference is hosted by Paul Franks (Philosophy and Jewish Studies), Joshua Knobe (Cognitive Science and Philosophy), and Malina Buturović (Classics), and co-organized by Daniel LeBlanc, Sera Schwarz, and Henry Straughan. It is supported by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempff Fund at Yale University. 

Relevant questions include (but are not limited to): 

• To what extent does human cognition involve teleological processes or notions? 

• Can we understand purposes nonanthropomorphically? In what sense might they be “objective”?

• Should purposes be invoked merely as heuristics or as stopgaps for nonteleological explanations, or do they have other legitimate, theoretically substantive uses? 

• Can and should we be realists about (at least some) teleological posits and processes?

• What is the relationship between mechanistic and teleological explanations? How can precedents from the history of philosophy and science help us rethink this relationship?

• Is teleology indispensable to the explanation of historical, social, and political phenomena? 

• Do we need teleological concepts to make sense of natural and biological functions? 

Confirmed speakers include:

• James Kreines (Claremont McKenna College)

• Tania Lombrozo (Princeton University)

• Jeffrey Mcdonough (Harvard University)

• David Rose (Stanford University)

• Karl Schafer (University of Texas at Austin)

• Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers University)

• Mark Schiefsky (Harvard University)
  
  

Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words, prepared for blind review, and submitted to [email protected] by Friday, March 13th, 2026. Presentations will be 20 to 30 minutes long. Limited funding for travel and accommodation may be available to support speakers without institutional resources. Accepted speakers will be notified by March 16th, 2026.