CFP: II FINO/SIFA Graduate Conference in Mind, Language and Science “Between natural, social, and artificial kinds”

NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE: April 15th, 2016

Call for papers 

II FINO/SIFA Graduate Conference in Mind, Language and Science “Between natural, social, and artificial kinds”

Under the auspices of the Northwest Italy Consortium for PhD Program in Philosophy (FINO) and the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (SIFA)

University of Genoa
DAFIST, Philosophy Section
Genoa, June 30th and July 1st 2016

 The II FINO/SIFA Graduate Conference in Mind, Language and Science  “Between natural, social, and artificial kinds” aims at improving the interaction among young scholars and researchers in philosophy, both from Italy and elsewhere, to discuss new trends on the topic of natural, social, and artificial kinds.

To say that a science theorizes about kinds that are natural, instead of social or artificial, is to say that they correspond to elements that reflect the real structure of the world, not merely human actions, interests, and values. These topics are among the most debated in contemporary philosophy as they raise many contentious issues, which involve the nature and semantics of concepts such as species, gender, race, disease, and so on, and also have pivotal implications both for ethics and the various sciences.

Topics of interest include bur are not limited to:

– The metaphysics of natural, social, and artificial kinds
– The epistemology of natural, social, and artificial kinds
– The semantics of natural, social, and artificial kind terms
– Taxonomies in the special sciences (chemistry, biology, medicine, psychology, social sciences, etc.)
– Alleged natural kind concepts (species, gender, race, disease, concept, emotion, etc.)

 Keynote speakers: 

• John Dupré (University of Exeter)
• David Papineau (King’s College, London)
• Emma Tobin (University College London)

Scientific Committee

Cristina Amoretti, Marcello Frixione, Michele Marsonet, Carlo Penco, Nicla Vassallo, Massimiliano Vignolo

Organizing Comittee

Deborah Conti, Fabio Patrone

With the aim of including as many contributions as possible, the conference will be structured around plenary sessions with keynote speakers and the contributed papers selected by double blind review. The contributed papers should last around 45 minutes (presentation + discussion). The language of the conference is English.

Abstracts of about 6,000 characters (roughly 1000 words) are invited on the topics of natural, social, and artificial kinds broadly understood. The abstracts, prepared for blind refereeing, should be submitted electronically using the EasyChair submission page at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=finosifa16

Deadline: March 30th, 2016 NEW DEADLINE: April 15th, 2016

Acceptances will be notified by April 30th, 2016 May 10th, 2016

Accepted abstracts will be available at the conference in booklet form and also available online before the conference. Selected full papers out of the conference may be published in the proceedings.

 Further Information:

The conference is supported by the Northwest Italy Consortium for PhD Program in Philosophy (FINO) and the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (SIFA).

The organisers hope to be able to provide selected speakers with support for meals or accommodation, but encourage participants to apply for travel bursaries etc. from their home institutions, and will be happy to provide accreditation to the conference in support of such applications.

For further information, please contact: [email protected]