5th Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference

I am pleased to announce this call-for-papers for the 5th Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference, provisionally scheduled to be held at University of Tampa on October 14th-15th, 2017 (for an idea of what past years of the conference have been like see here).

As in the past, the Cocoon conference will be unique in several respects:

1. Although conference attendance will be open to all members of the profession, paper presenters must be early-career philosophers (graduate students, post-docs, untenured faculty, independent scholars, etc.).
2. Due to travel-funding challenges that early-career philosophers often face, several sessions will be reserved for Skype presentations in which the author will be projected and field audience questions over Skype.
3. Although commentators and audience members are encouraged to present objections to papers, the conference theme will once again be "constructive engagement", where the primary intent is to help authors to improve their work (viz. by not only raising objections, but offering and discussing possible solutions).
4. Because publishing is one of the most difficult capacities for early-career philosophers to develop, the conference welcomes submissions of a typical full-length journal article (20-30 pages double-spaced). As a rule of thumb, the longer the paper, the higher the standards for acceptance to the conference. Extremely long papers are discouraged.
5. In order to defray costs of attendance (once again out of concern for the needs of early-career scholars), there will only be a small suggested (but non-mandatory) $5 registration "donation" to help pay for coffee & snacks. 
6. Submission to the conference involves an agreement to serve as a commentator on another paper during the conference should your paper be accepted and you accept your invitation to attend.

To submit a paper to present at the PCPC, please email the following to me at [email protected] by May 15th, 2017:

1. An anonymized paper.
2. A separate title page with the author's name, contact information, early-career status (e.g. grad student, post-doc, untenured faculty, independent scholar), and brief paper abstract.
3. A statement in your email and attached cover page concerning whether you intend to attend the conference in person or only via Skype.

Decision emails indicating whether your paper has been accepted should be sent out around August 1st (papers will undergo peer-review).  Finally, please bear the following in mind: In order to ensure that the conference is well-attended, there will be relatively few Skype sessions -- so the probability that your paper will be accepted is higher should you state in your submission email that you can attend in person.