CFP: Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception

CALL FOR PAPERS

Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception Conference and Edited Volume

SENSE PERCEPTION IN THE NORTH (SPIN, https://spinperceptionnetwork.wordpress.com/) is running a project entitled “Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception”, funded by the New Directions in the Study of the Mind project (http://www.newdirectionsproject.com/).

We invite submissions of papers for inclusion in an edited volume that directly address the goal of our project - see below. Those whose papers are selected for the volume will also be invited to be commentators at our project conference on July 11-12, 2017 in Leeds. (We will be able to cover accommodation and intra-European travel expenses.)

Please send submissions prepared for blind review to [email protected] (as a .pdf file entitled “Purpose and Procedure Conference Submission”). The deadline for submissions is 13 March 2017. Applicants will be notified of the results in early to mid April.

Papers should be circa 8500 words and contain an informative abstract to facilitate review.

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Arguably, part of the reason that many philosophical questions about perceptual experiences elude consensus is that there hasn’t been enough explicit discussion regarding how to go about answering them. Some think that we can discover the answers largely by reflecting on how our experiences seem to us, while others are deeply sceptical about how much we can learn in this way. Some think that science has all the answers, and so questions about perceptual experience should be left to the scientists (and the scientifically informed philosophers), while others think that the hard questions about experience are hard precisely because they can’t be answered satisfactorily by running experiments in a lab. Some think that perceptual experience must somehow ultimately boil down to neurons (or something else built up out of the entities physicists postulate in their theories), while others are open to the possibility that perceptual consciousness has to be something over and above such things. In general, there is widespread (and largely implicit) disagreement concerning (i) what philosophical theories of perceptual experience are supposed to explain, (ii) the fixed points from which theorising should proceed, and (iii) the methodology that such theorising should employ. The goal of our project is to move such methodological questions from the background to the fore, in order to facilitate progress where debates threaten to stagnate into impasse.

For further information about SPIN and our activities see our webpage: https://spinperceptionnetwork.wordpress.com/