The 64th Annual NW Philosophy Conference

The theme for this year’s conference is Responsibility.  The world is filled with extraordinary problems -- the loss of biodiversity, the problems associated with climate change, the gulf between the rich and the poor, seemingly endless war. Yet answers to questions of who is responsible for these conditions and what responsibility entails remain elusive.  At the same time, received concepts of agency, responsibility, and determinism have undergone challenges and changes by philosophers from different perspectives.

Are concepts of responsibility and related matters in need of further revision? Are they in need of rescue and defense? In what ways do they speak to questions that matter today and that will matter in the future? The concept of responsibility has connections to issues of ethics, punishment, free will, religion, desire, experimental psychology, evolutionary biology, personal identity, and many other issues.

We welcome thought-provoking papers on all aspects of this concept, broadly or narrowly construed.

However, this conference has a tradition of welcoming quality submissions on ANY philosophical topic and we will continue that tradition.   Our hope is to organize the papers about responsibility into dedicated sessions within the larger meeting.