CFP: Wuhan University International Conference on Explanation in Philosophy

Overview

Wuhan University's School of Philosophy is happy to announce the call for papers for its 2019 conference, "Explaining Philosophy". The conference will be held at Wuhan University from 24--26 May 2019.

This conference will examine the notion of explanation and the role that explanation plays in philosophy and its sub-disciplines. Our primary goal is to provide a venue for different perspectives on this crucial philosophical notion. In so doing, we seek to make progress toward unifying the disparate literatures on explanation as they currently stand in the philosophical sub-disciplines. At a minimum, we aim to expose conference participants to new ways of thinking about explanations. More ambitiously, we hope to achieve real philosophical advances through a cross-sub-disciplinary investigation of philosophical explanation.  

Our keynote presenters for the conference will be Jessica Wilson (Toronto) and Jamie Dreier (Brown).  

We also seek additional presenters whose work addresses the importance of explanation. Possible topics include:

• What is the relationship between causal explanations and non-causal explanations?
• What is the relationship between verbal explanations and metaphysical explanations?
• In what way do "grounding facts" explain the facts that they ground?
• How do natural facts explain normative facts?
• What is the relationship between explanations and reasons, particularly normative reasons?
• What does it take for an explanation to be the best explanation of some relevant data?
• Why would an explanation's "being best" confer on it a positive epistemic status?

Instructions

Please email submissions to [email protected] by February 15, 2019. Submissions should contain:

1. blinded for review: either a full paper or a "long abstract" (approximately 1000 words)
2. a cover page that includes name, affiliation, contact information, and a short abstract (under 200 words).    

Note on Funding

To help alleviate the financial costs of international travel, we are able to provide accommodations for all participants, as well as most of their meals.