Living Together Online: Social Epistemology, Ethics, and the Internet

The Department of Philosophy at Colorado State University is pleased to announce the first annual Bodaken Philosophy Symposium Workshop, to be held October 15-16, 2019 at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. This year’s theme is Living Together Online: Social Epistemology, Ethics, and the Internet.

The Internet has altered social life in many ways, from making it easier to keep in touch with family and friends to making it more difficult to avoid forming false, conspiratorial beliefs. There are fewer barriers to the acquisition of knowledge and ignorance, as well as fewer barriers between governments, technology firms and advertisers and our private mental states. We welcome submissions that address the conceptual puzzles and practical challenges of social life in the information age. Possible topics may include (and this list is by no means exhaustive):

--The nature and role of expertise and the obligations of experts in an age of “fake news”

--The nature and role of trust in anonymous, online contexts

--Epistemic injustice and the Internet

--Justifications for censorship in contexts that lack epistemic gatekeepers, e.g., social media

--Epistemic bubbles and echo chambers

--Democracy and the “attention economy”  

--The nature of privacy and property in the age of big data

--Deliberation, disagreement, and polarization

--Political manipulation and the Internet

Our keynote speakers are:

Regina Rini (Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition, York University)

C. Thi Nguyen (Associate Professor, Utah Valley University)

Karen Frost Arnold (Associate Professor, Hobart and William Smith Colleges)

James Williams (University of Oxford, Co-Founder, Time Well Spent)

Please send abstracts of no more than 700 words, as well as any questions, to [email protected], by June 15, 2019. Draft papers will be submitted by September 15,2019. Presenters will have 20-30 minutes to present their working papers, after which the floor will open for discussion.

We may have funds available to help support graduate students whose papers are accepted.