Philosophy in a Social World

Keynote Speaker: Nancy Bauer (Tufts).

UMSL’s Philosophers’ Forum invites submissions to the 14th annual Gateway Graduate Conference, “Philosophy in a Social World.” The conference hopes to explore the role of philosophy in our lives as social beings. This will involve engagement across multiple philosophical subdisciplines, including but not limited to epistemology, ethics, feminist philosophy, and metaphilosophy.

Questions of inquiry include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Can (or should) philosophy have a specific social, political, or moral orientation?
• How should philosophers engage with contemporary social issues, if at all?
•  Are loneliness, alienation, and solitude philosophical topics, or do they properly belong to other areas of inquiry?
• Given that we are social beings, how ought we conceive of human agency?
• Can we gain moral knowledge from the testimony of others?
• To what extent does recognition (or lack thereof) harm or alienate others?
• How might feminism or intersectional commitments inform how one conceives of rationality and reason?
• How might Anglophone social epistemology fruitfully interact with non-Anglophone philosophical traditions, such as Critical Theory?
• Is it possible to be alienated from oneself, or only from a larger community?

  To apply, please submit:

1) A blind-review paper, not exceeding 3500 words in length.

2) A separate cover sheet including name, institutional affiliation, contact information, paper title, word count, and an abstract of no more than 300 words.

to Samuel Filby ([email protected]) by September 16th. Acceptance will be notified by October 1st.