What's Virtue Got To Do With It?

Philosophers have appealed to the notion of virtue, both recently and historically, to help explain and settle issues in fields as diverse as ethics, epistemology, politics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science. Our conference seeks to explore whether they have been right to do so, and whether the concept of virtue can rightly be applied so widely. Why might virtue be indispensable to certain philosophical accounts? Can the facts it is supposed to explain be better accounted for in other ways? Is virtue relevant to all normative questions, or just to some? Is there a focal notion of virtue that runs through all such discussions? And if not, in what relations do these various notions stand?  

The graduate students of philosophy at the University of Toronto invite papers exploring these and related issues for their 13th annual graduate conference. We welcome submissions from all fields in philosophy, both those in favour and those critical of virtue-centric approaches, including those with connections to other disciplines, and especially those engaging with the history of philosophy. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• the relation between practical and theoretical virtue in Aristotelian ethics
• the role of virtue in Humean/neo-Humean ethical theories
• the advantages/disadvantages of virtue ethics vis-à-vis consequentalism and deontology
• the difference between (and advantages/disadvantages of) competing virtue theoretical accounts (e.g. Aristotelian vs. Humean virtue ethics)
• the relative merits of virtue epistemology over other epistemological approaches
• the relation between concepts of moral virtue and epistemic virtue
• the role of civic virtue in determining correct political action
• the role of theoretical virtues in the assessment of scientific theories
• the importance of virtue (either artistic or moral) in making aesthetic judgments
• the relative goodness of virtue in comparison with pleasure, happiness, and other goods

Deadline for Submission: JANUARY 6th, 2013  

Please send submissions to [email protected]. Submissions must be in PDF format and prepared for blind review. Papers should not exceed 3500 words, and should include an abstract not exceeding 300 words. In your email, please include your name, paper title, and institutional affiliation. Only one submission per author. Limited travel stipends are available, with special funds for exceptional papers in ancient and medieval philosophy.   For more information, please see our website (http://philosophy.utoronto.ca/gpsu/conf/) or contact us at [email protected].