Formal and Implicit Rules and Biases

The analysis of the different types of rules governing each level of human associations, from the political, to the social, to the interpersonal, is crucial to understand their working, their binding force, their justification or lack of, and to propose their reform. Recently a great deal of interest has been attracted to the presence and the effectiveness of implicit rules, often based on biases, of which agents are unaware and which run contrary to their explicit attitudes.  This workshop aims to bring together scholars from different philosophical traditions to explore how different kinds of rules affect human life often producing persistently unjust order and how such states of affairs can be remedied.  

Call for Papers

The workshop is organized as a part of the activities of the Area of Practical Philosophy within the “Centre for Communication and Research” of the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia. It originates from the experience of the Permanent Seminar on Practical Normativity established in 2016 (https://normativitapratica.jimdo.com) with the sponsorship of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy. The aim of the group is to provide a forum where scholars working in the field of practical philosophy can meet, study, and discuss a variety of issues in metaethics, philosophy of law, political philosophy, philosophy of action, theories of justification and the public order, moral philosophy and applied ethics.

We now invite paper proposals that engage, inter alia, with the following issues:

-        Social order and social norms;

-        Legal norms and democratic politics;

-        Topography of different kinds of rules;

-        Explicit norms, customary rules, conventions;

-        Social rules and moral norms;

-        Deontological and teleological rules;

-        Implicit biases and rules;

-        Norms and virtues;

-        How to change unjust rules;

-        How to change rule-governed behavior.

Paper proposals (500 words max) should be prepared for blind review and submitted electronically by 1st March 2020 at https://practicalphilosophy.jimdo.com.

Decisions will be made and communicated by the end of March 15th 2020.