PEA Soup

Big Changes Afoot...

PEA Soup is switching platforms this week, with a big media push coming. As a result, it might be best for folks to hold off on posting anything till the move is complete. 

More soon....

CfP: Philosophy's Practical Turn

The Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities (YJLH) is seeking full submissions for a symposium section of the Spring 2017 issue. The journal seeks submissions that employ methods of philosophy (broadly construed) to investigate practical legal issues. We hope to publish articles representative of an array of philosophical traditions and contemporary issues. The special section aims to exemplify how philosophical approaches and insights provide distinctive and significant contributions to practical legal debates.

Submissions to Multiple Journals

[UPDATED WITH A CORRECTION] In my recent summer orgy of refereeing, there were two occasions in which it seemed that an author had simultaneously submitted to different places (in one case it turned out I was mistaken). I know there are movements amongst some folks to allow these, but for now they are against most (if not all) philosophy journal policies, for what I take to be pretty good reasons about the time and energy involved in refereeing and editing that could be wasted (I had one former really placid colleague who got so angry about people engaging in this practice that his face turned red and he banged repeatedly on the poker table).

Now the journal editors I contacted about these cases were very grateful for the information and handled the situation swiftly and delicately. My question here is this: What more could be done to prevent this activity? I'm assuming that editors would want there to be a way to check that submissions are only to their journals. So why not some kind of coordinated private wiki, where, say, the title and the first paragraph of the paper are entered when it's received? Or perhaps there are other solutions? Have editors tried anything? Or do they think this is like voter fraud, happening so infrequently that there's no justification for trying to do anything to prevent it? (I hadn't discovered anything like this before, and I've refereed well over 200 papers). I'm especially interested in hearing from actual journal editors. (I'm also interested in whether other referees have made these discoveries, although that's less important here.)

WiNE Program Out!

From Mark Timmons:

The 2017 Program for the 8^th annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics is now available here. Registration is free and open to all. You may register to attend here. I will send periodic updates to those who register.

Information about the Westward Look resort (where the workshop will be held) and about travel and accommodations is available on the workshop website. I hope you will join us this January.

Welcome Lawrence Blum!

We're very pleased to announce that Lawrence Blum has joined the list of contributors to PEA Soup.  Lawrence is a Professor of Philosophy at U-Mass, Boston, as well as a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education.  He's written several highly regarded books in moral philosophy, including the very influential Friendship, Altruism, and Morality.  He's also done work on the philosophy of race (see his I'm Not a Racist, But...: The Moral Quandary of Race), philosophy of education, empathy, and care.  Welcome aboard, Lawrence!

Call for Proposals: Ethics and Policy Workshop

The Center for Ethics & Policy at Carnegie Mellon University invites paper abstracts for an inaugural Workshop on Ethics & Policy to be hosted November 4-5, 2016 at the CMU campus in Pittsburgh, PA.  We are pleased to welcome Richard Arneson as our keynote speaker.

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the publication of Alan Wertheimer’s seminal work Exploitation, the theme for our inaugural workshop is “Exploitation and Coercion”.  Submissions are welcome on any topic germane to the works of Dr. Wertheimer, with preference given to papers related to the relevance of exploitation and/or coercion to current issues in applied ethics and policy.

Journal of Applied Philosophy Prize Paper (open access)

The Journal of Applied Philosophy awards an annual prize of £1000 to the best article published in each year's volume. The judgement as to the best article is made by the editors of the journal.

The Journal of Applied Philosophy is delighted to announce the winner of the 2015 Essay Prize: Cheshire Calhoun’s paper, "Geographies of Meaningful Living," is available to read on open access until the end of July 2016.

For more about Cheshire Calhoun see her profile here.

Wrong Acts

I suspect I've just wandered into a longstanding dispute, but I'm curious what people think about the nature of wrong acts, and in particular about whether an agent incapable of perceiving the relevant wrongness/rightness reasons can nevertheless perform wrong acts.  Here's a representative quote from someone who does think this, Gideon Rosen, in his 2004 paper "Skepticism About Moral Responsibility":

When you pull my chair out from under me just for laughs, there is no doubt that the act is wrong. But if you’re only five years old, or if you mistakenly believed that I wouldn’t mind, then even though the act is wrong, it may be a mistake for me to blame you for it.

I agree with the blame claim, of course, but I don't know what to make of the claim that the act is wrong.  Would we say of a bear who did the same thing that the act was wrong? Interested to hear considerations for and against this claim.

WiNE CfA

From Mark Timmons:

I am pleased to announce a call for abstracts for the Eighth Annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethical Theory that will be held in Tucson, Arizona on January 12-14, 2017. Abstracts are welcome in any area or on any topic in normative ethical theory (to be distinguished as well as possible from metaethics, political philosophy, and applied ethics).

Abstracts should be 2-3 double-spaced pages and are due no later than Thursday, June 1, 2016. Please send abstracts by email to me at [email protected]. Those who presented at the 2015 or 2016 workshops are not eligible for presenting at the 2017 workshop. A program committee will evaluate the submissions, and decisions will be finalized early to mid-July. 

The keynote speakers for the 2016 workshop are Christine Korsgaard, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, and Talbot Brewer, Professor of Philosophy at University of Virginia. Further information about the Workshop is available here.

Experiment on Moral Decisions

(From Joachim Horvath) Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to an online experiment on moral decisions. In the experiment, you will be asked to judge about several cases which option the agent in the scenario should choose. You can enter the experiment via the following link: 

http://ww2.unipark.de/uc/regnu_pxe/?a=

 We especially encourage the participation of people with expertise in philosophy and/or ethics. At the end of the study, every participant can register for a price draw to win a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking: Fast and slow”.

If you have any further questions regarding our experiment, please feel free to contact Alex Wiegmann, Department of Psychology, University of Goettingen ([email protected]) or Joachim Horvath, Department of Philosophy, University of Cologne ([email protected]).