This page provides information on various events that take place during or in connection with GAP.11 like the keynote lectures, colloquia, section talks, book symposia and forums about issues in the profession, the Frege Prize Colloquium, the students congress, the new format “ask your philosopher!” and the satellite workshops. The conference will be accompanied by a public-philosophy programme. The print version of the conference reader can be found here. The last programme changes can be found here.

[In German] Opening lecture: Tim Henning (Mainz)

Monday, 12.09.2022, 18:00

Erkenntnis-Lecture: Serena Olsaretti (ICREA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Tuesday, 13.09.2022, 17:00

Abschlussvortrag: John MacFarlane (Berkeley)

Thursday, 15.09.2022, 17:00

The opening lecture by Tim Henning will be followed by the Panel “Scientific freedom and morality”. More information will be provided soon.

During GAP.11, eight colloquia will be taking place:

• Colloquium 1: Public Access to Other Minds in Psychiatry
• Colloquium 2: Epistemic Responsibility in the Context of Scientific Inquiry
• Colloquium 3: Besser Argumentieren! Was kann philosophische Bildung in Schulen und anderen öffentlichen Räumen beitragen?
• Colloquium 4: Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics: Hylomorphism and Its Ancient and Modern Alternatives
• Colloquium 5: Conceptual Engineering and the Ivory Tower
• Colloquium 6: How Many People Should There Be? Philosophy and World Population Growth
• Colloquium 7: The Epistemology of Journalism
• Colloquium 8: Krieg in der Ukraine: Philosophische Perspektiven auf eine po­litische Herausforderung

To adequately diagnose and treat patients, psychiatrists must be able to form justified beliefs about the mental states of patients. However, sometimes psychiatrists' beliefs or diagnoses might differ from the patient’s own beliefs about their minds. Typically, this occurs in cases of delusion and hallucination, but also in cases of anhedonia, alexithymia, or hypochondria. In psychiatric practice, it is often taken for granted that clinicians can doubt or even correct the patients' beliefs about the contents and happenings of their own minds. This seems to contradict the long-standing philosophical idea that introspection is a privileged way of accessing mental states, and subjects have epistemic authority regarding their own mind.

This conflict prompts the following questions: Is there a form of second or third-person access to someone's mental states that can trump first-person access? Can psychiatrists reach better (more accurate/more justified/more reliable) judgements about their patients' minds than the patients themselves? The Colloquium „Public access to other minds in psychiatry“ deals with this question by discussing methods and strategies scientists and clinicians have at their disposal to justify their diagnostic claims, as well as theoretical limitations that may undermine their judgments.

Time

Monday, 12.09.2022, 12:30 – 15:30

Guests

Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham), Sascha Benjamin Fink (Magdeburg), Jacob Stegenga (Cambridge)

Organizers

Adrian Kind (Magdeburg), Chiara Caporuscio (Magdeburg)

Facing the risks from human-induced global warming, future AI, nuclear technology, etc., contemporary society has been characterized with a realization of the wide ranging impact of scientific developments and the responsibilities that come with them. Such responsibilities concern not only accountable research by individual scientists, but even more so accountable knowledge production by the given scientific communities.

In view of these socio-epistemic pressures, it has become urgent to shift the focus from traditional epistemological questions of epistemic justification and scientific knowledge to the process of scientific inquiry and norms that underlie it. In particular, it has become important to explicate what the epistemic responsibilities that underly scientific inquiry are. Despite a shared interest in the topic of epistemic responsibility, discussions in epistemology and those in philosophy of science have remained largely disconnected.

This colloquium aims to bridge this divide by bringing together experts working on epistemic responsibility from each of these philosophical domains, particularly focusing on the context of scientific inquiry.

Time

Monday, 12.09.2022, 12:30 – 15:30

Guests

Will Fleisher (North­eastern), Kristina Rolin (Tampere University), Dunja Šešelja (Ruhr University Bochum / Eindhoven University of Technology)

Organizer

Dunja Šešelja (Bochum/Eindhoven) for the GWP

Argumentative Fähigkeiten sind nicht nur für die akademische Philosophie von großer Bedeutung. Vielmehr spielen sie für zahlreiche Lebensbereiche eine wichtige Rolle: von der Alltagskommunikation und schulischen Lernprozessen über öffentliche Diskurse bis hin zur Rezeption, Entwicklung und Vermittlung von Erkenntnissen an den Universitäten. Das Kolloquium ist der Frage gewidmet, welchen Beitrag philosophische Bildung in Schulen, Universitäten und anderen öffentlichen Räumen zur Entwicklung dieser Fähigkeiten leisten kann.

Dazu werden drei Aspekte beleuchtet: Erstens geht es um die Reflektion konkreter Initiativen zur Förderung argumentativer Fähigkeiten im Kontext des Philosophieunterrichts. Welche bewährten Modelle gibt es hierfür und für die Kooperation mit anderen Fächern? Was sollten Lehrkräfte können? Wo liegen Herausforderungen und Grenzen?

Zweitens fragen wir, welche Bedeutung logische und rhetorische Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten für das Argumentieren in unterschiedlichen Kontexten haben können. Dies geschieht ausgehend von einem hochschuldidaktischen Modell für die Vermittlung von Logik und Rhetorik im Rahmen des Philosophiestudiums.

Drittens geht es im Kolloquium um Ansätze zur Verbesserung öffentlicher Debatten. Wie sehen diese Ansätze aus, welche Erfahrungen gibt es mit ihnen, wo liegen Potenziale, aber auch Grenzen speziell der Argumentationstheorie dafür, zur Verbesserung öffentlicher Debatten beizutragen? Dies führt zugleich zurück zu der Frage, inwiefern philosophische Bildung an Schule und Universität einen Beitrag zur Förderung argumentativer Fähigkeiten leisten kann, der auch öffentliche Debatten bereichert.

Time

Monday, 12.09.2022, 12:30 – 15:30

Guests

Dominique Kuenzle (Zürich), David Lanius (Karlsruhe), Donata Romizi (Wien)

Organizers

Anne Burkard (Göttingen), David Löwenstein (Düsseldorf)

Neo-Aristotelian approaches are not only important and influential in ethics. Neo-Aristotelian interpretations are also relevant in contemporary metaphysics. The colloquium is devoted to neo-Aristotelian theories in analytic metaphysics.

The colloquium aims to bring together philosophers who take up neo-Aristotelian approaches in analytic philosophy and researchers who attempt to reconstruct and analyze Aristotle’s conceptions by applying theories from analytic philosophy.

The specific goal of the colloquium is to discuss hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory to understand and explain the constitution of particulars objects such as a bicycle, a mountain, or an octopus. The main focus of the colloquium will be on the metaphysics of artefacts. The ‘innocent definition’ of the hylomorphism allows a variety of answers, depending on how one answers the following bunch of questions: 1.) What is meant by form, what by matter, and what by the whole? (2.) What is meant by the three hylomorphistic relations, i.e. the relation between form and matter, the relation between form and the composite whole, and the relation between matter and composite whole?

The colloquium aims to discuss hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory for the interpretation of single objects in general and artefacts in particular, in dealing with different hylomorphistic approaches and with alternatives to hylomorphistic theories.

Time

Tuesday, 13.09.2022, 9:00 – 12:00

Guests

Kathrin Koslicki (Neuchâtel), Christian Pfeiffer (Toronto), Thomas Sattig (Tübingen)

Organizers

Béatrice Lienemann (Erlangen), Marilù Papandreou (Bergen)

Conceptual engineering is the method and the activity of assessing and improving our representational devices, in particular words and concepts. But does conceptual engineering have the potential to change representational devices of ordinary people or is it merely a topic for academics in their ivory tower? This colloquium aims to facilitate a debate on three related questions:

• Does conceptual engineering really have practical effect from which the public might benefit?
• What exactly are the benefits we can hope to achieve by doing conceptual engineering?
• How can conceptual engineering be implemented in the most effective way?

Answering these questions is of interest for philosophers, considering that much of the current appeal of conceptual engineering is contingent on whether it can actually have such significant effects on our individual and communal lives.

Time

Tuesday, 13.09.2022, 9:00 – 12:00

Guests

Mona Simion (Glasgow), Teresa Marques (Barcelona), Georg Brun (Bern)

Organizers

Robin Löhr (Bochum), Steffen Koch (Bielefeld)

Whether climate change, scarcity of resources, urbanization, securing pensions or the future of work -- hardly any public debate can do without reference to demographic issues and the scenario of a growing world population. The groundbreaking work of Derek Parfit has established the philosophical field of population ethics. It reflects such scenarios in a philosophically highly differentiated manner and tries to thereby contribute to finding good responses to urgent global challenges. One major challenge that has been much discussed in the Recent literature concerns the reasons we have, and the costs we should Be willing to bear, to secure the long-term survival of humanity and prevent human extinction.

Within a short period of time, population ethics has had a remarkable intra- and interdisciplinary effect. Trying to solve questions of population ethics has resulted in important and far-reaching developments in normative ethics. And it has a become a field where philosophy collaborates fruitfully with other sciences, especially economics.

This colloquium presents latest philosophical contributions to population ethics and discusses their relevance for publicly discussed questions.

Time

Thursday, 15.09.2022, 13:30 – 16:30

Guests

Elisabeth Finneron-Burns (Western Ontario), Johann Frick (Princeton), Gustaf Arrhenius (Stockholm)

Organizers

Tim Henning (Mainz), Christian Seidel (Karlsruhe)

In times of massive epistemic pollution, disinformation, informational overload, and increasing social polarization, one would expect the epistemology of journalism to play a major role. For, without epistemically proper journalism the truthfulness of public opinion will severely suffer. Surprisingly, this field of applied epistemology remains to be widely neglected within current epistemology. Questions about the objectivity of the media, the epistemological appropriateness of specific journalistic formats, and the reliability of journalistic practices do not receive the attention they deserve.

The colloquium takes steps towards establishing the epistemology of journalism as a new field of philosophical research. In order to frame the complex of topics in terms of content, it will focus on the following question: Which specific epistemological problems exist for journalistic reporting in the face of massive public misinformation and ignorance? Under this guiding question, the following thematic complexes will be considered:

• Epistemologically negative consequences due to the dissemination of information (e.g. through cognitive biases: false convictions through overgeneralization etc.)
• Epistemological problems of fact-checks
• Dissemination of information under uncertainty
• Epistemological status of nudging to reason, framing and epistemic paternalism in journalism
• Epistemological problems of balanced reporting

Time

Thursday, 15.09.2022, 13:30 – 16:30

Guests

Carrie Figdor (Iowa), Neil Levy (Macquary), Joseph Uscinski (Miami)

Organizers

Thomas Grundmann (Köln), Romy Jaster (HU Berlin)

Die klassischen Themen der Friedens- und Kriegsethik – Theorien des gerechten Krieges, Pazifismus, Friedenssicherung – scheinen nicht gut geeignet, die Besonderheit der politi­schen und moralischen Herausforderungen zu erfassen, die sich angesichts des Krieges in der Ukraine stellen. Die normative Lage ist ungewöhnlich klar: Es handelt sich um einen völkerrechtswidrigen Angriffskrieg, der dem Angegriffenen gemäß der UN-Charta ein Recht auf militärische Selbstverteidigung verschafft. Auch über das Prinzip, dass Angegriffene Un­ter­­stützung verdienen, gibt es kaum Dissens. Weniger klar sind Art, Umfang und Ziele der gebotenen Hilfe – insbesondere angesichts epistemischer Defizite und der Unsicherheit der Folgenabschätzung.

Time

Tuesday, 13.09.2022, 9:30 – 12:00

Guests

Susanne Burri (Konstanz), Sergii Sekundant (Odessa), Johannes Müller-Salo (Hannover)

Organizers

GAP-Organisationskomitee

[In German] Symposium 1: Susanne Boshammer (Osnabrück)

Die zweite Chance: Warum wir (nicht alles) verzeihen sollten, Hamburg (Rowohlt) 2020. Moderation: Dina Emundts (Freie Universität Berlin); Comments: Oliver Hallich (Essen), Stefan Riedener (Zürich). Thursday, 15.09.2022, 13:30 – 15:30

Symposium 2: Gerhard Schurz (Düsseldorf)

Hume’s Problem Solved: The Optimality of Meta-Induction, Cambridge, MA (MIT Press) 2019. Moderation: Thomas Müller (Konstanz); Comments: Leah Henderson (Groningen), Peter Brössel (Bochum). Thursday, 15.09.2022, 13:30 – 15:30

This year, the GAP will award the Frege Prize to Martine Nida-Rümelin (Fribourg). She is being honoured for her outstanding and internationally influential work on the philosophy of mind.

Laudatory speech: Terence Horgan (Arizona); Additional Guests: Pär Sundström (Umeå University), Chair: Kristina Musholt (Universität Leipzig), Wednesday, 14.09.2022, 18:00 – 20:00

While philosophising may be cheap, gaining access to the results of philosophical research is not: At the moment, a small number of publishing houses make large profits with subscription prices and article processing charges. Depending on the amount of available funding, access to research results is thereby often restricted – even though researchers are already largely funded by public money. Current developments, like Projekt DEAL, focus on agreements between public actors and private publishers (like Wiley, Springer Nature, and Elsevier) to increase open access by covering author processing charges. This, however, leads to a kind of public subsidising of publishing houses with profit margins of above 20%. In order to minimise such disadvantages, many therefore call for diamond open access, i.e. access free of charge for authors and readers. In this panel, we discuss the problems with the current system of publishing and benefits of diamond open access, with our panelists Prof. Martin Paul Eve (Birkbeck, CEO of the Open Library of the Humanities), Marco Tullney (TIB Hannover, director of Projekt KOALA), Dr. Christina Riesenweber (expert for open access publication at UB Freie Universität Berlin).

Organization

Sascha Benjamin Fink, Wanja Wiese

• Fachpolitisches Forum 2: Blogging in der Philosophie
• Fachpolitisches Forum 3: Philosophie in erster Generation
• Fachpolitisches Forum 4: Ökologische Nachhaltigkeit im Wissenschaftsbetrieb der Philosophie

For information on these panels, visit the German programme page.

“Ask your philosopher!” builds a bridge between school and university: several philosophy courses attend the congress with their teachers and will have the opportunity to ask questions that could not be answered in class. Selected philosophers specializing in the respective fields will answer their questions on a podium and engage in discussions with the students. Tuesday, 13.09.2022, 9:00 – 14.00

For more information, visit the German programme page.

There will be a student-organized section at GAP.11 with slots for student presentations. The submission deadline is April 15, 2022. More information can be found in these documents: students-congress reader, time table.

Following GAP.11, seven satellite workshops will be held:

• Bad Beliefs. Conspiracy Theories, Testimony, and Resistance to Evidence
• The Embodiment of Conscious Subjects
• Memory and Imagination: Varieties of (Dis)Continuism
• Scaffolding & Niche Construction: Conceptualization & Applications
• Hyperintensional Formal Epistemology
• Supererogation: Feministische Perspektiven
• Die Zukunft des Idealismus

This section will soon provide various informational documents about GAP.11. Resources in context with travelling to the conference site and accomadation in Berlin can be found on Travel & Accomodation.