This is the final call for abstracts for the second biennial New
Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), to be held in New
Orleans, LA at the Intercontinental Hotel on November 7-9, 2013.
Abstracts are welcome on any topic having to do with agency and/or
responsibility. Perspectives beyond just those from moral philosophy
(e.g., psychology, legal theory, neuroscience, economics, metaphysics,
and more) are welcome. (To see more about the workshop’s general aims
and other details, follow this link.) More info below the fold.
Abstracts should be no more than 3 double-spaced pages and are due no later than March 1, 2013.
They do NOT need to be prepared for blind review. Please send
abstracts by e-mail to David Shoemaker: dshoemak@tulane.edu. A program
committee will evaluate submissions and make decisions by early May.
The authors of all accepted abstracts will be expected to provide drafts
of their essays for distribution to NOWAR attendees four weeks prior to
the workshop, present their ideas at the workshop, and then commit the
final versions of their essays (subject to external review) to the
second volume of Oxford Studies on Agency and Responsibility (which is
expected to be published in early 2015). Those who presented at the first NOWAR are ineligible to present at the second.
NOWAR
is a biennial workshop featuring the presentation of sophisticated
original research on issues roughly captured under the label “agency and
responsibility.” This general area involves investigation of such
questions as: What does it mean to be an agent? How (if at all) does
the nature of personhood and personal identity across time bear on
questions of agency? What is the nature of, and relation between, moral
and criminal responsibility? What is the relation between
responsibility and the metaphysical issues of determinism and free
will? What do various psychological disorders (autism, psychopathy,
cognitive disabilities) tell us about agency and responsibility? What
is involved in the development of moral agency? What is the will,
willpower, and weakness (or strength) of will? What do the results from
neuroscience imply (if anything) for our questions about agency and
responsibility? What is the nature of autonomy and how is it related to
agency and responsibility?
Work in agency and responsibility,
while more or less having a home base in the world of moral philosophy,
draws from a host of cross-disciplinary sources, including moral
psychology, psychology proper (experimental, developmental, abnormal,
etc.), philosophy of psychology, philosophy of law, legal theory,
metaphysics, neuroscience, neuroethics, political philosophy, and more.
It is unified by its focus on who we are as deliberators and
(inter)actors, embodied practical agents negotiating (sometimes
unsuccessfully) a world of moral and legal norms.
The workshop, sponsored by the generous support of the Murphy Institute at
Tulane University, will involve 11 presentations (including keynote
speakers), from which will be drawn the papers contributing to the OUP
book series, Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility.
Keynote Speakers, 2013
John Martin Fischer, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside
Susan Wolf, Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina