April 15, 2006
5:42 pmto8:42 pm

Conference on Rationality and Value

University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

April 15, 2006

The organizing committee for the CMU-Pitt Graduate Philosophy Conference invites graduate students to submit papers on the theme of Rationality and Value.

Keynote Speaker: Allan Gibbard, Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan

Recently, thinkers such as Hillary Putnam, Bas van Fraassen, and Amartya Sen have discussed the entangled nature of rationality and value. Understood broadly, rationality concerns the subjection of ones choices concerning actions and values to principled scrutiny. Unfortunately, it is common to encounter rather formulaic characterizations of rationality concerning internal consistency of choice, expected utility maximization, or self-interested behavior in the literature–all of which drastically circumscribe the structure and role of values in rational decision-making. The organizing committee encourages contributions that move beyond these more restrictive understandings of rationality and value.

In particular, relevant sub-disciplines of philosophy for this topic include:

  • ethics
  • inference theory
  • epistemology
  • philosophy of science (especially belief revision/fixation, theory selection/generation, and under-determination)
  • philosophy of mind and cognition

Also relevant are philosophical approaches to

  • theoretical economics
  • artificial intelligence
  • the social decision sciences

Papers on other topics will also be considered.

Submission Guidelines

Papers should be read in 25 minutes and accompanied by a 250 word abstract. The papers must be prepared for BLIND REVIEW, with no identifying information appearing in the body of the paper or abstract. Instead, please include a cover letter with submitter’s name,institution, address, e-mail, telephone number, and title of paper. Please only one paper per person, so ensure that the paper submitted is the one you want us to consider.

*EXTENDED DEADLINE*: Papers must be submitted and received by Saturday, February 4, 2006.

Notifications for acceptance will be sent out by Wednesday, February 22, 2006.

Depending on funding, travel grants may be awarded to speakers with financial difficulties.

Papers may be submitted electronically to: cmu.pitt2006@gmail.com
(Please ensure papers are in either MS-WORD (DOC) or Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.)

Also, paper hardcopies may be mailed to

David Emmanuel Gray
CMU - Department of Philosophy
Baker Hall 135
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

For more information, please visit our webpage: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/conference/