Scepticism Conference

On June 6th 2009, a one-day conference on Scepticism is being hosted by the University of Southampton's Philosophy Department. Their blurb reads: "This includes scepticism as it appears in epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of language and other areas. Contributions concerning contemporary continental or analytic philosophy are equally welcome, as are those addressing topics from the history of philosophy. Papers are invited from graduate students and we are hoping to attract a wide external audience."

The keynotes will be:
Quassim Cassm (Univeristy of Warwick) "Knowing, Seeing and Stroud's Dilemma"
Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh) "Radical Scepticism, Epistemic Luck and Epistemic Value."

The deadline for submission of papers is Monday 4th May 2009, should be not more than 3,000 words in length (suitable for 20 mins presentation, followed by discussion), and submitted to Dr Denis McManus - D.Mcmanus@soton.ac.uk. The call asks for papers to be accompanied by a covering letter/e-mail, but to not contain any self-identifying references in the text itself. Contact Adam Dunn (agd205@soton.ac.uk) or Dan Clifford (djc302@soton.ac.uk) for other inquires.

Registration for the Scepticism day is free so I'm going to go, but I'm going to try and submit a paper too. I need to launch myself into the relatively unfamiliar world of the study of scepticism, sort through my data in relation to the two philosophical chapters of my thesis, and come up with something - by May 4th. As I'm hoping to get something resembling a nearly finished first draft by the end of May, this isn't out of the realms of possibility, so I'll give it a go. It might have a title something like: "Forms of Scepticism in Contemporary Christianity: Accepting Finitude and Celebrating Undecidability." But I need to know A LOT more about scepticism before I can even begin to position my data in this kind of academic context!!!