Call for Abstracts: Theme: History and Philosophy of Environmental Thought
Venue: KU Leuven (hybrid format)
Date: March 28th and 29th, 2025
Deadline for submissions: December 13th, 2024
Notification of acceptance: January 10th, 2025
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The ongoing environmental crisis has given rise to reflections in various areas of philosophy, including discussions in ethics about the intrinsic value of nature, debates in political philosophy about intergenerational justice, and broader reassessments of theories about science, knowledge, aesthetics, anthropology, and ontology.
In parallel, some scholars have sought to engage with the history of philosophy in light of the questions raised by current environmental challenges. Such an engagement can take the form either of a critical reassessment of modern philosophers’ views on science (Merchant 1979; Prigogine & Stengers 1984) or of an attempt to draw on different traditions of the history of philosophy to further our understanding of the current crisis. New approaches to environmental problems have thus been developed by drawing on concepts from Kant’s philosophy (Breitenbach 2022), romanticism (Nassar 2022), hermeneutics (Utsler et al 2014), phenomenology (Brown & Toadvine 2003), pragmatism (Hailwood 2015), among others.
This conference seeks to reinforce this recent trend by bringing together researchers working at the interface of the history of philosophy and environmental philosophy. All abstracts that tackle environmental problems from a historico-philosophical perspective are welcome. The aim of the event is to stimulate discussions about the philosophical challenges posed by the current crisis.
Confirmed speakers:
- Dalia Nassar (University of Sydney)
- Angela Breitenbach (University of Cambridge)
- Keith Peterson (Colby College)
- Anna Wienhues (KU Leuven)
- Stephen Howard (University of Freiburg)
- Luis Fellipe Garcia (KU Leuven)
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted by December 13th, 2024, to hpet2025@gmail.com. Abstracts, including the title, should be prepared for double-blind review by removing any identification details. The author’s name, paper title, institutional affiliation, and contact information should be included in the body of the email. Abstracts should be submitted in English.
Organizer:
- Luis Fellipe Garcia, Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven.
For additional information, see conference website.
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Call for Papers: The Philosophy of Biodiversity
The Monist invites submissions for an upcoming thematic issue of the journal on the philosophy of biodiversity. Publication date: January 2027
Advisory Editors: Markku Oksanen (University of Eastern Finland) & Helena Siipi (University of Turku)
Ever since the term ‘biodiversity’ was coined in the mid-1980s, it has become a synonym for the diversity of life. It does not only include the multitude of different species but also genetic diversity within those species as well various forms of different ecosystems and habitants. The purpose of this conceptual innovation was to increase the general awareness of human-caused rapid loss of variety in living beings. Thus, biodiversity was not a neutral term but an expression of concern about the permanent loss of something valuable and crucial to human well-being.
The philosophical approaches to biodiversity can increase our understanding of biodiversity as a science construct. There are normative issues such as whether human-created forms of life (for example the outcomes of synthetic biology) count as biodiversity, what are its components and how they are to be measured. How should we understand species and subspecies? How to distinguish between different types of ecosystems? There are tough ethical issues such as what ultimately makes extinction or the reduction of biodiversity wrong or right and how biodiversity is valuable. Clearly, some components of biodiversity are instrumentally valuable for human beings. But can instrumental value be attributed to biodiversity itself or could it have intrinsic value? Is relational value to biodiversity a meaningful category? Finally, there are policy issues such as whether biodiversity provides a meaningful goal for conservation and how different understandings and valuations of biodiversity be integrated into environmental decision-making. What role do considerations of justice play in biodiversity conservation policies? These are among the possible topics to be covered by the thematic issue.
The scope of the thematic issue is not limited to any philosophical tradition. The focus is not only on ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of biology but all approaches are welcome, including aesthetics, metaphysics and philosophy of history.
Submission Information: All submissions should be prepared for anonymous review and sent to the Advisory Editors: markku.oksanen@uef.fi and helena.siipi@utu.fi.
Manuscripts received from the call will first go through a pre-selection by the Advisory Editors. The manuscripts passing it will be sent for full double-blind review process.
World limit: 8000 words, including notes and references. Please follow the journal’s Author Guidelines.
Deadline for Submissions: 15 June 2025
https://academic.oup.com/monist/pages/cfp-philosophy-of-biodiversity
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