On the 4th and 5th of September 2025, the Department of Philosophy at Central European University in Vienna will be hosting a major two-day conference on the philosophy of Gilbert Ryle.
Planned speakers are:
Brice Bantegnie (University of California Riverside/University of Southampton)
Stefan Brandt (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Lesley Brown (University of Oxford)
Annalisa Coliva (UC Irvine) and Edward Mark (Loyola Marymount University)
Sean Crawford (University of Manchester)
Giuseppina D’Oro (University of Oulu)
Richard Eldridge (Swarthmore College/University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Katalin Farkas (Central European University) and Pelin Kasar (Central European University)
Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zürich)
Jonathan Gombin (Bourdeaux-Montaigne University)
Maheshi Gunawardane (University of Manchester)
Lesley Jamieson (University of Pardubice)
Michael Kremer (University of Chicago)
Guy Longworth (University of Warwick)
Christoph Pfisterer (University of Zürich)
Joseph Schear (University of Oxford)
John Schwenkler (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Will Small (University of Illinois, Chicago)
Rowland Stout (University College Dublin)
Roger Teichmann (University of Oxford)
Andreas Vrahimis (University of Cyprus)
Natalia Waights Hickman (University of Oxford)
Attendance is limited. If you would like to attend, please ↗ register here by 15 August.
Philosophie klingt für viele nach abgehobenen, komplizierten Gedanken oder nach etwas, das »eh nichts bringt«. Dabei begleiten uns philosophische Fragen täglich – im Großen wie im Kleinen, oft ohne, dass wir es bewusst wahrnehmen.
Als teil der Kulturfestival Südalpenraum Sankt Daniel (4 - 6 Juli) sind Sie herzlich eingeladen, ein kostenloses Gespräch in geschütztem Rahmen zu erleben – ein Raum zum Innehalten und Nachdenken, der neue Perspektiven auf persönliche Lebensthemen eröffnen und bereichern kann. Ganz im Zeichen von Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung.
This year’s WFAP graduate conference is devoted to the increasingly relevant phenomena of socio-epistemic structures in which the access to relevant sources of information is “filtered”, i.e., systematically modified, so as to channel certain contents to the exclusion of others. As a result, the epistemic attitudes of participants in such structures and their conferral of epistemic credentials on others are manipulated. Epistemic bubbles and echo-chambers are varieties of such socio-epistemic structures. Philosophical reflection on the topic aims to conceptualize information filters and related phenomena in order to explore their normative dimensions.
We aim to bring together early career and advanced researchers in order to discuss questions such as: What differentiates echo chambers from epistemic bubbles? Are epistemic bubbles inherently bad? How does one “pop” an epistemic bubble or break out of an echo-chamber? How do epistemic bubbles and echo chambers interact with other pernicious misinformation phenomena (e.g. fake-news, post-truth attitudes, bullshitting, conspiracy theories, etc.). What role can and should epistemic experts play in navigating this? What roles do epistemic virtues and vices play?
↗ Write us to access the Zoom details or to ask questions about the conference
About the organizer: The Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy is a student organization whose objective is to promote research, exchange and discussion among students and scholars. For this purpose, we organize regular meetings, lectures, workshops and conferences and foster national and international contact with individuals and groups interested in analytic philosophy.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together leading scholars working on the topics of grounding and truthmaking, both in contemporary philosophy and in the history of philosophy.
Our speakers will be Louis deRosset (Vermont), Kit Fine (NYU), Aaron Griffith (William and Mary), Marko Malink (NYU), Francesca Poggiolesi (CNRS), Christof Rapp (LMU), Mike Raven (Victoria), Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers), Benjamin Schnieder (Vienna), Naomi Thompson (Bristol), Alice van’t Hoff (Vienna), Anubav Vasudevan (Chicago), and Jennifer Wang (SFU).
Each speaker will give a talk of approximately 45 minutes, followed by 45 minutes of Q&A. The workshop will run from 10 AM till 6 PM each day.
The workshop is open to all, but registration is required by June 20th. ↗ Please register here.
The main organizer of the workshop is Asya Passinsky (CEU) and the assistant organizer is Javad Hajialikhani (CEU). If you have any questions, please contact Asya at passinskya [at] ceu.edu.
Here is the workshop schedule:
Monday,June 30
9:45 - 10 AM: Welcome and logistics
10 - 11:30 AM: Christof Rapp (LMU): Grounding and Truthmaking in Aristotle's Categories and Metaphysics
11:30 - 11:45 AM: Coffee break
11:45 AM - 1:15 PM: Jennifer Wang (SFU): A Social Constructionist Account of Rén (仁)in the Analects
1:15 - 2:45 PM: Lunch
2:45 - 4:15 PM: Marko Malink (NYU) and Anubav Vasudevan (Chicago): Truthmaker Semantics for Aristotle's Syllogistic
4:15 - 4:30 PM: Coffee break
4:30 - 6 PM: Kit Fine (NYU): Generic Truthmaking
Tuesday, July 1
10 - 11:30 AM: Louis de Rosset (UVM): Truthmakers and Propositional Identity
11:30 - 11:45 AM: Coffee break
11:45 AM - 1:15 PM: Alice van’t Hoff (Vienna): Truthmakers for Higher-Order Quantification
1:15 - 2:45 PM: Lunch
2:45 - 4:15 PM: Aaron Griffith (William & Mary): Truthmaking and Grounding in Social Ontology
4:15 - 4:30 PM: Coffee break
4:30 - 6 PM: Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers): Settling the Question, Grounding the Answer
Wednesday,July 2
10 - 11:30 AM: Francesca Poggiolesi (CNRS): Conceptual Explanations in Logic and Mathematics
11:30 - 11:45 AM: Coffee break
11:45 AM - 1:15 PM: Mike Raven (Victoria): Grounding Explanations: Worldly, Unworldly, and Both?
1:15 - 2:45 PM: Lunch
2:45 - 4:15 PM: Naomi Thompson (Bristol): Social Construction as Social Explanation
4:15 - 4:30 PM: Coffee break
4:30 - 6 PM: Benjamin Schnieder (Vienna): TBA
This workshop is about social metaphysics, broadly construed. Topics to be discussed include moral obligations to collectives, social group identification, junk social norms, gender identity, disability, and fundamentality relative to social reality.
The workshop will consist of three keynotes and five pre-read sessions. Each of the pre-read sessions will have one speaker and two commentators. The workshop uses a three-day (2 full days, 1 half day) schedule, beginning on 26 June and ending on 28 June.
Our keynote speakers will be Kit Fine (NYU), Katharine Jenkins (Glasgow), and Hans Bernhard Schmid (Vienna). Our pre-read speakers will be Gillian Gray (Michigan), Camilo Martinez (CEU), Emilie Pagano (Vienna), András Szigeti (Linköping), and Alice van’t Hoff (Vienna).
The workshop is open to faculty and students at Central European University, as well as those affiliated with Knowledge in Crisis. However, registration is required by May 15th. To register, ↗ please use this link.
If you are not affiliated with CEU or Knowledge in Crisis and you would like to attend the workshop, you can apply to be a commentator, chair, or non-presenting attendee by filling out ↗ this form. Please note that due to space limitations, we may only be able to accept a small number of external participants.
The workshop is organized by Asya Passinsky (CEU) and Kevin Richardson (Duke). It is part of the Knowledge in Crisis project, a Cluster of Excellence supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). If you have any questions, please contact the organizers directly at passinskya [at] ceu.edu and kevin.richardson [at] duke.edu.
Speakers: Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU Amsterdam), Rachel Fraser (MIT) (online), Hannah Ginsborg (UC Berkeley), David Plunkett (Dartmouth), Julian Ratcliffe (Oxford), and Tuomo Tiisala (University of Vienna)
Dogmatism is typically understood by reference to justification, namely as a refusal to rationally evaluate and update one’s beliefs and other commitments. In addition, however, research on concepts, narratives, and social perspectives has identified other sources of constraint that limit epistemic agency in a problematic fashion. The aim of this workshop is to reframe and explore the problem of dogmatism in terms of these various constraints that do not primarily operate on the level of belief.
In particular, the workshop brings together two lines of inquiry that investigate concepts but have not been systematically explored together. On the one hand, conceptual ethics and conceptual engineering (CE) study the normative questions “What concepts should we use and why?”. On the other, a particular strand in the scholarship on genealogy emphasizes that people often, perhaps typically, do not fully understand the concepts they use, for instance, the underlying values and inferential commitments a given concept incorporates. If this is correct, then the rational control over concepts, which CE tends to take for granted, is not automatically available to concept-users but rather needs to be acquired. And consequently there is a task of consciousness raising whose primary focus is not beliefs but concepts, including the narratives and social perspectives that congeal and motivate a given conceptual repertoire.
The workshop investigates how we should understand the nature, goal, and motivation of this task of consciousness raising, as well as its relationship to the justification of beliefs.
Organized by Tuomo Tiisala.
This is a two-day workshop (25-26 June) taking place at the University of Vienna.
To register, please ↗ contact the organizer directly.
We are happy to invite you to a workshop with Zoe A. Johnson King (Harvard University) on “Praiseworthiness” taking place on June 11th, from 9:45 to 16:00 at Sensengasse 8/10.
Zoe Johnson King is a leading figure in the philosophical debate on (moral) praise and praiseworthiness. The existing literature in moral responsibility and attached fields is primarily concerned with (moral) blame and blameworthiness which is why Zoe Johnson King has dedicated her upcoming book to the topic of praiseworthiness.
Speakers include Zoe Johnson King (Harvard), Sebastian Aster (Vienna), Leonie Eichhorn (Salzburg), Lea Spiegl & Caterina Anselmi (Vienna), Vittorio Catalano (Vienna), and Caterina Anselmi Kaiser (Vienna), Joachim Raich (Vienna) and Caterina Mazziotti.
The full book manuscript can be downloaded on her ↗ personal website.
We are going to discuss the book together with Zoe Johnson King in three separate sessions:
09:45 – 11:15 Chapter 1 & 2
11:30 – 13:00 Chapter 3 & 4
14:30 – 16:00 Chapter 5 & 6
The workshop is organized by the Knowledge in Crisis and ↗ PACE.
What is the truth, really? Can we define it? What is the best way to approach it? And is knowledge really in crisis? These questions and more will be discussed this evening.
Truth and Falsehood
Marian David (University of Graz)
Question: “What is truth?” Typical reactions: “There is no truth. Truth is relative. Truth is subjective. No one can know it.” These popular slogans should actually seem quite over the top, if we weren't used to them by now. How is it that such apparently radical views are so popular with the public? Do those who spout such slogans really mean what they are saying? Do they really?
The Ethics of Doubt or: Don’t Let Your Mind Be So Open That Your Brain Falls Out
Emannuela Carta (University of Graz) and Francesco Praolini (KU Leuven)
“Keep an open mind!” “Avoid jumping to conclusions!” Sure—but can those ever be mistakes? Philosophers have largely ignored this question, focusing instead on mistaken belief. Drawing on cases from vaccine hesitancy to mistrust of sexual assault survivors, we argue that suspending judgment can be just as wrong.
This event has been jointly organized by Knowledge in Crisis and Pint of Science Austria.
Get your free tickets ↗ here.
Human-induced climate change raises new, foundational issues in science. It requires us to question what we know and how we know it. The subject is important for society of course, but much of the science is young and history tells us that scientists can get things wrong before they get them right. Indeed, while the existence and the scale of the threat has robust foundations, understanding the details of that threat raises fundamental challenges; challenges that are as deep and as fascinating as any in the realm of scientific enquiry. So how can we judge what information is reliable and what is open to question?
In this talk David Stainforth will discuss his book - “Predicting Our Climate Future: what we know, what we don’t know, and what we can’t know.” He will describe the essential characteristics of human-induced climate change that make it such a difficult and interesting issue to study, before addressing some of the key challenges that researchers across multiple disciplines need to address. His talk will touch on the maths of complexity, the physics of climate, philosophical questions regarding the origins and robustness of knowledge, and the use of natural science in the economics and policy of climate change. He will argue that to support society in building a future that is better than it would otherwise be, there is an urgent need to rethink how we approach the science - and the social science - of climate change.
If you have any questions, please contact Marta Nin Santander.
David Stainforth is a physicist by training and has many years of experience in climate modelling. He is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economic and Political Science.
During his time as a researcher at Oxford University, Stainforth co-founded and was chief scientist of the climateprediction.net project, the world’s largest climate modelling experiment.
He has been both a NERC Research Fellow and a Tyndall Research Fellow at Oxford University.
Doubt is a weapon. Gaslighters warp reality, turning your own mind against you—Did that really happen? Meanwhile, the city tests you daily: Car, bike, or train? Every choice hides a story of control, freedom, or surrender. Who—or what—holds the map to your decisions?
Gaslighting and Epistemic Agency
Phyllis Pearson (Central European University)
Gaslit individuals are made to believe their epistemic faculties are defective. They are made to doubt their sense perception, reasoning, and memory. How exactly does this happen? I argue that gaslighting should be understood as involving a kind of weaponized skepticism. Gaslighting involves the unjust manipulation of another’s epistemic context, making it the case that one must take seriously difficult-to-rule-out possibilities, like the possibility that one’s memory is faulty. This is an important way in which a person’s epistemic agency can be undermined.
By public transport yesterday, by car today, by bike tomorrow. What about the day after?
Roxani Gkavra (BOKU University)
Have you ever thought why some people choose to travel by car, others by public transport and others by bike? There are numerous factors affecting mode choice behaviour and all other mobility-related decisions. How to capture, understand, model, and predict them? Why is this at all important? These as well as some more answers in this trip around urban mobility research.
This event has been jointly organized by Knowledge in Crisis and Pint of Science Austria.
Get your free tickets ↗ here.