Knowledge, Value and Mind

The Knowledge, Mind and Value Project

Overview of the Project

The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce the establishment of the Knowledge, Mind and Value project. This will draw on a significant cluster of research excellence within the Department to work on inter-related issues in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and value theory. The topics that will be dealt with by the project include the following:

Epistemic Value
Normativity and Reason
Moral and Epistemic Virtue
Moral and Epistemic Luck
Social Epistemology

The activities of the project will include major international conferences, distinguished visiting scholars, one-day workshops, and other research activities, such as reading groups and visiting speakers.

The inaugural event of the project was the conference on Epistemological Contextualism that took place in the Department on March 19th-21st 2004 and was timed to coincide with the visit to the Department of Professor Keith DeRose as a 2004 Scots Philosophical Club Centenary Fellow. Members of the project also seek to pursue research links with other Philosophy Departments, both in the UK and worldwide, who have similar research interests.

Project Members

Michael Brady (Glasgow) specializes in contemporary moral philosophy and epistemology.

He has published a number of articles in this area and is also the co-editor, with Duncan Pritchard, of Moral and Epistemic Virtues (Blackwell, 2003).

Adrian Haddock works mainly on action theory and the philosophy of mind.

He has published a number of articles in this area, including recent papers in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of the Social Sciences.

Alan Millar works mainly in the philosophy of mind and epistemology.

He has written extensively in these areas, including two books, Reasons and Experience (Oxford UP, 1991) and Understanding People: Normativity and Rationalising Explanation (Oxford UP, 2004).

He is also the co-editor (with Jose Bermudez) of Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality (Oxford UP, 2002).

Duncan Pritchard specializes in epistemology and has published extensively in this area.

He is the author of Epistemic Luck (Oxford UP, 2005) and What is this Thing Called Knowledge? (Routledge, 2006).

He is also the co-editor, with Michael Brady, of Moral and Epistemic Virtues (Blackwell, 2003), along with numerous other volumes.

Project Activities

Visits from Distinguished Scholars

In 2004, the Philosophy department hosted two distinguished scholars as the 2004 Scots Philosophical Club Centenary Fellows: Keith DeRose (Yale) and John Greco (Fordham). For more details about these visits, click here.

In 2005, the visiting project fellow was Chris Hookway (Sheffield).

In 2006, the visiting project fellows were Rich Feldman (Rochester), Stephen Maitzen (Acadia/Dalhousie) and Markus Lammenranta (Helsinki).

As part of the Knowledge, Mind and Value project the Department of Philosophy plans to seek funds to invite further distinguished scholars on a regular basis.

Conferences

Scepticism Conference. This conference is the closing event of the AHRC-funded 'The Value of Knowledge' project that is based at the University of Stirling, and run by Adrian Haddock (Stirling), Alan Millar (Stirling) and Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh). Previous events organised as part of this project include a conference on Epistemic Value and a conference on Social Epistemology.

A major international conference on Social Epistemology is to be held in Stirling at the end of August 2007, featuring keynote talks from Miranda Fricker, Elizabeth Fricker, Sandy Goldberg, Alvin Goldman, Ernest Sosa, Alan Millar, and Scott Sturgeon.

Other conferences include:

Epistemic Value, August 2006. The speakers at this event included Wayne Riggs, Ward Jones, Alan Millar, Christian Piller, Martin Kusch, Berit Brogaard, Matt Weiner, and Mark Kaplan.

Epistemological Contextualism, March 2004. The speakers at this conference included Peter Baumann, Michael Brady, Jessica Brown, Tony Brueckner, Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose, Neil Gascoigne, Patrick Greenough, Alan Millar, Duncan Pritchard, Charles Travis, Ralph Wedgwood, Timothy Williamson, Rene van Woudenberg, and Crispin Wright.

Virtue Epistemology, November 2004. The speakers at this conference included: Sven Bernecker, Michael Brady, Jonathan Dancy, John Greco, Susan Haack, Chris Hookway, Andrew McGonigal, Alan Millar, David Owens, Duncan Pritchard, Ernest Sosa and Rene van Woudenberg.

As part of the Knowledge, Mind and Value Project the Philosophy Department plans to host further events related to epistemology and the philosophy of mind over the coming years, so look out for postings.

For more details about previous events related to epistemology and philosophy of mind that have been hosted by the Department of Philosophy, see below.

Workshops

Epistemology I, March 2004. Speakers: Keith DeRose (Yale), Patrick Greenough (St. Andrews), and Duncan Pritchard (Stirling).

Epistemology II, November 2004. Speakers: John Greco (Fordham), Christoph Kelp (Stirling), Philip Ebert (St. Andrews), and Cornelis van Putten (Amsterdam).

Epistemic Value, October 2005. Speakers: Martijn Blaauw (Aberdeen), Igor Douven (Rotterdam), Chris Hookway (Sheffield), Michael Lynch (Connecticut), Alan Millar (Stirling), Finn Spicer (Bristol), and Rene van Woudenberg (Amsterdam).

Value Theory and Epistemology, November 2006. Speakers: Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund), Niko Kolodny (Berkeley), Michael Brady (Glasgow), Tim Chappell (Open University), and Alan Millar (Stirling).

Action and Knowledge, May 2006. Speakers: Fabian Dorsch (Fribourg), John Gibbons (Nebraska), Lucy O’Brien (UCL), Christopher Peacocke (Columbia), Johannes Roessler (Warwick), and Matthew Soteriou (Warwick).

Knowledge: Themes from McDowell, November 2007. Speakers: John McDowell (Pittsburgh), Paul Snowdon (UCL), Ram Neta (NC, Chapel Hill), Quassim Cassam (Cambridge).

As part of the Knowledge, Mind and Value Project the Philosophy Department plans to host regular one-day workshops on themes related to the project.

Epistemic Value Weblog

There is now a weblog hosted by the Knowledge. Mind and Value project which is specifically devoted to the topic of epistemic value. Click here.

Epistemic Value Research Resources Webpage

As part of the Knowledge. Mind and Value project, a webpage of research resources relevant to the topic of epistemic value is maintained. Click here.

Other Activities

As part of the Knowledge, Mind and Value project the Philosophy Department also plans to establish other activities relevant to the themes of the project, including reading groups and visiting speakers.

To see more about the visiting speaker programme at Stirling, click here.

Relevant Publications by Project Members

To see details of recent publications by the members of this project, click on the project member names below:

Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind in the Philosophy Department

Previous Events and Activities

The Philosophy Department has established a world-class reputation for its research in the areas of philosophy of mind and epistemology in recent years, and has organised a number of international workshops and conferences in these areas. In March 2002, the Philosophy Department at Stirling hosted a conference entitled Virtues: Moral and Epistemic.

The speakers at this conference included Miranda Fricker, Chris Hookway, Marie McGinn, Philip Percival, John Skorupski, Michael Slote, Lawrence Solum and Linda Zagzebski. For more details on this conference, click here.

The proceedings from the conference were published in a special double issue of Metaphilosophy that was edited by the conference organisers (Michael Brady and Duncan Pritchard). The proceedings were subsequently published as a book with Blackwell entitled Moral and Epistemic Virtues which featured additional articles by, amongst others, Guy Axtell, Julia Driver, Juli Eflin and John Greco.

The Philosophy Department has been home to the Consciousness in the Natural World project, which organised a number of events relevant to the philosophy of mind and epistemology, with guest speakers including Ernest Sosa, Fred Dretske, Paul Boghossian, Crispin Wright, Timothy Williamson, John Campbell. Sydney Shoemaker, Al Mele, Alex Byrne, Michael Williams, Simon Blackburn, E. J. Lowe, David Papineau, John Broom, Allan Gibbard, Susan Hurley, Robert Kirk, Lynne Rudder Baker, Ruth Millikan, Jonathan Lowe, Chris Hookway, John Skorupski and Isaac Levi.

Some of the papers presented at these events have been published as a volume with Oxford UP edited by Alan Millar and Jose Luis Bermudez entitled Reason and Nature: Essays in the Theory of Rationality. For more details about the events that were organised by the Consciousness in the Natural World project, click here.

Other Research at Stirling

Professor Peter Sullivan has been awarded a £100,000 AHRB grant to pursue a three-year project on Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

He will be working with Dr Michael Potter, who joins the Department from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge to work on this project.

For more details about the project, click here.

Professor Antony Duff and Professor Sandra Marshall, together with two colleagues in the Faculties of Law from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, have been awarded a £35,000 AHRB research grant for a three year project on the criminal trial. Professor Duff is also presently in receipt of a three-year Leverhulme Major Fellowship.

Contact Details

Informal inquiries about this project can be made to Duncan Pritchard. He can be reached by e-mail at d.h.pritchard@stir.ac.uk

Alternatively, you can write to him at the following address:

The Knowledge Mind and Value Project,
c/o Prof. Duncan Pritchard,
Department of Philosophy,
University of Stirling,
Stirling,
FK9 4LA
Scotland, UK

Tel: (+44) (0) (1786) 467594
Fax: (+44) (0) (1786) 466233

Last updated: 4th August, 2006 by Duncan Pritchard.