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Call for Symposium Proposals and Workshop Proposals

Philosophy of Science Association

Twenty-First Biennial Meeting: November 6-9, 2008
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Members of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) are invited to submit proposals for symposia and workshops to be presented at the PSA 2008 meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 6-9. Proposals must include sufficient supporting material to permit the program committee to evaluate the quality and interest of the symposium or workshop. See below for details.

Symposia will follow the traditional format. Some symposia will be accepted for both presentation at the PSA 2008 meeting and publication in a supplementary issue of Philosophy of Science; other symposia will be accepted just for presentation. The evaluation for publication will be on entire sessions; that is, all papers in the session will be published together. All contributions for symposia will be electronically archived, whether or not they are accepted for publication.

Workshops should be innovative in both form and content; neither formal papers with discussion nor papers in traditional symposia format will be accepted in this category. The workshop format may be more attractive for sessions involving participants from outside the philosophical community (for example, scientists), or for exploratory research. There is no expectation that material from workshops will be submitted for review for publication in the proceedings. Participants may choose to have materials archived in electronic form.  Some workshops may take the form of lunch roundtables or mentoring sessions.

Symposia and workshops of interest to members of both PSA and HSS are warmly invited.

Proposals for symposia should include:

  1. The title of the proposed symposium
  2. A description of the topic and a justification of its current importance to the discipline (about one or two pages)
  3. A short descriptive summary of the proposal (100-200 words)
  4. Titles and abstracts of all papers
  5. A list of participants and either an abbreviated curriculum vitae or short biographical description for each
  6. Institutional affiliation and e-mail addresses for all participants
  7. Full contact information for the organizer (who may or may not be a proposed speaker), to be used for communication with the Program Committee

Proposals for workshops should include:

  1. The title of the proposed workshop
  2. A description of the topic and a justification of its current importance to the discipline (about one or two pages)
  3. A short descriptive summary of the proposal (100-200 words)
  4. A description of the format of the workshop, including the expected contribution of each participant
  5. A list of participants and either an abbreviated curriculum vitae or short biographical description for each
  6. Institutional affiliation and e-mail addresses for all participants
  7. Full contact information for the organizer (who may or may not be a proposed speaker), to be used for communication with the Program Committee

The PSA 2008 Program Committee will strive for quality, variety, innovation and diversity on the program. We encourage proposals in both traditional and novel areas of philosophy of science. Members of the committee are listed at: http://philsci.org/conferences/psa2008/program_committee.html

The deadline for Symposium and Workshop proposals is February 1, 2008. Decisions about acceptance will be made by the beginning of May, 2008.

NB: In accordance with long-standing PSA policy, no one will be permitted to publish more than one essay presented at PSA 2008. Symposium participants are, therefore, encouraged to let their symposium organizers know whether they also have submitted a contributed paper or are involved in more than one symposium proposal.

All presenters at the PSA 2008 meetings must be both members of the PSA and registrants at the conference.

Proposals must be electronically submitted at http://philsci.org/conferences/psa2008/submit/

All questions about submissions should be directed to:
Alan Richardson
Department of Philosophy
University of British Columbia
1866 Main Mall – E370
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
psa-2008@interchange.ubc.ca