CFP: Special Issue of *Philosophical Explorations* on "Extended Cognition and Epistemic Action"

CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of Philosophical Explorations on "Extended Cognition and Epistemic Action"

Guest Editors: Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh), Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh), Krist Vaesen (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Submission Deadline: September 15, 2011

Invited Contributors: Fred Adams (University of Delaware) & Ken Aizawa (Centenary College of Louisiana), Ronald Giere (University of Minnesota), Sanford Goldberg (Northwestern University), Richard Menary (University of Wollongong) and Kim Sterelny (Australian National University and Victoria University).

Background and Aim
According to the thesis of extended cognition, cognitive processes do not need to be located inside the skin of the cognizing agent. Humans routinely engage their wider artifactual environment to extend the capacities of their naked brain. They often rely so much on external aids (notebooks, watches, smartphones) that the latter become a proper part of a hybrid (human-artifact) cognitive system.

The thesis of extended cognition has been influential in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, linguistics, informatics, and ethics, but, surprisingly, not in epistemology. The discipline concerned with one of the most remarkable products of human cognition, viz. knowledge, has largely ignored the suggestion that her main object of study might be produced by processes outside the human skin.

In this special issue of *Philosophical Explorations* we therefore are looking for papers that explore the ramifications of the thesis of extended cognition for contemporary epistemology in general, and for conceptualizations of epistemic action in particular. The special issue will include five invited papers (by Fred Adams & Kenneth Aizawa, Ronald Giere, Sanford Goldberg, Richard Menary and Kim Sterelny), plus two contributions selected from the papers submitted in response to this open call for papers.

We expect contributions discussing the impact of extended cognition on issues as: epistemic agency and responsibility, cognitive ability, ownership of belief, the distribution of epistemic credit, the sources of belief, artifactual testimony, the growth of knowledge, non-propositional knowledge, the evolution and reliability of extended cognitive processes, the varieties of extended epistemic action.

Submission Details
Please send a pdf-version of your paper (max. 8000 words) to Krist Vaesen, (k.vaesen@tue.nl). Contributions that do not make it to the special issue may be considered for publication in one of the regular issues of Philosophical Explorations.

Further Inquiries
Please direct any inquiries about this call for papers to Krist Vaesen, (k.vaesen@tue.nl).

CFP: The Problem of the Criterion

Final Call for Papers: "The Problem of the Criterion"

Special Issue of Philosophical Papers
Guest Editor: Mark Nelson (Westmont College)

[Expected contributors include Ernest Sosa (Brown), Michael DePaul (Notre Dame), Carrie Jenkins (Nottingham), and Anne Meylan (Geneva)]

The problem of the criterion is one of the most ancient and enduring questions of philosophical methodology. Attributed to Agrippa, the dialellus or ‘wheel’ became a staple of skeptical arguments from Sextus to Montaigne, but it was perhaps given its best-known formulation by R.M. Chisholm:

To know whether things really are as they seem to be, we must have a procedure for distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. But to know whether our procedure is a good procedure, we have to know whether it really succeeds in distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. And we cannot know whether it does really succeed unless we already know which appearances are true and which ones are false. And so we are caught in a circle. [‘The Problem of the Criterion’, 1982]

This problem admits of several interpretations, resists easy solution, and lurks at the bottom of philosophical reflection on knowledge and method in any topic, yet it has received only one book-length treatment in Anglophone philosophy in the last fifty years, Robert Amico’s The Problem of the Criterion (1993).

Possible topics for discussion include:
- The problem of the criterion in ancient, modern (Montaigne, Hume, Reid, Hegel), or 20th C epistemology (Moore, Wittgenstein)
- The problem of the criterion as an interpretation or form of skepticism
- The relevance of the problem of the criterion to various kinds of knowledge, e.g., moral, religious, aesthetic, of other minds
- Substantive and methodological commitments in philosophy
- Basic knowledge and the problem of the criterion
- Intuitionism and the problem of the criterion
- Philosophical disagreement and the problem of the criterion
- The problem of the criterion and the method of reflective equilibrium
- The problem of the criterion and the foundationalism/coherentism dichotomy

The deadline for receipt of submission is 30 June 2011. This special edition of Philosophical Papers, which will contain both invited and submitted papers, will appear in November of 2011.
Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts electronically, prepared as a PDF or Word document attachment, and emailed to . Authors should include their full name, affiliation, and address for email correspondence with their submission. Further enquiries can be addressed to Mark Nelson (manelson@westmont.edu) or Ward Jones, Editor,Philosophical Papers(w.jones@ru.ac.za).