First announcement
XXVI Varna International Philosophical School
(June 4th – 6th 2010, Varna, Bulgaria)
I. Conference description:
There is hardly ground for doubting that the place and ethos of 21st Century Philosophizing is laid within humanity’s everyday social objects’ construction. There are no real substances outside of this field, as there are no privileged cognitive regimes. Many signs point to an identity crisis in contemporary philosophy. The debate spurred by this crisis has by and large focused on methodology, and understandably so: If one wants to characterize the nature of philosophy, it seems natural to focus on what philosophers do and what tools they employ. The language of this debate East and West differs, but are the semantics so different after all? If we proceed from the hypothesis that recent work in experimental philosophy has methodological and heuristic implications for applied philosophy, how do these implications look East and West?
Applied and experimental philosophies are a dynamic part of the state of the art social sciences’ and humanities’ cognitive space. The aim of the XXVI Varna International Philosophical School is to mediate and bring together the heuristically interesting performative cognitive dynamics of East and West social sciences and humanities. The methodological field of applied philosophy is regarded in Eastern Europe as a “social technology” that could bring coherence to the incoherent and disharmonious post 1989 endeavors towards a meaningful social change. In the West, both in Europe and North America, the methodological field of applied philosophy is lately problematized in experimental philosophy, applying methods of experimental psychology to our pre-theoretical intuitions regarding philosophical cases and by extension also including neural image studies of our brain states while having such intuitions. The 2010 Varna School discussions will make an effort to find new pro and contra arguments for the place and role of applied and experimental philosophy, while looking for their common grounds. The main idea is widening the notion of experimental philosophy via its binding to practical philosophy and to the philosophical analyses of various types of social experiments.
Panel debates will be looking for answers to questions like:
- What is applied philosophy’s specificity?
- How to differentiate practical and experimental philosophy?
- Is the advance of new philosophical disciplines and multiplying of philosophies in separate subject fields related to the tendency of applied philosophy’s exploding research?
- Is applied philosophy helping to overcome the crisis of academic philosophy and isn’t this related to changes in the relationship “fundamental – applied” in contemporary science?
- What is philosophy’s role in rationalizing, modeling and directing newly emerging social practices and situations of choice in different fields?
- How medicine has saved ethics and how explosion of applied ethics brought to ethics’ development?
- To what extent is the notion of applied philosophy justified?
- What is common and diverse in philosophical rationalization and in variety of experiments’ modeling and utilization in terms of proving philosophical principles?
- Can we have diverse notions of experimental philosophy according to diverse notions of social, moral and political philosophy and philosophy of law?
- What is the role of theory of action and social practice for an experimental philosophy’s development?
- Is there a conflict between academic and folk philosophy and could experimental philosophy overcome this conflict?
- What kind of experiments could prove the fundamental principles of social, political and moral philosophy? Is this possible only via researching intuitions of ordinary people?
- Could we say that Plato’s attempt of putting into practice in Syracuse his ideal state theory, is the first historical example of an experiment, designed to prove the validity of philosophic theory?
- How are correlated: philosophy of religion and experimental philosophy of religion; philosophy of culture and experimental philosophy of culture; philosophy of law and experimental philosophy of law; philosophy of economics and experimental philosophy of economics?
- How, in highly innovative risk societies, experimenting is one of the instruments for risk reaction?
- What is the philosophical basis of social experiments? How is it related to game theory and mind experiments?
- What are the philosophical premises of philosophy of economics?
- How could we analyze economic experiments through the prism of philosophy of economics?
- What is the role of linguistics and psychology for achieving the ends of applied and experimental philosophy?
- What are the interconnections between experimental and applied philosophy, on one side, and psychology and linguistics, on the other?
Applied and/or pure logic: how to use logical tools for dealing with problems on the border of logic, epistemology and ontology?
Preliminary Topics for panel discussions:
1.Challenges of Knowledge Based Society to Applied Philosophy;
2.Challenges of Knowledge Based Society to Experimental Philosophy;
3.Applied and Experimental Philosophy in Comparison with Traditional Philosophy;
4.Applied and Experimental Philosophy in Social Sciences and Humanities (social philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of culture, philosophy of law, philosophy of politics, economics, etc.);
5.Applied and Experimental Philosophy in Traditional Philosophical Fields (ontology, epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, etc.);
6.Applied and Experimental Philosophy in the context of Education: Nelson-Heckmann Socratic Dialogue, Philosophizing with Children, Philosophical Counseling and Other parallel Movements;
7.The Linguistic and Psychology Turn of Applied and Experimental Philosophy;
II. Organizers:
Institute for Philosophical Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Department of Philosophy, Philosophical Faculty of Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”;
III. Organizing committee:
1.Prof. DSc. Vassil Prodanov; Head of the Organizing Committee; Director of the Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS.
2.Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vesselin Petrov, Scientific Secretary of the Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS.
3.Assoc. Prof. DSc. Aneta Karageorgieva, Head of the Department of Philosophy in Philosophical Faculty of Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”.
4.Assist. Prof. Dr. Rosen Lutskanov, Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS
5.Assist. Prof. Dr. Doroteya Angelova, Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS
6.Dr. Tania Marincheshka, Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS
7.Lyubomir Vladimirov, Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS
8.Dr. Ivan Mikov, Institute for Philosophical Research – BAS
IV. Program committee:
1.Prof. Dr. Papineau ,David (UK)
2.Prof. Dr. Keith Hammond (UK)
3.Prof. Dr. Hans Jörg Rheinberger (Germany)
4.Prof. Dr. Timothy Williamson (UK)
5.Prof. Dr. Hans-Johann Glock (Switzerland)
6.Prof. Dr. Ido Erev (Israel)
7.Prof. Dr. Toulchinsky G.L. (Russia)
8.Prof. DSc. Vassil Prodanov (Bulgaria)
9.Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vesselin Petrov (Bulgaria)
10.Prof. DSc. Aneta Karageorgieva (Bulgaria)
V. Keynote speakers (to be confirmed):
1.Prof. Dr. Timothy Williamson (UK)
2.Prof. Dr. David Papineau (UK)
3.Prof. Dr. Keith Hammond (UK)
4.Prof. Dr. Stephen Stich (US)
5.Prof. Dr. Hans Jörg Rheinberger (Germany)
6.Prof. Dr. Ido Erev (Israel)
7.Prof. DSc. Toulchinsky G.L. (Russia)
8.Prof. Dr. James R Beebe (US)
VI. Provisional program:
To be provided in the Second announcement: 1st of May 2010
VII. Conference abstracts and papers:
Submission of abstracts: no more than 500 words
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1st of April 2010
Notification of acceptance: 30th of April 2010
Submission of papers to be considered for publication – (Deadline after the conference): up to 3000 words with an abstract and key words up to 200 words. All papers and abstracts should be sent electronically to the e-mail: [email protected] until 15 July 2010 in Microsoft Office Word 2003, Times New Roman, 12 pt.
Publication: A collection of the best papers will be published in an authoritative international publishing house after the end of the conference.
VIII. Registration and accommodation:
Registration fee: Conference fee 50 Euros per person; Possible to pay registration fee in cash during the registration of participants at the beginning of the conference; The Organizing committee does not cover any costs (Hotel, Meals, and Travel) of participants. Key-note speakers’ participation costs will be covered.
IX. General Information:
Place: City of Varna, Bulgaria
Date: 4 - 6 June, 2010
Working language: English
Contact persons (phone, e-mail):
Dr. Ivan Mikov;
Dr. Tania Marincheshka
Web-site: www.philosophybulgaria.org
E-mail:
Second announcement: 1st of May 2010
X. Useful information:
Letter of invitation: An official letter of invitation will be sent upon request.
Visa: Bulgaria is a member of the European Union; so, the visa rules for the EU are also valid for Bulgaria.
Climate: June is the beginning of the summer in Bulgaria. Usually we enjoy a temperature around 20-250 C.
Bank information: Bulgarian money: BGN (Leva). Bulgaria has a currency board. The BGN is fixed to the Euro: 1 Euro is equal to 1, 95 BGN (Leva).
Transport: Direct regular and charter flights to and from Varna from a number of European cities like London, Budapest, Moscow, etc.
XI. Sponsors (to be confirmed):
British Council, Sofia; Goethe Institute, Sofia; Open Society, Sofia; Swiss Embassy, Sofia; US Embassy, Sofia; French Cultural Center, Sofia, etc;
XII. FAQ:
For any questions please contact the Local Organizing Committee: e-mail: