Logic List Mailing Archive

CfP: Engaging Rationality Today, 22-24 May 2024, Lille (France)

We are pleased to invite multidisciplinary contributions for a three-day symposium on contemporary conceptions of rationality, including logical approaches broadly construed.

Dates: 22-24 May, 2024
Venue: University of Lille (France)
Organizers: Zoé McConaughey, Shahid Rahman, Sequoya Yiaueki
Institutions:  Institut Éric Weil, UMR 8163-Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL), École Doctorale des sciences humaines et sociales

The international symposium Engaging Rationality Today will bring together specialists from multiple disciplines (philosophy, logic, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, etc.) to reflect collectively on  contemporary meanings and uses of rationality.

The current Western cultural context, which  is marked by numerous challenges (war, fake news, A.I., populism) and critiques (post-colonialism, feminism, etc.), requires a reevalutation of the classic notion of rationality. They show the limits of the classical notion, grounded on concepts like objectivity, universality, argumentation, and causal relationships. How are we to face this?  Accepting every new conception without criteria seems to give way to relativism, thus leading to a dilemma. Either we defend the classic notion at all costs, thus limiting the concept and those who can be recognized within it, or this notion folds into relativism because of the plurality of conceptions of rationality, where any dialogue between them becomes, at best, difficult, and at worst, impossible.

The symposium Engaging Rationality Today aims at tackling this dilemma by creating a space of dialogue between various conceptions of rationality. To do so, it is not only a question of examing what rationality is, but also, and above all, a question of studying the limits, blindspots, and problematic uses of the proposed definitions of rationality. We hope that by examining rationality’s multifaceted aspects, including what falls outside of the proposed definitions,  contributors will be encouraged to reevalute their own defninitions through dialogue with others.

This project stems from the organizers’ fundamental dialogical commitment. According to this approach, rationality is opposed to violence. This is because rationality is seen to emerge from a common will to think together by communicative means. This in no way means that interlocutors have to be of the same mind, to have the same goals, or to agree to everything others say or believe: they may disagree, and this possibility may even be a necessary component of rationality. However, thinking together still requires minimal duties, namely, the duty to be committed to what one says and to provide reasons for it when asked, thus being accountable for what is publicly said.

The organizer’s dynamic and dialogical conception of rationality makes it open to other perspectives, which may be based on different principles, be opposed to the present one, or simply stress different aspects. The aim of the present project is to provide a comprehensive view of how rationality is currently understood, from various perspectives (philosophy, psychology, linguistics, etc.).

A full description is available on the website: https://engaging-rationality.univ-lille.fr/

Guidelines for contributions – To help make each conception of rationality clearer and to facilitate the comparison between conceptions, we ask that each contribution spell out what the author takes rationality to be, to not be, and what remains under-determined. In addition, contributions can (but do not have to) address one of the following pairs of guiding questions. They can also challenge the implied validity of these oppositions:
What does rationality involve? What does it rule out?
How do we recognize it? What could rationality also be?
What are its applications and uses? What are its misapplications and misuses?
Does it affect us? Can we resist it?
What does it allow us to do? What does it keep us from doing?
Does it have diverse articulations? Or, for it to be rationality, must it always be exactly the same?

Keynote speakers

Quill Kukla (Georgetown University, USA)
Mahamadé Savadogo (Université de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)
Κai Kresse (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)

Confirmed invited speakers

Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Owen Griffiths (Oxford University, UK)
Franca d’Agostini (Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, Italy)
Alexandre Billon (Université de Lille, France)

Projected sessions

Logical and hermeneutical meta-analyses
Psychology and cognitive sciences
Philosophy of langage, linguistics, and AI
Political philosophy, anthropology, and social sciences
other

In your application, please mention in which session (or sessions) your contribution would be most appropriate. True to our multidisciplinary goals, we invite a broad variety of approaches and methods and welcome researchers from any background.
Deadline: January 8, 2024
Abstracts: If you would like to present, please submit an anomymous abstract (max.of 800 words) in a pdf format.
Accepted submissions will be notified by February 1, 2024.
We strongly encourage submissions from underrepresented groups in academia.
For further information, please visit the webpage: https://engaging-rationality.univ-lille.fr/
For any questions or queries contact: engaging-rationality@univ-lille.fr<https://mailto:engaging-rationality@univ-lille.fr>



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