Cfp: Conversations V: Theories of Knowledge, Department of History and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, November 19-20, 2009.

The broad theme for the fifth Cave Hill Philosophy Symposium (CHiPS) will be epistemology. This area of philosophy has seen some dramatic changes especially in the past three decades, with the alternative approaches offered to traditional mainstream epistemology by social epistemology and naturalized epistemology. These developments have brought about a shift in the old ordering of perception, memory and testimony as sources of knowledge—where perception and memory usually ranked as the best and most secure sources, and testimony as a distant third. Several works over the past two decades have pointed to testimony being an increasingly urgent and interesting topic of epistemological analysis. These works also open space to consider—as feminist and other post-colonial theorists have long been doing—the extent to which the epistemic authority of testimony varies across situations and circumstances of social and political inequality. Likewise they call into question earlier lack of concern for the ways of conceiving the knower and his or her being in the world. CHiPS V will therefore focus on these developments, examining themes such as testimony, epistemic authority, objectivity/subjectivity, knowledge and power, and related issues. The Symposium welcomes papers that offer philosophical explorations of these and related topics. The tradition that has developed in our philosophical conversations at CHiPS is one where views from varying philosophical traditions and regional philosophies are welcome, and the hope is that the contributions for Conversations V will continue this trend. The Symposium also welcomes papers of a theoretical nature in the disciplines that share a boundary with philosophy; disciplines such as critical theory, cultural studies, gender studies, law, linguistics, political theory, theology, and others. Papers with such an orientation should grapple with the social dimensions of epistemology within their respective disciplines. Our keynote speaker will be Dr Lorraine Code. She is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at York University in Toronto Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Dr Code specializes in Epistemology, Feminist Epistemology and the Politics of Knowledge; Epistemic Responsibility; Twentieth-century French Philosophy (Foucault, Beauvoir, Le Doeuff); Ecological Theory and Post-Colonial Theory. Her books include: Epistemic Responsibility (1987), What Can She Know? (1991), Rhetorical Spaces (1995), and Ecological Thinking (2006); she was editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories (2000), and Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer (2003); and co-translator of Michèle Le Doeuff The Sex of Knowing (2003). In an effort to ensure well-prepared, quality presentations, abstracts (300-500 words) are due by August 31, 2009. Participants whose abstracts are accepted by the vetting committee will then be required to submit their completed papers via email as an attachment in Open Office, Word or Wordperfect by the firm deadline of October 19, 2009. (These papers will then be posted on-line for other participants to consult prior to the conference with the intention that time at the Symposium can be devoted much more to discussion than to exposition of the written papers.) We hope that revised papers will continue to be available online: those from the earlier symposia can be accessed from http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/histphil/Philosophy/ChiPS/. Contact persons: Dr Frederick Ochieng’-Odhiambo: frederick.ochieng-odhiambo@cavehill.uwi.edu; Mr Ed Brandon: edbrandon@gmail.com; Ms Roxanne Burton: roxanneeburton@gmail.com.