Reflections from the 2012 Intermountain West Graduate Philosophy Conference

By CBS Graduate Student, Erick Peirson

On March 1 - 3, 2012, the University of Utah Department of Philosophy hosted the annual Intermountain West Graduate Philosophy Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. This intimate conference brought together graduate students with a wide range of interests, and facilitated engaging dialogue across disparate fields. Participants included not only philosophers, but also historians and biologists, giving the meeting a strongly interdisciplinary dynamic. Attendees hailed from Arizona State University, San Francisco State University, University of California Riverside, University of California Davis, and Ohio State University. The format of the meeting had a strong emphasis on discussion, with short presentations followed by both formal commentary and round-table conversation.

This conference was an excellent opportunity to share recent research with peers at other institutions. On Thursday, March 1, Embryo Project Training Scholar Shawn Miller (University of California Davis), gave a paper titled, "Not even false: minimalism, metaphilosophy, meaninglessness and an unsavory Sorites solution." Erick Peirson presented some preliminary findings from his research on the history of evolutionary ecology, in a talk titled, "The plastic trajectory: Stephen Stearns' conception of reaction norm in life-history evolution." On Friday, March 2, Guido Caniglia presented an overview of his work on the epistemology of evolutionary studies in social insects, in his talk, "Explanations as reconstructions: the evolution of social mechanisms from sociobiology to sociogenomics." Other presentations included work on species concepts in the philosophy of biology, conceptual issues in modeling cultural evolution, and other papers from the philosophy of math and logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. Philosopher of science C. Ken Waters, from the University of Minnesota, gave a keynote address reviewing his recent work on the epistemology of scientific practice.

We were treated to the exceedingly generous hospitality of University of Utah graduate students and faculty, as well as beautiful Utah winter weather, and are looking forward to continuing the stimulating dialogue that emerged from this conference.