Bled Conference

Did anyone out there go to the Bled Conference? Any experiences you want to share? Was everyone singing the praises of Semicompatibilism? No, seriously, do you mind sharing some thoughts about this conference? What is the venue like?

Comments

[Neil]

I was one of the few gardners there (along with Ish Haji and Tim O'Connor, who are technically gardners). Bled is a beautiful town, set on an alpine lake. It is a fairytale setting, complete with mountain backdrop and a castle overlooking the lake. It was difficult not to stare out of the window at the view during papers!

The papers were not in streams, so most people went to most papers. Semi-compatibilism was not a big theme, perhaps surprisingly. It came in for some criticism, and little praise. The program for the conference is here:

http://www.bled-conference.si/index.php?page=content&page_id=3

One of the interesting things about the conference is that some people attend it every year, no matter what the topic. So we had papers from people who are not free will specialists. This makes for refreshing perspectives. It also means that questions can't be foreseen with the same degree of accuracy. The sense I got was diversity, rather than the emergence of a theme or a set of themes. I won't try to pick out highlights. There were no bad papers at all.

Next year's theme is epistemology. If you're at all interested, and are able to, I recommend the experience.

[Joe Campbell]

I thought that it was a great conference, John. Nice group of people and, as Neil says, no bad papers!

I know I'm missing some folks but highlights include papers by Ish, David Hunt, Mark Brown, and Tomis Kapitan. Sharing a session on sourcehood with Bernard Berofsky was pretty cool. David Widerker was in the audience, which was great, too. In general, the questions were good and the mix between free will specialists and others who specialize in other areas was nice.

But my favorite moments came in two separate sessions: one on agent causation (Meghan Griffith, Tim, Ned Markosian, and Neil) as well as one on contextualism (Alastair Norcross, John Carroll, and Mark Heller). I wonder why more compatibilists don't focus on agent causation (like Markosian) or contextualism. These are relatively neglected areas of research in the free will field.

Perhaps folks writing on free will skepticism might attend next year's epistemology conference. Oh, yeah! That's a metaphysical view!

[Kip Werking]

The outstanding program for this conference, and the presence of Joe and Neil, make me sorely miss not attending...

[Kip Werking]

Is there no way to obtain copies of any papers from this conference? Must I wait for the special issue of Acta Analytica, which will publish selected articles? I would love to read so many of them.

[Joe Campbell]

Check out the Bled website and someone should be able to help you. I'd be happy to share a copy of my paper in a week or so.

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