Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering

The 2nd call for papers for the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering (WPE-2008), 10-12 November (Monday-Wednesday) 2008, at The Royal Academy of Engineering is available here. The 2nd CFP contains details on the keynote and tutorial speakers. The lineup of keynote talks and tutorials may be viewed here.

With a little over a month to the submissions deadline its time to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, or chisel to tablet and start working on those extended abstracts for what promises to be a pivotal event in the history of Philosophy and Engineering.

Natasha McCarthy and I have gotten some questions about permissible topics at WPE-2008. The short answer is that we are interested in anything at the intersection of Philosophy and Engineering.

A longer more specific answer comes from looking at last year’s schedule (schedule here) and examining last year’s extended abstracts (abstracts here). As cursory examination suggestions, the admissible topic set is quite broad (and by no means constrained by the topics accepted at WPE-2007), but a word is in order about the three demes.

The idea of the demes is to get appropriate individuals reviewing appropriate submisssions. Because of the longstanding cooperation of engineers and philosophers in engineering ethics, the ethics deme is co-chaired by one philosopher and one engineer, and authors familiar with the literature of engineering ethics should be comfortable here. Of course, philosophers have been philosophizing about engineering and technology for some time, and so the philosophy deme is designed for trained philosophers familiar with the rough and tumble of that discipline. Engineers interested in epistemology or ontology or other philosophical topics should probably submit to the Reflections deme, which is chaired by and reviewed by other philosophically aware engineers.

Judging by the preliminary interest in the workshop, we expect to break attendance records of WPE-2007 by a good bit. For further questions write to Natasha McCarthy (here) or me (here).

The call for papers for the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering to be held 10-12 November 2008 (Monday-Wednesday) at The Royal Academy of Engineering, London is available here.

The WPE web page has undergone the beginnings of an update for the 2008 workshop to be held at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, 10-12 November 2008 (Monday-Wednesday).  More information will be made available as it becomes available.

The next Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering will be held 10-12 November 2008 (Monday-Wednesday) in London, England. WPE-2008 will be hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the RAEng’s Natasha McCarthy will join David E. Goldberg of the University of Illinois as workshop co-chairs. TUDelft’s Ibo van de Poel will join the co-chairs as a third member of the workshop business committee. Stay tuned for further announcements.

At 0845, Monday, 29 October 2007, the Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering begins.  More news will be available throughout the workshop.

The full booklet of WPE-2007 extended abstracts is available here and the final program is available here.

The detailed tentative WPE-2007 program can be downloaded as an PDF file here.

Limited support for student travel is available for student participants in WPE-2007 due to a grant from Deere & Company.  Students with accepted abstracts should prepare a brief travel budget, including workshop registration fee.  List other sources of support, including that provided by home departments and other organizations.

Send your request to deg@uiuc.edu and specify the amount requested to support your travel.  Due to limited amounts of funding, students cannot rely solely on the support of the workshop.

Due to a number of requests and summer vacation schedules, the call for papers (1-2 page extended abstracts) has been extended until 1 September 2007.  The extended call for papers may be downloaded here.   The notification of acceptance date has been pushed back until 24 September.