Conference Report: SOPhiA 2024

For the 14th time, the Salzburg Conference for Young Analytic Philosophy took place from 11 to 13 September 2024 at Unipark, one of the many buildings of the University of Salzburg. The conference is an opportunity for master and PhD students in particular to present their ideas in talks and connect with each other and more experienced philosophers. In general, talks at SOPhiA can come from almost any possible area of philosophy, as long as the arguments which are laid out are presented in clear language and fit into the analytic tradition. Indeed, over 180 philosophers submitted abstracts, with 120 acceptances and an acceptance rate of more than 66.3 % among the contributed talks (resubmissions not included). The most represented areas were metaphysics and epistemology with 18 talks each, followed by ethics with 14 talks. The smallest number of talks was devoted to the history of philosophy with only three presentations. Additionally, there were three keynote speakers, who held plenary sessions: Alexander Hieke (Paris Lodron University Salzburg), Andreas Hüttemann (University of Cologne) and Barbara Osimani (Polytechnic University of Marche). Five workshops took place in parallel sessions, their titles being: Causality: “Ontology, Epistemology and the Scientific Method”, “Explaining Mental Phenomena: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives”, “Science in Society”, “Logics of Normativity and the Normativity of Logic(s)” and “Social Foundations of Language”. The whole conference was held in a hybrid mode, with both speakers and audience having the opportunity of holding talks or listening and contributing to the Q&As either in person or online via MS Teams. Every slot for contributed talks consisted of 20 min for presentation and 10-minutes for Q&A, except for the plenary sessions of the keynote speakers which lasted 90 min. There were six physical and virtual rooms for parallel sessions, five of which were used during the workshops. The general language of the conference was English due to the internationality of the event, with participants from universities from over 30 countries. Only the J.B. Metzler session on the first day, on how to publish one’s dissertation as a first book, was held in German. The total number of registered participants (speakers, audience, keynotes, workshops) was over 136. It was also possible to attend the conference as a guest without registering in advance. Compared to 2023 the growth rate of submissions for contributed talks was around 16.03 %.

The first day of the SOPhiA conference began with a short opening speech by Raimund Pils (Paris Lodron University Salzburg), the head of the programme committee. The speech also included the announcement of the winners of the best paper award, which are Ragna Oeynhausen with the paper “Applying the Collapse Argument to Carnapian Pluralism” and Elsa Magnell with a paper entitled “Vague Disagreements: Vagueness without Arbitrary Stipulation”. The jury, which marked the papers via points in a blind review, consisted of Alexander Hieke, Barbara Osimani and Ludger Jansen. The mentioned two papers were given equal points, which is why this year there were two winners (out of 18 submissions). The papers, if approved by external reviewers as usual, will be published in the journal KRITERION – Journal of Philosophy (De Gruyter). As a prize for winning the award, the article processing charges are waived. After the opening speech, the first plenary lecture by keynote speaker Andreas Hüttemann took place in person. The talk with the title “The Laws, the Past and the Consequence Argument” was focused on how the modal status and content of laws of nature are fundamental for the consequence argument. This argument states that, if determinism is true, then what happens in the present moment is completely determined by the past and the laws of nature and, thus, one does not have free will. After the subsequent J.B. Metzler session and the lunch break, the rest of the afternoon was dedicated to the contributed talks which belonged to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics. The first day ended with an evening buffet for all participants at Unipark.

The second day started right away with contributed talks in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and ethics. After the lunch break Alexander Hieke gave his plenary lecture in person. In this talk, entitled “Three Principles about Knowledge, the Universe and everything else”, Alexander Hieke laid out three principles of knowledge: 1: all knowledge is empirical, 2: what science tells us about the existence of physical entities is true and 3: every other entity is useful in gaining knowledge about the physical world. He argued for the truth of these three principles in his presentation. The remainder of the day was filled with the above-mentioned affiliated workshops. The organizers of the workshop “Causality: Ontology, Epistemology and the Scientific Method” were Michał Sikorski (Marche Polytechnic University), Alexander Gebharter (Marche Polytechnic University) and Barbara Osimani (Marche Polytechnic University). The title is quite explicit – the workshop focused on metaphysics and methodological aspects of causation. The workshop “Explaining Mental Phenomena: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives” was organized by Maria Sekatskaya (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) and Corina Strößner (Ruhr University Bochum). The workshop “Science in Society” was organized by two members of the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Charlotte Werndl and Raimund Pils, with speakers from the same institution. The organizers and speakers of the workshop are part of the cluster of excellence project “Knowledge in Crisis”, which addresses big questions and problems concerning the current relationships between knowledge, truth, science, ethics, politics and reality. The organizers of “Logics of Normativity and the Normativity of Logic(s)” were from the Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy: Bailey Fernandez, Stefan Forster, Eva Hiljkema, Alina Jacobs, Yara Katnik, Veronika Lassl, Gabriel Levc and Irmena Tsankova. Its main aims were to explore the relationship between deontic logic and its normative force on the one hand, and if and how the knowledge, gained by deontic logic, should and can be embedded in normative reasoning on the other hand. Last but not least, the workshop “Social Foundations of Language”, organized by Thorben Peterson (University of Bremen) and Ludger Jansen (PTH Brixen) was concerned with the social foundations of language and how they relate to other grounds of language. Philosophers of language, social ontologists and theoretical linguists were the speakers.

The third day was mainly reserved for contributed talks. In the evening, right before the end of the conference, Barbara Osimani gave her online plenary talk with the title “Statistical Evidence in Strategic Environments”. She spoke about the reasons and solutions for scientific misconduct, which is important because it can lead to mistrust in science in general. She stated that currently advanced remedies might not be appropriate solutions to the problem because, if looked at in a game-theoretical framework, there might be interactions of factors which could even lead to a backfire of these remedies. Afterwards, the registered participants were invited to have a closing dinner at a well-known restaurant at the heart of the old town of Salzburg.

The 14th SOPhiA conference was supported by: Department of Philosophy (Humanities) at the University of Salzburg, StV Philosophie (GW), ÖH Salzburg, KRITERION – Journal of Philosophy, Schwabe Verlag, De Gruyter, Karl Albert Verlag, GAP – German Society of Analytic Philosophy, Salzburg Country, Salzburg City, Nomos/Academia Verlag, Harvard University Press and Metzler Verlag. On behalf of everyone who attended the conference, be it as a speaker, audience member or other participant, I would like to thank all of the sponsors for making this event possible. I, Sarah Fischbacher, as a member of the organizing team, would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the participants, which made the conference a success again this year. The other members of the organizing committee were: Raimund Pils, Gregor Greslehner, Alexander Gebharter, Benedikt Leitgeb, Florian Pointner, Mathijs Geurts, Selina Zauner, Leonie Eichhorn, Stephen Müller, Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla and Sebastian Krempelmeier.