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Call for Abstracts: Animals and Equality Conference

Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy and the Duke Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy

Friday October 18 – Saturday October 19, 2024

About the event

A vast literature now exists on the ethical status of non-human animals (for short, “animals”). Much of this scholarship is utilitarian, going back to Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975) and much earlier, of course, to Bentham. Another substantial portion is rights-based, as in Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights (1983). Relatively less work addresses the status of animals for purposes of broadly egalitarian ethical views. “Broadly egalitarian,” here, includes telic welfare-egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientism; these views modified to incorporate considerations of desert, responsibility, or opportunity; deontic versions of these views; relational egalitarianism; and accounts of distributive justice framed in terms of resources rather than welfare or desert/responsibility/opportunity-adjusted welfare.

How animals figure in such views is, to be sure, a topic that some scholarship has taken up. Shelly Kagan’s How to Count Animals, more or less (2019) is a prominent recent example. But the question of animals and equality has been less central to the literature on animal ethics than other topics.

This conference, “Animals and Equality,” will focus on the role of animals in broadly egalitarian ethical views. Both philosophical scholarship and scholarship in welfare economics/social choice theory is invited. On a different axis, we invite contributions arguing that animals have full status within a broadly egalitarian view; alternatively, arguing that animals have diminished status or fall outside the scope of such view; and scholarship exploring the details of how to incorporate animals into a broadly egalitarian account. Other work on animals and broad egalitarianism also falls within the scope of the conference (for example, analyzing the questions that animal well-being poses for egalitarianism among humans).

Call for abstracts

Those interested in presenting at the conference should email an abstract not to exceed 300 words to leanna.doty@law.duke.edu. Please include a current CV. Due date for abstracts: May 1, 2024. Presentations should be based on work-in-progress, rather than already published work. (Working papers available at the conference date will be circulated to participants, but are not required for a presentation.) The conference will be an in-person conference. Zoom presentations are possible, but preference will be given to in-person presentations. The conference sponsors will cover accommodation (up to 3 nights) for those presenting at the conference, and vegan food will be served during the conference. We have limited budget to cover travel by early career scholars (within five years of their degree).

This event is organized by Matthew Adler at the Duke Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy. It is co-sponsored by The Duke Center for Law, Economics and Public Policy and the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy. The program committee consists of Matthew Adler (Duke), Heather Browning (Southampton), and Jeff Sebo (NYU).

Call for papers: Award and Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness

The NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program is thrilled to announce that we are now accepting submissions for an award and workshop on animal and AI consciousness. We invite PhD students and early career faculty (PhD 2017 or later) in any field to submit current or recent (published 2021 or later) work on this topic. Selected authors will receive a $500 award and an all-expenses paid trip to the Association of Scientific Studies of Consciousness Conference at NYU in June 2023. They will also be invited to speak at a Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness associated with this conference.

The NYU Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness will be held on Monday, June 26, 2023. Selected authors will present their work to an audience of NYU faculty and students and ASSC Conference attendees. There will also be a keynote address and a dinner. This workshop will be an excellent opportunity for early career scholars to discuss their research and meet other people working in this important and neglected space. More generally, this trip will be an excellent opportunity for these scholars to attend a major conference on consciousness and share ideas with everyone there.

We welcome papers in any field in the humanities or sciences that can advance understanding of fundamental issues related to animal and AI consciousness. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• What is the nature of consciousness, and what do different answers to this question imply about the possibility of animal and AI consciousness?

• Can we have knowledge about other minds, and what do different answers to this question imply about the knowability of animal and AI minds?

• How, if at all, can we make welfare comparisons across species and substrates, and what do different answers to this question imply about the distribution of welfare in the world?

• How might the study of biological and artificial minds be similar and different, and what do different answers to this question imply about the methods we should employ in each area?

To apply, please email nonhumanminds@gmail.com by January 15, 2023 with the subject heading “Award and Workshop Submission” and the following materials in PDF format:

1. Curriculum vitae

2. Cover letter
   The cover letter should be no more than 500 words, and should include a summary of your paper and of the research program of which this paper is part.

3. Paper draft
   This work should be current or recent (nothing published prior to 2021), no longer than 10,000 words (a self-contained excerpt is fine), and accessible for a multidisciplinary audience.

Please contact jeffsebo@nyu.edu with any questions about the award or workshop.