Bryan Chambliss's Conference Summary

     Bryan Chambliss
     Ph.D. Student
     Cognitive Science GIDP

     Conference Summary
     American Philosophical Association, Central Division
     Chicago, IL

Thanks to the support of the Herbert E. Carter Travel Grant, I attended the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, IL. The APA is one on the largest annual philosophy conferences in the United States, featuring sessions and panels on a wide variety of topics. I gave a talk myself, and attended various others. I also caught up with colleagues from afar, and met new people whose research relates to my own.

My talk presented a key argument from my dissertation to a room of specialists in the philosophy of language and mind. My commentator offered extremely helpful criticism of the project, as did the audience during the question and answer period. The discussion spilled over into lunch and subsequent emails exchanges, and my project will greatly benefit from the feedback that I received.

I enjoyed the rest of the conference as well. I attended a useful panel session about teaching philosophy, alongside talks on a range of topics. Among the most interesting were talks on moral status, the plurality of mindreading mechanisms, and on the semantics and pragmatics of slurs. The people I met at the APA, and the feedback that I received on my presentation, furthered my own research while helping me to develop my professional network. I am grateful for the support that allowed me to attend.