One of the (many) nice features of the Rutgers Epistemology Conference is that they have a prize for the best essay by a Young Epistemologist. The capital Y on Young is needed, because the stipulative definition of young (less than 10 years since PhD) definitely is not folk usage. But it’s a good idea nonetheless. And I hope that when the Rutgers Epistemology Conference becomes the Rutgers Metaphysics Conference, as it will every other year in the future, they will keep running the prize. (That is, I hope they will have a Young Metaphysician Prize when it’s a metaphysics conference, though a Young Epistemologist Prize at a metaphysics conference could be amusing for all sorts of reasons.)

This year the prize was won by Michael Bergmann for his paper Epistemic Circularity: Malignant and Benign, which is well worth reading.

The prize is pretty good as is. A place in the conference proceedings, all expenses paid to the conference, paper published in PPR, and $1000 cash prize. There’s only one thing missing: a trophy.

Some of the grad students here (who for some reason want to remain anonymous on this one) suggested a trophy be part of the prize. This is obviously right. Indeed, it seems so obviously right as to be beyond enlightened argument. The only issue was what the trophy should look like. The best suggestions so far are that the metaphysics trophy should be a tailless kangaroo, fallen over, and the epistemology trophy should be a speckled hen with an indeterminate number of speckles. If you have better suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments box. If not, it’s over to the Rutgers organisers to make the trophies happen.