The Eidos Centre for Metaphysics in Geneva has put out a call for papers for its upcoming ‘Because’ conference.  Unfortunately their web site seems to be down at the moment so I will reproduce the details here.

The use of explanatory concepts, as expressed by means of locutions like ‘because’ or ‘in virtue of’, pervades all philosophical disciplines.  In many cases what is at stake are causal links, but in many other cases causation is not involved. A currently hotly debated example is provided by the topic of truth-making. A truth-maker is something which makes a truth-bearer (a sentence, or a proposition, etc.) true, and the truth-making relation is commonly spelt out in terms of a non-causal explanatory relationship: for a truth-bearer to be made true by an entity is for it to be true in virtue of that entity, or in virtue of the existence of that entity. Other examples can be found in discussions about ontological dependence, supervenience, substances, essence, reduction, the realism vs. anti-realism debate, or again knowledge. The papers presented at the conference will deal with topics where non-causal explanatory links are crucially involved, as used in order to treat certain philosophical issues, or as the proper topic of philosophical inquiry.

The conference will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 15-17 February 2008.

The submission deadline is *December 1st, 2007*.  Participants will be notified by December 15th.  Email abstracts of approx. 1000 words to Fabrice Correira or Benjamin Schnieder.

Travel and accommodation will be paid for speakers, and it is expected that a selection of conference papers will be published in a subsequent edited volume.  The invited speakers are Kit Fine (NYU), E. J. Lowe (Durham), Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (Oxford), Zoltan Szabo (Yale) and me (Nottingham).  It should be a great event, and Geneva is a beautiful city, so get writing on those abstracts!

 Update: The conference website seems to be working now.