ColdWAR Workshop

Workshop Overview

ColdWAR (Workshop on Agency and Responsibility)

October 23rd & 24th

ColdWAR (Workshop on Agency and Responsibility) features sophisticated original research on issues roughly captured under the label “agency and responsibility.” This general area involves investigation of such questions as: What does it mean to be an agent? How (if at all) does the nature of personhood and personal identity across time bear on questions of agency? What is the nature of, and relation between, moral and criminal responsibility? What is the relation between responsibility and the metaphysical issues of determinism and free will? What do various psychological disorders (autism, psychopathy, cognitive disabilities) tell us about agency and responsibility? What is involved in the development of moral agency? What is the will, willpower, and weakness (or strength) of will? What do the results from neuroscience imply (if anything) for our questions about agency and responsibility? What is the nature of autonomy and how is it related to agency and responsibility?

Work in agency and responsibility, while more or less having a home base in the world of moral philosophy, draws from a host of cross-disciplinary sources, including moral psychology, psychology proper (experimental, developmental, etc.), political economy, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of law, legal theory, metaphysics, neuroscience, neuroethics, social norm theory, political philosophy, and more. It is unified by its focus on who we are as deliberators and (inter)actors, embodied practical agents negotiating (sometimes unsuccessfully) a world of moral and legal norms. Talks and discussion based on these and other topics to be held at Cornell University on October 23-24, 2026.

 

Participating scholars include: 

  • Olivia Bailey (UC Berkley)

  • Jessica Isserow (University of Notre Dame)

  • Mikayla Kelley (University of Chicago)

  • Joe Metz (Eastern Connecticut State University) 

  • Rachel Achs (UC Santa Cruz)

  • Samuel Reis-Dennis (Rice University)

  • Jada Twedt Strabbing (Wayne State University)

Program

Friday, October 23rd:

Location: TBD

3:00pm - 5:00pm 

Cornell Philosophy Colloquium Keynote Talk by John Doris, Professor of Philosophy, Peter L. Dyson Professor of Ethics in Organizations and Life, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

Disentangled: Quietism about Moral Psychology, Instrumentalism about Moral Responsibility, & Policing the Subject

John M. Doris is Peter L. Dyson Professor of Ethics in Organizations and Life at Cornell University. He works at the intersection of cognitive science, moral psychology, and philosophical ethics, and has authored and co-authored papers for such venues as Noûs, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Nature: Scientific Reports, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He authored Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge, 2002), Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency (Oxford, 2015),and Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality (Oxford, 2022). With Edouard Machery, he authored Reasonable Doubt: Rethinking Trust in Science (Princeton, 2027). With the Moral Psychology Research Group, he wrote and edited The Moral Psychology Handbook (Oxford, 2010) and, with Manuel Vargas, edited The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (2022). Doris has been awarded funding from Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities; the American Council of Learned Societies; the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; Templeton World Charities Foundation; Princeton’s University Center for Human Values (twice); the National Humanities Center (twice); the National Endowment for the Humanities (4 times). He is past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology; he is also a winner of the Society’s Stanton Prize for excellence in interdisciplinary research, and the American Philosophical Association’s Gittler Award for outstanding scholarship in the philosophy of social science.  Doris’ pedagogy has been recognized with awards at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Saturday, October 24th:

Location: Physical Sciences Building, 401 

9:30am - 10:00am

Welcome and coffee

10:00am - 11:15am

First session: paper TBD

11:15am - 11:30am

Break 

11:30am - 12:45pm

Second session: paper TBD

1:00pm - 2:30pm

Lunch

2:30pm - 3:45pm

Third session: paper TBD

3:45pm - 4:15pm

Break

4:15pm - 5:30pm 

Fourth session

5:30pm - 7:00pm

Drinks and dinner
 

Registration

Event is invite-only. 

Travel and Accommodations

Travel

Ithaca is served by the local Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, four miles from Cornell campus, and Syracuse Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York, which is about an hour away from Ithaca. American Airlines (from Philadelphia), Delta (from Detroit and JFK), and United (from DC-Dulles) all serve Ithaca Airport, with a wider set of options flying into Syracuse.

Ithaca is about 250 miles from New York City as well as Newark, NJ. If you are in the New York city area, you might consider taking one of the many busses from New York City to Ithaca downtown, which is about a 4 hour trip. Cornell’s Campus-to-Campus Express (1.607.254.8747) picks up in midtown and provides comfortable seating, internet, power outlets, reading lights, complimentary beverages, and snacks. Advance reservations are needed, however.

Accommodation

We strongly advise you to book hotels or AirBnBs as soon as possible, given that rooms in Ithaca are in high demand during late summer. Hotels will fill up fast. AirBnB is always an option as well. If you have difficulty finding accommodation, please let us know and we will do our best to assist.

Local hotels include:

Hilton Garden Inn
Hilton Canopy 
Hotel Ithaca
Marriott
William Henry Miller Inn

Workshop Events and Area Information

The Workshop will include several social events, including a cocktail hour, a closing dinner and a local hike. These events are all optional. Please check back for further details.

Ithaca has good restaurants, excellent bars and cafes, as well as stunning natural beauty. Below, we list some local options for dining and travel that we recommend.

Restaurants

Restaurants with good vegetarian / vegan options marked with a star

Cafés

Bars

Goldwin Smith Sidewalk

Trails, Waterfalls, Vineyards

Ithaca boasts over 150 waterfalls within a 10 mile radius and stunning gorges carved out by glaciers during the last ice age. There are several short and doable hikes right on campus, with breathtaking views, including the Cascadilla Gorge Trail (connects downtown to the Law School) and the trail from Triphammer falls (near the art museum) to Beebe Lake.

Fantastic hikes within driving distance include the trails at Robert Treman State Park, Buttermilk Falls State Park, and Taughannock Falls State Park.

For a map of local vineyards, see here

Related: NOWAR

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