NOWAR (New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility)

NOWAR 8 Program is out!

NOWAR 8 will take place at the Intercontinental Hotel, in New Orleans, from November 13-15. Program (linked above) includes 14 presentations, including our first class of Decorated WAR Veterans, Randy Clarke (FSU) and Manuel Vargas (UCSD). All talks will be abbreviated versions of read-ahead papers.

To register, please email Melissa Totman (melissa.totman@cornell.edu). She will provide a payment link. There is a graduated registration fee: $50 for grad students, postdocs, adjuncts, and independent scholars; $100 for tenured and tenure-track faculty (this is to offset costs of the meeting room).

In addition, there will be a block of hotel rooms available at the Intercontinental. Write to David Shoemaker (dws267@cornell.edu) for a link.

NOWAR (New Orleans Workshop on Agency & Responsibility)

is a biennial workshop, sponsored by Cornell University, featuring the presentation of 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 and neurodivergencies (autism, psychopathy, intellectual disabilities) tell us, if anything, about agency and responsibility, and should the proper conditions of agency/responsibility be derived from neurotypical people? What is involved in the development of moral agency? What are 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? Are there differences between other-blame/praise and self-blame/praise? Does desert play a crucial role in justifying blame/praise, and is it some kind of moral justification (of justice or fairness, say)? And many more....

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.

The Oxford University Press series Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility (I am the general editor) draws on presentations from this workshop.

Starting with the 2025 cycle, NOWAR will be organized and hosted by the recently formed NOWAR Council, which consists in Santiago Amaya, Matt King, Elinor Mason, Hannah Tierney, and Dave Shoemaker.

NOWAR 8 Program

November 13-15, 2025