Featured Author Series

Dear All,

Just a reminder concerning the upcoming schedule for the Featured Author series (see below for details). First, I wanted to once again thank Suzy Killmister for doing a great job stoking the philosophical fires here at Flickers during September. From manipulation and paternalism to addiction and autonomy, she hit upon a wide range of interesting issues. As always, it is nice to have Featured Authors who don't usually contribute to the blog. The more voices and opinions, the better! Hopefully, doing some time guest-blogging will encourage Killmister and other Featured Authors to participate in discussion threads here down the road.

That said, later this month, we will host  another guest-blogger as Featured Author--namely, Michael Bratman (who will be posting in late November and early December). Here is Bratman's biography:

I have been at Stanford University since 1974.  I was Olmsted Visiting Professor in Yale University's Program on Ethics, Politics and Economics, in Fall, 1994.  My  book publications are Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (1987), Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (1999), Structures of Agency:  Essays (2007), and Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (2014).  I am also a co-editor of Introduction to Philosophy:  Classical and Contemporary  Readings. I have been awarded an ACLS Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Stanford University Humanities Center. I am a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers in 1993. My paper, "Plans and Resource-Bounded Practical Reasoning," Computational Intelligence 4 (1988): 349-355, jointly written with David Israel and Martha Pollack, was the recipient of the 2008 International Foundation of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems influential paper award.

 

Needless to say, I am excited to see what Bratman comes up with for our readers! So, please join me in welcoming him (and once again thanking Killmister)! The Featured Author series continues to march along. Please join the show. Unfortunately, participation in the discussion threads has been waning. I am as guilty as anyone else. I realize we're all busy. But nearly each month, we are fortunate to have Featured Authors who spend their time and energy trying to generate interesting discussions about the kind of work we do. It's a shame when we pass on the opportunity to play along. So, please join me in the comment threads later this month when Bratman puts up his first post! He's the final Featured Author of 2016! Let's make blogging about agency great again!

On that note, here is the upcoming schedule:

Nov.          Michael Bratman (Nov. 28^th-December 2^nd)

Dec.          No Featured Author

2017:

Jan.           Michelle Ciurria (Week TBD)

Feb.           Jules Holroyd (Feb. 13th-19th)

March:     Matthew Silverstein (Week TBD)

April:        Maria Alvarez (Week TBD)

May:         Rowland Stout (Week TBD)

I have a few more people who are planning to do a stint (e.g., Paul Russell), but we have yet to firm up the plans! If you have any suggestions, please let me know (as always)!