Natasha McCarthy and I have gotten some questions about permissible topics at WPE-2008. The short answer is that we are interested in anything at the intersection of Philosophy and Engineering.

A longer more specific answer comes from looking at last year’s schedule (schedule here) and examining last year’s extended abstracts (abstracts here). As cursory examination suggestions, the admissible topic set is quite broad (and by no means constrained by the topics accepted at WPE-2007), but a word is in order about the three demes.

The idea of the demes is to get appropriate individuals reviewing appropriate submisssions. Because of the longstanding cooperation of engineers and philosophers in engineering ethics, the ethics deme is co-chaired by one philosopher and one engineer, and authors familiar with the literature of engineering ethics should be comfortable here. Of course, philosophers have been philosophizing about engineering and technology for some time, and so the philosophy deme is designed for trained philosophers familiar with the rough and tumble of that discipline. Engineers interested in epistemology or ontology or other philosophical topics should probably submit to the Reflections deme, which is chaired by and reviewed by other philosophically aware engineers.

Judging by the preliminary interest in the workshop, we expect to break attendance records of WPE-2007 by a good bit. For further questions write to Natasha McCarthy (here) or me (here).