Northern New England Philosophical Association

The Northern New England Philosophical Association was founded in 1972 by a group of philosophers from several northern New England institutions of higher learning for the purpose of promoting the study of philosophy and the exchange of philosophical ideas. The organization meets annually, usually on a Friday-Saturday in the second half of October. Institutions that have hosted the annual conferences more recently are:

  • Bates College (2006, 2015)
  • Bowdoin College (1997)
  • Clark University (2001)
  • Colby College (1991, 2008)
  • College of the Holy Cross (2019)
  • Dartmouth College (1994, 2004, 2013)
  • Keene State College (1990, 2003, 2016)
  • Norwich University (1996)
  • Plymouth State University (1993, 2002)
  • Rivier University (1995, 2005)
  • Saint Anselm College (1987, 1999, 2010)
  • St. Michael’s College (1988, 2011)
  • Stonehill College (2017)
  • UMass Dartmouth (2007, 2014)
  • UMass Lowell (2012)
  • University of New Hampshire (1992, 2000, 2009, 2022)
  • University of Vermont (1998, 2018)

NNEPA took a two-year hiatus in 2020 and 2021 due to the covid-19 pandemic.

A highlight of each NNEPA conference is the presence for the two days of an invited prestigious philosopher, who gives the Friday evening keynote address, often followed by a plenary panel session on her/his work on Saturday morning. Past conferences have featured distinguished keynote speakers, including Robert M. Adams, Robert Audi, Annette Baier, Jonathan Bennett, Ned Block, Robert Brandom, Michael Bratman, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Darwall, Hubert Dreyfus, Catherine Elgin, Bernard Gert, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Terence Irwin, Shelly Kagan, Patricia Kitcher, Christine Korsgaard, Alasdair MacIntyre, Joseph Margolis, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, Hillary Putnam, W. V. O. Quine, Robert Scharff, Charlotte Witt, and Robert Paul Wolf, Stephen Yablo.

NNEPA Officer

Executive Secretary: Paul McNamara, paulm@unh.edu, of University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH.

NNEPA History

Learn more about the NNEPA's origin and watch the NNEPA's origin part 1 and NNEPA's origin part 2.

NNEPA is always trying to add to its recovery of our historical details, especially the earliest history, and we need your help. If you have any info on the meetings from 1972-1985 (e. g. mailed programs or just recollections of keynotes or locations), please contact:

Lloyd Carr at lcarr@rivier.edu

Note: There will be a post-50th Anniversary pause in the conference series for 2023.

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Dear NNEPA Friends,

After a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19 complications, it is with great pleasure that I announce that the next, and 50th annual NNEPA conference will be at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, Fri-Sat, October 21-22, 2022. (I will be inhabiting the local role of President as well as that of Executive Secretary since UNH is my home base).  

It is also with great pleasure that I announce that our distinguished visitor and keynote speaker will be Professor Daniel Dennett of Tufts University, Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, University Professor, and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy. He is one of the most well-recognized names in philosophy, and one of the most recognized philosophers outside of philosophical circles. He is the author of a dazzling array of books, not all listed here: 

Content and Consciousness  (1969) 
Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (1978)
Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting  (1984)
The Intentional Stance (1987)
Consciousness Explained (1991) 
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995) 
Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (1996)
Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds 1984-1996 (1998)
Freedom Evolves (2003)
Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (2005)
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006)
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (2013)
From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds (2017) 

He also co-edited the delightful and unique work, The Mind's I (1981), with Douglas Hofstadter, as well as authoring over four hundred scholarly articles. To keep this close in length to our usual approximately  1-page announcements, I refer you to his home page at Tufts: https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/, which contains a fuller bibliography, profiles, honors, talks/videos/interviews, links to past and present articles, among other treats.

Best,

Paul McNamara
NNEPA, Executive Secretary
Philosophy, UNH

Program