The Northern Institute of Philosophy (NIP) is dedicated to excellence in research in the core areas of analytic philosophy. Directed by Professor Crispin Wright, the Institute is home to teams of senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students,working at the leading edge of contemporary philosophy to produce research of the highest standard. The Institute holds principles of collaboration in research to be paramount, both within and across Institute projects.

NIP began operation at the University of Aberdeen in September 2009.

General Mission

• To produce and disseminate to the international philosophical community original research of excellence within the areas of remit.
• To support graduate student and early career philosophers of excellence to develop their interests and skills and absorb examples of best research practice in collaboration with experts.
• To stimulate and coordinate work on the issues worldwide through the parts played by visitors, exchanges, international networks, conferences, workshops, multi-centre research collaborations and website dissemination.
• To develop standing research liaisons with selected institutions of philosophical excellence worldwide.
• To make a positive contribution to society by bringing the benefits of collaborative philosophical inquiry to broader audiences, including the general public, schools and disadvantaged groups.
• To extend results to neighbouring disciplines seeking contributions from philosophers, to communicate a sense of the goals, results and interest of contemporary analytical philosophical research to non-professional audiences, and to establish effective models of wider public communication for possible more general uptake by institutions within academic philosophy.
• To uphold wherever possible the aspirations of analytical philosophy as an essentially critical, normative, potentially revisionary discipline; and to defend and maintain its engagement with the great perennial problems of philosophy.

Areas of Remit

• Epistemology (formal epistemology, entitlement, epistemic externalism, perception)
• Formal Logic, including the history of logic
• Philosophy of Logic (logical consequence, the paradoxes, inferentialism and model-theory, the epistemology of logic and the a priori)
• Philosophy of Language (rule-following, propositions, vagueness, semantics and pragmatics, contextualism and relativism, content externalism)
• Philosophy of Mathematics (foundations, neo-logicism and structuralism)
• Metaphysics (value, taste, meaning, intentionality, time and truth)
• Philosophy of Mind (the metaphysics and epistemology of the self, rationality and rational explanation)
• History of Analytical Philosophy, and its methods, scope and limits

Research Practices

The work of the Institute will in many respects follow and build upon the intense, highly synergetic and hugely successful prototype pioneered by Crispin Wright at the Arché Centre at St. Andrews during its period as an AHRC Research centre (2003-8).

Research Projects

A number of multi-year managed collaborative research projects are underway, including the Leverhulme Trust funded Relativism and Rational Tolerance (2012-15) and pilot projects on Self Knowledge, Testimony, The A Priori, and Pluralism. Each NIP project is be pursued by a resident team of senior, postdoctoral and graduate student researchers.

Seminars

Core seminars for each of these projects, involving all resident and interested visiting researchers, we average one meeting per week during term and somewhat less frequent meetings during the summer (totalling about 35 annually.) Cross-fertilisation and collaboration between projects is strongly and officially encouraged. Participation in the various project seminars and other meetings normally involve most, or all of the resident Institute researchers, together with Research Leaders and other interested visitors. Postdoctoral fellows and graduate students are expected to regularly lead discussion at the core seminars.

Research Minuting

All funded research meetings are minuted, the postdoctoral fellows taking primary responsibility for convening additional short follow-up seminars at which graduate students (and others) will have an opportunity to rehearse issues arising in the main seminar and a minute will be composed collectively and put directly on-line. This process serves both to provide an effective record for the further development of ideas in play and the evolution of new research questions, and to help colleagues to clarify and absorb the ideas, and issues, emerging in the course of the research. (The project minutes will be submitted weekly to the Auditors — see below)

Academic Audit

An Audit of all funded projects, and of the Institute’s activities as a whole, takes place annually. The process involves the Auditors’ receiving work in progress and self-assessments from all the Institute researchers and then visiting for a period of up to four days to attend research presentations and meet with project members and the Institute Directorate. This provides the basis for an annual report assessing all aspects of progress in the research projects and collateral research activity in the Centre. The current auditor is Richard Heck (Brown) for Relativism and Rational Tolerance.

Milestones

An end-of-year one-day ‘Milestone seminar’ for each funded project is held annually to facilitate a conspectus of the previous year’s work and review the relations of the findings of the previous year with those of earlier years. Each Milestone seminar generates a collaborative ‘state-of-the-art’ article surveying the main findings, problems and prospects identified during the year, co-authored by members of the project team and posted on the project website. These seminars will play a key role in helping to shape new research agendas and future directions of research.

Conferences, Special Seminars and Workshops

Two weekend workshops per project are held annually in Aberdeen or at partner institutions, at which additional standing Networks of interested philosophers from elsewhere in the UK and abroad convene. At least one major international conference on themes associated with one or more of the projects is held annually.

Graduate Training

Full-fledged participation in the project research is a major additional component within a regular UK-style PhD education, involving standard principal and second supervisorial arrangements. In addition, a one-year MLitt serves both as a platform for basic training of prospective PhD students, and as a screening for those with the aptitude to excel at PhD research.

NIP Public

The Northern Institute of Philosophy is strongly committed to communicating its research to the public and, through activities of public engagement and knowledge transfer, to make a positive contribution to society. We aim to involve broader audiences in the collaborative methodology of philosophical inquiry in order to allow the benefits of pursuing philosophical reflection to reach beyond academic circles.

These benefits include, but are not restricted to:

• the ability to think creatively and critically about complex matters
• the ability to understand, recognize and respect alternative reasonable viewpoints
• the willingness to subject one's own views to critical scrutiny and, where reason requires, to improve and refine them

NIP Public provides a platform for public engagement and knowledge transfer. It comprises

• Social Partnerships: Collaborations with charities and public sector organizations to improve the quality of life and social cohesion of disadvantaged groups through Philosophy.
• The 10-Minute Puzzle: A series of brief podcasts that introduces a central problem in contemporary debate and philosophers’ main lines of response. A series of shorter podcasts, The 2-Minute Puzzle, is currently under development.
• Philosophers on Film: A series of short film interviews with contemporary philosophers.
• Philosophy with Children: Teacher training in Philosophy with Children and collaborations with local primary and secondary schools.
• Café Philosophique: Our programme of public engagement with Philosophy.

Calendar

The Institute’s terms diverge from the Aberdeen University calendar in respects designed to facilitate visits from overseas scholars while maintaining sufficient time for project researches and for reflection and writing. Thus the Institute’s Winter term runs during the months of September to December, when the focus is primarily on project research. January to mid-March is a Spring Recess, with a concentration on writing, when graduate students are assisted to visit partner institutions if they wish. Seminars resume during the Institute’s Summer term running from April to late July, when the main concentration of research visits occur.

Institutional Partnerships

The Northern Institute will be owned by Aberdeen University is an institutional participant in New York University's Global Network University through its partnership with the New York Institute of Philosophy, (the first such participant at graduate/research level).

A wide network of additional Institutional research partnerships and graduate student and postdoctoral exchanges will be established. Proposals concerning workshops and graduate and postdoctoral visits are under discussion with recently emerging centres of analytical philosophy in Continental Europe, including CSMN in Oslo, Cogito in Bologna, Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, Eidos in Geneva, and the Logos group in Barcelona. There will be a close collaboration with the Institute of Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. We anticipate continuing close working relationships, including informal graduate student exchanges, with the "Epistemic Warrant" project at the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU and with colleagues in the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut.

NIP Professorial Fellowships

These appointments play a key role in the Institute’s research processes and internationality. They are open-ended one-quarter time posts, held by scholars of the highest international distinction, in areas within the remit of the Institute. The duties, of research leadership and graduate and postdoctoral support and advising, involving duties of research leadership and graduate and postdoctoral support and advising.

NIP Associate Fellowship

NIP Associate Fellowships are offered to former graduate, postdoctoral or senior members of the Institute, or former project auditors, who are willing to undertake an ongoing commitment to the work of the Institute and to participate regularly in its activities. They are assisted with travel costs to enable them to visit, and encouraged to take initiatives in developing research activity, including organisation of ad hoc workshops, and to develop and maintain academic relationships with the younger members of the Institute.