i'm working on a paper for this contest called: "the superiority of anti-constructive naturalism" which defends McDowell's naturalism

University of Kentucky
Sixth Annual Prize Essay Competition in
European Philosophy from Kant to the Present


QUESTION: Is any Variety of Naturalism Superior to Others?


This topic may be addressed historically, systematically, or through any combination of these two approaches. The winning essay will receive a prize of $1000 and, upon recommendation of the selection committee, be published in Inquiry. The author of the winning essay will also be brought to the University of Kentucky in the Fall of 2009 to present it.

The winner of the first four annual Prize Essay Competitions were Sami Pihlström (University of Helsinki), Robert Guay (Binghamton University), Helder De Schutter (University of Leuven), and Herbert de Vriese (University of Antwerp) for their essays “Recent Reinterpretations of ‘The Transcendental’ Revisited” (Inquiry 47, No. 3 [2004]), “The ‘I’s Have It: Nietzsche on Subjectivity” (Inquiry 49, No. 3 [2006]), “Nations without Nationalism” (Inquiry 50, No. 4 [2007]), and “The Myth of the Metaphysical Circle” (Inquiry 51, No.3 [2008]). The prize essay selection committee declared no winner in the fifth competition.

Essays will be judged by a process of blind review. Submissions should be appropriately formatted for such a process, with the author's name and other identifying information appearing only on a separate cover sheet. Essays should be double spaced, in English, and no more than 8000 words in length. Past and present faculty and students at the University of Kentucky are ineligible to compete. Submissions should not have been previously published or submitted for publication.

The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2009. Essays should be submitted in triplicate in typed (hard copy) form to Ms. Katie Barrett, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027 USA. No electronic submissions please.