2026 Annual Conference

Responding to the Contemporary World:
Wrong Answers Only

July 22-26 at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS)
Colorado Springs, CO

Abstract Submissions Due by February 6, 2026

We invite submissions for the annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, to be held July 22-26, 2026 at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Of particular interest are papers that engage with this year’s theme: Responding to the Contemporary World: Wrong Answers Only. However, we also welcome and encourage papers on any topic related to philosophy in the contemporary world, broadly construed.

SPCW seeks to provide a forum for new areas of research in philosophy, and we aim to build a community of scholars who provide supportive feedback and constructive criticism. We welcome papers on all topics, from any philosophical tradition. SPCW is especially interested in supporting individuals from historically underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds, as well as anyone working to expand the scope and quality of philosophical discourses. In addition to traditional papers and presentations, SPCW welcomes diverse formats such as spoken word, script readings, performances, and other approaches that invite and broaden philosophical reflection. Furthermore, we welcome the camaraderie of graduate students, nontraditional philosophers, and thinkers from other disciplines or with non-philosophical specializations. Simply put, we seek to foster productive philosophical exchange in a constructive environment.

CONFERENCE THEME

For the 2026 Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World Conference, we invite proposals that reflect on what it means to respond to the contemporary world with “wrong answers only.”

The phrase “wrong answers only” emerges from internet culture as a playful gesture of irony—an invitation to respond to familiar questions in unexpected, subversive, or humorous ways. Yet beyond its meme-life, the phrase raises a deeper philosophical provocation: What does it mean to respond “wrongly” in an age already structured by mistrust, crisis, and rupture? Can “wrong” responses illuminate what is overlooked, destabilize what is assumed, or open new paths of thought and practice? In a time of fractured institutions, competing claims of truth, and the sedimentation of modernity’s remnants, we ask whether wrong answers might paradoxically serve as generative calls toward beauty, reconciliation, or new guardrails for ethical-social-political life. To answer wrongly might be to resist the false clarity of ready-made analyses, diagnoses, and solutions, to dwell in the ruptures that shape our age, and to risk alternative visions—wise and otherwise.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • philosophy in the age of mistrust

  • subversion and playfulness

  • remnants of modernity

  • wrong turns, new paths

  • finding guardrails

  • finding beauty

  • rupture and reconciliation

  • wise and otherwise

  • (re)orientation

  • re-imagination

  • critique and creativity

  • creation through annihilation

  • Any topic related to philosophy in the contemporary world

Conference Submission

Abstract submissions should be approx. 500 words and are due by February 6, 2026. Abstracts for traditional papers and presentations should provide a substantial overview of the details of the final presentation. Abstracts for diverse format presentations and creative proposals should also include a brief description of the proposed format. Abstracts should include a bibliography which will not count toward the 500 word limit. Papers should be prepared for 20-30 minute presentations, followed by Q&A.

All submissions are circulated for anonymous peer review. Please remove all identifying information from the submission. 

Authors will be notified by February 28, 2026.

SUBMISSION FORM