Science, Philosophy, and Belief

We need EVERY participant to clarify their arrival and departure dates, and register for tours. Please login using your username and password to register for the sightseeing tours and to check/change/add the dates of your arrival and departure. 

I’d like to clarify hotel and transportation costs. We will pay hotel costs for all registered Chinese professors and students who live outside of the Beijing area from June 14-June 20 (assuming you are arriving in time to attend the trip to the Great Wall) and for Western participants from June 14-21. If you don’t intend to make the Great Wall trip, then you may arrive on June 15 or 16 and depart on June 20 (we know the June 20 departure date will make it difficult for some Chinese participants to attend the Forbidden City tour on June 20). We’d like everyone to arrive in time to attend the pre-conference dinner at Lake View Hotel on June 16 at 5:30pm; the first two keynote lectures will be held after that dinner. We will pay for transportation by train of all Chinese scholars. Please make your own travel arrangements and then bring your receipt with you to the conference so that we may reimburse you. Again, it is our hope that every participant will arrive on June 14 and make the trip together to the Great Wall on the 15th.

We’d like every participant, Western and Chinese alike, to arrive by June 14 so that we can enjoy a day together at the Great Wall on June 15. Even if you’ve been to the Great Wall before, we believe it will enhance our conference time together if we can enjoy one another’s company and take some meals together in the shadow of China’s Great Wall. We will cover all of the expenses for these tours. In order to plan appropriately, we need EVERY participant to log on and indicate their interest in participating in our three sightseeing tours. Use your user name and password to log on at spb2009.org and then scroll down to the very bottom of that profile page to find the Sightseeing Tours checkboxes.

 Here are your options:

 June 15: Great Wall Mutianyu. Meet at the Lake View Hotel at 8am for bus transportation to the Great Wall. We very much hope everyone will go on this tour.

 June 16: The Summer Palace. Meet at the Lake View Hotel at 9:30am for a half-day trip to the Summer Palace. You will return in time to rest up for the opening banquet and first keynote session.

 June 20: Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City and Shopping. Meet at Lake View Hotel at 8am for a day of Beijing’s finest sights.

We have had several requests/paper submissions by Western scholars. Western presenters are by invitation only and all of the Western slots have been filled. The only people who may submit papers now are mainland Chinese scholars (due date is April 21) and mainland Chinese students (due date is May 1). Although this is an international conference, it is the culminating conference of a three-year program for mainland Chinese scholars. Hence, the focus is on them and their work for this conference.

Please note that the due date for submissions of papers by Chinese scholars is in one week.

Western participants should apply for a visa very soon. We strongly recommend that you use a visa service; do NOT apply directly to the Chinese Embassy. On the Visa app: We suggest that the purpose of your visit is Tourism (2.1); (4/7-8) your contact is Xu Xiangdong, Peking University, phone number: 86-010-62751949; (4.9-4.10) the address is Peking University and email is xuxd@phil.pku.edu.cn. I don’t see it on the form, but sometimes they ask where you will be staying: Lake View Hotel in Beijing.

We invite Chinese students to submit a ten page paper for consideration for presentation at the student session. You will have fifteen minutes to make your presentation based on your paper (you may not read your paper, you may just present the main ideas in English). Four students from the US have already been selected to make presentations: Jonathan Vance, Cornell; Elise Crull, Notre Dame; C. Ang Tong, NYU; and Emmalon Davis, Calvin College. Submission deadline is May 1, 2009. Please submit your paper to Professor Xu Xiangdong at xuxd@phil.pku.edu.cn.

The submission deadline for submission by Chinese scholars has been extended to April 21, 2009.

Abstracts of the Western presentation are now available online.

We have had little response to our open enrollment. Please make sure that students and professors in the Beijing area are being informed of the opportunity to register for the conference. They can do so on the website’s Registration Page.

We have just opened registration for the conference to all interested parties. Since registration is limited to 15o (90 are already registered), we hope to locate scholars–professors and students–with interest in the topics and with English proficiency. Please encourage interested scholars to register. The evening keynote lectures are open to the public and registration is not required for those lectures.

Information about the conference and registration may be found at our website: http://www.spb2009.org.

We will cover room and board (June 14-20), and transportation by train for all non-local conference participants. We will cover lunches and dinners for all Beijing area participants.