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Transactions Call for Papers View this email in your browser <https://mailchi.mp/c3669ca3c16d/call-for-papers-transactions-of-the-charles-s-peirce-society?e=860edf35dc> [image: Header: The Charles S. Peirce Society] *Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Call for Papers* What Makes us Think it Will Work? Inference to the Best Warrant and Design of Peace, Security and Development Solutions Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society invites proposals for a special issue devoted to Derek B. Miller’s “Inference to the Best Warrant” (IBW), considered in relation to the American philosophical tradition and to the practical challenges involved in designing projects and policies to advance peace, security, and development. This special issue of Transactions takes Derek B. Miller’s formulation of “Inference to the Best Warrant” (IBW) as a target article and invites historically grounded, systematic, and practice-oriented responses. Miller presents IBW as a form of practical inquiry concerned with situations where high-level political agreement may authorize action but cannot by itself provide justified confidence that the intended consequences will follow. Contributions are invited to examine IBW through the resources of the American philosophical tradition, classical and contemporary: to clarify its philosophical foundations; defend, develop, revise, or challenge its central claims; bring it into conversation with alternative accounts of practical reasoning, public inquiry, deliberation, decision making, and institutional judgment; or investigate its adequacy under conditions of power, pluralism, urgency, uncertainty, and technological mediation. Of particular interest are papers that ask how thinkers and traditions in American philosophy might deepen, redirect, or expose limitations or possibilities in IBW rather than simply supply philosophical antecedents for it. To give the special issue a common practical focus, we especially invite contributors to consider the potential and limitations of IBW in the design of peace, security, and development solutions (e.g. projects, programs and policies by international organizations, national or local governments, NGOs, civil society, or other appropriate local actors), where the achievement of agreement marks not the end of practical inquiry but the beginning of the difficult question of how an agreement can be made to hold in a complex and often resistant world of enactment. Contributions may draw on any aspect of the American philosophical tradition, broadly construed. Possible questions include, but are by no means limited to, the following: • How might Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, fallibilism, conception of the community of inquiry, or economy of research deepen, revise, or challenge IBW? • How does IBW relate to James’s treatment of live, forced, and momentous options, particularly where the demand for action outruns the available evidence? • Can one be warranted in acting without being warranted in believing that the action will succeed? If so, what kind of warrant or justified confidence does practical action require? • How might Peircean realism, Deweyan warranted assertibility, Rortyan anti- representationalism, or Putnam’s entanglement of fact and value recast IBW’s claim that proposed actions must ultimately answer to a “world of enactment”? • How might Addams, Du Bois, Alain Locke, feminist pragmatism, Black pragmatism, or Cornel West reshape IBW’s treatment of standing, voice, exclusion, suffering, and power within practical inquiry? • What pragmatic differences, if any, distinguish IBW as a named and specified practice from ordinary deliberation, negotiation, design, practical judgment, or expert decision-making? Does IBW identify a genuinely distinctive form of inquiry, or redescribe practices already recognized under other names? In short, does its introduction add value to the way we might understand, discuss, teach, or enact deliberative process towards high-stakes, consequential ends? Inference to the Best Warrant (IBW) is Miller’s name for a recurrent form of practical inquiry first recognized through program-design work in peace, security, and development, including at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research and The Policy Lab. It becomes relevant when agreement can authorize action but cannot by itself make that action effective. A treaty, policy, or mandate, for example, may be negotiated by one set of actors but implemented in a social world populated by others who may interpret, resist, adapt, appropriate, or ignore it. The practical problem is therefore not only “What should we do?” but also “What makes us think it will work?” Answering the second question requires a situated theory for action: an account of how a proposed activity, under specified conditions, may reasonably be expected to produce a desired result. Candidate propositions for action earn standing not merely by attracting assent but by being generated, challenged, revised, and tested against relevant objections. The “best” warrant is thus neither proof nor a guarantee of success, but the least assailable proposition the participants can construct under constraints of time, knowledge, resources, and participation (et. al), thereby creating justified confidence to act. Miller presents IBW as a socially enacted, fallibilist practice rather than a formal logical schema. Its principal philosophical resources include Peirce’s abduction and fallibilism, Dewey’s account of indeterminate situations and warranted assertibility, Mead’s social conception of thought, Simon’s satisficing, and a Popperian emphasis on survival under critical challenge. Submission Guidelines If you are interested in submitting a paper for this special Transactions issue, please send an email to Cornelis de Waal at [email protected], so he can send you a copy of the target paper. Proposals should include: • A title and a 300–500-word abstract outlining the focus, significance, and approach of the proposed paper. • A brief biography (150 words) highlighting your expertise and experience. • Contact information (preferred email address), including institutional or organizational affiliation (if applicable). • If your proposal is accepted, final submissions should not exceed 7000 words Key Dates: • Proposal Submission Deadline: December 15, 2026 • Notification of Acceptance: January 15, 2027 • Full Submission Deadline: September, 1 2027 • Anticipated publication: Fall 2027 Please send proposals to Cornelis de Waal at [email protected], with the subject line: Submission for IBW issue. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. 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