Sunday, August 17, 2008
UT Methodology Workshop Pictures
The UT Methodology workshop is finally over. We had sessions from Jeff King, Marc Moffett, Ernie Sosa, Josh Dever, Dan Bonevac, Roy Sorensen, Derek Ball, Dan Korman and John Bengson, plus round-table discussions on the place of data about natural language in philosophy, paradoxes, and thought-experiments. It's been an exhausting five days, but I've learned a lot from it, and the visiting speakers were great to have around.
Colleen has put up some really good photos of the event on her Flickr site, so check those out if you want a flavour of the event. There were a bunch more photos taken last night by other people, and hopefully some of those will be online at some point.
Colleen has put up some really good photos of the event on her Flickr site, so check those out if you want a flavour of the event. There were a bunch more photos taken last night by other people, and hopefully some of those will be online at some point.
Labels: Conferences
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
UT Methodology Workshop
Well, it's finally that time. I'll be spending the next 5 days at the Methodology Workshop, which kicks off today with Roy Sorensen's 'What Makes Something Interesting?' and our own Josh Dever's 'Linguistic Idealism.
Alex G and Alex B have done a fantastic job putting this all together, and I'm anticipating it being a really fun event.
Alex G and Alex B have done a fantastic job putting this all together, and I'm anticipating it being a really fun event.
Labels: Conferences, Methodology
Saturday, July 19, 2008
NYU PhilMath Conference Date Change
As Justin has pointed out, the philosophy of maths conference he and Shieva are organizing has been shifted from October to April 10-12 2009. Check out the website of the conference here.
Labels: Conferences
Thursday, July 03, 2008
CMM Graduate Conference
As Ross noted in the comments to my earlier post, the CMM Graduate conference in Leeds is taking place on the 4th of September, not the 5th to the 7th as I'd originally written. The excellent-looking Perspectives on Ontology Conference takes place in Leeds from the 5th to the 7th, which presumably explains my confusion.
Labels: Conferences
Thursday, June 19, 2008
NYU Philmath Conference
While we're on the subject of conferences, let me draw the attention of those of you not on Facebook to Justin and Sheiva's philosophy of maths conference at NYU in October. I'm going to do my best to be there, and the lineup is very exciting. So (at least) two reasons to go!
Labels: Conferences, Philosophy of Mathematics
Update and Calls for Papers
I've been quiet the last while as Lauren's been visiting me in Glasgow, and I've been trying to make the most of my time here. Tomorrow I fly back to Austin, and I'll be back to work properly on Monday. Expect posting to pick up again around then.
In the meantime, there are a couple of CFPs out for excellent looking conferences in Europe. First, there's the third annual CMM grad conference at Leeds. Papers are to be on metaphysics (construed very broadly) or mind, and are due no later than Friday the 18th of July. The conference will be on September 4th. There will be a panel on grad-student publishing with two former Archeans, Robbie and Ross. The CFP is here. The grad conference is just a couple of days earlier than a grown-ups conference, Perspectives on Ontology, which has a great line-up.
The Arche/CSMN conference is being held in Oslo this year! They're looking for high-quality papers on topics in their core areas, due by the first of September. The conference itself will be held on November 14th-16th. The keynotes announced so far are Zoltan Szabo and Carrie Jenkins (whose forthcoming book, Grounding Concepts, is released in August). See the CFP here for further details.
Lastly, on the other side of the Pond, there's a graduate conference on Essentialism being held at UC Davis. The official webpage is here, but the actual call is a .doc file, so let me offer a more web-friendly version here:
In the meantime, there are a couple of CFPs out for excellent looking conferences in Europe. First, there's the third annual CMM grad conference at Leeds. Papers are to be on metaphysics (construed very broadly) or mind, and are due no later than Friday the 18th of July. The conference will be on September 4th. There will be a panel on grad-student publishing with two former Archeans, Robbie and Ross. The CFP is here. The grad conference is just a couple of days earlier than a grown-ups conference, Perspectives on Ontology, which has a great line-up.
The Arche/CSMN conference is being held in Oslo this year! They're looking for high-quality papers on topics in their core areas, due by the first of September. The conference itself will be held on November 14th-16th. The keynotes announced so far are Zoltan Szabo and Carrie Jenkins (whose forthcoming book, Grounding Concepts, is released in August). See the CFP here for further details.
Lastly, on the other side of the Pond, there's a graduate conference on Essentialism being held at UC Davis. The official webpage is here, but the actual call is a .doc file, so let me offer a more web-friendly version here:
Graduate Conference on Essentialism
U.C. Davis, 26-27 September, 2008
Keynote Speaker: L.A. Paul (University of Arizona)
Submission Deadline: 1 July 2008
About the Conference
The conference is directed primarily at graduate students who are ABD and who are writing in metaphysics. The aim of the conference is to facilitate the exchange of ideas among graduate students working in metaphysics. Authors of accepted papers will be expected to present, not read, their papers. There will be six graduate papers presented. Participants will be expected to pre-read accepted papers.
Submission Guidelines
Topic: Papers on any area of metaphysics will be reviewed. However, preference will be given to papers addressing topics within Essentialism or ontology.
Length: 4000 - 6000 words
Cover Letter: name, paper title, email address, abstract (max. 500 words)
Submit in PDF form to: essentialism.conference@gmail.com
Please ensure that papers are suitable for blind review.
If you are interested in participating in the conference via chairing or commenting, please email Dana at essentialism.conference@gmail.com.
Labels: Conferences, Links, Metablogging
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Arche Assertion Workshop
I just got back from a pretty spectacular weekend in St Andrews, during which I saw lots of people, and attended eleven - count 'em - eleven presentations. On Friday morning my good friend Marcus Rossberg, who kindly put me up for the bulk of the time I was there, discussed the options one has for reconciling inferentialism about the logic constants with the non-conservatism of third- over second-order logic.
Jonathan Schaffer kicked off the Arche Assertion Workshop that evening with a talk arguing that if you put together the Stalnakarian thought that what an assertion does is aim to reduce the contrast set with the Williamsonian thought that knowledge is the norm of assertion, the outcome is a contrastivist notion of knowledge; in slogan form, knowledge in the image of assertion is contrastive knowledge.
The next morning, Ofra Magidor presented joint work she's done with John Hawthorne which aims to show that the non-transparency of certain notions appealed to in Stalnaker's framework prevents him from being able to retain the following principle, we they label Uniformity: In cases of rational communication, the same proposition is asserted at each world in the context set. (Very roughly indeed: A notion N is transparent just in case Np implies NNp and ~Np implies N~Np.) Jessica Brown's talk noted that the thesis the knowledge is sufficient for warranted assertion is frequently appealed to, but never defended. She explored some arguments analogous to Williamson's arguments for the necessity claim, and suggested that none of them were good enough. In the questions, I tried to argue that her point is even more significant than she'd suggested, since it's actually the sufficiency thesis that Williamson appeals to when defending the necessity condition in the face of cases where a subject asserts something false but on the basis of impeccable evidence. These seem to be cases in which we just as asserter to have asserted well in some sense, yet he clearly did not know that which he asserted. Williamson writes (257, emphasis added):
'The case is quite consistent with the knowledge account. Indeed, if I am entitled to assume that knowledge warrants assertion, then, since it is reasonable for me to believe that I know that there is snow outside, it is reasonable for me to believe I have warrant to assert that there is snow outside. If it is reasonable for me to believe that I have warrant to assert that there is snow outside, then, other things being equal, it is reasonable for me to assert that there is snow outside. Thus the knowledge account can explain the reasonableness of the assertion.'
The same line will get run in response to Gettier cases. So, I suggested, it seems like it may be difficult to defend necessity without appealing to sufficiency - but, as Jessica pointed out, sufficiency has never been remotely adequately defended.
In the afternoon, John MacFarlane explored four different styles of accounts of the nature or purpose of assertion; the Stalnakarian account, the more or less Gricean account, Williamson-style accounts which hold that assertion has a constitutive norm, and commitment accounts. He explored how each of these accounts could make sense of the phenomenon of retraction, and whether they are genuinely competing, ending with a tentative suggestion that the kind of commitment account he has defended in print can make the best sense of retraction, and may enable one to recapture what each of the other accounts seems to have right. Lastly, Jason Stanley argued that defenders of the knowledge norm, his earlier self included, aren't free to appeal to Moore-paradoxical sentences of the form 'p, but I don't know so' to support their view. The reason is that sentences of the form 'p, but I'm not certain that is so/it's not certain that is so' are, as Unger pointed out, just as weird, yet seem to require even more demanding norms of assertion.
I only attended three out of the four talks on the Sunday, the final day of the workshop. Sandy Goldberg kicked things off, arguing that accepting that assertion has an evidential norm can help us explain certain phenomena in the epistemology of testimony. Jennifer Lackey also argued against the sufficiency of knowledge for warranted assertion, though in the question session most of the audience seemed convinced that her counterexamples should really be regarded as cases in which one has violated Gricean maxims. Bob Stalnaker finished things up with a talk on how to accommodate self-locating beliefs within his general framework.
All in all, this was about the best conference I've ever attended. The talks I went to were all very interested, and I learned a lot from them, and the whole thing was superbly organized. Thanks to Jessica Brown, Herman Cappelen, and last but not least, Sharon Coull for putting together such a great event.
Yesterday we had two further talks in the Basic Knowledge seminar from Baron Reed and Jennifer Lackey. Baron tried to defend a new argument for scepticism which would be immune to the charge, commonly leveled against standard sceptical arguments, of having presupposed an internalist picture of knowledge and justification. Jennifer defended and elaborated her 'justificationist' view of what to do in the face of peer-disagreement.
All in all, a fantastic weekend. As well as attending the talks, I got to see a lot of old friends, and meet a bunch of new people. Now I just have to recover in time for Duncan Pritchard's workshop on Basic Knowledge and Scepticism this coming weekend...
Jonathan Schaffer kicked off the Arche Assertion Workshop that evening with a talk arguing that if you put together the Stalnakarian thought that what an assertion does is aim to reduce the contrast set with the Williamsonian thought that knowledge is the norm of assertion, the outcome is a contrastivist notion of knowledge; in slogan form, knowledge in the image of assertion is contrastive knowledge.
The next morning, Ofra Magidor presented joint work she's done with John Hawthorne which aims to show that the non-transparency of certain notions appealed to in Stalnaker's framework prevents him from being able to retain the following principle, we they label Uniformity: In cases of rational communication, the same proposition is asserted at each world in the context set. (Very roughly indeed: A notion N is transparent just in case Np implies NNp and ~Np implies N~Np.) Jessica Brown's talk noted that the thesis the knowledge is sufficient for warranted assertion is frequently appealed to, but never defended. She explored some arguments analogous to Williamson's arguments for the necessity claim, and suggested that none of them were good enough. In the questions, I tried to argue that her point is even more significant than she'd suggested, since it's actually the sufficiency thesis that Williamson appeals to when defending the necessity condition in the face of cases where a subject asserts something false but on the basis of impeccable evidence. These seem to be cases in which we just as asserter to have asserted well in some sense, yet he clearly did not know that which he asserted. Williamson writes (257, emphasis added):
'The case is quite consistent with the knowledge account. Indeed, if I am entitled to assume that knowledge warrants assertion, then, since it is reasonable for me to believe that I know that there is snow outside, it is reasonable for me to believe I have warrant to assert that there is snow outside. If it is reasonable for me to believe that I have warrant to assert that there is snow outside, then, other things being equal, it is reasonable for me to assert that there is snow outside. Thus the knowledge account can explain the reasonableness of the assertion.'
The same line will get run in response to Gettier cases. So, I suggested, it seems like it may be difficult to defend necessity without appealing to sufficiency - but, as Jessica pointed out, sufficiency has never been remotely adequately defended.
In the afternoon, John MacFarlane explored four different styles of accounts of the nature or purpose of assertion; the Stalnakarian account, the more or less Gricean account, Williamson-style accounts which hold that assertion has a constitutive norm, and commitment accounts. He explored how each of these accounts could make sense of the phenomenon of retraction, and whether they are genuinely competing, ending with a tentative suggestion that the kind of commitment account he has defended in print can make the best sense of retraction, and may enable one to recapture what each of the other accounts seems to have right. Lastly, Jason Stanley argued that defenders of the knowledge norm, his earlier self included, aren't free to appeal to Moore-paradoxical sentences of the form 'p, but I don't know so' to support their view. The reason is that sentences of the form 'p, but I'm not certain that is so/it's not certain that is so' are, as Unger pointed out, just as weird, yet seem to require even more demanding norms of assertion.
I only attended three out of the four talks on the Sunday, the final day of the workshop. Sandy Goldberg kicked things off, arguing that accepting that assertion has an evidential norm can help us explain certain phenomena in the epistemology of testimony. Jennifer Lackey also argued against the sufficiency of knowledge for warranted assertion, though in the question session most of the audience seemed convinced that her counterexamples should really be regarded as cases in which one has violated Gricean maxims. Bob Stalnaker finished things up with a talk on how to accommodate self-locating beliefs within his general framework.
All in all, this was about the best conference I've ever attended. The talks I went to were all very interested, and I learned a lot from them, and the whole thing was superbly organized. Thanks to Jessica Brown, Herman Cappelen, and last but not least, Sharon Coull for putting together such a great event.
Yesterday we had two further talks in the Basic Knowledge seminar from Baron Reed and Jennifer Lackey. Baron tried to defend a new argument for scepticism which would be immune to the charge, commonly leveled against standard sceptical arguments, of having presupposed an internalist picture of knowledge and justification. Jennifer defended and elaborated her 'justificationist' view of what to do in the face of peer-disagreement.
All in all, a fantastic weekend. As well as attending the talks, I got to see a lot of old friends, and meet a bunch of new people. Now I just have to recover in time for Duncan Pritchard's workshop on Basic Knowledge and Scepticism this coming weekend...
Labels: Assertion, Conferences, Norms of Assertion
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Methodology Workshop Update - King, Korman, Driver
Jeff King, Julia Driver and Dan Korman have been confirmed as faculty participants since my previous post. And this may not be the finished list - look out for further updates.
Labels: Conferences, Methodology
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
UT Summer Methodology Workshop
From August 12 - 16 UT Austin will host a philosophical methodology workshop aimed at graduate students. Faculty participants already confirmed are:
Josh Dever (UT Austin),
Marc Moffett (Wyoming),
Mark Sainsbury (UT Austin and KCL),
Roy Sorensen (Dartmouth),
David Sosa (UT Austin), and
Ernest Sosa (Rutgers).
Stay tuned for more news on the lineup.
Attendance for those not registered at UT Austin is limited to 10, so if your a philosophy grad student at another program who is interested in attending, you'll want to check out how to apply on the website. From the site:
'The workshop is free for all participants. We hope to provide outside participants with housing and some amount of travel assistance.'
This looks like it's going to be a great event. Thanks to Alex and Alex for putting it all together.
Labels: Conferences
Monday, April 21, 2008
Logical Pluralism in Tartu
You've probably already seen this on blogs that get updated a bit more often, but....
LOGICAL PLURALISM
27-31 August 2008, University of Tartu, Estonia
Organizers:
Daniel Cohnitz (University of Tartu)
Peter Pagin (Stockholm University)
Marcus Rossberg (Arché, University of St Andrews)
Speakers
JC Beall (Connecticut)
Manuel Bremer (Düsseldorf)
Hartry Field (NYU)
Per Martin-Löf (Stockholm)
Peter Pagin (Stockholm)
Nikolaj Jang Pedersen (UCLA)
Dag Prawitz (Stockholm)
Graham Priest (Melbourne)
Agustín Rayo (MIT)
Stephen Read (St Andrews)
Greg Restall (Melbourne)
Marcus Rossberg (St Andrews)
Stewart Shapiro (Ohio State)
Johan van Benthem (Amsterdam / Stanford)
Dag Westerståhl (Gothenburg)
The conference will take place in Tartu, Estonia, from August 27-31
2008. For more information, please go here.
Everyone interested is invited to participate. To plan the event,
however, we would need your registration by July 1, 2008.
Please send us an email to
cohnitz@ut.ee
Participants are responsible for making their own travel and
accommodation arrangements. However, we have reserved some places in
a nearby student dormitory. Please indicate in your registration when
you are interested in staying at the student dormitory.
The conference is sponsored by the Swedish Bank Tercentenary Fund.
Labels: Conferences
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Schedule: UT Austin Grad Conference 2008
I've been pretty lax about posting, with things going on in the department and my imminent prospectus defense creeping up. Hopefully that'll change shortly. In the meantime, the schedule for this year's grad conference has just gone online. Check it out here.
Labels: Conferences, Metablogging
Monday, January 14, 2008
Conferences at UT
The deadline for the 2008 Graduate Conference here at UT has been pushed back until Feb. 1st. It's mutual-knowledge* that the graduate conferences here have been great in the past, and with David Chalmers and Tamar Szabo Gendler as keynotes, that's surely going to continue. So get submitting!As if that weren't enough, Michael Tye is organizing this year's MLK conference. which will feature papers and responses by UT graduate students. It's taking place on MLK day (Monday Jan. 21st), all are welcome, and the program is as follows:
9.30
Coffee, rolls, etc.
9.55
Welcome by Michael Tye
10.00 - 10.55
Speaker: Enrico Grube, "In Defense of Content Preservation"
Respondent: John Bengson
Chair: Nora Berenstain
11.00 - 11.55
Speaker: David Ivy, "Perceptual Experience as Neither Veridical Nor Nonveridical"
Respondent: Alex Baia
Chair: Stephen James
12.00 - 1.25
Lunch
1.30 - 2.25
Speaker: Kate Ritchie, "Quantifiers, Context, and Semantic 'Completing' Strategies"
Respondent: Talia D'Abramo
Chair: Liz Rodgers
2.30 - 3.25
Speaker: Alex Grzankowski, "Against DeRose on Epistemic Modals"
Respondent: Malte Willer
Chair: Aidan McGlynn
3.30 - 4.25
Speaker: David Frank, "Once Again, With Feeling: Affectivity and the Emotions"
Respondent: Briggs Wright
Chair: Tomas Bogardus
4.30
Reception at Crown and Anchor
Labels: Announcements, Conferences
Monday, December 24, 2007
CFP: Powers, Dispositions, and Singular Causation
For the metaphysicians amongst you, Adam Taylor at Buffalo University is organizing a conference in metaphysics happening on April 5th 2008. If you're interested, the deadline for submissions is soon: January 10th to be precise.
The keynote address will be by Stephen Mumford of the University of Nottingham. Be sure to check out Adam's lovely website for the conference, which includes the full call for papers.
The keynote address will be by Stephen Mumford of the University of Nottingham. Be sure to check out Adam's lovely website for the conference, which includes the full call for papers.
Labels: Conferences
Monday, December 17, 2007
Reminder CFP: The University of Texas at Austin Philosophy Grad Conference 2008
The deadline for submissions is creeping up for the:
2008 University of Texas at Austin Graduate Philosophy Conference
Keynote Speakers:
David Chalmers (ANU)
Tamar Szabo Gendler (Yale)
Faculty Roundtable: Understanding and Illusion with:
Adam Pautz (UT Austin)
Mark Sainsbury (UT Austin and KCL)
Michael Tye (UT Austin)
When: April 5-6 2008
Where: the live music capital of the world
Call for Papers: Papers are due by January 15th 2008. The official CFP is here.
2008 University of Texas at Austin Graduate Philosophy Conference
Keynote Speakers:
David Chalmers (ANU)
Tamar Szabo Gendler (Yale)
Faculty Roundtable: Understanding and Illusion with:
Adam Pautz (UT Austin)
Mark Sainsbury (UT Austin and KCL)
Michael Tye (UT Austin)
When: April 5-6 2008
Where: the live music capital of the world
Call for Papers: Papers are due by January 15th 2008. The official CFP is here.
Labels: Conferences
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Semantics and Philosophy in Europe
There are definitely some big advantages to living in Texas. It's mid-December, and it's in the 70s outside. Plus, as many Brits over here have observed before me, Thanksgiving really is a great holiday. Until we get some equivalent on the other side of the Pond, this seems like the right place to be.
That said, every so often I do see things going on which make me wish I was able to spend more time in Europe. And my attention has been drawn to the new annual colloquium Semantics and Philosophy in Europe. The first event is being held in Paris (a city I have yet to see, and am starting to think I'll never get to see) on May 2-4 2008.
There's a CFP up for the first meeting, which will feature, amongst others, Herman Cappelen, Robert May, Stephen Neale and Zoltan Szabo as invited speakers. Obviously this is a wonderful opportunity, so get your submissions in by February 15th!
That said, every so often I do see things going on which make me wish I was able to spend more time in Europe. And my attention has been drawn to the new annual colloquium Semantics and Philosophy in Europe. The first event is being held in Paris (a city I have yet to see, and am starting to think I'll never get to see) on May 2-4 2008.
There's a CFP up for the first meeting, which will feature, amongst others, Herman Cappelen, Robert May, Stephen Neale and Zoltan Szabo as invited speakers. Obviously this is a wonderful opportunity, so get your submissions in by February 15th!
Labels: Conferences, Linguistics, Philosophy of Language
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Not-OK Computer
You're probably wondering what's happened to the blog. Actually, you're probably not wondering that at all, but humor me. Well, my laptop is out of the game, which as most of you will know is the kiss of death for a grad student. Fortunately, the damage is only to the AC adapter, so I won't lose any work, and I should be up and running again on Monday. But it really is a pain in the ass - I now have a ton of work overdue. I'm reminded of the old saying: "To err is human. To really mess things up takes a computer".
In other news, Amanda and Andrew have a summary of the Buffalo conference in the latest issue of the Reasoner. That's handy, since I won't have a chance of my own to report on it. But let me add what those guys couldn't write - they did a simply superb job organizing the conference, from making sure everyone got where they needed to be, to feeding us extremely well (including some home-cooking upon arrival!). I'd like to thank the organizers and all involved for a great weekend. Stewart Shapiro proved himself a model keynote, coming to every graduate talk with feedback to offer. Aaron's talk was a real highlight - he has his own short report here.
Ok, back to work.
Update: My new adapter has arrived, thank goodness.
In other news, Amanda and Andrew have a summary of the Buffalo conference in the latest issue of the Reasoner. That's handy, since I won't have a chance of my own to report on it. But let me add what those guys couldn't write - they did a simply superb job organizing the conference, from making sure everyone got where they needed to be, to feeding us extremely well (including some home-cooking upon arrival!). I'd like to thank the organizers and all involved for a great weekend. Stewart Shapiro proved himself a model keynote, coming to every graduate talk with feedback to offer. Aaron's talk was a real highlight - he has his own short report here.
Ok, back to work.
Update: My new adapter has arrived, thank goodness.
Labels: Conferences
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
CFP: The University of Texas at Austin Philosophy Grad Conference 2008
I'm very pleased to announce the:
2008 University of Texas at Austin Graduate Philosophy Conference
Keynote Speakers:
David Chalmers (ANU)
Tamar Szabo Gendler (Yale)
Faculty Roundtable: Understanding and Illusion with:
Adam Pautz (UT Austin)
Mark Sainsbury (UT Austin and KCL)
Michael Tye (UT Austin)
When: April 5-6 2008
Where: the live music capital of the world
Call for Papers: Papers are due by January 15th 2008. The official CFP is here.
2008 University of Texas at Austin Graduate Philosophy Conference
Keynote Speakers:
David Chalmers (ANU)
Tamar Szabo Gendler (Yale)
Faculty Roundtable: Understanding and Illusion with:
Adam Pautz (UT Austin)
Mark Sainsbury (UT Austin and KCL)
Michael Tye (UT Austin)
When: April 5-6 2008
Where: the live music capital of the world
Call for Papers: Papers are due by January 15th 2008. The official CFP is here.
Labels: Conferences
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo
I'm off to Buffalo this weekend for Reason, Intuition, Objects: The Epistemology and Ontology of Logic, where I'll be presenting my paper 'Iterations and Limitations'.
For the interested, here's the abstract:
'The iterative conception of set has been defended as a natural and non-arbitrary successor to the inconsistent naive conception, but in ‘The Iterative Conception of Set’ George Boolos showed that the hierarchical picture of the set-theoretic universe given to us by this conception fails to lend support to some of the axioms of ZFC, most notably choice and replacement. Both these axioms are delivered by a rival conception of set—the limitation of size conception—but unhappily this puts the axioms of power set and infinity beyond our reach, and has struck many as merely a technical device designed to avoid the paradoxes, rather than a genuine elucidation of our conception of set. Boolos has suggested that perhaps our conception of set is a hybrid of the leading thoughts behind the iterative conception and limitation of size, and in this paper I begin an assessment of the prospects of such a conception. I argue that even if this hybrid conception—the limitation of iteration conception, as I call it—can deliver all of the axioms of ZFC, it does so only if we are willing to make assumptions justified (if at all) only on pragmatic grounds. Insofar as our project is that of providing conceptual grounds on which to believe the axioms of ZFC, I conclude that we have reason to reject the limitation of iteration conception.'
For the interested, here's the abstract:
'The iterative conception of set has been defended as a natural and non-arbitrary successor to the inconsistent naive conception, but in ‘The Iterative Conception of Set’ George Boolos showed that the hierarchical picture of the set-theoretic universe given to us by this conception fails to lend support to some of the axioms of ZFC, most notably choice and replacement. Both these axioms are delivered by a rival conception of set—the limitation of size conception—but unhappily this puts the axioms of power set and infinity beyond our reach, and has struck many as merely a technical device designed to avoid the paradoxes, rather than a genuine elucidation of our conception of set. Boolos has suggested that perhaps our conception of set is a hybrid of the leading thoughts behind the iterative conception and limitation of size, and in this paper I begin an assessment of the prospects of such a conception. I argue that even if this hybrid conception—the limitation of iteration conception, as I call it—can deliver all of the axioms of ZFC, it does so only if we are willing to make assumptions justified (if at all) only on pragmatic grounds. Insofar as our project is that of providing conceptual grounds on which to believe the axioms of ZFC, I conclude that we have reason to reject the limitation of iteration conception.'
Labels: Conferences, Set Theory
Friday, September 14, 2007
New Blog - Conundrum
While I remember, I should point out that Aaron Cotnoir (who used to post on the now defunct UConn students' blog) has just started a new blog called Conundrum. Like Colin Caret, Aaron has moved all of his posts from the group blog over to his new digs.
Aaron will also be joining me for the conference at Buffalo, so if you're in the area, you now have at least three good reasons to attend. (The first is, naturally enough, Stewart).
Aaron will also be joining me for the conference at Buffalo, so if you're in the area, you now have at least three good reasons to attend. (The first is, naturally enough, Stewart).
Labels: Conferences, Links
Friday, September 07, 2007
This is the news..............
Well, the semester has really gotten underway, and it's just hectic. I don't remember ever having a first week where I felt so busy before. Anyways, following on from my earlier post, I have some good news. I'm heading out to the Reason, Intuition, Objects: the epistemology and ontology of logic conference at SUNY Buffalo next month to join my one-time philosophy of maths professor, Stewart Shapiro, and others for the weekend. I'm presenting my paper on set theory again. As regular readers of this blog will know, Kenny had some pretty persuasive things to say against some of the kinds of arguments I developed in the paper, but while I think he was clearly onto something, I hope there's still a lot to be said on these issues.
While I'm indulging in some navel-gazing, I was wondering if anyone has access to recent issues of Acta Analytica. Apparently I figure in some small way in this paper by Nenad Miščević, and I'm just a little intrigued. Any light that anyone could shed would be welcome (and I hope people won't think I'm too ridiculous for asking!).
One last piece of news. Sadly, What is it like to be a blog?, the blog of the graduate students at UConn, has been put to rest. As I'm sure you are all aware, WIILTBAB was home to many interesting discussions on dialetheism and paraconsistency, Dummettian anti-realism, logical revisionism in general, and a host of other topics from metaphysics to the ethical grounds for vegetarianism. The good news is that Colin Caret, the man behind many of these discussions, has set up a single authored blog called Inconsistent Thoughts on which he'll continue to post about these issues. Be there and be square and not-square.
While I'm indulging in some navel-gazing, I was wondering if anyone has access to recent issues of Acta Analytica. Apparently I figure in some small way in this paper by Nenad Miščević, and I'm just a little intrigued. Any light that anyone could shed would be welcome (and I hope people won't think I'm too ridiculous for asking!).
One last piece of news. Sadly, What is it like to be a blog?, the blog of the graduate students at UConn, has been put to rest. As I'm sure you are all aware, WIILTBAB was home to many interesting discussions on dialetheism and paraconsistency, Dummettian anti-realism, logical revisionism in general, and a host of other topics from metaphysics to the ethical grounds for vegetarianism. The good news is that Colin Caret, the man behind many of these discussions, has set up a single authored blog called Inconsistent Thoughts on which he'll continue to post about these issues. Be there and be square and not-square.
Labels: Conferences, Links
