Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism (Salerno)

Busy conference season in Australia. Today ends the Evolution and Cooperation Conference at ANU, organized by Richard Joyce & Kim Sterelny.

Speakers:
Steve Downes (University of Utah); Christian List (LSE); Ben Kerr (University of Washington); Timothy Ketelaar (University of New Mexico); Matteo Mameli (Cambridge); Fiery Cushman (Harvard); Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard); Kai Spikerman (LSE); Brett Calcott (ANU)

Day 1 included Christian List, who had neat empirical data on the Condorcet jury theorem as applied to deliberative democracy. Another great talk was Fiery Cushman's, which included loads of data about our judgments regarding moral consequences and intentions. And there were others.

Ah, I took my first spin around the block on the left side of the road. It was at night, and some street signs were apparently missing, but overall the episode went down without a hitch. Driving on the left is easier than I thought. Just take everything you do with your left hemisphere and replace it with everything you do with your right hemisphere, and vice versa. The drive was in part preparation for my trip to Sydney for the Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism conference, hosted by the Centre for Time. I didn't drive to Sydney (Chalmers and Fish took care of business), but I did get stuck with the honor of driving around to find a parking spot in Potts Point. No problemo, but I think i'll stay on my bicycle for a while.

Arrived during Simon Blackburns talk. He waxed broadly about the ins and outs of expressivism. Also caught Jamie Dreier's talk on the difference between irrealism and realism, and the pitfalls of trying to articulate said difference. This was also our 3 and a half year old daughter's first time attending philosophy talks. She had a blast. She wanted to know what order-of-explanation has to do with the reality of the subject matter. Will check out more talks tomorrow. Still don't know how long we are staying in the fabulous city, but won't be upset if we leave later rather than sooner.

S & P Advisory Board

The editors of the new journal-to-be Semantics and Pragmatics have just announced their Advisory Board:

Greg Carlson (former editor of Linguistics & Philosophy)
Gennaro Chierchia
Bart Geurts (editor of Journal of Semantics)
Irene Heim (editor of Natural Language Semantics)
Polly Jacobson (editor of Linguistics & Philosophy)
Hans Kamp
Angelika Kratzer (editor of Natural Language Semantics)
Manfred Krifka (editor of Theoretical Linguistics, former editor of Linguistics & Philosophy)
Barbara Partee
Robert Stalnaker

Impressive line-up!

Philosophers' Carnival # 52

... is here.

APA Book Prize

This year's APA Book Prize went to Jason Stanley for his Knowledge and Practical Interests (via Leiter)

John Broome Conference

Just got out from an ANU conference on the work of John Broome, which was organized by Nic Southwood (RSSS) and Daniel Star (CAPPE). The speaker line-up was great: Jamie Dreier (Brown), Nic Southwood (RSSS), Andrew Reisner (McGill), Geoffrey Brennan (RSSS), Garrett Cullity (Adelaide), Daniel Star (CAPPE), Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund), and John Broome (Oxford). Joe has a discussion of some of the talks.

Hansen and Hendricks on the Copenhagen Fashion Fair

Pelle Guldborg Hansen and Vincent Hendricks just published a paper in the Danish newspaper (Dagbladet Information) about fashion (the Copenhagen fashion fair just ended), consumption, pluralistic ignorance, knowledge, information cascades, norms and preferences. People are going crazy over this. The link is here in case you missed it.

The Fruit of Long Deliberations

Cartoon of Vincent Hendricks and Frederik Stjernfelt (authors of Tal en Tanke) from the Danish broadsheet paper Weekendavisen.

Translation:

Frederik: "My dear Hendricks, it dawns on me that the apple ("ævlet" which in
Danish is either slang for an apple or means "rubbish") does not fall far from
the language tree".

Vincent: "As spoken right out of my thoughts"

The caption says: "The fruit of long deliberations about talk by Hendricks and
Stjernfelt".

Greetings from the Southern Hemisphere

We arrived safely in Canberra and are almost done unpacking. This place is amazingly active, talks every day, zombie wars and tea chats. I like it lots.

Gotta Catch a Flight

We are getting ready to leave St. Louis to join these guys.

Knowledge and Action

There is an interesting discussion of John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley's "Knowledge and Action", forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy, over at Certain Doubts. I would have liked to join it but I am too busy packing. Maybe later.

UPDATE: Clayton Littlejohn has written a reply to Hawthorne and Stanley. I haven't read it yet but it looks very interesting.