PHIBOOK - The Yearbook for Philosophical Logic

The web-site for PHIBOOK is now up and running.

PHIBOOK is an annual volume devoted to philosophical logic and its relation to philosophy and science with particular emphasis on multi- agent and modal systems, active agency and social software. The yearbook is intended to inform the community of current and future directions of research and activity in philosophical logic, major events, books and important papers of the past year but also leaves extensive room for discussion in terms of columns, opinion pieces, and critical reports.

Editors:
Alexandru Baltag (Oxford)
Johan van Benthem (Amsterdam / Stanford)
Branden Fitelson (Berkeley)
Vincent F. Hendricks (Roskilde)
Hannes Leitgeb (Bristol)
Fenrong Liu (Beijing / Amsterdam)
Eric Pacuit (Stanford)
Bryan Renne (CUNY)
John Symons (El Paso)

PHIBOOK/2007 will be available in May 2008

SUBMISSIONS/DEADLINES

PHIBOOK invites authors to submit extensive survey (expositional) papers (30-50 pages) on philosophical logic (including inductive logic, modal, alethic logic, temporal logic, epistemic logic, deontic logic, conditional logic ... with special focus on multi-modal logics and active agency) and its relations to notably epistemology, methodology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and its applications and philosophical significance in computer science, information theory, cognitive science, mathematics, linguistics, economics and game theory ...

For more information click here.

Thousands of New Cases of Zombification

Check this out:

In Haiti, up to a thousand new cases of zombification are reported
every year. However, exactly how sorcerers zombify their victims
remains open to debate. So, fascinating as it is, zombification is an
ultimately confusing phenomenon....

The article discusses the use of tetrodotoxin, found in pufferfish, to
make zombies.

(Via Colleen Keating)

Powers, Dispositions, and Singular Causation

Graduate Conference in Metaphysics

University at Buffalo, State University Of New York
Philosophy Department

April 5, 2008

Keynote Address
Stephen Mumford (University of Nottingham UK): "Passing Powers Around"

Email submissions should be sent by January 10, 2008 to:

buffalo.philosophy07@gmail.com

For further information and paper guidelines click here.

Alex

Here's an article on the death of the most linguistically advanced parrot there ever was. Alex learned more than 100 English words, several phrases, and was able to recognize shapes and colors. His last words to Dr. Pepperberg, who worked with Alex, were: "You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you."

Tal en Tanke in Atheneum Bookstore

Atheneum Bookstore will host a meeting with Vincent F. Hendricks and Frederik Stjernfelt on Wednesday September 19 at 4:30 P.M. Hendricks and Stjernfelt will talk about themes from their new book Tal en Tanke -- the bestseller about clarity and nonsense in thought and speech. Everyone is invited.

Iowa Philosophical Society Final Call for Papers

Final Call for Papers!

The Iowa Philosophical Society Meeting

When: Saturday, Oct.20, 2007
Where: Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA

Keynote Address by Paul Boghossian of NYU

Papers should be prepared for approximately a
20 minute presentation. Submission deadline Sept. 15, 2007.

Send abstracts of approximately 300 words to:

John Lemos at jlemos@coe.edu or you may send them in the regular post to:

John Lemos
Dept. of Philosophy
Coe College
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

PPR Returns

As Robbie notes, PPR appears to be back up and running.

New Zombies

Good to see that more or more Northerns are giving in to the facebook craze (aka the zombie war).

Sydney

At least I wasn't driving. Joe, Bill and Dave seemed more comfortable on the left. I probably should have stood up for the world's female drivers but that didn't happen. Oh, well. Sydney was fun. My first time there (except for the airport, but that doesn't count). Went to one and a quarter conferences. First the expressivism conference, then the moral cognition conference. Many excellent papers and fun times. Some of them:


Rae Langton and Simon Blackburn. Simon: "Excellent point, Rae!"


Lunch (David Chalmers, Rae, Simon and Peter Lewis (far right))


Allan Gibbard: "Here is how to express expressivism".


Alexis Burgess: "It is not the case that Santa and Rudolph do not exist"


Uriah Kriegel and Luca Moretti. Uriah: "I am looking for something that does not exist, dammit"


Jamie Dreier: "You see, creeping minimalism likes to hit and then it tries to hide"


Dave: "I think I know how to teletransport this glass of wine into Facebook ... Where is my Palm Pilot?"


Becky and I. Me: "Oh man, this article is hard". Becky: "Yeah, I read it during naptime"


Amie Thomasson: "Worlds: who needs 'em?"


Indian food and philosophy: a happy mix


Rachael Briggs and Dave. Rachael: "Help, the curry bowl keeps toppling over".


Adina Roskies and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Walter: "I didn't do it"


Joe Salerno: "Curry bowls are fun!"


Amie and Rachael in the wee hours

For more conference photos click here (Joe Salerno) or here (Dave Chalmers).

The Reasoner 1 (5)

The latest issue of The Reasoner is now available.

In this month's issue:

Editorial - Eric Pacuit
Interview with Rohit Parikh - Eric Pacuit
Kripke, Pierre and Constantinescu - Laurence Goldstein
The Mechanist’s Challenge - Bhupinder Singh Anand
Does conceivability entail possibility? - Clayton Littlejohn
A note on conceivability - Roger Harris
On the Paradox of Rationality’s Rationality - Nader N. Chokr
Abstraction vs. Idealization - Steffen Ducheyne
Is the Answer to this Question No? - Martin Mose Bentzen
The Divine Liar Resurfaces - Daniel J. Hill
New Centre for Reasoning at Kent - Jon Williamson

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.