http://tar.weatherson.org Donate to Oxfam: <a>Australian link</a>, <a>New Zealand link</a>, <a>UK link</a>, <a>US link</a>. Mon, 12 May 2008 10:20:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've just finished drafting a critical notice of Ralph Wedgwood's book The Nature of Normativity, which I'm writing at the invitation of Analysis Reviews (the future continuer of Philosophical Books).  I'm posting the current draft; comments are welcome.  The critical notice focuses mainly on Wedgwood's normative epistemology, though it also takes ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/05/12/the-nature-of-normativity/ If you've been paying attention to the news recently you might have noticed that the university where I work - Washington University in St Louis - has decided to give an honourary doctorate to Phyllis Schalfly. I, like many people here, hadn't heard of Ms Schlafly, but having ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/05/08/wustl-graduation/ Tim Williamson thinks it is. But I'm not convinced. This is a little paper where I explain (some of the reasons) why I'm not convinced. Williamson relies heavily on (what he thinks of as) logical equivalences between modal propositions and certain counterfactuals. But such logical equivalences (even assuming that's what ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/05/08/modal-epistemology-is-counterfactual-epistemology/ My first ever book has just come out, and is now available world-wide. Here's what it looks like:     It's called Truth in Virtue of Meaning and it's basically a new account of the analytic-synthetic distinction (one which is designed to fit better with phenomena like contextualism and semantic externalism than ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/05/07/shazeen-samad/ Ernie Lepore and Gilbert Harman are organising a "conference on Quine":http://www.wvquine.org/wvq-fest.html to celebrate Quine's 100th birthday. It will be on June 25th at Princeton. More details are "here":http://www.wvquine.org/wvq-fest.html. http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/05/04/quine-fest/ And just after writing the post below, I discovered that a US immigration application (one of several applications needed to get a green card) got approved after 14 months. Hooray for immigration services on tax day! UPDATE: I just wanted to add a note of thanks to the immigration staff ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/04/15/more-immigration-news/ I've been buried recently under (amongst other things) a mountain of immigration paperwork. So it was with some trepidation that I realised that my Australian passport was about to expire and I needed a new one. It wasn't exactly reassuring to think I'd be dealing with another immigration and ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/04/15/australia-australia-australia/ I've had to use the "Sakai":http://sakaiproject.org/ course management software this term, and it's really the worst software I've had the misfortune of using in a long long time. If anyone out there has the choice between using it and using a commercial product like "Blackboard":http://www.blackboard.com/us/index.bbb, I strongly recommend the ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/04/12/why-i-hate-sakai/ As part of an ongoing series of workshops on issues to do with philosophy of language (broadly construed), the "Cornell philosophy":http://www.arts.cornell.edu/phil/ department is running a workshop on evaluative and expressive language. The workshop will be on April 26, from 1-6pm, in room B21, Lincoln Hall. (That's the building next ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/04/09/cornell-meta-ethics-workshop/ This stuff is great. I've been teaching a slightly-harder-than-usual logic course this semester and I really wanted a blackboard for my office, for practicing proofs on. One of those things that I think good logic students quickly realise is that it's one thing to be able to ... http://tar.weatherson.org/2008/04/03/blackboard-tiles/