From Wednesday to Sunday next week I’m going to be at the APA Pacific, in beautiful San Francisco. I like saying that to make people who are not going to be in SF jealous. The APA Pacific is always fun because (a) it’s on the Pacific coast, and (b) the papers are high quality. At risk of offending practically everyone, and of crashing Blogger, here is a table of the talks that look most interesting to Brian over the conference. (Note that for some sessions the division of people into ‘speakers’ and ‘commentators’ is rather arbitrary, but it was this or make the table even more complicated, and as you can see I don’t really understand tables in HTML as it is.)

The real issue some days will be deciding which papers to go to. The worst clashes for me are in session 7, on Saturday morning. (Session 4, on Friday morning, is not much better.) That may put some dampner on the amount of socialising that can be done Friday (and maybe Thursday) night. Or it might not. If every session is such that I can reasonably miss it, then I can reasonably miss all sessions, so I can party all night Friday…Note that I’ve left off all the interesting papers from Sunday, because I won’t be there (flying back early Sunday sadly), so I don’t have much motivation to search the program for the highlights. But it doesn’t look like the program gets any lighter when I leave it.

From Wednesday to Sunday next week I’m going to be at the APA Pacific, in beautiful San Francisco. I like saying that to make people who are not going to be in SF jealous. The APA Pacific is always fun because (a) it’s on the Pacific coast, and (b) the papers are high quality. At risk of offending practically everyone, and of crashing Blogger, here is a table of the talks that look most interesting to Brian over the conference. (Note that for some sessions the division of people into ‘speakers’ and ‘commentators’ is rather arbitrary, but it was this or make the table even more complicated, and as you can see I don’t really understand tables in HTML as it is.)

The real issue some days will be deciding which papers to go to. The worst clashes for me are in session 7, on Saturday morning. (Session 4, on Friday morning, is not much better.) That may put some dampner on the amount of socialising that can be done Friday (and maybe Thursday) night. Or it might not. If every session is such that I can reasonably miss it, then I can reasonably miss all sessions, so I can party all night Friday…Note that I’ve left off all the interesting papers from Sunday, because I won’t be there (flying back early Sunday sadly), so I don’t have much motivation to search the program for the highlights. But it doesn’t look like the program gets any lighter when I leave it.

Common Minds
Common Room, University House, ANU
24 – 25 July 2003

Philip Pettit, currently William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, was Professor of Social and Political Theory in the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, from 1983 until 2002. Common Minds will focus on some of the questions and themes that dominated his work during his 20 years at RSSS. The conference papers will all be made available online. Speakers will be given 10 minutes to introduce their session, the remaining time being given over to discussion. This conference is being organized jointly by the Philosophy Program and the Social and Political Theory Program at RSSS.

The philosophy papers blog is (finally) posted for the day. I’ve already mentioned the two most interesting papers there, but there are two other papers, and three journals, also posted for your browsing pleasure.

The philosophy papers blog is (finally) posted for the day. I’ve already mentioned the two most interesting papers there, but there are two other papers, and three journals, also posted for your browsing pleasure.

It would make it a lot easier for Brian to write a book on vagueness if smart people would stop writing on it. The goal posts keep moving so fast that I have to spend all day keeping up to keep up.

Vagueness without Ignorance by Cian Dorr.

Just as I decide to write a paper on imaginative resistance, I see there is a whole book of papers about to appear on the topic. On the one hand, this is good news, for it helps my argument that the question is ripe. (I hate writing the bit of a philosophy paper that is pitched at the referee and the referee only, and only aims to convince him (ever her?) that the question the paper addresses is worth an article. Hate it. But if I don’t do it, who knows if anything I write will ever be published.) On the other hand, there is some chance that everything I say will be anticipated by the papers in the volume. Normally my preternatural confidence would assure me that I’m smarter than the people writing there, so I really shouldn’t worry about that possibility. But I know some of the people writing for that volume, so I know such confidence would be misplaced.

Just as I decide to write a paper on imaginative resistance, I see there is a whole book of papers about to appear on the topic. On the one hand, this is good news, for it helps my argument that the question is ripe. (I hate writing the bit of a philosophy paper that is pitched at the referee and the referee only, and only aims to convince him (ever her?) that the question the paper addresses is worth an article. Hate it. But if I don’t do it, who knows if anything I write will ever be published.) On the other hand, there is some chance that everything I say will be anticipated by the papers in the volume. Normally my preternatural confidence would assure me that I’m smarter than the people writing there, so I really shouldn’t worry about that possibility. But I know some of the people writing for that volume, so I know such confidence would be misplaced.

Jason Stanley has a paper posted on Context, Interest-Relativity, and the Sorites. When I get some spare time and energy, I’ll post an analysis of it here.

Big crop of papers in the philosophy papers blog today, in part because I got lazy and decided to list papers that had been posted as much as 36 hours ago on the site.