This is a nice touch. On the MIT colloquia page there’s links to the colloquia page of all the other universities in the area. And they’re kind enough to include Brown as part of the ‘area’.

On tha note, hopefully we’ll have some announcements soon to make about our spring schedule. Our fall events have been good so far, and the rest of the program looks pretty interesting.

(By the way, if anyone at MIT is reading this, the Brandeis link isn’t working right now. I don’t know if it’s a temporary network failure or a dead link. I tried to find the right link, but Google sent me to a philosophy page that is currently listing talks ‘upcoming’ in 1999.)

Richard Rorty has an article in today’s Boston Globe arguing that Davidson showed that “reality can’t be an illusion.” (Note: that quote is from the subhead not from Rorty.) It almost goes without saying that I don’t believe a word of it, but it’s still a more rigorous philosophical piece than you’ll normally see in an American newspaper. (Thanks to the APA News service for the link.)

Juan Non-Volokh said that Joe Lieberman said something false on the weekend:

For example, Lieberman stated that the Bush Administration’s “Clear Skies” proposal to reform the Clean Air Act “actually would increase pollution” … He’s wrong … and should know better as a member of the Senate Environment Committee.

First, the proposed “Clear Skies” legislation will reduce utility emissions of NOx and SOx by around 70 percent. As I have noted before, the worst that can be said of “Clear Skies” is that it will reduce utility emissions marginally less than they might be reduced under current law – I say “might” because current projections presume that the current regulatory process will stay on schedule, and this is unlikely. Either way, this is not a policy that “actually would increase pollution.”

My first thought was that there’s a meaning for ‘increase’ that Lieberman could be using here. On second thoughts, I’m not so sure, but the semantic question is pretty interesting I think, at least if you’re a semi-professional semanticist.

I’d have thought that the meaning of ‘increase’ would be in the ballpark of these two concepts, which I define stipulatively.

X increases_t Q if X causes Q to be larger than it previously was. (The t subscript is to indicate that this is a temporal concept – what matters is that Q grows over time as a consequence of X.)

X increases_c Q if X causes Q to be larger than it othewise would have been. (The c subscript is to indicate that this is a counterfactual concept – what matters is that Q is larger than it is in some relevant counterfactual situation.)

What is the relation between the meaning of ‘increase’ and my concepts increase_t and increase_c? If it means the disjunction of the two, or it is ambiguous between the two, then Lieberman is (arguably) off the hook, since Juan is conceding (at least for the sake of the argument) that the Clear Skies legislation increases_c pollution. Unfortunately, it isn’t obvious that either of these claims holds. Here are a couple of cases to test intuitions.

Merlin
We have here a pile of rocks. The pile is a little unstable, and some rocks are rolling down it, and if left untouched they will soon roll off the pile. Merlin casts a spell that halts one of the rocks, and moves it to a stable point. While this spell is being cast, some other rocks roll off the pile. Did Merlin increase the size of the rock pile? My intuition is that he did not, even though he did
increase_c it.

RHAWP
The Red-Haired Australian Welfare Plan (RHAWP) calls for all red-haired Australians to be given a one-time payment of $100,000. Let’s imagine (contrary to fact) that we are in a scenario where the deficit is falling fast enough that even with the RHAWP in place, it will still fall next year. In that circumstance, would the RHAWP increase the deficit? It would increase_c the deficit, but not increase_t it. In this circumstance I’m a little more conflicted – I’m certainly more inclined to say that the RHAWP will increase the deficit than that Merlin increased the size of the rockpile. That’s good news for Lieberman, since arguably the Clear Skies legislation will have the same effect on pollution as the RHAWP has on the deficit.

Here’s my best guess as to what is going on. ‘Increase’ really does mean increase_t, and Juan is right than what Lieberman said is false. But we are happy to use it of people who exacerbate, that is increase_c, something we perceive to be a problem. To test this prediction, imagine what would happen if we thought the rock pile was getting in the way of something we want to do. For example, assume it covers up a mine shaft down which a young child is trapped. I think in that case I’d be more prepared to say that Merlin increased the rock pile. And I think (very tentatively) the best analysis of the case is that it’s a case where one can appropriately say something not true because it’s a useful way of communicating something that is true.

One final question. Juan says that

A “lie” is a deliberately false statement, typically made with an intent to deceive. Not just any false statement, or bit of spin, will do. Intentional deception is key.

Hmmm, is intent ‘typical’ or ‘key’? Anyway, we might wonder whether the following situation constitutes lying. X utters S (deliberately), S means that p, X knows p is false, but X thinks S means q, and X believes q is true. I’d say that’s not a lie. And in Lieberman’s defence, that might be what happened here. Before thinking through the cases, I thought ‘increase’ might mean increase_c. I now think that’s wrong, but I think it’s a mistake a competent speaker could make. (I don’t think I was incompetent before I thought about the Merlin case.) Juan makes a point of not accusing Lieberman of lying, and I think that was correct given these considerations.

From the front page of yesterday’s Boston Metro:

Rice to get bigger hand in Iraq

Some of the jokes here are too much fun to refuse.

Kerry to get bigger hair in Paris
Bush to get bigger nose in New York
Blogger to get bigger foot in mouth

And there’s plenty more of these in my mailbox, but I’ll refrain from them for fear of triggering New Zealand aiport filters.

The sports page of the Metro also had a nice Dewey beats Truman moment too. In the Hot/Not column of the sports pages, Colts coach Tony Dungy was listed as being Not after his old team, the Bucs, whipped his Colts. What was surprising about this was that they had the box score of the Red Sox game that only ended about half an hour before the Colts staged the most dramatic late-game comeback in Monday Night Football history.

If you want to keep buying music without supporting the RIAA (now most famous for suing 12 year olds) it’s worth checking out RIAA Radar, which provides some lists of which albums are not released by members of the RIAA. For a good sample of what’s available, here’s their list of the top 100 non-RIAA albums on Amazon. There’s some good stuff on there, including recent albums by Múm, the New Pornographers (my favourite album of the year to date), Warren Zevon, Super Furry Animals, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Shins, the Waifs and many more.

Thanks to Virulent Memes for the link.

What with the Red Sox series and the BloggerCon and some real work to do, blogging has been quiet the last few days. I’m not sure when it will return to normal. If you want your fill of pop philosophy, check out The Economist on the latest attempts to use fuzzy logic to solve the liar paradox. I’m not sure of the history claims the post makes. (Had no one used fuzzy logic on the liar before 1979? Only on a fairly narrow construal of fuzzy logic I’d guess.) And the philosophy doesn’t look much better. (Just for fun, try and figure out from the article whether there’s any way to generalise the account given to a solution to the strengthened liar.) But it’s philosophy (of a sort) in the popular (of a sort) press.

Thanks to Sasha Volokh for the link.

What with the Red Sox series and the BloggerCon and some real work to do, blogging has been quiet the last few days. I’m not sure when it will return to normal. If you want your fill of pop philosophy, check out The Economist on the latest attempts to use fuzzy logic to solve the liar paradox. I’m not sure of the history claims the post makes. (Had no one used fuzzy logic on the liar before 1979? Only on a fairly narrow construal of fuzzy logic I’d guess.) And the philosophy doesn’t look much better. (Just for fun, try and figure out from the article whether there’s any way to generalise the account given to a solution to the strengthened liar.) But it’s philosophy (of a sort) in the popular (of a sort) press.

Thanks to Sasha Volokh for the link.

Pekka Väyrynen just pointed out to me that there’s lots of new papers up on the Philosophical Studies website. I don’t know how to provide direct links that will reliably work on all browsers (or that will work at all in Firebird, which is what I now use) but follow the link there and click on forthcoming papers and you’ll find some papers by Susan Hurley, Diana Raffman and many more. (Much thanks of course to Pekka for the link.)

For some reason I’d presupposed that I was the only Brown faculty member with a blog, or at least an academically inclined one. As you probably guessed from this lead in, that is not true. Vika Zafrin, and NEH Research Fellow in Italian Studies, runs Words’ End. There’s not much overlap with my research interests, but given it’s an academic blog by an inhabitant of Providence, there’s naturally some points of contact.

Physically further away, but closer to my heart, is The X-Bar. It seems I missed the opening night party, but I think I’ll make up for it with return visits. Any bar open 24/7 with people around to talk about syntax is a very good thing in my book. Here’s how Rosanne (the proprietor) described her new blog.

This journal is intended to be a central place to keep tabs on my current reading in linguistics and the thoughts and ideas that come from within and without said readings. I’m a third-year Ph.D. student in a generative linguistics program, on leave for a while thanks to blissful maternity and less blissful academic burnout, and trying to become inspired by the field once more. I plan to review core readings, ponder questions that have been burning to be answered since I entered the field, and to (boldly) go (boldly) where I’ve never studied before. The readings will likely span the fields of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and reach into the philosophy of language, with a more practical turn into pedagogically oriented grammar. I’ve a hankering to look more closely at functionalist efforts (particularly in light of the grammar work), and am also trying to broaden my horizons from the Chomskyan framework in which I’ve cut my teeth.

When I saw that the deadline for APA Central papers was moving my first thought was, “Excellent! Having the deadline a full eight months before the conference is absurd. Shortening the deadline will mean papers dealing with more contemporary issues, or at least with papers published/distributed within those eight months, can be addressed.” Of course, that was before I read the text of the announcement.

Beginning with the 2004-2005 Academic Year, the Central Division deadline for papers will be moving to July 1 prior to the meeting. Thus, the deadline for paper submissions for the Central Division Meeting in April 2005 will be July 1, 2004.

Why so far in advance? Is it that hard to get them all refereed?

Here’s a wild suggestion for the APA Central.

Make it an unrefereed conference, and abolish commentators for colloquium papers. Or at least abolish refereeing for colloquium papers, while keeping refereeing for the longer symposium papers.

Abolishing refereeing could mean moving the deadline back months, shortening the time between writing a paper and presenting it. And since many (most?) commentators are would-be paper presenters who got their papers rejected, abolishing commentators would not disadvantage too many people.

One might think this would lead to a dramatic fall in quality, but the Australasian conference seems to keep the average quality high enough without refereeing.

It might also lead to a need for too many rooms, but I don’t think there would be much harm in (a) adding evening sessions to the Central, which from memory didn’t exist this year, and/or (b) using the abolition of the commentator as an excuse to cut colloquium sessions to 45 minutes. I don’t know how the logistics goes, but I would think/hope (a) would be enough to solve the logistical problems.

UPDATE: In the above I managed to confuse the procedures of various APA Divisions. I thought that the APA Central included submitted 5000 word papers, and I thought they were called Symposium papers. It turns out this is true of the APA Eastern and Pacific, but not the Central. Much thanks to Michael Kremer for clearing up the details on that. So the above proposal would mean abolishing all refereeing for the Central (as Michael pointed out in the comments).