What is it to have visited a state? Do I count as having visited Maryland if I went to a football game there while in DC? Do I count as having visited New Hampshire if I drove across it en route to Ottawa? Would it make a difference if I stopped at some shops along the way? Obviously these are not the most pressing questions in the world, but if you want some practice exercises in conceptual analysis, they may be worthwhile.
That suggests a semi-serious thought. Would it be worthwhile pedagogically to go over a case like conceptual analyses of expressions like “visited a state” in an intro class before getting to things like knowledge or justice or virtue or causation? I’m not sure. In the meantme, here’s a map of the states I’ve visited under a very tight conception of ‘visit’.
You can build your own such map here.
Thanks to Allan Hazlett for, perhaps inadvertently, raising the conceptual issues here, and Kelly in Kansas for the map.