A few quick thoughts while pondering the remarkable recuperative qualities of Scottish merchandise and wondering whether it’s acceptable to leave party’s in daylight on account of the unreasonably early sunrises here.
Very casual observation has convinced me that there’s even less chance than I thought there was two days ago of giving a general theory of humour. Just watching what things are funny in everyday life seems to suggest that they really have nothing at all in common. Josh suggested that maybe a massively disjunctive theory would be possible, and it might be, though I bet any such theory I tried to write would overgenerate dramatically.
I presented the “truer paper”:http://brian.weatherson.org/ttt.pdf at Arch{e’} yesterday and there was widespread feeling that Cian’s objection was rather more pressing than I was prepared to acknowledge. Cian’s objection is that the inference rule A, ¬B therefore A is truer than B is plausible, but it is inadmissible in my system. Maybe I’ll have to write something up specifically on why it’s not an absolute disaster that this is inadmissible in my theory.
Arch{e’} has been so good for my workrate that I’ve already written a paper while here. It’s my reply to John Hawthorne’s recent paper on Humeans in _No{u^}s_. Admittedly it’s just a tidying up of an old blogpost, and I don’t have the references and it reads more like a first draft than the second draft it really should be, and some of the attributions might be mistaken (I was doing some of the credits from memory) but still it’s a draft and that’s a good thing.
bq. “Humeans aren’t out of their minds, unless everyone is”:http://brian.weatherson.org/jhdh.pdf
Here’s a picture Tamar took of me in northern Hungary.
bq. !- http://brian.weatherson.org/hungary.jpeg 192×144!
I’m not the most photogenic person in the world I’m afraid, so this might be the last photo of me to go on here for a while.
Matt Haber (UC Davis) has sent me the following announcement about a “Philosophy of Biology Workshop”:http://www.ishpssb.org/workshop2004/ in San Francisco this September. For anyone who is interested there are more details at that link or below the fold.
The 2004 ISHPSSB Future Directions Workshop (FDISH) will be an excellent opportunity for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, post-docs and young faculty interested in philosophy of biology. We have an interactive schedule planned with great faculty participants, and hope that you will strongly encourage those in your department with a professional interest in philosophy of biology to apply to attend our workshop.
FDISH is structured around four invited speakers, various small-group roundtable discussions, practical workshops, and planned, but informal, meetings with faculty from around the greater San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere.
The workshop features talks by Jay Odenbaugh (Lewis and Clark College), Jason Robert (Arizona State University), Kim Sterelny (The Australian National University and Victoria University, Wellington), and Edna Suárez Diaz (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), as well as other faculty participants.
The application deadline is July 14th, so please get those applications in as soon as possible! Furthermore, we have funds available for graduate student travel reimbursement (though students must be ISHPSSB members to qualify). “Please apply online”:http://www.ishpssb.org/workshop2004/registration.htm.
The philosophy of biology is intertwined closely with the history and sociology of biology, and so graduate training in these areas should also be integrated. As such, FDISH has invited and seeks scholars and graduate students of these, and other, disciplines to join us.