In lieu of actual posting, this is another links post. This time it is to two interesting discussion threads.

Over on Certain Doubts, Ralph Wedgwood started an interesting discussion on an “Epistemic Newcomb Problem”:http://fleetwood.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=641. I remember Kieran Setiya discussing a similar problem here at Cornell, and people’s intuitions about the case were all over the shop.

And at PeaSoup, Kris McDaniel launched a very long discussion on “the relation between preference and desire”:http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2006/12/desire_bleg.html.

(Cross-posting from LWBM.)

Ralph Wedgwood has a fun case – an Epistemic Newcomb Problem – over at Certain Doubts.

Also well worth checking out: the online manuscript of Tim Williamson‘s new book ‘The Philosophy of Philosophy’. (Hat tip: Dave Chalmers.)

There’s an interesting “comments thread at Certain Doubts”:http://fleetwood.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/?p=638#comments about Google and blind review. There’s a worry that papers are blindly refereed because referees will use google to find a draft version of the paper on your website. I think all the folks arguing that papers should be kept off websites before refereeing are making a serious mistake. There are many advantages to having papers up on a website (it generates feedback, it provides visitors an idea of what you are doing, it establishes a sort of priority, etc) and the potential disadvantage that a referee might (although they shouldn’t) Google the paper to find out who the author is and hence might (although they shouldn’t) use that information in making their decision is pretty small. This is especially true for people looking for work; papers on websites are your friend, often a crucial friend.

“Wo”:http://www.umsu.de/wo/ has a string of good new posts up. I always found it a little tricky to get much done in Canberra when the temperatures got too high, but this doesn’t seem to be slowing him down.

Finally, “David Chalmers links”:http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2006/12/discussions_els.html to many interesting discussions around the web on, largely, Chalmers-ish topics. I used to do more of this, and I should get back to doing so. But it’s all that blind refereeing that’s holding me up!

I just saw that the latest “Philosophical Perspectives”:http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/phpe/20/1 is out. I’m rather happy that my little “magnets paper”:http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2006.00116.x is in print. That’s in part because it is a paper that arose out of my Lewis seminar, and I’m happy that’s already led to one in print conclusion. And in part because I think the puzzle is so interesting.

The puzzle is probably simpler than I thought it was. (I’m indebted here to conversations with Robbie Williams.) If M1 and M2 are distinct fundamental vector-valued magnitudes, then intuitively (a) the direction of x’s M1 is not intrinsic to x, and the direction of x’s M2 is not intrinsic to x, but (b) the angle between x’s M1 and x’s M2 is intrinsic to x. That strongly suggests that a property that x has in virtue of two non-intrinsic properties it has is itself an intrinsic property. It is rather a strong restriction on theories of intrinsicness that it leave this open as a possibility. If I hadn’t thought about vectors, I would never have thought this was a possibility. But it is, and now I have a little paper in print saying why it is.

There look to be many other excellent papers in the volume, so when I’m finished grading, reviewing, meeting deadlines etc, I’ll try to say something about them. That may not be soon.

If I hadn’t been a philosopher, I would probably have been a lawyer. I thought one of the big advantages of my actual career move was that I got considerably more flexibility in my writing. That I could, if I so chose, write out papers in rhyming verse. (Or engage in obscure Joycean word games in probability papers, for example.) I didn’t think I could do that, for example, in writing legal briefs. It turns out “I was wrong”:http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/humor/grinch.asp. You can submit a legal brief in Seussian verse after all. Happy news for the season!

Over the last two and a bit years, I’ve had the most remarkable run as a sports fan. Three of my favourite (four) teams have pulled out huge victories when this looked absolutely impossible. The Red Sox rallied from 3-0 down to the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, Liverpool came back from 3-0 down at half-time of the Champions League final, and now Australia pulled out almost the “unlikeliest victory of the lot”:http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ausveng/engine/current/match/249223.html. On one of the flattest pitches in living memory, England went from 1/59 overnight to all out for 129. Warne bowled about as well as I’ve ever seen him bowl. I was really only watching because I thought even in a dull draw, he’d be worth watching. And it was a masterclass.

Anyway, if you see a few cricket photos turn up in the upper right corner, that’s why. One of them, the one where the batsman looks one way, the ball is the other way, and the off-bail is airborne, is from a split-second after Warne bowled Petersen around his legs. Great stuff. There’s nothing else is sport quite like top-rate leg-spin bowling, and getting to watch Warne, perhaps for the last time, is a real luxury.