I’m just back from the SOFIA conference on the metaphysics of epistemology, which was quite rewarding. More serious philosophy to follow soon, but first here are a few links to fun things from while I was away.

* A very interesting thread at PEA Soup on “whether APA interviews are worthwhile”:http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2007/01/is_the_eastern_.html. My short answer is _no_, not least because one opportunity cost of going to the APA is not going to the Boxing Day Test. I’m also pretty moved by the argument Gilbert Harman gives in that comments thread.

* Wo has “a nice quiz”:http://www.umsu.de/wo/archive/2007/01/13/A_Quiz on conditionals.

* Kieran Setiya likes Jarman’s “Wittgenstein”:http://ideasofimperfection.blogspot.com/2007/12/wittgenstein.html for reasons that can be shown not said. (Sorry…)

* “Clayton Littlejohn dissects”:http://claytonlittlejohn.blogspot.com/2007/01/god-delusion.html Alvin Platinga’s “review”:http://blog.johndepoe.com/?p=208 of Dawkins’ _The God Delusion_. Let me mention one technical point about something Clayton quotes from Plantinga. Plantinga says that if God is a necessary being, then the probability He exists is 1. I think that’s not right. In the relevant sense, the probability in question is epistemic probability, and the epistemic probability of a necessary truth can be arbitrarily low. Proof: For any (positive) value _x_, there is a true proposition whose probability is _x_. Let _p_ be such a proposition. The _epistemic_ probability of _Actually p_ is the same as the epistemic probability of _p_, which by hypothesis is _x_. So the epistemic probability of this necessary truth, _Actually p_, is _x_. But _x_ was an arbitrary positive value, so the probability of a necessary truth can be arbitrarily low.

* And Daniel Davies “continues his review”:http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2007/01/this-has-been-so-absurdly-trailed-it.html of _Freakonomics_.