Nottingham A Priori Workshop

More details on the forthcoming Nottingham A Priori Workshop (9th October) are now available, including the programme and information on how to register.

Attendance is free (though we do require advance registration), lunch, tea and coffee are provided, and the speakers are Anthony Eagle (Oxford), Jessica Brown (St Andrews), myself (Nottingham) and Michael Devitt (CUNY/Nottingham Special Professor).

A Priori Workshop

My colleague Greg Currie is organizing a workshop on the a priori, to take place here in Nottingham on October 9th.  Further details here.  Please contact Greg if you would like to attend.

The workshop is timed to coincide with the visit of Nottingham Special Professor Michael Devitt, whose forthcoming volume Putting Metaphysics First includes some work (check out the title of essay 13) attacking the a priori (a popular pastime of late).

There’s a NIP in the Air in Aberdeen

(Cross-posting from LWBM)

Some very big news for British philosophy.  From 1st September there will be a new philosophy research centre at Aberdeen founded by Crispin Wright.  Its provisional name is the Northern Institute of Philosophy.  The centre will have the following remit (with areas of envisaged mid-term focus in brackets):

  • Epistemology (formal epistemology, entitlement, epistemic externalism, perception)
  • Formal Logic, including the history of logic
  • Philosophy of Logic (logical consequence, the paradoxes, inferentialism and model-theory, the epistemology of logic and the a priori)
  • Philosophy of Language (rule-following, propositions, vagueness, semantics and pragmatics, contextualism and relativism, content externalism)
  • Philosophy of Mathematics (foundations, neo-logicism and structuralism)
  • Metaphysics (value, taste, meaning, intentionality, time and truth),
  • Philosophy of Mind (the metaphysics and epistemology of the self, rationality and rational explanation)
  • History of Analytical Philosophy, and its methods, scope and limits

A number of appointments are planned, including 2-3 Institute professors and 6 quarter-time professorial fellows.  There will also be funded PhD places and postdoc positions, as well as funding for networks and workshops.

Exciting times!

Philosophy Short and Tweet

This week I’ve been running a competition for the best Twitter tweet-length philosophical argument (that’s 140 characters or less), with the prize being kudos, respect and TAR airtime for the top tweet. It’s been so much fun reading the entries that I’m now sad it’s over.  There were 72 entries in total (and of course, I made my decision on idiosyncratic grounds such that nobody should feel offended in any way by not winning). 

I think the winner has to be Mark Steen (@marksteen), for making this great point with 57 characters to spare:

Ordinary objects are mereological sums. Objects can change parts, so sums can too.

I decided early on, given the nature of many of the entries, that I needed a separate category for comedy value, and in fact ended up with a number of other “special awards”.  I’ve put the full list of PSAT awards and the full list of entries online. Enjoy!

And of course, if you think you can do better …