One of the issues that arose out of the Barcelona workshop on relativism was that there is a lot of terminological confusion around the place, and it would be good to sort this all out. The point of this post is to try and set out in a systematic way what the logically possible options are, with the hope that it leads to some clarity down the line. We’re going to start off very abstract, but hopefully things will get more concrete shortly.
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If you haven’t looked at it for a while, it is worth checking out David Chalmers’ ever-expanding list of Philosophical Weblogs. There have been a few additions over the summer, and the list of grad students with philosophy blogs is now impressively long. If some smart person found a way of having an RSS feed for all of those blogs, those of us with RSS readers might do nothing but read blogs.

On a similar note, Geoff Pullum found an amusing cartoon from the _New Yorker_ about our noble practice.

The Sage School at Cornell is hiring this year. Here is “our job ad”:http://www.arts.cornell.edu/phil/search.html.

All the back issues of “Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic”:http://projecteuclid.org/Dienst/UI/1.0/JourNav?authority=euclid.ndjfl&type=past are now online through Project Euclid, which seems like a great resource. (Hat tip: John Dilworth.)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Michael Lynch and Simon Blackburn were been interviewed on NPR about truth. Their books were also “favourably reviewed in the New York Times”:http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDD113DF937A15754C0A9639C8B63.

“Robbie Williams”:http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~phljrgw/ won the “Young Philosophers Essay Competition”:http://www.arts.cornell.edu/philrev/ run by the Phil Review for his paper _Eligibility and Inscrutability_. Well done Robbie!

I’ve been away from the blog for a while, and obviously a lot has happened since then. I have two pieces of info about Hurricane Katrina to pass on.

First, Brian Leiter has (as so frequently) set up “a useful message board”:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/09/philosophy_facu.html#comments for information to be distributed. Many of the Tulane faculty and students have reported their new email addresses there. (The Tulane servers are out of action right now.) There is also info about most of (but sadly not yet all of) the safety of the philosophers who were based in the areas affected.

Second, Dominic McIver Lopes passes on the following message from the APA concerning its attempts to make some things easier for hurricane victims.

bq.. The Pacific Division paper submission deadline has been extended for APA members living in areas severely affected by the hurricane. Any members who contacted the APA National Office because storm damage prevented them from submitting by the September 1 deadline received new deadlines responsive to their individual situations.

Members in Gulf areas of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who have been unable to contact the National Office are invited to do so when communication mechanisms become available to them. Please contact Lindsay Palkovitz at lindspal@udel.edu, or (302) 831-1112, or by writing to her at: The American Philosophical Association, 31 Amstel Avenue, University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716-4797, if hurricane damage prevented you from submitting by the September 1 deadline.

The APA Pacific Division also will waive convention registration fees for individuals from Gulf area universities that are not able to return to normal operation this fall. Please contact Pacific Division Secretary-Treasurer Anita Silvers at asilvers@sfsu.edu for a registration fee waiver (or for other help you may require).

Jamie Dreier sent along a couple of interesting links that you might enjoy checking out.

The first is a radio show, WBUR’s “On Point”. It features Michael Lynch and Simon Blackburn talking about truth.

bq. “Truth on the Radio”:http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2005/08/20050817_b_main.asp

The second is a review by Jim Holt (who has written some good articles for _Slate_) of Harry Frankfurt’s _On Bullshit_ and Simon Blackburn’s _Truth: A Guide_ from the latest _New Yorker_.

bq. “Truth reviewed”:http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/050822crat_atlarge

With that I have to take another leave of the blog. I’m impersonating a jetsetting young professional for the next few weeks, spending time in Prague, London, Oxford (very briefly) and Barcelona. I’m looking forward to lots of philosophising and holidaying, two of my very favourite activities. Unless I post from the road, I’ll be back here in three weeks.

Over at “The Valve”:http://www.thevalve.org/go there is what promises to be a massive symposium on a recent collection of papers called “The Literary Wittgenstein”:http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/archive/C42/. (John Holbo reviewed the book “here”:http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=2661.) It looks like it should be a fun and informative debate, with several authors of pieces showing up to defend themselves from slings and arrows of commentators.

To my knowledge, my paper “Are You a Sim”:http://brian.weatherson.org/sims.pdf was the first paper in an academic philosophy journal to cite a computer game. So you’d think that game would develop a healthy respect for philosophy. Sadly, no, though they seem to have a well developed disrespect.

Via “David Chess”:http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20050812.html#20050815, here are the list of courses in the philosophy major for the “Sims 2: University expansion”:http://www.simplisticsims.co.uk/tutorials/classcat.html#philosophy.

bq. What is the Meaning of This?!
The Refrigerator Light: Proof vs. Faith
Old Dead Guys who Thought Stuff
Optimists and Other Idiots
Philosophy’s Place in the Neighborhood: Anywhere?
Existentialism: Depressing Yourself on Purpose
Who Controls the Pie Menu and Why?
Senior Project: Preparing For The Food Industry

And the preferred career paths for philosophy majors

# Slacker
# Culinary
# Paranormal

Those with better knowledge of my work habits, cooking skills and connection to entities without good scientific explanation (Red Sox, Aust cricket team etc) can say which I’ve ended up in.

I’m off to sunny Minneapolis for a few days, so probably little posting will be done here. The silly talk thread below seems to keep growing and growing however, so you might want to check back in for the latest stories.

“Shieva Kleinschmidt”:http://emiratio.typepad.com/blog/ pointed me to Cosmic Variance’s discussion of “silly talk about science”:http://cosmicvariance.com/2005/07/24/silly-talk-about-science/. The thread contains lots of stories fromo scientists consisting of the silliest things people have said to them about science. So, what about a thread on the silliest things people have said to you about philosophy, or silliest philosophical claims you’ve heard made?

This could be a slightly more interesting thread than the science thread. After all, it’s unlikely that the silliest claim about science a scientist will have heard will have come from another scientist. On the other hand, making silly philosophical claims is an occupational hazard of real live hard-working philosophers. (Unless, as Austin would have added, it is their occupation.) Certainly some of my metaphysical views are pretty odd – though at least I don’t deny the existence of tables chairs and beer mugs.

Here’s some news about a couple of online ethics journals that I’ve mentioned before. I haven’t been tracking it for OPP for some reason, but here’s the first three articles from the “Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy”:http://www.jesp.org/

bq. “Is Gibbard a Realist?”:http://www.jesp.org/articles/download.php?id=19, by Laura Schroeter and Francois Schroeter

bq. “Essentially Comparative Concepts”:http://www.jesp.org/articles/download.php?id=18, by Jonathan Dancy

bq. “The Good, the Bad, and the Blameworthy”:http://www.jesp.org/articles/download.php?id=17, by Neil Levy

And “Studies in the History of Ethics”:http://www.historyofethics.org/ has a “call for papers on The Ethics of War and Peace in Historical Perspective”:http://www.historyofethics.org/cfp072005.html, which is excerpted below the fold.
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