Below the fold is a letter Elizabeth Lee sent along about a possible closure of a philosophy department in Budapest, along with “a petition to sign protesting the closure”:http://www.petitiononline.com/hpselte/. I haven’t been able to independently verify everything in the letter, but everything I have looked at has checked out.
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Michael Otsuka sent me the following message that I wanted to circulate more widely (with his permission). He refers to a letter of Phil Gaspar’s that has been circulating and which I’ve repasted below the fold.

bq. I’m sure that a number of those who plan to attend the APA meeting in San Francisco would like to know whether they will need to cross a picket line to do so. Phil Gasper has recently circulated an email in which he says that there certainly will be a picket line during the meeting. The email from the APA Pacific committee (which you posted on your web page on March 9) says, by contrast, that there will not be a picket line (unless the dispute between the union and hotel management escalates between now and the end of March). As far as I can tell, these contrasting claims rest on a disagreement as to what constitutes a picket line. I believe that the APA committee understands a picket line to be the line that workers would form, would not cross, and would request others not to cross, if they went on strike. (They are not on strike at the moment.) I believe that Gasper, by contrast, also includes picketing by union members in the absence of a strike as an instance of a picket line. Such picketing would presumably occur at the same time that other union members were inside the hotel and working. Gasper believes that one or the other form of picketing will certainly occur during the meeting.

I agree with Michael, and I think both the union and Professor Gaspar are being less than perfectly clear with their terminology. In my idiolect, as I’m sure in many others, _picket line_ is a term with a quite definite meaning, namely a line that the union declares all supporters should not cross. Unless the situation deteriorates, there won’t be such a line at the Westin, because the workers will still be working there. (If there were a picket line in my sense, there couldn’t possibly be union workers inside the line.) So while I support the boycott, and won’t be staying at the Westin or buying anything from them, I don’t believe that the _don’t cross picket lines_ rule prevents one attending the conference.

Professor Gaspar’s letter below the fold.
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_Philosophical Investigations_ paragraph 98

bq. [I]t is clear that every sentence in our language ‘is in order as it is’.

From the _Palo Alto Daily News_ as quoted by “Geoff Pullum”:http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001973.html.

bq. Generating $66 million in sales revenue last year, Kopacz estimates that a larger dealership with a freeway billboard could generate $130 to $140 million in sales.

I’m actually in sympathy with what Wittgenstein is doing in paragraphs 98ff, namely opposing Frege/Sider style nihilism about vagueness, but he makes a bit of a meal of his statement of the position. (Which I guess helps to prove the point.) Whatever else we may say about sentences with “stunningly inept modifiers” like this one, they are not “in order as they are”. They aren’t truth-valueless, but that’s hardly the only way to be out of order.

I just wanted to echo a recommendation that H. E. Baber made in the comments below.

bq. I’d say just do it: if you’re committed to staying at a fancy hotel close by the Sir Francis Drake is very close by, commended by the hotel workers’ union for signing their “me too” agreement. It isn’t a big hassle to switch, you lose no money canceling out on the Westin, the Drake is cheaper, and changing your reservations is virtually free virtue.

The Drake rooms also, I believe, have complementary wi-fi. (At least it says this on their booking page.) For an added bonus, the Drake has “doormen in beefeater uniforms”:http://www.sirfrancisdrake.com/sfdconc/index.html. On the downside, I can’t believe there is anything the union is protesting more heavily than making the staff wear beefeater uniforms. So maybe it isn’t entirely free virtue. But it is where all the Kewl Kids will be this APA – or at least all the Kewl Kids who like staying at fancy hotels.

For anyone who wants to change, “here is the hotels.com link”:http://www.hotels.com/processSearch.do?inout=&CIYear=2005&COYear=2005&searchID=AC102643-89D2-E910-28F2-7DE52B90677F&paging=1&stateCode=CA&countryCode=USA&state=&numrooms=1&numadults=2&numchildren=0&usertypedcity=&userdropdownselection=&myrecentsearchdestination=&destination=8d4456fb-4038-4a55-bcbe-aa544ab549ad%7Ccc2ece3c-1604-43af-9386-12d602b423e3%7CSan+Francisco%2C+CA%2C+USA%7C1&sortBy=PROXIMITY&origdest=8d4456fb-4038-4a55-bcbe-aa544ab549ad%7Ccc2ece3c-1604-43af-9386-12d602b423e3%7CSan+Francisco%2C+CA%2C+USA%7C1&CIMonth=3&CIDay=23&COMonth=3&CODay=27&hotelName=&newLandmarkDestID=a1186333-7726-179e-d992-11c5f7907fe0&z_property=ALL&amenity_0=on&refineSearchButton.x=11&refineSearchButton.y=8. The evil Westin is at the top, but “the Drake”:http://www.hotels.com/property.do?mtnHotelID=6961&page=info&numadults=2&numchildren=0&numrooms=1&CIDay=23&CIMonth=3&CIYear=2005&CODay=27&COMonth=3&COYear=2005&z_property=ALL&gds=3&thisPageNumber=1&qKey=SA308631502612&roomTypeCode=002 is only a few doors down. Further down the page is the King George, where I stayed last time. It is a little cheaper and rather, er, cozy. But from memory they were selling tickets to ball games from the front desk which I think counts for a lot.

I just wanted to echo a recommendation that H. E. Baber made in the comments below.

bq. I’d say just do it: if you’re committed to staying at a fancy hotel close by the Sir Francis Drake is very close by, commended by the hotel workers’ union for signing their “me too” agreement. It isn’t a big hassle to switch, you lose no money canceling out on the Westin, the Drake is cheaper, and changing your reservations is virtually free virtue.

The Drake rooms also, I believe, have complementary wi-fi. (At least it says this on their booking page.) For an added bonus, the Drake has “doormen in beefeater uniforms”:http://www.sirfrancisdrake.com/sfdconc/index.html. On the downside, I can’t believe there is anything the union is protesting more heavily than making the staff wear beefeater uniforms. So maybe it isn’t entirely free virtue. But it is where all the Kewl Kids will be this APA – or at least all the Kewl Kids who like staying at fancy hotels.

For anyone who wants to change, “here is the hotels.com link”:http://www.hotels.com/processSearch.do?inout=&CIYear=2005&COYear=2005&searchID=AC102643-89D2-E910-28F2-7DE52B90677F&paging=1&stateCode=CA&countryCode=USA&state=&numrooms=1&numadults=2&numchildren=0&usertypedcity=&userdropdownselection=&myrecentsearchdestination=&destination=8d4456fb-4038-4a55-bcbe-aa544ab549ad%7Ccc2ece3c-1604-43af-9386-12d602b423e3%7CSan+Francisco%2C+CA%2C+USA%7C1&sortBy=PROXIMITY&origdest=8d4456fb-4038-4a55-bcbe-aa544ab549ad%7Ccc2ece3c-1604-43af-9386-12d602b423e3%7CSan+Francisco%2C+CA%2C+USA%7C1&CIMonth=3&CIDay=23&COMonth=3&CODay=27&hotelName=&newLandmarkDestID=a1186333-7726-179e-d992-11c5f7907fe0&z_property=ALL&amenity_0=on&refineSearchButton.x=11&refineSearchButton.y=8. The evil Westin is at the top, but “the Drake”:http://www.hotels.com/property.do?mtnHotelID=6961&page=info&numadults=2&numchildren=0&numrooms=1&CIDay=23&CIMonth=3&CIYear=2005&CODay=27&COMonth=3&COYear=2005&z_property=ALL&gds=3&thisPageNumber=1&qKey=SA308631502612&roomTypeCode=002 is only a few doors down. Further down the page is the King George, where I stayed last time. It is a little cheaper and rather, er, cozy. But from memory they were selling tickets to ball games from the front desk which I think counts for a lot.

I was hopinig to not be one of those people who teach Wittgenstein by going into detail about what thoughts they’d had on a single paragraph. So today in class we managed to at least start on paragraph 2 after spending only _almost_ all the class on paragraph 1.

It would be nice to spend a large part of the APA at the “Starlight”:http://www.harrydenton.com/homepage.htm. But I’d also like to have money left when I come back home. It’s a tough call.

“Liverpool”:http://football.guardian.co.uk/Match_Report/0,1527,1434222,00.html?gusrc=rss is through to the quarter finals of the Champions League! Now if only they could play this well in the Premiership.

“John Perry on religion and law”:http://philosophytalk.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/random_thoughts.html – It’s rather nice to think of Justice Thomas looking out at the one about not covetting they neighbor’s wife as he ponders deep issues. Of course, he tends to be a strict constructionist, and its dubious that any of the women on the porno flicks he liked to watch were wives of neighbors. So maybe it doesn’t bother him.

If you’re a baseball geek you’ll love this post by David Pinto on “graphical representation of range”:http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/008526.php. Half of me wants the Red Sox to offer Pinto a job – the other half hopes he’ll keep putting out stuff like this for free.

The server for the poll was down for large chunks of the day, which might explain why we got so few votes in. Anyhow, 24 votes for unconditional move, 14 for moving if recovering the cancellation fee, and 16 for not moving. Thanks to everyone who participated.

It transpires the APA Pacific committee has looked into moving the conference away from San Francisco and decided against it. Below the fold I’m posting the full letter explaining the move. Here’s the core paragraph.

bq. While acknowledging that neither option is without its costs and critics, the Executive Committee concludes after difficult deliberation that it would be worse, and most likely infeasible, to move the meetings from San Francisco to San Jose. Under the very best scenario we have been able to envisage, a significant number of participants would be considerably harmed or unable to come at all, and/or would lose substantial amounts already expended on prepaid San Francisco travel or accommodations.

The letter was sent to everyone on the main program so I guess many people saw this before I did, but for those of us who aren’t on the main program, here’s the full letter, which goes into quite a bit of detail about what steps the APA took before making a decision, and what is going on vis a vis the dispute at the moment.
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I added a quick poll to the right hand column to see get reader’s reactions to the letter posted below. Obviously this is *very* unscientific, and voting in the poll should not be taken as a substitute for writing to the APA encouraging them to not hold the Pacific at a boycotted hotel, but I was interested in getting a sense of how people here felt about the proposed move. (I didn’t mention this at first, but I should add that the poll is set up so each person, or at least each IP address, can only vote once. So don’t try voting hundreds of time to move your preferred option up!)

I thought it would be useful to pass on this letter by Phillip Gaspar that “Brian Leiter just posted”:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/possible_change.html.

bq.. Dear Colleague:

The American Philosophical Association is currently considering moving its Pacific Division meeting, scheduled for the end of this month, from the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco, to a hotel in San Jose, because of a continuing labor dispute.

The Westin St. Francis is one of a group of San Francisco hotels that has been involved in a dispute over a new contract with its employees since last August. Hotel profit margins have increased in recent years, but management wants to cut health care benefits and grant only minimal wage increases that will not keep up with inflation. In the fall, the hotels locked out their workers for several weeks and threatened to cancel their health benefits, only relenting after considerable public pressure and direct intervention by San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom. Nonetheless, by the time the lockout ended, many hotel workers had already received eviction and foreclosure notices. Since then, negotiations with the union representing the hotel workers, UNITE HERE Local 2, have stalled.

In the face of management intransigence, Local 2 has called for the public to boycott all hotels involved in the dispute, including the Westin St. Francis. In response, several conferences and meetings have been moved from San Francisco to other locations in recent weeks, including the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Not only is the boycott still likely to be in place by the time of the APA meeting but according to the union, the labor situation is unstable and could deteriorate further. Our meeting could therefore very possibly be disrupted. (For more information on the labor dispute see “http://www.unitehere2.org/”:http://www.unitehere2.org/ and “http://www.hotelworkersunited.org/”:http://www.hotelworkersunited.org/.)

If the APA Pacific Division meeting is held at the Westin St. Francis as scheduled, it is likely that a significant number of people due to participate in or planning to attend the conference, will feel duty-bound to honor the union boycott and cancel their appearances.

Some APA members will also feel an obligation to join union informational pickets outside the hotel calling on others to respect the boycott. If the meeting goes ahead at the St. Francis it is therefore likely that the program will be much weaker than planned and the outcome will be divisive.

While there are certainly logistical difficulties in moving the meeting at this late date, the APA is currently engaged in negotiations with the Fairmont hotel in San Jose, which may be prepared to pay the conference cancellation fee at the St. Francis.

It is almost as easy to get to San Jose from the San Francisco and Oakland airports, as it is to get to San Francisco. Hotel reservations at the St. Francis can still be canceled with no penalty. Some people may already have made non-refundable reservations at other hotels in San Francisco, but it may be possible for the APA to consider setting up a fund to compensate people in this situation if the meeting is moved, particularly graduate students.

If the APA is able to move the meeting venue to San Jose, we will not only be able to honor the union boycott, but we will be much more likely to have a successful conference than if we remain in San Francisco. The Pacific Division is currently contacting people on the conference program to see whether they would support a move. If you agree that we should move the meeting, please contact the APA Pacific Division officers and the APA executive director as soon as possible to let them know this. Their email addresses are listed below.

Please forward this message to others who you know will be attending the APA Pacific Division meeting. (Apologies to anyone who receives this more than once.)

Sincerely,

Phil Gasper
Professor of Philosophy
Notre Dame de Namur University
Belmont, CA 94002

apa_execdirector at UDel.Edu
dreyfus at cogsci.berkeley.edu
jeffrie.murphy at asu.edu
jannas at u.arizona.edu
asilvers at sfsu.edu
normore at humnet.ucla.edu
sgoering at u.washington.edu
mejubien at ucdavis.edu
ndsmith at lclark.edu
dom.lopes at ubc.ca

I’d been loosely following the “Heart of Philosophy”:http://www.heartofphilosophy.com/about.html events through “Melbourne Philosopher”:http://melbournephilosopher.blogspot.com/2005/03/heart-of-philosophy-event-on-beauty.html but I was pretty surprised when I opened up the front page of “the newspaper”:http://theage.com.au today and saw a link to “an article on pub philosophy”:http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/03/08/1110160824974.html. When I was at Syracuse there was plenty of philosophy in the pub, well at least there were plenty of philosophers in pubs, but we never got talked about in the newspapers. I’m not sure what I’d think about the content at these events, but I’m pleased to see this level of interest in philosophy being generated and responded to.