Karen Bennett (Philosophy, Princeton) reports that Harry Frankfurt is scheduled to be on _The Daily Show_, presumably promoting his book “On Bullshit”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691122946/ref=nosim/caoineorg-20. The date is now set to be March 14, though that doesn’t seem to be absolutely certain. Non-philosophers should feel free to be less overjoyed with excitement at a philosopher getting this much attention, but I think it’s rather fun, and that episode won’t end up being one of the _Daily Shows_ that I miss – or fastforward through the interview.

When Andy and I wrote the “pranks paper”:http://brian.weatherson.org/prank.pdf we believed that we were dealing with purely fictional cases. We didn’t believe, that is, that there could be wrongdoing that actually increased utility. “David Killoren reports”:http://eg.typepad.com/eg/2005/02/an_invasive_and.html on a guy who attempted to actually carry out the wrongful utility-maximising plan. The guy is an artist, so he doesn’t explictly talking about doing wrong for the sake of utility, but doing wrong for the sake of beauty. Given the broad conception of utility Andy and I are working with, this is less of a distinction than it may first appear.

“Richard Chappell”:http://feeds.feedburner.com/PhilosophyEtCetera?m=136 argues that David’s case isn’t a counterexample to consequentialism because it should be solvable by whatever solves the liar paradox. I’m not entirely sure I understand the response, but think I don’t think it’s correct. The guy did perform an act, and it either was the right thing to do or it wasn’t. And it sure seems to me that there are possible contexts (whether or not the actual world is one of them) where the actions make for an all-things-considered better world but it is still a wrong act. Anyway, it’s worth reading “David’s piece”:http://eg.typepad.com/eg/2005/02/an_invasive_and.html to get the full background to see if you agree.

Last year I went to UC Riverside for a conference on Howard Wettstein’s book The Magic Prism which was lots of fun, and now UC Riverside is having a conference on Gary Watson’s book Agency and Answerability. The keynote speakers are Michael Bratman and Stephen Darwall, and it looks like it should be a great occasion. If you’re in the area (broadly construed) it’s highly recommended.

I’m pleased to announce that Cornell University has hired “Matti Eklund”:http://spot.colorado.edu/~eklundm/home.htm.

Matti graduated from MIT in 2000 and has in just a few years produced some of the most important contemporary work on metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of logic. His work on how many philosophically important concepts may be constituted by inconsistent inference rules has opened up new lines of inquiry in personal identity and vagueness, and helped immensely in clarifying some traditional debates about theories of truth. And as a quick glance at his “online papers”:http://spot.colorado.edu/~eklundm/papers.htm shows, he continues to be incredibly productive, extending his work into meta-ethics and debates about the foundations of metaphysics. Right now there is no department in the world that can match Cornell’s collection of young “lemmings”:http://tar.weatherson.org/archives/004008.html (at least if you precisify _young_ in such a way that Rutgers doesn’t beat us;) and Matti is a significant addition to our department. We are _very_ pleased to welcome him on board!

I’m pleased to announce that Cornell University has hired “Matti Eklund”:http://spot.colorado.edu/~eklundm/home.htm.

Matti graduated from MIT in 2000 and has in just a few years produced some of the most important contemporary work on metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of logic. His work on how many philosophically important concepts may be constituted by inconsistent inference rules has opened up new lines of inquiry in personal identity and vagueness, and helped immensely in clarifying some traditional debates about theories of truth. And as a quick glance at his “online papers”:http://spot.colorado.edu/~eklundm/papers.htm shows, he continues to be incredibly productive, extending his work into meta-ethics and debates about the foundations of metaphysics. Right now there is no department in the world that can match Cornell’s collection of young “lemmings”:http://tar.weatherson.org/archives/004008.html (at least if you precisify _young_ in such a way that Rutgers doesn’t beat us;) and Matti is a significant addition to our department. We are _very_ pleased to welcome him on board!

“David Chalmers”:http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2005/02/philosophers_an.html is looking for nominations for the 2004 _Philosophers’ Annual_. I’ve closed comments on this so comments can be consolidated at “Dave’s site”:http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2005/02/philosophers_an.html.

Huge “papers blog”:http://opp.weatherson.org/archives/004150.html today with the feature being six chapters of Peter Unger’s monumental new book, “All the Power in the World”:http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/unger/power/, forthcoming this year with OUP. Peter’s book has been many years in the making, and covers many of the most important issues at the foundations of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Well worth a look.

In other news, I read on “Jennifer Lackey’s website”:http://www.niu.edu/phil/~lackey/research.shtml that her paper _Learning from Words_ won the “Young Epistemologist Prize”:http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/EVENTS/EPIS2005/prize.html this year. Well done Jennifer! The “Rutgers Epistemology Conference”:http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/EVENTS/EPIS2005/ this year has a very strong lineup, to which I’m sure Jennifer’s paper will be an excellent addition. (The papers aren’t posted yet, but they apparently will be shortly.)

I’ve been meaning to post for days on my trip to Scotland. It was lots of fun, and very educational. I leadned about lots of interesting stuff that I planned to write about when I had a free hour or three and spare battery power in my brain. But that doesn’t seem to be happening, and if I let it wait any longer I won’t get around to thanking the people I should thank.

So thanks particularly to Patrick Greenough and Elia Zardini for arranging the vagueness workshop, and Albert Atkin for arranging the Glasgow trip. Thanks especially to Daniel for housing me while in St Andrews! If/when I get the brainpower, there are points to be written up expanding on and responding to things that Andrew McGonigal, Stephen Schiffer, Delia Graff, Gary Kemp and I’m sure many others made. (I have notes with more details on this, but clearing them up would be as hard as writing a proper post, which as you can see I’m putting off.) I always enjoy visiting Scotland, both from a work and pleasure standpoint, and hopefully it won’t be too long before I get back there.

Next stop on the never-ending tour, Princeton next Friday to reprise the vagueness talk – hopefully having incorporated points I learned from my ‘Scottish’ friends.

From Spencer Ackerman’s “latest post on TNR”:http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2561.

bq. I don’t mean to suggest that Arab-Kurdish disputes over the multi-contested city [Kirkuk] are principally economic, but they’re not _not_ economic. (Emphasis in original.)

This kind of phrasing, with an apparently ineliminable double negation, is fairly common, especially when discussing vagueness. My opinion is that this is a kind of metalinguistic negation; the stress on the second _not_ is the same as the stress on _like_ in _I don’t like cricket; I love it_. What is being denied here is that it’s proper to say the disputes are not economic. In this case it is improper because it implicates that they are not at all economic. In the vagueness cases it would be because it implicates something is determinately true. E.g. of a borderline smart person you can say _He’s not *not* smart_, with strong stress on the second _not_ and some stress on _smart_, meaning that it would be wrong to say he’s not smart.

From Spencer Ackerman’s “latest post on TNR”:http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2561.

bq. I don’t mean to suggest that Arab-Kurdish disputes over the multi-contested city [Kirkuk] are principally economic, but they’re not _not_ economic. (Emphasis in original.)

This kind of phrasing, with an apparently ineliminable double negation, is fairly common, especially when discussing vagueness. My opinion is that this is a kind of metalinguistic negation; the stress on the second _not_ is the same as the stress on _like_ in _I don’t like cricket; I love it_. What is being denied here is that it’s proper to say the disputes are not economic. In this case it is improper because it implicates that they are not at all economic. In the vagueness cases it would be because it implicates something is determinately true. E.g. of a borderline smart person you can say _He’s not *not* smart_, with strong stress on the second _not_ and some stress on _smart_, meaning that it would be wrong to say he’s not smart.