San Francisco APA

In just a couple days I am headed to San Francisco for the APA. The timing is good in that I will have almost entirely recovered from my trip to Scotland by then (recovered in the sense of getting back to a normal amount of sleep which takes place during the right periods for the time zone I am in, etc.) The timing is bad in that, as soon as I am easing back into my normal work routine here, I am heading off for another conference. Of course, the silver lining to that cloud is that it reminds me that I like my work so much that the major downside to attending a conference is that I don't get to spend as much time actually working as I'd like.

If you will be at the San Francisco APA, and want to hear me talk about Cognitivism about intentions (roughly, the view that intentions are at least partially constituted by beliefs), you should come see my session on Thursday, April 1st, at 2:00 pm.

Reid Conference: Talks I Saw

I just got back from a week in Scotland, where I attended a fantastic conference on Thomas Reid.

In this post, I am just going to give a list of all the talks I saw, and actually write up more about some specific talks later (note: for many of the conference sessions, I had difficult choices about which talk to attend, and I also left the conference a day early, if that gives you any indication of how much was going on at this conference):

• Thomas Reid in the History of Moral Thought (James Harris)
• Thomas Reid's Experimentum Crucis (Todd Buras)
• Thomas Reid Between Externalism and Internalism (René van Woudenberg)
• Dugald Stewart on Innate Ideas and the Origin of Knowledge (Emanuele Levi Mortera)
• An Open Revolt against the Authority of Reid: Thomas Brown and the Developments of Common Sense Philosophy (Christina Paoletti)
• The Enkinaesthetic Foundation for the Development of Reidian Artificial Signs (Susan Stuart)
• Reid's Assault on the Theory of Ideas (Lewis Powell)
• Thomas Reid and the Moral Philosophy of Samuel Stanhope Smith (Bradford Bow)
• Thomas Reid in the US: a Potato-Pop-Gun? (Jean-Marie Chevalier)
• Direct Realism and The Infinite Divisibility of Time in Thomas Reid (James Bruce)
• Reid's Theory of Language (David Alexander)
• What Kind of Realism? Reid on Aesthetic Response (Laurent Jaffro)
• Reid on Consciousness (Dialogue between Rebecca Copenhaver and Udo Thiel)
• Reid on Virtuous Habits, Belief, and Moral Responsibility (Esther Kroeker)
• Reid and His Fellow Scots on Moral Foundations (Phyllis Vandenberg)
• Instinctive Exertions and the Conception of Power (Chris Lindsay)
• Reid on the Moral Faculty (Keith Lehrer)
• Reid on Acquired Perception (Rebecca Copenhaver)
• Four Questions About Acquired Perception (James Van Cleve)

More Presentation Excitement!

Five Things:

First, I added a "widget" to the right that is a list of all my upcoming presentations, so if you are keen to know about my upcoming presentations, that is a good place to find out.

Second, I found out today that my abstract was one of six accepted for the New England Colloquium in Early Modern. The paper I will be presenting there is a significant piece of my dissertation.

Third, I also added an entry for a Colloquium presentation at my home department (USC). The principle aim of this presentation will be for me to get experience in preparation for the job talks I will hopefully be giving next year when I am on the job market.

Fourth, because of all the travel I am already committed to (and the amount of work I am hoping to accomplish this summer), I had to pass up an opportunity to comment on a paper for the upcoming Hume conference in Antwerp.

Fifth, a number of people have asked me if/when I will be making more Robotic Dialogues. The answer is that I hope/intend to make more in the not-too-distant future, but obviously robot parodies of philosophy take a back seat to actually working on my dissertation and the like.

Upcoming Presentations

1. Later this month, I head to Aberdeen and Glasgow for the conference Thomas Reid: In His Time and Ours. Those who are curious should feel free to read the abstract for my paper.

2. I already posted about this, but my paper "Toward a Less Confident Cognitivism" was accepted for the Pacific APA in San Francisco in early April. The paper argues that Cognitivists about Intention can avoid the commitment that intending to do X involves believing that one will do X without sacrificing the explanatory power of their Cognitivist assumption.

3. I just heard back that my paper "How Can Hume Suppose What Cannot Even Be Conceived?" was accepted to the 5th Biennial Margaret Dauler Wilson Conference in Early Modern Philosophy (which will be held in June at UC Boulder).

Reid Conference Program

The annual conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy this year is a conference in honor of Thomas Reid. The conference, "Thomas Reid: From His Time To Ours", lasts for a whole week (March 21-26), and spans two different universities (Aberdeen and Glasgow).

The program for the conference has now been posted, and my first response is: wow, that is a lot of conference, and my second response is being excited about seeing my name on the program.

Anyway, this looks like it will be a pretty exciting conference, and I am glad my paper got accepted, giving me a pretty good excuse to go all the way to Scotland to attend it.

Upcoming Travel (and a terminological suggestion)

1. In a couple days I am heading to New York City for the Eastern APA. If anyone has suggestions of exciting looking sessions for me to check out, mention them in the comments.

2. I grew up in Chicago, so I always love an excuse to get back home, so I am also going to the Central APA in Chicago. I am also considering trying to attend the Epistemology shin-dig right before it.

3. A paper of mine was accepted to the upcoming Thomas Reid conference in Aberdeen and Glasgow in March. Those who are curious should feel free to read the abstract for my paper.

4. I already posted about this, but my paper "Toward a Less Confident Cognitivism" was accepted for the Pacific APA in San Francisco in March. The paper argues that Cognitivists about Intention can avoid the commitment that intending to do X involves believing that one will do X without sacrificing the explanatory power of their Cognitivist assumption.

5. I'd be really excited if, in casual conversation, philosophers started using the terms "semantricks" and "pragmagic" to suggest that some phil language shenanigans are going on with respect to a given view. Example uses: "You'd need some serious semantricks in order for that view to get the right truth-conditions." "Even though the semantic value of S is P, defenders of this view claim that an utterance of S pragmagically produces an assertion of Q."