A Reply to Varzi

I know the blog has been slow as of late.  Instead of a real post, I’m here to report good news! The Philosophical Quarterly accepted my paper “Antisymmetry and Non-Extensional Mereology”. It’s a response to Achille Varzi’s recent defense of extensionality  “The Extensionality of Parthood and Composition” also in PQ.  Earlier bits of this paper appeared on this blog here.  I owe a big thanks to many for comments on this paper including Achille, Jc, Andrew, Colin, Don Baxter, Paul Hovda, and Reed Solomon.

A final version will be posted soon.

Updated Mereology

For those who haven’t noticed, Achille Varzi has substantially updated his SEP entry on Mereology. The new entry is a much more complete treatment of supplementation and complementation principles, and importantly different formulations of sums and fusions.  (Some of this was pointed out in Hovda’s recent paper in JPL).

There is also an updated discussion on antisymmetry in mereology. My favorite new sentence:

On the one hand, some authors maintain that the relationship between an object and the stuff it is made of provides a perfectly ordinary example of symmetric parthood.

He has also included an interesting discussion of vague objects and the fuzzification of mereology using Kleene and Lukasciewicz semantics. All very relevant to my dissertation, and all very interesting.  More to come…

Spandrels is Out!

Jc Beall’s Spandrels of Truth is finally out. Having read a couple draft versions I can truly say that this book is worth your money. It’s a great introduction to some non-classical options in treating the semantic paradoxes — and the problems that arise. It’s easily the most conservative/modest/plausible(?) version of dialetheism I’ve ever seen.  Perhaps most exciting is that he essentially solves the “just true” objection to dialetheism. As a bonus: it also includes a much more accessible discussion of Hartry Field’s recent view.

You should buy it. Oh, and click here for 20% off.

The Evils of WYSIWYG

Good article here: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

PGR

The PGR hit the fan internet today, and UConn made the list in some specialty rankings:

• Philosophical Logic
  
• Philosophy of Mathematics
  
• Mathematical Logic
• Early Modern: 18th Century
• Philosophy of Mind
• Feminist Phil.
• Chinese Phil.

In the italicized subjects, we were unranked last year.  We have been ranked in Phil. Logic before, almost exclusively due to Jc.  This year, I’m particularly happy to see Philosophy of Mathematics on the list.  No doubt, this is due to our hiring Marcus.  We also made the Mathematical Logic list, partly due to the formation of the PM Logic Group with the Mathematics and Linguistics departments.  Early Modern recognition is almost certainly due to Don Baxter’s careful new book on Hume. I’m also glad to see that Chinese Philosophy made the jump from “Also Strong” to Group 2 with Duke and Hawaii.

Specialty rankings are, of course, heavily dependent on whether the chosen evaluators really are “experts” in the field. And given the confusion between Philosophical Logic and Philosophy of Logic (compare: Mathematical Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics), there is reason not to take these rankings as gospel.  However, it is clear that UConn’s program has been making some improvements, and we can only expect more good things.

New Website

I’ve just finished tweaking my new homepage.  Please come by and visit here:

http://homepages.uconn.edu/~ajc05009

The page has a lot of the same info I’ve had on this page for quite a while.  The blog will remain here at WordPress, although it will probably be integrated into the new site at some point. I’d love any comments and suggestions for improvements.

The page was designed by my brother-in-law Penn, who is a budding graphic designer. So a big thanks to him for all the help.

Arche, UConn, and the best places to do Logic

First things first. UConn has apparently made a reasonable jump in the dubious-but-whatever Leiter rankings. I still think we’re better than rated, but at least we’re among the “most dramatic improvements”. Anyway, with the formation of the UConn Logic Group, I think we have become one of the best places to study philosophical logic in the US. Let’s hope the specialty rankings reflect that.

I’ve also just come back from an extremely enjoyable trip to St. Andrews. It was a whirlwind! I arrived Friday, and Sunday, Monday, Tuesday were all-day workshops.

The first was alethic pluralism; and we got a lot accomplished. We systematically attacked some of the major issues facing a pluralist account of truth. It was, on the whole, interesting discussion. Some of which was lead by none other than Crispin Wright. It was a pleasure to finally meet him. I also had a chance to meet and chat with Stephen Read.

The second was two days worth of the logical consequence workshop. It’s good to see Arche returning to its roots: logic. The line-up was incredible. The big names: Jc, Marcus, Stephen Read, Crispin Wright, Peter Milne, Graham Priest. I got to meet so many great young philosophers too. Ole Hjortland, Julien Murzi, Elia Zardini, Michael De, Dirk Kindermann, Ira Kiourti, Ricki Bliss, Yuri Cath, Patrick Allo, Ralf Bader, Paula Sweeney, and many more.

The FLC project is shaping up to be one of the most exciting research projects in a long time. The kickoff workshop proved that the place will be buzzing with good work in the next 3.5 years. There were some great moments. Here are some of my favorites:

“You’re doing to truth what the U.S. did to Iraq!”

Even better:

“That’s like going out in the rain, taking off all your clothes, kicking yourself in the balls, and claiming you’ve got classical logic!”

“If you leave your socks on, you’re an intuitionist.”

“Yes, but if you have double sock elimination, you’re back to classical logic.”