Not long ago, I wrote a short paper on musical performance. My interest in the topic was prompted by conversations with Cristyn and various musicians, and further prodded on by my old friend turned philosopher of art Christy Mag Uidhir. Such writing poses the risk that I'll look dilettante, but I am lucky to be in a department that recognizes publication as publication.

The paper has just now appeared in the British Journal of Aesthetics.

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I've posted a new draft of my paper on epistemic significance and natural curiousity.

In other news, Summer is hot.

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One of my first publications was a PSA paper about what I then called the problem of identical rivals. The 'problem' is that an apparent case of underdetermination might not involve any rival theories after all, if the would-be rivals were merely different formulations of the same theory. In a new paper co-authored with Greg Frost-Arnold, I've begun to think more proactively about dissolving would-be underdetermination in this way. I now think of it as the identical rivals response.

With Greg's permission, I've posted a draft of the paper. Comments are welcome.

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Rob Helpy-Chalk runs down the options for open access logic books, including forall x. He concludes, "Heck, the Magnus book looks like just the item. That was quick."

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Janet tagged me in another meme.*

THE RULES:
Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.

Give your picture a short title.

Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt."

Link back to this blog entry.

Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

I ruminated on this for a while, but all the cleverness has been squeezed out of me by interminable grading. So I drew this:


ARE YOU SURE IT'S A BARN?
(and not a cleverly disguised mule?)


This, of course, is one of the suggested t-shirts from my epistemology class. The rationale for including it in the passion quilt is this:

Philosophy cannot be an entirely abstract discipline. Its principles must apply to some instances, if it is to teach us anything at all. At the same time, philosophical examples can get out of hand. Carried too far, the obsession with examples is a round about way of being inapplicably abstract. As JL Austin once wrote, "over-simplification, schematization, and constant obsessive repetition of the same small range of jejune 'examples' are... far too common to be dismissed as an occasional weakness of philosophers."

I don't think that this is really what I am most passionate about students learning, but it is one lesson that I hope they do learn.

All well and good, but the clever reader will suspect that the drawing is just an excuse to make t-shirts with the clever motto on them. Indeed, I've made a Mule Barn Country t-shirt at Cafe Press; also a polo and a long-sleeved version.

Similarly, I've made the 'Evil Demons' shirt available in white and colour.


* Janet was flexible with the rules and so I will be, too. I won't tag anybody. As chain letters always say, this will probably have dire consequences.

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