Seriously

Apparently someone is ranking philosophy blogs and Philosophy Sucks! is ranked 12th…nice.

I was thinking about fantasy baseball today after watching Knocked up. I am not much of a sports fan so I started thinking about a philosphy version of this stuff. So, let’s say you were the chair of your won philosophy department. What would your fantasy department look like? Let’s say that you only get 10 faculty. My picks would be as follows

1. Kent Bach

2. David Rosenthal

3. Austen Clark

4. Stephen Neale

5. Michael Devitt

6. Bill Lycan

7. Stephan Darwall

8. Ned Block

9.  John Searle

10. Ruth Millikan

I guess we need some rules to, like points for books published and conference presentations…what would be your picks?

There is some interesting discussion of Kripke’s recent remarks by Jason Stanely over at Leiter’s page.  On the off chance you haven’t seen it, go check it out!

Here

But this is for real

Carnival here

There has been a lot happening out here in the real world lately (see my website for details). Here is a synopsis

1. I have a committee and a date to defend my dissertation! This is simultaneously exhilerating and terrifying…

2. My paper “The Metaphysical and Epistemic Impossibility of Moogles” has been accepted to appear in the forthcoming Final Fantasy and Philosophy volume…does this make me a super nerd?

3. I put some new tunes up at the Logical Form site…check them out! (Rumor has it that there may be a NC/DC reunion soon…

OK, I got to go, but I’ll be back…

I am off today to the Society for Philosophy and Psychology meeting in Philly where I will present Language, Thought, Logic, and Existence as a poster. I likely won’t get to the comments for a couple of days….but then again, that is an empirical matter! 🙂 

Here

Better late than Never!

They say that being crazy means repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results. Well, call me crazy ’cause even after a month of acrimonious debate and philosophical bullying from Richard C. I still think that he can be convinced by reason. Maybe after that we can work on his pompous arrogance…

At anyrate, he has set up a quick poll on our debate over at Philosophy, etc. If you have an opinion on the matter please go weigh in! 

UPDATE:

RC has put together a nice list of links detailing the back and forth between us, so if you are looking to get involved in the poll this is a good place to start (though I must voice agreement with GNZ when he wonders about the methodology of the poll…I mean it isn’t really a poll when you debate the respondants. I would prefer it if he would just let the posts speak for themselves)…I will reproduce it here.

1. RB’s Non-Physical Zombies parody argument, and my initial response: how to imagine zombies.

2. His replies: how not to imagine zombies and Beating an Undead Horse.

3. A paragraph in my Zombie Review refines my criticism of his NP analogy (as well as clarifying the original argument, to avoid certain worries about conceivability that had arisen way back when).

4. RB on the role of reduction in the dualism debate; my response; RB with the final post on the analogy (see also comments).

5. RB charges that the zombie argument is question begging. I respond here and here.

6. Having wondered why I’ve spent so much time arguing over the same basic points, I write a more general post exploring ‘The End(s) of Discussion‘. Though it never actually mentions any specific interlocutors, RB seemed quite offended. In that last comment he accuses me of saying, “gee, isn’t this guy stupid; he can’t see that my intuitions are right“. I respond that our dispute has not been about intuitions at all, but meta issues (what makes for a sound analogy/parody, what is begging the question, etc.). This final exchange continues on RB’s blog.

OK, so I got some comments to get to (including one from RC), but it is so nice outside that I have to go and play…but I’ll be back