Call for Papers 2010-1

Using the phrase “just in case” as synonymous with “if and only if” is rampant in contemporary philosophy. I remember it first coming up explicitly in one of my logic classes as an undergraduate. The professor said that we should translate the English phrase “just in case” as “if and only if” (or its symbolic equivalent, “<–>”). Since we were supposedly talking about ordinary English, the students got to objecting to the professor’s translation rule. We insisted that in English “just in case” is only used as it is in the phrase “She built a storm shelter just in case a terrible storm came through town.”  The professor was dumbfounded.

Well, so was I. Yet for as long as I’ve been studying philosophy, I’ve still been puzzled by it. But I’ve pretty much just put the issue on the backburner. My best guess has been that I’m not crazy, this is a technical turn of phrase used by philosophers (and perhaps other academics), and the professor had just gotten so wrapped up in that usage he lost touch with ordinary English. But I’ve always wondered whether this non-ordinary use is something philosophers really recognize as such. Could it be that young philosophers just assume it’s an ordinary phrase of English that only the highly educated use (and thus they follow suit)? After all, I have never heard it introduced as a special term, despite its ubiquity in philosophy classrooms.

I’ve discussed this issue with other graduate students in philosophy from time to time, but no one seemed to know much about the origin of this odd (I think) use.  I got to thinking about this issue again today and did a bit of Google searching to shed light on it. I found this post by a linguist, Geoffrey K. Pullum:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003470.html

He seems as puzzled as I am and draws pretty much the same conclusion that I had: it’s an (American) academic invention. But I wonder what others think, especially those within philosophy. Anyone know anything about this?

Two graduate conferences to keep in mind:

(i) The Syracuse Graduate Student Conference
April 16 & 17
Keynote Speakers: Ted Sider (NYU) & Ben Bradley (Syracuse)
Paper submission deadline: Jan 1, 2010
Send submissions to:  suphilgradconf@gmail.com

Papers should be suitable for a 25-30 minute presentation (no more than 4000 words).

Submissions must be prepared for blind review and sent as either a PDF or Word file.

In the text of your email, please include your name, contact information, and short abstract (max 150 words).

We welcome submissions in all areas of philosophy.

(ii) The 18th Annual Harvard-MIT Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

Conference Date: Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Keynote Speaker: Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford

Commentary provided by Harvard and MIT faculty

Submission Deadline: Sunday, January 10th, 2010

We seek submissions from graduate students in any area of philosophy.  Submissions should be suitable for a 40-minute presentation.  As guidance, a 4000-word paper usually takes about 40 minutes to read.

All submissions must be accompanied by an abstract of 400-500 words (roughly one single-spaced page).  No identifying information should appear in the body of the paper or the abstract.  Instead, please include a cover sheet with the submitter’s name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, name of his or her institutions, and title of the paper.

Please submit papers by e-mail to harvardmit2010@gmail.com in one of the following formats: .pdf, .rtf, .doc.  We can only accept one submission per applicant.

If you have any questions, please contact us at harvardmit2010@gmail.com.

Jenann Ismael (Arizona, Center for Time – Sydney) will give a talk at USC on Friday, Dec. 4, at 4:00 pm in Mudd Hall of Philosophy 102. Her talk is entitled “Freedom, Natural Law, and the Humanization of Physics”.

Elliott Sober, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin – Madison will give the talk: Did Darwin write ‘The Origin of the Species’ Backwards?

Friday, 4 December 2009, 4:00pm
Caltech, Cahill Center, Hameetman Auditorium
Refreshments will follow in the lobby

Here’s some information about the conference, which will be held at U. of Missouri-St. Louis from May 23-25, 2010. Note: deadline for submission of abstracts is Dec. 31.

I haven’t read very much of Williamson’s Knowledge and Its Limits; this is probably answered somewhere in there. But why isn’t this a good argument against E=K?

(1) I know that the sun will rise tomorrow.

(2) It’s not part of my body of evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow.

(3) Therefore, I know a proposition which is not part of my body of evidence.

I think that (1) is true. Maybe some people don’t. In fact, the little bit of the book I did read suggested that Williamson may think something like this. I don’t have a copy of the book in front of me, but somewhere (I think in chapter 9), he talks about a case where I watch someone draw n marbles from a bag, and they’re all red. Intuitively, the proposition that the n+1 marble drawn is red is not part of my evidence. One reason to think this is that it seems compatible with my evidence that the n+1 marble drawn is not red. But if it was part of my evidence that the n+1 marble drawn is red, then this would not be compatible. Williamson’s explanation for why this proposition is not part of my evidence is that I do not know it. For a small n, I can buy this. But what if n is large? Can’t I come to know, by induction, that the next draw is red? This is essentially the worry I’m pressing in (1)-(3) above. It seems that it’s compatible with my evidence that the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow (this could probably be challenged). So the proposition that it will is not part of my body of evidence. But I do know it (given that it’s true). So E=K is false.

Where am I going wrong?

The 12th Annual Southern California Philosophy Conference will be held this Saturday at Pitzer college. Several graduate students and professors from schools in the area will be presenting and commentating.

I feel like I should have gotten this up earlier. Here’s the link to the website, with the CFP. Note that the deadline is fast-approaching – November 1st.

I don’t know about other places in the area, but Thomas Reid is pretty big here at USC. The BSHP Annual Conference is on Reid this year in Scotland. Note that the deadline for submission of abstracts is Oct. 31. So hurry!