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By Andrew Cullison, August 29, 2008

This is a heads up for readers who haven’t heard about academia.edu. Academia.edu is a social network site for all academics. This looks like it’s going to be pretty cool. Check it out.

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By Andrew Cullison, August 28, 2008

Back in June I started posting BibTeX files for major philosophy journals. Mark Kalderon’s GitBib is inspiring me to continue posting BibTeX files for the major philosophy journals. Here’s what I have so far.

1. Australasian Journal of Philosophy (1998-2008)
2. Mind (1975-2008)
3. Nous (1997-2008)
4. Philosophical Review (2000-2008)
5. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1960-2008)

Zotero enabled me to create one for Journal of Philosophy (1985-2008) in just a few minutes! I’ll post that as soon as I get a chance to format the keys in Kbib.

These are useful not just as for helping manage citations and bibliographies in your papers, but they are also useful to quickly scan the major journals for interesting articles. It’s about the quickest method I’ve ever had the pleasure of using.

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By Andrew Cullison,

Consider the following theses.

(A) For any person P, P exists iff P is alive.

(B) For any person P, P is alive iff P is not dead.

(C) Whether or not some person is dead is vague.

(D) Whether or not someone exists is not vague.

On the face of it, these four theses seem to be incompatible. If they are then when of them must go, and it’s a little puzzling to me which one it would be. However, there is a background assumption one would need to derive an inconsistency. I’m not quite sure how best to articulate the principle, but it goes something like this:

(E) If two properties A and B are such that A applies iff not-B and it is vague whether or not B applies, then it is vague whether or not A applies.

So here we have 5 principles and it seems that one of them must go. Continue reading 'Death and Vagueness'»

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By Andrew Cullison, August 26, 2008

Mark Kalderon has an excellent idea for sharing BibTex files!

[HT: Brad Weslake]

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By Andrew Cullison, August 25, 2008

is here

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By Andrew Cullison, August 24, 2008

Attention metaphysicians and philosophers interested in the four-dimensionalist/three-dimensionalist debate. A few mathematicians have created some videos that are designed to help people try and visualize a four-dimensional object.

Pretty cool.

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By Andrew Cullison, August 23, 2008

I just discovered the best FireFox Plugin ever! Zotero is a free all-in-one reference/bibliography manager. This one is going to be very useful to help philosophers research and write! Here are some of the highlights that will help you see how great this plugin is.

• One-click reference addition.
  When you’re on a site with works that list bibliographic information - the zotero button pops up next to the URL. Click it and the information is neatly submitted to your bibliography database in the standard format
• Export
  You can export your database in whole (or part) to just about any standard format. You can even export it to your clipboard and paste it in a word processor file.
• Styles
  Zotero supports the major citation styles (Chicago, APA, MLA), and you can create your own.
• Tagging
  You can organize your bibliography entries with multiple tags (something very useful in philosophy where articles tend to overlap several areas)
• Offline
  Eventhough it’s a FireFox plugin - you can access your bibliography database when you don’t have an internet connection.
• Attachments
  You can easily include multiple attachments that are related to the bibliography entry from papers you’ve written about it, papers other people have written about it, or an electronic copy of the paper itself.
• Notes
  Take multiple notes on each entry (bye-bye 3×5 note cards - if you actually use those)

That should be enough to have you drooling. But there’s more…

• Word Processor Plugins
  You can download a plugin for OpenOffice or Microsoft Word, and you’ll get a Zotero toolbar. You can use that toolbar to insert reference/footnotes/bibliographies according to the major styles and a bibliography. I’ve tried this out in OpenOffice 2.4. The plugin is buggy in the beta version of OpenOffice 3.0 - but the Zotero staff says that the next release will be OpenOffice 3.0 compliant!
• Zotero 1.5 and 2.0
  The future of Zotero looks to be awesome. Not only will it be OpenOffice 3.0 compliant, but Zotero will include a server side element so you can access your database online from other computers and share your databases with others. The next installment (1.5) promises syncing of the database across multiple computers.

Check out the website. They have a very short video tour that gives you a nice explanation of everything.

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By Andrew Cullison, August 21, 2008

The journal mashups are still churning out interesting stuff. This article came up. Here’s the abstract.

Presentism: Through Thick and Thin
Abstract: Presentism is the view that whatever exists presently exists. Without defending Presentism, I argue first that Presentists should be Time-Free Presentists – Presentists whose views do not imply that there exist irreducible times. Second, I argue that Presentists should accept Limited Thick Presentism, the view that ‘the present’ has some extension and is thereby neither durationlessly thin nor unlimitedly ‘thick’. Third, before addressing several objections to Limited Time-Free Thick Presentism [LTFTP], I argue that defenders of LTFTP should accept that ‘temporal becoming’ involves an overlapping
succession of present entities, not a ’skipping’ from one set of present entities to the next discrete set.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. It looks like one of my recent posts - “How Long is The Present?” - argues against precisely what Hestevold defends. I can’t wait to read this paper - too bad I can’t access it right now.

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By Andrew Cullison, August 14, 2008

Just a friendly reminder. The Young Philosophers Fall 2008 Lecture Series submission deadline is August 22. Spread the word to those you think might be interested.

The call for papers is here.

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By Andrew Cullison, August 10, 2008

Welcome to the 75th Philosophers’ Carnival. Doesn’t 75 seems like a number worthy of celebration? I thought so, and so I’ve been working quickly for the last month to make sure that I would have a special treat for everyone. It’s in the bonus section at the end.

Metaphilosophy and Metaethics

1. Chris Hallquist presents What Richard Chappell is Wrong About and responds to an earlier request from Richard to have his readers to tell him what assumptions he generally makes that they disagree with. Posted at The Uncredible Hallq.
2. In Moral Experts Richard links to an article that answers the question: Who’s To Say What’s Right or Wrong? Answer: Professional philosophers, that’s who. Posted at Philosophy, et cetera.

Philosophy of Mind

1. Adam Taylor serves up a dual-dose of some interesting discussions on dualism with Spliting Up (Brains) is Hard To Do and Dualism and the Problem of Interaction - both posted at Buffalo Lake-Effect Philosophy.
2. Gualtiero Piccinini throws out a bleg and asks What’s New and Exciting About Computationalism? The excitement isn’t in the post; it’s in the comments. Posted at Brains.
3. Alrenous presents The Mind Node in an attempt to explicate a non-physical account of the mind. Posted at Accepting Ignorance.

Philosophy of Religion

1. Enigman examines an attempt to use liar-like sentences to argue against the existence of God in Liars, Divine Liars, and Semantics over at Enigmania.
2. Justin reviews Paul Davies book The Goldilocks Enigma at Panexperientialism and offers a Panexperientialist account of fine-tuning.
3. Jeremy Pierce is working on a piece for a Blackwell Series on Harry Potter and Philosophy. His post on the paper is Prophecy in Harry Potter. The paper title is “Destiny in Harry Potter”Check it out at The Prosblogion.

Political Philosophy/Applied Ethics

1. People who don’t pay taxes because they don’t want to support the military may get a bit uncomfortable after reading Joseph Orosco’s The Military-Industrial Complex and You - you may support the military in more ways than you thought. Posted at Engage: Conversations in Philosophy.
2. Thom Brooks presents offers up a critical review of a recent report called “Engaging Citizens to Fight Crime” in hopes that it can help the government fight crime in More Public Justice? Part II posted at The Brooks Blog.

Sympoze Bonus!
I started a social-bookmarking site for philosophers two weeks ago called Sympoze. We already have 50 philosophers signed up with user accounts! I thought it would be fun to post 5 of the top blog entries ranked by Sympoze users since the website launched.

1. Tips on Publishing as a Graduate Student posted at Brains.
2. Questions from a New Journal Referee posted at Leiter Reports.
3. Against (Armchair) Metaphysics posted at The Splintered Mind.
4. Experimental Philosophy on Bank Cases and Pragmatic Encroachment posted at Certain Doubts.
5. A Poor Man’s Pragmatic Encroachment posted at PEA Soup.

(Here’s a link to The Highest Ranked Posts)

About Sympoze
Sympoze is a social-bookmarking/content promotion site for philosophers. It’s is a great way for professional philosophers to share, rank, and promote online philosophy content. Here’s more information about Sympoze and how to get involved.

If you’re a professional philosophers or graduate student and you want an account just email me. Once you have an account, submitting and voting is easy.

The End
That’s it for the carnival. Thanks for reading. The next Philosophers’ Carnival will be hosted at Think It Over.