Wide Scope A philosophy blog that ranges over philosophy and other fun stuff.

Archive for January, 2009

PhilPapers = Some Kind of Awesome

01.28.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

For those of you haven’t heard, David Chalmers and David Bourget have put together what promises to be an incredibly awesome resource for philosophers called PhilPapers. It’s a very massive database of philosophy papers. You can browse up to 200 of the current philosophy journals, browse unpublished papers by philosophers who have uploaded them, and…oh just ...

New Laptop Policy in My Classes

01.26.2009 · Posted in educational technology, teaching

I’m sympathetic to Clayton Littlejohn’s laptop ban discussed here and inspired by Kevin Timpe. Last semester, I noticed a significant increase in the number of students bringing laptops to class. I know these hurt performance (see Clayton’s post for the empirical data). I toyed with the notion of banning laptops, but I know there are some students ...

Taking Attendance with Google Phone

01.19.2009 · Posted in android, educational technology

Here’s another blog post from my new g1. I have an attendence policy for all of my classes. Students get a certain number of free absences (2-3), and every absence after that results in a small point deduction from their final grade. The Android Marketplace has a simple spreadsheet program called “Shead Spreet,” and you can use ...

Blogging from the Google Phone

01.18.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

I just got my T-mobile G1 (google phone), and I’m using it to write this post. Typing is quick and easy. The keyboard layout is great. Now I can blog about philosophy - while on the go. In other news: I am now the technology associate for our professional development center. Because of this, you can also ...

Sympoze External Vote Button

01.12.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

I just added a new feature to Sympoze called an External Vote Button, and I’m hoping that Sympoze users and philosophy bloggers will help me start testing it. This should make submitting and voting up philosophy blog posts way easier and more efficient for Sympoze users. You can see it just under the title of this ...

New York Times Article on Ubuntu

01.11.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

Here’s a good article about Ubuntu (and its founder Mark Shuttleworth) in the New York Times. Here’s an interesting quote. The often quirky software remains in the realm of geeks, not grandmothers. If the machine is built on hardware that is known to be Ubuntu compatible, then I’m not sure the above quote applies. My mom wanted to ...

Now I’ve Heard it All: An Objection to Musical Perdurantism

01.09.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

Many months ago I presented an objection to a view called musical perdurantism. Now I want to discuss a different objection. First a refresher. Ben Caplan and Carl Matheson define musical perdurantism as follows. According to musical perdurantism, a musical work is a fusion of performances. On this view, works persist by perduring: that is, they exist ...