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

Archive for August, 2009

Pacific APA Paper Submission Warning

08.31.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

Just a heads up. I submitted a paper to the Pacific APA today, but the instructions were weird. After you click on the link to submit a paper you are taken to the submission page. At the top of the page is information about you. Below that information is the following set of instructions. Please verify ...

Use Firefox Word Count Plus to Check Student Work

I have a course blog. Students are required to post 2 substantive analysis posts on the reading for the semester. I stagger these deadlines so that every week there are a few analysis posts each week. These posts should be about 250-500 words in length. I also have a weekly 200 requirement. All students must post, ...

Facebook Used to Catch Exam Cheating

08.31.2009 · Posted in ethics, teaching, the academy, the profession

This story showed up on Tech Crunch about a week ago. I’m just now getting around to reading it. It’s about two Belgian college students who were caught cheating on exams. It looks like there was already some evidence against them, but it was their Facebook conversations (presumably public wall postings) that finally convinced the academic ...

Taking the Mystery Out of Ways

I like Ways-Millianism. It’s a combo-theory about meaning and the metaphysics of belief. Here are two of the core theses. (M) The meaning of a proper name is its referent. (W) Belief is a mediated relation between a person and a proposition. People believe propositions in virtue of standing in relation to some third thing - call ...