Andrew Cullison

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 give my grandmother a cheap computer that was powerful enough to use Skype - so she could video conference with Simon.

So my friend helped me build her an Ubuntu machine for Christmas. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Andrew Cullison
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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 at different times by having different temporal parts - for example, different performances - at those times.

Caplan and Matheson defend musical perdurantism from Julian Dodd’s objection that ‘musical perdurantism entails the absurd thesis that works of music cannot be heard in toto’ (Caplan and Matheson 2008, 80)

Dodd assumes that in order to perceive all of a whole at some time all of its parts must exist at that time. This is a problem for musical perdurantism because all of the performances of Clair de Lune, for example, do not exist whenver you listen to it.

Caplan and Matheson pin the following princple on Dodd.

(1P) For any x, y, z, and t, if x perceives all of y at t and z is a part of y, then z exists at t.

Caplan and Matheson argue that (1P) is false and that it is in fact possible to perceive something that doesn’t exist. They use a dead star as an example. iIt is possible to perceive stars even though the stars parts may not exist - because the star ceased to exist by the time the light reached Earth.

While I have my doubts about this response, I think we can set them aside. The spirit of Dodd’s argument can be preserved by appeal to a different principle. All Dodd needs is that to perceive all of something one must perceive all of that thing’s parts.

(2P) For any x, y, z, and t, if x perceives all of y at t and z is a part of y, then x perceives z at t.

I think that I’ve listened to Clair de Lune in its entirety. I only need (2P) for that to come out true. I think that best captures the spirit of Dodd’s objection.
B. Caplan, C. Matheson (2008). Defending ‘Defending Musical Perdurantism’ The British Journal of Aesthetics, 48 (1), 80-85 DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/aym037

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I just stumbled upon this over at Taylor and Francis (publisher for Australasian Journal of Philosophy).

Their plan is called iOpenAccess. They will make any articles that you publish with them freely available to the public, but…

All authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication in one of these iOpenAccess journals will have the option to make their articles available to all via the Journal’s website, and to post to repositories, for a one-off fee of $3250.

?!?!

Here’s another option. Publish your article with a genuinely free and open access journal. Don’t pay them anything. Have your work be freely available.

Filed under: open access, philosophy journals by Andrew Cullison
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There have been a litany of complaints about the organization of American Philosophical Association (APA) since the close of the Eastern APA. I thought I’d gather them here.

1. Philosophers Anonymous has several complaints here and here
2. Leiter posted a complaint by David Velleman here. That thread is still generating interesting discussion.
3. The Philosophy Smoker has seven suggestions for the APA here.

I won’t weigh in on all of the comments and concerns here, but I will note that one of the more fruitful suggestions comes from Gregory Wheeler in the comment thread on the Leiter post. Here’s what he said. (more…)

Filed under: the academy by Andrew Cullison
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Happy New Year!

It’s been slow here, but philosophy resume in the very near future. Until then, I thought it would be nice to post the top stories from 2008 over at Sympoze.

Top 9 Sympoze Posts in 2008

1. Tips for Publishing as a Graduate Student
2. Excursus: Philosophy Feeds
3. Fetishes and Russell’s Paradox
4. Philosophers on Bloggingheads.TV
5. Logic for Philosophers - Sider
6. Sharing BibTeX with Mark Kalderon
7. Philosopher’s Annual 2007 Winner - 10 Best Papers
8. Thom Brooks Advice on Publishing
9. Intuition Isn’t Unreliable

You can check out all of top posts here from last year here.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sympoze… (more…)

Filed under: sympoze by Andrew Cullison
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[UPDATE: An alternative method explained at bottom of post.]

A lot of us are furiously crunching numbers into Spreadsheets, but then we’ll have to convert those final grade percentages to letter grades.

Here are some formulas you can use to automatically generate a Final Letter Grade from your students Final Grade Percentage. Even if you can do the conversion quickly in your head, this method is probably much quicker and it reduces the likelihood of human error.

It’s VERY simple. Happy Grading and Happy Holidays!

Instructions

1. Tally up your students’ final grade percentage (on a 100 point scale).
2. Copy one of the functions below.
3. Paste the code in the cell where you want the first student’s letter grade to appear.
4. Important: Make sure you change all occurences of ‘A1′ in the function to the cell ID where the first student’s Final Grade Percentage is located.
5. Fill the Formula Down the Column
   (If you’re using a Spread Sheet Program - I’m assuming you know how to do this part.)

Standard Scale

Formula
=IF(A1>93,”A”,IF(A1>89,”A-”,IF(A1>86,”B+”,IF(A1>82,”B”,IF(A1>79,”B-”,IF(A1>76,”C+”,IF(A1>72,”C”,IF(A1>69,”C-”,IF(A1>66,”D+”,IF(A1>62,”D”,IF(A1>59,”D-”,”F”)))))))))))

Grade Scale
A = 94-100
A– = 90-93
B+ = 87-89
B = 83-86
B- = 80-82
C+ = 77-79
C = 73-76
C- = 70-72
D+ = 67-69
D = 63-66
D- = 60-62
F = 59 – below (more…)

Filed under: teaching by Andrew Cullison
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You know why Lewis Powell is awesome? He loves thinking about Frege’s Puzzle.

You know why Lewis Powell is even awesomer? He loves thinking about Frege’s Puzzle this much.

Filed under: fun, philosophy of language by Andrew Cullison
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I finally finished making some stylistic changes to “Moral Perception”. It’s forthcoming in the European Journal of Philosophy.

I posted this recent version of it on my Research Page, but you can also click here.

Filed under: ethics, papers, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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A while back, I argued that we philosophers ought to shift our practices so that all of our research was published in open access mediums.

I then suggested several strategies for what the discipline needed to do.

One of the suggestions was that the editorial staff should simple migrate the journal into an open access forum. I noted that this would be particularly easy if the editorial board had the authority to switch publishing venues without penalty from the current publisher.

So, it looks like Analysis has that sort of migration authority, and they are leaving Blackwell. But they they are switching to Oxford University Press!

No! This would have been the perfect opportunity to free one of philosophy’s top journals from the clutches of proprietary publishing. If Analysis had the freedom to move, why not go open access?

In fairness to OUP and Analysis, as far as proprietary publishers go OUP isn’t so bad. I’m told they divert a sizeable chunk of earnings back into academia. They are also in the habit of offering several months of free access to all of their journals.

But still - can you imagine how great it would be if everyone had free online access to Analysis?

Filed under: open access, philosophy journals by Andrew Cullison
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John Basl has compiled a list of Philosophers using Twitter. This list keeps growing, and I just wanted to help John spread the word. If you don’t know what Twitter is check out his follow up post here. In that second post he discusses the issue - Why would a philosopher want a Twitter account?

I want to pick up there. I agree that it’s not a must have technology, but it’s suprisingly useful and not a total time waster.

Here are 11 things that, as a professional philosopher, I have found useful about Twitter.

1. Get in Touch

The primary benefit of Twitter for philosophers is that it a good means to put philosophers in touch with other philosophers.

2. Staying In Touch

Let’s be honest. How bad are you at staying in touch with friends or colleagues you’ve met at a conference over email? I’m awful at this. Twittering, however, makes this easy. With all the different ways to update Twitter at your disposal (email, Firefox plugin, text message, desktop applications), and the 140 character limit - It takes 2 seconds to post a quick status update. Over a week or a month - these add up and you get a nice snapshot of what you’ve been up to. Two people following each other on Twitter - do stay current with one another without much effort for either party.

3. Professional Help

Following philosophers on Twitter isn’t just about learning that they had some yummy eggs for breakfast. Twitter has actually helped professionally. For example, Basl has been a huge help with Sympoze. As he notes - our contact and most of our interaction is through Twitter.

With regards to research, I usually tweet the topic or title of the paper I’m currently working on. I usually get at least one response from another philosopher interested in the paper. In the six months that I’ve used Twitter, I received a lot of professional help from other philosophers.
(more…)

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