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C O G I T A M U S

The University of Connecticut Philosophy Department Newsletter Vol. V, No. 1 January 2002

General Editors: Margaret Gilbert and Anne Hiskes
This issue edited by Anne Hiskes.

Welcome to the fourteenth issue of Cogitamus! It reports on the period of October 1, 2001 through January 31, 2002. The next issue will be published in early Spring. Please send items for the next issue by e-mail to AHiskes@uconnvm.uconn.edu.

Highlights: This month we profile the work of three graduate students, -Lisa Cassidy, Chris Panza, and Gordon Stevenson - who are entering the job market this year. Good luck to all the job seekers.

The Editors wish everyone a merry holiday season and a Happy New Year

Job Candidates:


UConn-MIT Conference:

Liars and Heaps: The Logic and Semantics of Paradox


FACULTY

Honors

Samuel C. Wheeler III has been appointed editor of Public Affairs Quarterly, effective January 2002. If you have a good paper in ethics and political philosophy remotely connectable to some practical current real-world issue, get in touch with Sam.

Publications

  • Don Baxter has recently published three papers: "Instantiation as Partial Identity," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2001), 449-464. "Loose Identity and Becoming Something Else," Nous 35 (2001), 592-601; and "Hume on Steadfast Objects and Time," Hume Studies 27 (2001), pp. 127-46.

  • JC Beall has published a paper with Mark Colyvan, "Looking for Contradictions", in AJP, December, 2001.

  • Austen Clark's review article of consciousness studies "Vicissitudes of Consciousness, Varities of Correlates" is forthcoming in The American Journal of Psychology.

  • Margaret Gilbert has recently published the following 5 articles:
    1. "Collective Remorse" in War Crimes and Collective Wrongdoing, ed. A. Jokic, Blackwell Publishers: Malden, MA, 2001, pp. 216-235.
    2. "Considerations on Collective Guilt" in From History to Justice: Essays in Honor of Burleigh-Wilkins, ed. A. Jokic, Peter Lang: New York, 2001, 239-249.
    3. "Philosophy and the Social Sciences" in Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science , (invited lecture) Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, 439-449.
    4. "Collective Preferences, Obligations, and Rational Choice", Economics and Philosophy, 17 (2001), 109-119.
    5. "Joint Action", 2001, long entry in the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, eds., Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, Elsevier Scientific Publications.
  • Joel Kupperman has published a new paper "Naturalness Revisited", in Confucius and the Analects: New Essays, ed. Bryan Van Norden (New York: Oxford University Press, December 2001).

  • Several essays by Ruth Millikan have now appeared in print:
    1. "The Language-Thought Partnership: A Bird's Eye View", in Hans Johan Glock, ed. Language and Communication 21 (2001), pp. 157-166.
    2. "What has Natural Information to do with Intentional Representation?" in Denis Walsh, ed., Naturalism, Evolution and Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 105-125.
    3. "Cutting Philosophy of Language Down to Size," Philosophy (July 2001? 125-140?). Published simultaneously as a separate Cambridge University Press volume, 2001, 125-140.
    4. "The Myth of Mental Indexicals," a revised version of "The Myth of the Essential Indexical," in Andrew Brook and Richard DeVidi eds., Self-Reference and Self-Awareness, Advances in Consciousness Research Volume II, John Benjamins, 167-181.
    5. "Purposes and Cross-Purposes: On the Evolution of Language and Languages," The Monist 84.3 (July 2001) (Special issue on "The Epidemiology of Ideas," ed. Dan Sperber), 392-416.
  • Samuel C. Wheeler III has published "Gun Violence and Fundamental Rights" in Criminal Justice Ethics, 20: 1 (Spring 2001): 19-24.

    Presentations

  • During the first few weeks of October, JC Beall was a visiting scholar in the philosophy subfaculty at Oxford giving talks and consulting with Brad Armour-Garb on several forthcoming papers and possible books. For several weeks in November JC was a visiting scholar at the University of St. Andrews in the Department of Logic where he gave a few talks and collaborated with Graham Priest et al.

  • Paul Bloomfield traveled to the Philosophy Department at the University of Cincinnati where he presented a paper "Two Dogmas of Metaethics" which lead to a lively and fruitful discussion Paul reports that he first presented material for this paper to the Uconn Philosophy Department in a Brown Bag seminar last spring.

  • Austen Clark gave invited talks on two successive days at the cognitive science program (Phil at Washington University in St. Louis, November 1 and 2. He also gave invited talks on two successive days at the cognitive science program at Cornell University on November 29 and 30.

  • Margaret Gilbert will participate in two conferences in January. She will open a conference on "Action Theory and Social Ontology" at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, January 10-12, with an invited talk entitled "Acting Together". Her paper "Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings" will be one of a set of invited papers to be discussed at a conference on "Crimes Against Hmanity", at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, January 25-6 2001.

  • Ruth Millikan has traveled extensively this past Fall while on leave for the semester. October 4-6 she spoke at Ohio State University, presenting "Compositionality and Embedding in Soft Natural Signs" and "Exaptations". On October 16, she presented "Compositionality and Embedding in Soft Natural Signs" at the University of Sussex. October 18-21 she attended a workshop at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research on "Evolution of Communication Systems: a Comparative Approach" and presented: "On Reading Signs: Differences between Us and The Others" . On October 23-25 Ruth visited the J.W. Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt Institut fur Philosophie. She began her visit with a four hour seminar for faculty and graduate students called " Blackboard on Teleosemantics". The next day she gave a public talk "On The Rumored Takeover by the Genes and the Memes" for the project " Wissenkultur und Geselschaftlichen Wandel, followed by a seminar for faculty and graduate student on the same topic. Returning to the USA, Ruth spoke at the University of Iowa on Nov. 29 and 30, first giving The E. W. Hall Philosophy Lecture titled "Purposes and Cross-purposes" and the next day presenting "Compositionality and Embedding in Soft Natural Signs". (Addis says he has written on both topics). Wrapping up her travels temporarily, Ruth presented "On Reading Signs: Differences between Us and The Others" at the University of Chicago on Dec. 7.

    • Service

    Work in Progress

    GRADUATE STUDENTS

    Publications

    Presentations

    Fun Stuff

    Austen Clark and Denise Polivy plan to try to climb Iztaccihuati (17,160 ft. and Pico de Orizaba (18,410 ft.) in Mexico over the break, from December 27 to January 7. "We will be in a party with three climbing friends from Maine." Good luck Austen and Denise.

    Alumni News

    Congratulations to Steve Lahey and Julia McQuillan on the birth of their first child, a daughter, Thea Louise (born December 8). Steve reports, "she is the center of the universe".

    This newsletter was designed by the Philosophy Department's Program Assistant Shelly Burelle. Please visit our website at: "http://vm.uconn.edu/~wwwphil" where this newsletter is located for miscellaneous links, including links to abstracts, and colloquium updates.

    Any questions or comments should be directed to Shelly at philos1@uconnvm.uconn.edu.