C O G I T A M U S

General Editors: Margaret Gilbert and Anne Hiskes
Special Guest Editor: Paul Bloomfield

• On March 8, 2002 Michael Dickson (Associate Professor, Dept. of the History & Philosophy of Science, Indiana University) gave a joint Philosophy and Physics Colloquium "Metaphysics - Physics = I Know Not What". In spite of promises to offend everyone in the room, the talk was well-received by both departments.

• On April 17, 2002 at 4:30 William P. Alston (Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University) will give a colloquium entitled "Perception and Representation" in Manchester Hall, Basement Lounge.

• UConn-MIT Conference: Liars and Heaps: The Logic and Semantics of Paradox
  

Honors

Paul Bloomfield has been asked to join the editorial board of a new journal in metaethics, aptly called Metaethica which will be part of The German Library of Sciences.

Publications

• Don Baxter's "Leibniz on Contingent Conceptual Truths in the Arnauld Correspondence" has finally appeared in Studia Leibnitiana (2000) [sic], pp. 191-214.

• J.C. Beall has published "The Simple Liar without Bivalence?," (with Otavio Bueno), Analysis 62.1, January 2002, pp. 22-26, and "A Priestly Recipe for Explosive Curry," Logical Studies 2001, No. 7. ISBN: 5-85593-143-9.

• Tom Bontly's paper "The Supervenience Argument Generalizes" will be appearing in the next issue of Philosophical Studies.

• Austen Clark has published two chapters in Werner Backhaus, (ed), Neuronal Coding of Perceptual Systems (New Jersey: World Scientific, Series on Biophysics and Biocybernetics, Vol 9, 2001, ISBN 981-02-4164-X). The chapters are "Some Logical Features of Feature Integration" (pp 3-20) and "Phenomenal Consciousness So-called" (pp 405-422). Website: "http://worldscientific.com/books/physics/4297.html".

• Margaret Gilbert's "Collective Wrongdoing: Moral and Legal Responses" will appear in the April 2002 issue of Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 28, No. 2. The paper is a critical study of C. Kutz's book Complicity and G.Bass's book Stay the Hand of Vengeance. Margaret's invited paper "Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings" will soon appear in the Journal of Ethics in a special issue on Collective Responsibility.

• Steve McGrade's (Emeritus) King's College Chapel sermon (Cambridge University) commemorating the 400th anniversary of Hooker's death has now been published as "Do We Need Richard Hooker"' in Modern Believing, 43.1 (January 2002):38-43. Cambridge UP is bringing out a digital edition of Steve's book on Ockham's political thought.

• Diana Tietjens Meyers has published a new monograph, Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery and Women's Agency (Oxford University Press), and her review of The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, edited by Miranda Fricker, and Jennifer Hornsby, appears in the current issue of Ethics.

• Ruth Millikan has published two papers: "The Myth of Mental Indexicals," a revised version of "The Myth of the Essential Indexical," in Andrew Brook and Richard DeVidi, eds., Self-Reference amd Self-Awareness, Advances in Consciousness Research, Vol. 11, John Benjamins, 163-177; and "A Theory of Representation to Complement TEC," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24: (4).

Presentations

• Susan Anderson presented "Human Nature, Religion and Violence", UConn, Stamford Campus on February 7th , and "Ethics, Business and Today's Society," UConn School Business, Executive Forum Series Panel on Business Ethics, Stamford Campus, March 7th.

• On March 21 Don Baxter presented "Altruism, Grief, and Identity" to the Philosophy Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. The paper was also presented as a UConn Humanities Institute Luncheon Talk on February 26.

• J.C. Beall has given two papers recently: "A Dialetheic Approach to Vagueness", California State Fresno, Fresno CA, and "No Contradiction is True (But Some Contradiction is True)", Yale University, New Haven CT. He is also invited to participate in a philosophy of mathematics and logic workshop at the Philosophy Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, April 4-6.
• On February 20, Paul Bloomfield gave a talk "Morality: Truth or Power?" at Connecticut College which was attended by faculty and about 30 interested undergraduates. Paul is an invited participant at an "Author-Meets-Critic" session on Mark Timmons' book Morality Without Foundations at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology Conference to be held in Nashville at the end of March. He is also giving a paper "Is Normative Discourse Assertoric?" at the APA Central Division meeting in Chicago.
• Tom Bontly is presenting a paper "Two Approaches to the Study of Causation" at the APA Central Division meeting in Chicago. (A longer version of the paper is in progress.)

• On March 8 Austen Clark gave an invited talk "Feature-placing" at the Institut Jean- Nicod ( http://www.institutnicod.org) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifiq Paris. On Feb. 14. Austen gave a seminar on color vision and presented a paper "Vision and Visual Awareness" at the University of Quebec. On Feb. 15 he gave a talk entitled "From Sensing to Phenomenal Consciousness: A New Testament to the Myth of Jones" at Concordia University in Montreal ( http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/philosophy).

• On April 5 Margaret Gilbert is giving the opening presentation, "Considerations on Collective Guilt" at an international, interdisciplinary conference called "Intentionality, Collective Responsibility, and the Attribution of Collective Guilt" at the University of Constanz, Germany. Margaret is the only speaker who is a philosopher, the other speakers being from Sociology and History.
• Robinson Grover (Emeritus) presented his paper "The New State of Nature and the Terrorism" (forthcoming in Pubic Affairs Quarterly) at the University of Helsinki, March 21.
• Joel Kupperman and Samuel C. Wheeler III are participants on a panel on Comparative Philosophy at the APA Pacific Division meeting in Seattle on March 30. Joel is giving a paper called "Purposes and Functions of Comparative Philosophy" which will be published in a special APA Newsletter on Comparative Philosophy, ed. by Chenyang Li (UConn Ph.D.).
• Diana Tietjen Meyers was an invited speaker at a conference held at UIC to honor Sandra Lee Bartky. She presented the paper "The Personal, the Political, and Psycho-Corporeal Identity." In March Diana also presented the paper "Gendered Work and Individual Autonomy" at a faculty workshop at the UConn Law School.
• Ruth Millikan presented the papers "Exaptations," "Cross purposes", and "On the Rumored Takeover by the Genes and the Memes" in a series of lectures and seminars to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty at Queens University in Kingston during January. On March 19, Ruth gave a day-long seminar at NYU on her book On Clear and Confused Ideas to an audience of NYU and CUNY students, faculty, and instructors. On March 27 Ruth and the above-mentioned book were the focus of an Author-meets-Critics session at the APA Pacific Division meeting. Georges Rey, Antony, and Kristen Lawler were commentators.
• John Troyer has been invited back as a participant in the annual Rutgers Epistemology Conference, April 19-21.

Service

• In honor of its 100th anniversary, the APA has suggested that philosophers become visible in their communities. In response, Susan Anderson has given two talks "Human Rights," and "Ethics, Business, Today's Society" at the Edgehill Retirement Community in Stamford.

• In January Austen Clark traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia where he served as one of three external reviewers for the Department of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University.
• On March 9 Anne Hiskes gave a talk "Searching for the Sorcerer's Stone" to an audience of middle school students and their parents as part of Odyssey Day for the Johns Program for Talented Students. Using themes and topics in the Harry Potter books, the talk explored the question "What is Science" by looking at the history of alchemy and testing the audience for clairvoyance. Anne Hiskes and Joel Kupperman are also doing yeoman's service representing the Humanities in the University Senate as the Senate debates issues concerning new general education requirements for the university.

Work in Progress

• Susan Anderson is currently working on a book "Equal Opportunity Individualism: Interpretation of the American Dream".
• Steve McGrade is in the thick of editing the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, and is also working on the Richard Hooker entry for the New Dictionary of National Biography. (n.b.: Steve now lives in Cambridge England. The word "national" is apparently an indexical.)
• Ruth Millikan is currently working on The Jean Nicod Lectures to be delivered May and June, 2002. The Jean Nicod lectures are delivered annually in Paris by the winner of the Nicod Prize, who must be a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically oriented cognitive scientist. The lectures are organized by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). The lectures will be published in the Jean-Nicod Lectures series (MIT Press/Bradford Books; F. Recanati editor).
• John Troyer is editing a collection of early utilitarian writings (chiefly by Bentham and Mill) for Hackett, and would appreciate any suggestions about *short* pieces that might supplement the main works.

Congratulations to Chris Panza on his new tenure-track job at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. Chris starts his job in the Fall of 2002.

Publications

• Sandy Boucher and Ian Gold are publishing a paper "A Computational Approach to Linguistic Knowledge" in the journal Language and Communication.

Presentations

• The philosophy graduate students have resumed their Grue Bag seminars for the Spring semester. The schedule of presentations/papers is as follows:

  February 7: Doug Osborne, "An Actual Solution to the Sorites"
  February 21: Patrick Fleming, "Web of Desires as Teles"
  March 7: Sandy Boucher, "Naturalized Epistemology and Normativity"
  March 38: Jim Phelps, "Why ask why? On the Ethics of Sexual Preference Research"
  April 11: Chris Panza, "Helpful Tips on Getting a Job at a Teaching College", or "Counterexamples to Refute Causal Determinism".
  April 25: Donovan Cox, "Duns Scotus, Individuation, and the Incommensurability of Parts and Wholes"

Other

Chris Panza submitted an article to Philosophy and Phenomenological Research entitled "Partial Consideration, Mental Separation, and General Reference".

Alumni News

• Steve Lahey (Ph.D.) will soon finish seminary at Seabury Western and then spend nine months doing Clinical Pastoral Education in a Lincoln hospital, in preparation for ordination in Nov. 2003. Steve has published an article on Scotus, Bonaventure, and Albert the Great in the most recent issue of the popular magazine Christian History, available at a bookstore near you. Steve and spouse Julia are enjoying their new daughter Thea Louise.
• Jessica Prata Miller (Ph.D.) has published "A Critical Moral Ethnography of Social Distrust", Social Philosophy Today, Vol. 16 Feb 2002, and she looks forward to release in December 2002 of her forthcoming book Trust: A Philosophical Approach (Broadview Press). Jessica is also Program Committee Chair for the Eastern Society for Women in Philosophy conference at MIT April 5-7. She was pleased to see her former adviser Diana Tietjen Meyers at the FEAST conference in Florida in October and promises to send her best majors to our graduate program.
• Virgil Whitmyer (Ph.D) Virgil has a post-doc at Indiana University, and writes the following: I am currently in Bochum, Germany working with Gregor Schoner on a dynamic field model of the data we have collected in my study of 12-21 month old infants engaged in various gross motor acts (I'm trying to resist the urge to make a joke about infants and things that are gross). Before coming to Bochum I spent a week at an "interdisciplinary college"--a workshop--at Mohnesee, also in Germany. While I'm here I will give a talk on my study, which we could call something like "Perseveration in Gross motor tasks in toddlers". The model we develop here will be included in a poster that I will present at the International Conference on Infant Studies in Toronto, April 18-21. AufWiedersehen!

Fun and Life Outside of the Classroom

• JC Beall reports that he has discovered some budding philosophers in the Towers Dormatory on campus, where he lives with spouse and Residence Hall Director Katrina Higgins. JC has been meeting with and tutoring students in the hall.

• In early March, Austen Clark wrote: "Because of a death in the family (Denise's stepfather) Denise and I had to cancel our mountain-climbing trip to Mexico. We hope to go snow-boarding at Lake Tahoe over spring break. We hope not to break anything!" Alas, Austen's second hope was not fulfilled. On one of the last days of the snow-boarding trip, Austen fell and broke his leg. He now hopes to move first floor office for the remainder of the semester.

• Steve McGrade, Professor Emeritus, and spouse Jo McGrade are planning a trip China this May as participants in a Yale alumni tour. In August they will travel to Portugal for a medieval congress.
• Congratulations to Jessica Prata Miller (Ph.D) on the birth of son Max on Dec. 7. Max joins his older brother David who turned 2 in December. Jessica's husband Stephen has a tenure track position in the History Department at the University of Maine in Orono where Jessica also has a tenure track position. Jessica says that she are her husband are "busy". Oh really.
• Congratulations to Chris Panza and Christie (Cathey) on their engagement. They plan to marry in July. Christie is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology at UConn.

Focus on Margaret Gilbert

By Paul Bloomfield

If we at UConn can pride our department on being intellectually serious as well friendly place for philosophy, our pride is greatly justified by the presence of Margaret Gilbert, Professor of Philosophy. Margaret came to the United States from England where she earned a bachelor's degree in classics and philosophy --- with a "double first" -- at Cambridge University, and a B. Phil. and D. Phil. in philosophy from Oxford. She values greatly two years spent as a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and has received many other awards and honors. Margaret has been a visiting teacher and researcher at numerous institutions, including Wolfson's College (Oxford University) King's College London, Princeton, NYU, CUNY, UCLA, Indiana University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Margaret joined the UConn department in 1983 and has been at the forefront, indeed has helped to found, several new areas of philosophical discussion and research, including philosophy of social science, the theory of sociality, and central aspects of social epistemology. Her latest book is a collection of papers, tentatively titled Les Sujets Pluriels, to be published in French by the prestigious Presses Universitaires de France. Her other books include On Social Facts (reprinted by Princeton University Press which has been labeled a "seminal" and "goundbreaking" work, and two thematic collections of her essays Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), and Sociality and Responsibility: New Essays in Subject Theory (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). Margaret's work has been the focus of discussion by others in many philosophical journals, book chapters, and conferences particularly since her research has interdisciplinary ramifications for economic psychology, and political theory. Some of Margaret's articles have been reprinted in books, and some have been translated into Chinese, Italian, and French. Needless to say, a full report of all her published articles, book chapters, book reviews, critical studies and abstracts (not to mention public lectures) would take up pages and pages!

In 1989, when On Social Facts was first published, it presented the first discussion of what Gilbert calls "plural subject theory", or the theory that an important range of phenomena are plural subject phenomena. By this she means that there are social phenomena in which the participants are "jointly committed together to constitute a body with specified features". Among the phenomena in question are group languages, social conventions, social rules, and joint intentions and actions. She has been progressively refining these ideas over the years, and by now Margaret's theory social phenomena is a respected explanatory model in the social sciences. (The irony of a naturally gregarious philosopher spending so much time in seclusion writing about social relations is not lost on Margaret. For a change of pace, she regularly goes dancing.)

Margaret's most recent work focuses on aspects of her theory most germane to ethics and political philosophy, including such topics as collective responsibility, collective belief and emotion. She is currently finishing a book tentatively called Social Ontology and Political Obligation which presents and argues in favor of a novel account of citizens' obligations to obey the law that goes beyond, but has affinities with, the classic theory linking obligations to an actual agreement. Her next book, with working title Rights Reconsidered, will will address the nature of rights, particularly moral rights, a theme inspired by readings undertaken in the course of UConn's Human Rights Semester in the Fall of 2001.

You can learn much more about Margaret's research on her webpage at: http://vm.uconn.edu/~wwwphil/gilbert.html.

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.