MIT philosophy news

Bob Stalnaker's Our Knowledge of the Internal World has just been published
in an orderly handover that will see even higher yields from graduate students toiling in the field of philosophy, our Great Leader, Steve Yablo, has been succeeded by our Dear Leader, Richard Holton
The Philosopher's Annual have made their picks of ten best philosophy papers published in 2007: they include Seth Yalcin's "Epistemic Modals", Sally Haslanger's "'But Mom, Crop Tops are Cute!' Social Knowledge, Social Structure and Ideology Critique", and our alum Adam Elga's "Reflection and Disagreement"

Steve Yablo and Agustín Rayo are back from Peru, Bob Stalnaker is back from France and Germany, Rae Langton and Richard Holton are back from Iris Murdoch's house in Oxford, Alex Byrne is back from Australia and New Zealand, Caspar Hare is back from Britain, France, Macedonia, and Wisconsin, Vann McGee sensibly stayed home, other faculty members as yet unaccounted for...
Adam Hosein, David Etlin, and Brad Skow went to the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress; his youthful good looks secured Brad the young ethicist prize
more news about the peripatetic Etlin: he, Sarah Moss and Bob Stalnaker gave talks at the First Formal Epistemology Festival in Konstanz Germany -- which was partly in honor of Bob and co-organized by MIT alum Eric Swanson
David Etlin wandered around the Americas: he gave a talk in Paraty Brazil at CLE30/EBL XV/SLALM XIV and then (if that were not exact enough) at the Society for Exact Philosophy, in Laramie Wyoming
Heather Logue hopped around Australia: she gave a talk on The Relational and Representational Character of Perceptual Experience at the ANU
Lauren Ashwell hiked around England: she gave a talk at Bristol
much summer chitchat from Holton and Langton: Richard gave talks about freedom of the will in Oxford, Edinburgh, Oslo, Paris and Talahassee, and about factives in Oxford and Bristol; Rae gave talks about unknowability and intrinsicness in Oxford and Bristol, and about pornography and hate speech in Oxford, London, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Oslo

the philosophy indoor soccer team, the Existential Eliminators, following distinguished predecessors, made the playoffs in our intramural competition
in more tenure news, Steve Yablo's tenure as department head ended with a traditional reading of the hunting of the snark
Agustín Rayo received tenure

David Etlin, Caspar Hare, and Agustín Rayo all went to Paris to talk about vagueness
Irving Singer is on MIT World
MIT alum Peter Koellner won a Goedel centenary prize
the 16th annual Harvard-MIT graduate student philosophy conference went swimmingly
Ephraim Glick gave a paper ("What is the Problem of Intentional Identity?") at the central APA, winning a graduate student travel stipend

Steve Yablo gave the Hempel Lectures at Princeton
AskPhilosophers has been selected as one of the 101 most useful websites, which must have something to do with Sally's answers
Ephraim Glick and Paolo Santorio gave papers at the Princeton/Rutgers graduate conference
Brad Skow was picked to pick the Burchard Scholars
Bob Stalnaker gave the keynote address ("The New Relativism") at the NYU/Columbia philosophy graduate student conference

Judy Thomson gave the keynote address ("Turning the Trolley") at the USC/UCLA philosophy graduate student conference, and stayed on at UCLA for the rest of the month to give a mini-seminar on moral theory in the philosophy department, and a paper ("Some Reflections on Hart and Honore, Causation in the Law") at the law school's legal theory workshop
13 students and 2 faculty decided to getfit (alternative spin: 15 students and 10 faculty decided not to)

Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy, edited by Sally Haslanger and others, now has a companion blog: Gender, Race and Philosophy: The Blog
faculty and graduate students of past and present had an enjoyable and successful MITing

while the faculty were busy collecting their prizes, Seth Yalcin published "Epistemic Modals" in Mind
in late breaking news, Brad Skow won the 2007 Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholars Competition

Richard Holton gave a public lecture, "What Does Empirical Research on Moral Intuitions Tell Us about Morality?", at the Kennedy School of Government

Irving Singer gave a public talk and reading from his new book on Ingmar Bergman at Lame Duck Books
Valentina Urbanek presented "Person affecting reasons and the nature of morality" at the Northern New England Philosophical Association
Irving Singer's book Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity was published by MIT Press

the department introduced a new undergraduate concentration in ethics
Rachael Briggs rewrote "Diamonds are a girl's best friend"
Alex Byrne gave the Burman lectures in Umeå, Sweden
Sally Haslanger's paper "Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: not by reason (alone)" made crooked timber and inside higher ed

MIT philosophy
updated: 2 sep 2008