What I've Been Up To
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at 2:22 PM
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3 Comments |
1. I've substantially revised my work replying to Derrick Darby's defense of rights externalism; it is now under review for publication. You can find the new and improved paper here. The new abstract reads as roughly the same paper, but countless improvements have been made, to the point that I'm far more confident in the soundness and philosophical merit of the paper.
Abstract: In this paper, I advance the critical power objection to rights externalism. In short, I maintain that there are some rights some subjects have which are logically prior to any social arrangement, practice, or policy. I first consider Derrick Darby’s critique of the objection and find it decisive. In response, I reformulate its central ingredient, the security thesis. I argue that rights must be grounded in something that is fixed to have sufficient critical force. I draw from a variety of conceptual resources, including recent free will literature on the validity of a certain modal inference.
2. Additionally, I completed my critique (see link for earlier work) of Peter Milne's attempted take-down of truthmaker theory. You can find the paper here. Submitted that piece to ANALYSIS.After a number of false starts and lengthier treatments, the point I finally make is simple and direct; in the paper, I maintain that an assumption Milne relies upon is neither true nor false (though perhaps still meaningful, in some minimal sense). I remain cautiously pessimistic about both of the above submissions, but hey, you never get published if you don't submit. And the rewards are easy to calculate; either paper, if accepted, could serve me well in getting into a graduate program of choice.
3. Recieved John Martin Fischer/Mark Ravizza's Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility and Timothy O'Connor's Persons & Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will in the mail today. While I've read portions of both texts before, I can now give these important works the attention they deserve.
4. In other news, Tom Crisp agreed to oversee an independent study of Principle Beta in the fall. I've already gathered together most of the materials necessary for my research and will finalize the reading list shortly before the semester starts.
In short, these last dozen days or so have been productive.
3 Comments:
Riskman1 at 9:32 PM said... So student philosopher:
What did the Monist say to the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything.
Sally at 8:02 AM said... I am pleased to know someone like you (do I know you?).... one who attends to philosophy as you do... friend to my girl.
Right now I am lost in the abyss of my mind having tumbled off a cliff. The neurons in my brain are missfiring synapses. I think I'm done with posting...
brian at 2:13 PM said... i too feel angst at my neurons.
congratulations on your productivity.
i have a philosopher's joke for you:
what did the analytic philosopher say to the other analytic philosopher?
give up? do you?
he said, "is being?"
