One of the things that's interesting about talking to a four-year-old is that they can hit on some philosophically interesting topics. For example, there was the discussion that come out of Izzy's proclaiming that God couldn't exist because he doesn't have a body. I'm constantly amazed at how much of a materialist she can be. This afternoon, as we walked a couple of blocks to meet my wife, Izzy began talking to me about her brain. Specifically about how her memories are in her brain. I don't know why, but I was a bit surprised that she said 'brain' and not 'mind'. So, I began asking her questions like "Are all your thoughts in your brain?" Her response was a seemingly certain yes. She said some part were for memories, but other parts did other work. I tried to ask her about qualia. She thought it was just to have your brain be a certain way, though she confessed to not really understanding how.

I was having a good deal of fun with the philosophy of mind discussion, so I thought I'd push on the personal identity. I asked her, "What would happen if we switched our brains? That is, what would happen if we put your brain in my body and my brain in your body?" Her response... "That's absurd!" (I'm always surprised by some of the words she uses.) I told her that probably more than a few philosophers agreed with her, but to try and imagine it in any case. We had to set a side the fact that her brain is smaller than mine, and that mine wouldn't fit in her body. In the end she concluded that she'd see out of my body and I'd see out of hers. I wanted to press her on fission cases, but sadly we'd arrived at her mother's hair salon. Apparently hair products and chocolates are serious distractions to doing philosophy.

In any case, here is my first stab at fulfilling my responsibilities and displaying my full geek pride. I made an Ubuntu desktop wallpaper that represents someone who has deeply influenced my philosophical thinking, Alvin Goldman. I thought Goldman was appropriate since I switched to ubuntu for its process reliability.

Grab your own copy of the Goldman Reliability Wallpaper.

Rule Two: Make sure that you spell peoples names correctly. I have no idea who Keith de Rosa and Jonathan Kvanig, but suspect the author means Keith DeRose and Jonathan Kvanvig.

Rule Three: Attribute the correct views to individuals. While DeRose and Williamson are leading epistemologists, they are not to my knowledge virtue epistemologists.

Well by this point you probably get the idea as to how the rest of the review goes. If you really want to know about Sosa's book go read Ram Neta's NDPR review.

1. OK, there is a tiny wing of philosophy that sometimes talks of a "correspondence theory of knowledge" but I think this is mostly confused.

It will take place October 17-18, 2008, on the campus of UNL. Tyler Burge (UCLA) will be giving the keynote address.

The second workshop consists of eight nonconcurrent sessions, each involving a presentation of approximately 40 minutes followed by 40 minutes of discussion. Workshop papers will be made available to participants in advance of the workshop. Other than Burge, this year's presenters included Mike Bergmann (Purdue), Andy Egan (Michigan), Adam Leite (Indiana), Peter Markie (Missouri), Brit Brogaard (Missouri-St. Louis), Jonathan Weinberg (Indiana), Juan Comesaña (Wisconsin).

MEW2 is supported by the Chambers Research Fund, the UNL College of Arts and Sciences, the UNL Philosophy Department, and the Cedric Evans Memorial Lecture Fund.

The conference website for the second annual Midwest Epistemology Workshop.

Information from the first MEW (which took place November 2007 at Northwestern University) can be found here. (A forthcoming edition of Philosophical Studies is being devoted to the talks given there.)

The other day I discovered a web site that has a printable pdf that you can print out and use to build your own impossible triangle. The design works best when used with heavier paper.

All philosophers with an interest in epistemology, irrespective of their geographical location, are invited and encouraged to participate.

The Society of Analytical Feminism is sponsoring a conference in Lexington, KY, April 4-6, 2008.  The Society invites the submission of papers that address feminist issues in any area of philosophy, including philosophy of language, philosophy of science, metaphysics, race theory, normative ethics, metaethics, Kantian ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, Ancient philosophy, rational choice theory, and epistemology.  The general theme of the conference is an examination of the relationship between analytical feminism and these areas of philosophy, including contributions that analytic feminist philosophy has made to these areas and ways in which it may have changed approaches to problems in these areas.

• Knowledge: Timothy Williamson (Oxford University)
• Metaphysics: Kevin Mulligan (University of Geneva)
• Language: Paolo Leonardi (University of Bologna)

With the aim of including as many contributions as possible, the conference will be structured around plenary sessions with the keynote speakers and pairs of parallel sessions dedicated to contributed papers. The intention is that contributed papers should last around 30 minutes and allow around 15 minutes for discussion.

The language of the conference is English.

Range of Topics

• Language: meaning; truth; truth-conditions and assertibility; sense and reference; semantics and syntax; form and content; the language of thought; metaphor...
• Knowledge: scepticism; foundationalism and coherentism; internalism and externalism; holism and indeterminacy; justification; the a priori; perception; memory; induction; other minds...
• Metaphysics: particular and universal; things, facts and events; mind and body; time, identity and cause; possible worlds; God...

Deadline **June 15th 2007**

Webpage of the conference: http://www.filosofia.lettere.unipd.it/analitica/grad-conf/

Matthais Steup
Department of Philosophy
St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, MN 56301