1. Biggest bummers. My rough estimate is that a third of the people who were supposed to be there didn't get through the bad weather. The biggest bummers for me here were that (a) my cowriter Frankie Worrell got stranded in New Orleans and didn't make it, and (b) that Mark Lance and Rebecca Kukla didn't make it for the scheduled author meets critic section of "Yo!" and "Lo!": The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons. I'm going to teach the book next Fall in a Philosophy of Language class, so at least I'll still get to study it deeply. [Professor A to Professor B: Have you read book X? Professor B: Read it? I haven't even taught it yet!]
2. Weird synchronicity. Even though Lance wasn't at the APA a lot of us got exposure to some of his work. Greg Restall's fantastic presentation on proof theory and meaning centrally focused on Lance and White's "Stereoscopic Vision: Persons, Freedom, and Two Spaces of Material Inference" (2007, Philosophers' Imprint 7 (4):1-21). Thanks to that, I actually feel that for the first time like I'm on the cusp of really deeply understanding two dimensionalism and the real nature of the difference between subjunctive and indicative conditionals. And I have taught 2 dimensionalism before. Restall's presentation got me re-energized about proof theory too. [I think I found a new non-standard logical operator during his presentation that does weird things to various accounts of the relation between the intuitive notion of Dummettian harmony and Gentzen/Prawitz cut elimination/normalization results. I'm going to get caught up on the relevant literature before I say anything though, because the point is so seemingly obvious that it's likely to have a simple flaw or be already discovered.]
3. Weirder synchronicity relating to logic types on this blog. Van Bentham presented after Restall in the logic section, and about four or five times he mentioned stuff that Catarina Novaes said at the empirically informed logic workshop.
4. First inevitable moment of APA related depression. During the discussion session of any talk there is a ratio of questions that try to destroy the speaker's argument and questions that point out the way the speaker's argument can be enriched or applied to other issues. At some point in going to talks I just became convinced that in Philosophy this ratio is way too high (I know that it's much lower in Linguistics at least). In my own presentation the only question of the motivationally helpful type I got was by someone who came up afterwards and pointed me to some Buddist discussions of vagueness and ethics that fit really well with what Frankie and I were doing. All the other questions were of the former type. In some of the other talks I went to, none of the questions were supportive. I couldn't help but to feel that something was wrong with us.
5. Second inevitable moment of APA related depression. A number of the questioners at me and Franki'es talk were grad students dissertating on vagueness. I managed to catch up with three of them at the smoker. All were really great, ferociously sharp, and doing interesting work. None of them had any interviews.
6. Third inevitable moment of APA related depression. At the smoker I manged to hook up with some other OSU folks, and for a couple of hours we just had a blast talking philosophy and gossiping. At some point we all realized that a few years ago when all of us were trying to get jobs the very sight of us now yucking it up amidst so much doom would have inspired some gamut of emotions from mild Nietzschean ressentiment to near rage.
7. Greatest APA epiphany. At one point outside of the conference hotel I realized I was still wearing my name tag. I felt uncool and started to take it off, but before I'd unhooked the pin I looked up and saw Daniel Dennett, striding boldly down the street proudly wearing his APA name tag. Who's too cool for school now Cogburn? Seriously, that part of my soul deformed by the highschool terror of being uncool got a little bit further unkinked. It's just yet another thing to be thankful to Daniel Dennett for.
8. Another random weird moment. The employees at Legal Seafood who refilled the Tabasco bottle neglected to reinstall the little aperture at the top. So when I tried to put some in my lobster bisque it had the same effect as the old practical joke where someone loosens the top of the salt shaker. About 1/5th of my appetizer was Tabasco sauce. The waitress offered to get me some new bisque, but it still tasted great to me. She said, "you must be from Louisiana." I guess I am now.
9. Yet more being-in-a-strange-city synchronicity. Someone at my talk told me about the advertisement pictured above, which says that vagueness leads to socks, ties, and underwear. Me and Frankie's substantive conclusion neither entails nor contradicts that. So it's worth thinking about.
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