The Central APA; Where I Learn that it is Better to be Gettiered than to Gettier

I hope to do a longish post consisting of thoughts about the Central APA, but I have to get something off of my chest first. A really weird thing happened to me on Friday, April 1st.

I was exhausted by talks on Thursday, getting dinner with the Braver panel, and the Smoker after that (weirdly, at each APA I seem to meet one more person from the U. Conn Philosophy department; it's a great place). So on Friday afternoon I skipped some talks and took a longish nap. At about 5:30 my hotel phone rang and when I picked it up the person said, "Jon? It's Steve. You want to get dinner?"

Now here is the problem. I had absolutley no idea who was talking to me, and (as a result of what followed) I can confidently say that if this ever happens to you, do not do what I did. In my APA induced narcoleptic state I just kind of went along with it, I guess figuring that I'd remember who Steve was as I woke up more. So instead of saying "Steve who?" I decided to avoid embarassment and just said "sure." Then Steve wanted to meet in ten minutes because he was in a hurry because of some talk at 7:30. I didn't pick up what talk it was, but Steve clearly thought I would be going to that talk too. But I'd just woken up so we agreed to meet at 6:00 in the lobby.

In the ensuing 30 minutes I couldn't remember any Steves! I figured it must have been someone I'd met either at dinner or at the smoker.  I though maybe it was the guy from Texas A&M who I remembered wrote the book Tragedies of Spirit:  Tracing Finitude in Hegel’s Phenomenology (SUNY Press, 2006; paperback, 2007). I remembered everything that guy had said in the conversation and was really excited about reading his book and even written down three other book titles that he'd mentioned. But all I remembered about his name was that it was two first names. This is a common thing with me, where I remember everything but the person's name. So maybe one of the Finitude-in-Hegel's-Phenomenology-guy's two first names was Steve?

But then I spent fifteen minutes looking through the program and nobody had the last name Steve, and the only first name Steve I recognized was Stephan Blatti from the University of Memphis (editor of the Southern Journal). I knew him when he was an undergrad at OSU (along with Levi Bryant) and have e-mailed with him a couple of times I think when I reviewed a paper or two for Southern,  but not well enough to where he wouldn't have said, "Hey Jon this is Steve Blatti." And the guy I talked to didn't sound like Blatti (shamefully, I think Blatti's paper might have actually been during my nap).

So at 6:00, with a very heavy heart, I slurk downstairs just sort of desperately looking around to see who Steve might be. Every group of people I see that includes someone I even marginally know I kind of sneakily ask if they know any Steves (I don't want the real Steve to hear me inquiring about him). But that entailed telling this embarassing story. Not one Steve showed up for a whole hour, and I also got some really weird responses. Robert Kraut told me that he never eats dinner with anyone named Steve, and that it served me right. Roy Cook noted that Friday was April 1st so maybe it was a prank, or perhaps I'd been hallucinating earlier. Mark Okrent said that none of his philosopher Steve friends was at the conference. Roy and I tried to make a jokes about twin-Steve or swamp-Steves, but after the philosophical labors of the previous two days we weren't up to it, and our efforts fell flat. And then the friendly Hegel Finitude dude actually did show up at 7:00 and I told him I remembered the title of his book and that his name was two first names, but I didn't remember if one of them was Steve, and he said no. His name is Ted George (I'd sat next to him at the Braver dinner and he's a really wonderful conversationalist; at one point he noted that rooting for the Yankies is sort of like rooting for Big Oil).

So, finally at 7:15 I walked out alone into the cold yet forgiving Minneapolis night. On my way to my third meal at Masa I had an existential realization. And it is this. Whatever divinities are in charge of our sad universe dictate that at every meeting of the American Philosophical Association there must be at least one actual, real Gettier example. This somehow propitiates various infernal philosophical spirits (or possibly just the spirit of Bertrand Russell). And at this APA Steve was the sacrifical lamb, and I was just an unwitting participant in his Gettierization.

So here's what clearly happened. Steve dialed the wrong number, but just happened to be calling the room of someone with the same name as the person he was trying to get. We had our conversation, so he had the justified belief that he was going to meet Jon (or more probably John) downstairs at 6:00. But then when he gets there he meets the original Jo(h)n, who just happened to be walking around downstairs at 6:00. And they take off, leaving me to pester people for an hour about whether or not I had met a Steve during Thursday night's shenanigans. Since Steve really did meet Jo(h)n, his justified belief was true. But not knowledge.

That's the best theory I have. But if Steve is out there reading this, and I'm wrong about the whole propitiate-the-ghost-of-Bertrand-Russell thing, and I somehow misunderstood where we were supposed to meet, many apologies. Please don't be insulted that I forgot your name. If you've written a book, I probably do at least remember it.

On the other hand, if anyone reading this knows of a Steve getting dinner with a Jo(h)n on Friday, April 1st at the APA, please respond with the details. I think most APA gettierizations involve broken clocks (Russell's original example) or maybe facades and whatnot. But I think that anyone who has read the above will agree that this gettierization was a doozie, causing me no small amount of embarassment. So it would be cool if any further details are forthcoming.