Matt Harvey, on Radio 4
POEM: ALAN TURING
here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?
I just learnt, via Greg Restall’s twitterfeed, that Bob Meyer has lost his struggle with cancer.
I first met Bob when I was a masters student here at Calgary during the 1995 meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy. I had helped Brian Chellas organize the conference, and so when Bob did not appear for his scheduled performance I was delegated to go rouse him — it turned out he had overslept.
When scheduling talks Brian had mentioned that Bob was not a morning person, and his session had been scheduled for 4pm. No one was surprised that this was still too early. I think I knew at that moment that philosophy and I were meant for each other.
During my three years as a doctoral student at Canterbury I was at a fair number of Australasian Association of Logic talks by Bob (all of which he was on time for!) — I don’t think I ever once had the courage to ask him a question, but I enjoyed every one. He will be missed.
Reminiscences by folks who knew him better than I: Greg Restall and David Chalmers.
I am sure he will be remembered fondly by all at the SEP this week.
Syntax, and the void.
First-year philosophy papers are awful. Oh there are a some that are pleasant to read, and a few that are interesting, and a smaller group that are both. But on the whole, they aren’t very good.
This is not because the students are awful. Of course, some students are awful. But the ratio of awful papers to awful students is not 1:1. It is (warning: totally made up statistic) more like 20:1.
read more…
Everyone should watch this TED talk from Mike Rowe (of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs) on what he learnt about work from doing the show.
Arnold Zwicky @ Language Log says:
(1) When all parts of a subject joined by or or nor are singular, the verb is singular; when all parts are plural, the verb is plural
…
The fact is that clause (1) (slightly amended, to get the person issue out of the way) is utterly uncontroversial; I’m not aware of variation on this point, and I doubt that anyone needs to be told what to do when confronted by disjunctive subjects of the same number (and person).
Am I the only person who speaks an idiolect on which:
- Neither Barbara nor Sam is able to …
is dubious and
- Neither Barbara nor Sam are able to …
is clearly correct?
I don’t need to be told what to do, he’s right about that. But I do the precise opposite of what he thinks everyone does.
Spandrels of Truth strikes me as one truly awesome title, and I wish I had thought of it. Thinking of the contents of the book would have been pretty nice also.
It’s out, btw. No doubt the ever prolific JC Beall will now just go write more. Encourage him. Buy the book. Get 20% off (via Greg Restall).
So, yes, there was supposed to be a part two. And then I lost my phone and failed to get grading done in a timely manner, and so on and such and such. I am not an organized person. I am trying to give up apologizing for this, on the grounds that none of my apologies meet the Gricean conditions for sincerity — in particular, I have no real* intention of changing this behaviour.
So what was supposed to be in part two?
I went to a panel presentation feature three members of The Institute of Media Research at the Braunschweig University of Art. Serjoscha Wiemer, Stefan Boehme, and Rolf F. Nohr were there to talk about their research project, which focuses on knowledge representation in game interfaces, and the ways in which knowledge is acquired and deployed by gamers. It was an interesting session but I left blogging it so long that I no longer remember the details.
*I mean, I say I would like to change it, but I have being saying that for 20 years, so the extent to which this properly counts as an intention seems slim at best. Your theory may differ.
Today is day 3 — for me day 2 — of the Southwest/Texas Pop Culture Association and American Culture Association Meeting in Albuquerque. Yesterday and today in slots in which there were no philosophy stream panels I have being going to game studies panels. I know nothing about game studies qua academic discipline, but I do know about games.
I’ve gone to some interesting panels. Yesterday I saw a panel with three speakers: Harrison Gish, University of California, Los Angeles “Developing Transitional Space in Classic Games”, Jennifer deWinter, Worcester Polytechnic Institute “:), or On Emotion in Game Studies”, and Kevin Moberly, St. Cloud State University “Preemptive Strikes: Ludology, Narratology, and Deterrence in Computer Game Studies”.
Now is the time to move on if you could care less about games, and click read more if you want to geek out with me.
At the end of his article “Meaning” Grice says roughly that interpreting a difficult text–say a philosophical one–written by oneself can be as much an act of decision as an act of remembering. Presumably this is because what you intended at the time, which for Grice is determinative of speaker meaning, may be lost to all. Interpretation is as much a case of making a reasonable choice for you as for anyone.
