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Masses of Formal Philosophy

Friday, March 3, 2006 at 09:35AM

Vincent Hendricks and John Symons are working on a sequel to their book Formal Philosophy, in which philosophers who use “formal methods” talked about their work, their motivations, and their take on the state of philosophy. For the sequel, they are opening things up for others to take an “interview” with five questions, to appear in the next book, Masses of Formal Philosophy. I’m not sure what the criteria Vincent and John are using for selecting answers for appearing in the book – but I am thinking about their five questions. Here they are:

  1. Why were you initially drawn to formal methods?

  2. What example(s) from your work (or the work of others) illustrates the role formal methods can play in philosophy?

  3. What is the proper role of philosophy in relation to other disciplines?

  4. What do you consider the most neglected topics and/or contributions in late 20th century philosophy?

  5. What are the most important open problems in philosophy and what are the prospects for progress?

These look like interesting questions to think about. Maybe I’ll post some draft answers here first, for feedback, and if I’m happy with the result, I’ll post it off to Vincent and John for consideration. If you work in this area, you might consider doing the same thing.

What do you think? Does it sound like a good idea?

News Archive

2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Happy 2006 – Teaching in Semester 1, 2006 – Assorted crosscultural observations, upon visiting the supermarket – Phase Change – Fun with Playlists: Squeezing your music library onto a 2GB iPod – Degrees of Truth, Degrees of Falsity – Masses of Formal Philosophy – Greg Hjorth coming back to Melbourne – Marathon Effort – Last Night at the MCG – Dame Edna at the Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony – Being a logician means sometimes having to say that you're sorry. Or at least, that you're wrong. – Oh, and there's another paper, too – Spooky coincidence? I think not – AJL Papers – 2006 redesign in progress – Enclosures – The Shifty Salesman – Well, that was easy... – Happy 5 day! – Masses of Formal Philosophy: Question 1 – On the Cable Guy Paradox – On Regret and Slingshots – End of Semester – Interviewed – This football game is pretty tense... – Key Ideas in the theory of proofs #1: The Duality of Proofs and Counterexamples – Teaching in Semester 2, 2006 – Off to France – Here in Nancy, Day 1 – Here in Nancy, Day 2 – Back home – Assorted Observations – Interviewed again – On Politics – On the Interview – Ten Questions about Books – Visits – An idea... – Masses of Formal Philosophy: Question 2 – Party on Tuesday – A Philosophical Poll: on a priori knowledge of possibilities – Horn tooting – Scenes from an afternoon – Off to India... – 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 |

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About

I’m Greg Restall, and this is my website. I work in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. Email: greg at consequently.org; Post: School of of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia.

Start at the home page—a summary of the site. The left column is news, archived on the news archive page. The central column contains recent items from the writing page, which lists my publications. These are also categorised by topic. You can follow my links at my account on delicious and occasional short snarky remarks at @consequently on twitter.

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This site is handcoded: I write text in Textmate, and Webby files things in the right place and uploads them to the server. This page was last modified on 2009-01-07 at 10:49AM.

Thought

G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his mother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.’ It’ the qualifier “necessarily” that shows Chesterton possessed a truly philosophical mind. – Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, in Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar …