consequently.org/news

About

I'm Greg Restall, and this is my website. I work in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. [Email: greg at consequently.org; Skype: greg_restall; Post: Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia.]

Writing

These are the three last modified entries on my writing page.

“Truthmakers, Entailment and Necessity 2008,” an addendum to “Truthmakers, Entailment and Necessity,” to appear in Truth and Truth-making, edited by E. J. Lowe and A. Rami, Acumen, 2008. →
[with Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance] Appendix to Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’: the pragmatic topography of the space of reasons, Harvard University Press, to appear. →
“Curry’s Revenge: the costs of non-classical solutions to the paradoxes of self-reference,” in The Revenge of the Liar, ed. JC Beall, Oxford University Press, pages 262–271, 2008. →
“Anti-Realist Classical Logic and Realist Mathematics,” under revision. →
“Proof Theory and Meaning: on second order logic,” to appear in the Logica 2007 Yearbook, Filosofia. →

Classes

In Semester 2, which starts on July 31, I’ll be teaching an honours seminar 161-438 Logic and Philosophy, in which we cover proof theory and its applications to semantics.

Events

AAL2007: the annual conference of the Australasian Association for Logic, University of Melbourne November 9 to 11, 2007.

Recent Past

University of Melbourne Philosophy Undergraduate Workshop, University of Melbourne September 21 to 23, 2007.

Logic Colloquium 2007, Wrocław, Poland, July 14-19, 2007.

1st GPMR Workshop on Logic & Semantics on Medieval Logic and Modern Applied Logic, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany, on June 28-30, 2007.

Logica 2007, Hejnice Monastery, Czech Republic, 18-22 June 2007.

Heart of Philosophy Café talk and discussion on “What Marx, Freud and Nietzsche have taught me about belief in God”. Tuesday May 8, 7--9pm in the Merrick's General Store.

Masses of Formal Philosophy

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:

Why were you initially drawn to formal methods?
What example(s) from your work (or the work of others) illustrates the role formal methods can play in philosophy?
What is the proper role of philosophy in relation to other disciplines?
What do you consider the most neglected topics and/or contributions in late 20th century philosophy?
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?

Posted 09:35 AM on March 3, 2006

Comments

I think it sounds like a splendid idea.

The first book was good. But it seems to focus most on grand old men/women, e.g. Hintikka, Barcan Marcus, van Benthem, Follesdal. I think it would be nice to hear from some of the younger people in the field, such as yourself.

andreas , March 4, 2006 01:26 AM

Sounds like a great idea - I’d be interested in seeing your replies. I am particularly interested in answers to question 5. From where I am sitting, it seems to be a lot harder to talk about open problems in philosophy as opposed to, say, maths. For instance, by what criteria do you judge a philosophical problem to be solved?

Jon , March 7, 2006 01:19 PM