Among my agenda items for the summer were participating in a reading group on Alexander Nehamas’ theory of beauty and writing a paper on William James’ epistemology. Done and done.1
Continue reading “The trail of the Jamesian octopus is over everything”Author: P.D. Magnus
Having been written, more like is to believe
The paper which began as a blog post now exists as a draft.
Risk and Efficacy in ‘The Will to Believe’
Abstract: Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse have recently argued strenuously against James’ permissivism about belief. They are wrong, both about cases and about the general issue. In addition to the usual examples, the paper considers the importance of permissiveness in scientific discovery. The discussion highlights two different strands of James’ argument: one driven by doxastic efficacy and another driven by inductive risk. Although either strand is sufficient to show that it is sometimes permissible to believe in the absence of sufficient evidence, the two considerations have different scope and force.
How do matters lie with the polygraph dissertation?
I’ve been thinking lately about dissertations. The traditional model is for a PhD student to write a book-length exploration of a topic. A newer model is for the student to write several publishable papers on related topics. I’ve heard the former called the monograph dissertation, which naturally makes the latter a polygraph dissertation.2
I have met some philosophers who are hostile to the polygraph dissertation, but not for any clear reasons. I’ve met others who welcome the new model. As someone advising graduate students, I would like to have a better sense of what the disciplinary norms are.3
Continue reading “How do matters lie with the polygraph dissertation?”
New scribbles from the past
I’ve had the Font Monkey website for many years, but it has been a while since I updated. Just now, three new fonts!
Tye Spices is a recent creation that’s meant to be suggestive of typewritten letter forms. The first draft was monospaced, but that looked stultified. The final version is neat and tidy the way a lived in room might be neat and tidy, rather than in the way a cathedral might be.
I hammered out Carrollus Magnus,which has the worst pun-name I’ve given to a font. I’m rather fond of a free font from almost twenty years ago which was patterned after the handwriting of Lewis Carroll. I often try to use it in various projects, but usually give up because of its erratic line weight. This is my take on the same problem. So it’s distally from Carroll and proximally from me.
While preparing these, I came across a font that I’d saved under the name “mildhand” without giving it a proper name. The file record indicates that I drew it in late March of 2008, but I honestly have no recollection of it. Since I was posting the others, though, I gave it a proper name and posted it too: Mild Hand Jive.
I also updated the version of the Ninjascript font family that’s on the site. I’ve made various small improvements to it over the years, and the version on the site was a few generations behind.
These are offered under the Open Font License, which is a long thing with definitions and disclaimers. My fonts have always been free, because I’ve never felt like trying to wring money out of them, but I used to just give give informal and hand-waving terms in the readme file. Even though I’m using the OFL, the readme file still asks that anyone who uses the font for anything nifty reach out to let me know about it.
Can you dig it?
Richard Roundtree wanted to go to a science fiction convention, but he was worried that too many people would recognize him. So he decided to go in disguise. He dressed up as the monster bug that fought Godzilla, but his costume was so revealing that everyone could tell it was him.
They said the man who played Shaft was a bad Mothra faker.4
Admusement
“You’ve Never Worn Underwear Like This Before”
A poorly-drawn cartoon inspired by a sponsored link from somewhere on the internet.
Cyberpunk ambitopia
When I got my first iPhone, I wrote that its “compressed functionality underscores the extent to which the internet has changed things. If you had told me about it when I was a kid, I would not have been able to wrap my head around it.” It’s a camera, a calendar, an address book, a pocket watch, a GPS. It also takes calls, although I use it for text messaging more than voice.
When I imagined future technology as a kid, I often imagined smart houses. There was recently an on-line ad targeted to me for a front door lock that you can control from your phone. This is like the computerized houses of my elementary-school imagination. I should be excited, but I’m not.
The future has gritty problems that 1980s cyberpunk novels didn’t prepare me for.
Revisions to a draft about values and science
Over at Crooked Timber, John Holbo writes: “Remember when there were blogs? Ah, those were the good old days.”
Remember when I used to post just to say that I’d uploaded a new draft of a paper? Today was one of those days.
Sponsored links are the new spam
Steven Frank drew the webcomic Spamusement from 2004 to 2007. The schtick was “Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!”
It was a genius idea. Frank encouraged other people to draw their own, based on spam they’d received. Back in the day, I drew about a dozen. Drawing them was a pleasant kind of mental palate cleanser, doodling that was tethered loosely to the verbal part of my brain.5
The two wills to believe
Having just taught a seminar on pragmatism and reading a recent book review by Alex Klein, I realized that there’s a reading of William James’ “Will to Believe” which isn’t universally recognized even though it seems obvious to me.