Lewis Powell

It's actually more of a wishlist of things I hope to have a chance to read during the remainder of this summer, rather than a legitimate plan for things I reasonably expect to be able to read in the next couple months:

The Philosophy of Philosophy - Timothy Williamson
Parts and Places - Roberto Casati & Achille Varzi
Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge - Condillac
The Probable and the Provable - L. Jonathan Cohen
An Essay On Belief and Acceptance - L. Jonathan Cohen
Objects of Thought - A.N. Prior
Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology - Sanford Goldberg (editor)
Slaves of the Passions - Mark Schroeder
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding - Leibniz
Truth and Ontology - Trenton Merricks
Learning From Six Philosophers - Jonathan Bennett

Additionally, I have been perusing Mill's System of Logic (specifically the opening sections on language), but I can't even pretend that I'll be getting a chance to seriously look at that this summer.

And, I should probably add Hume's Treatise and Locke's Essay as quasi-permanent members of any sort of philosophy reading list of mine, at this point. I can't really foresee any particular time when I won't be working on something or other from either or both of those.

Outside of philosophy, I am also hoping to find time this summer to teach myself calculus (using Michael Spivak's text) and also to get up to greater competence with my computer programming skills (using the former MIT introductory programming text, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs).

Justin Snedegar

I notice that not much has happened at H/P in the last week. I've been on a family vacation and Lewis went to a conference at Cornell (I think). Maybe he should do a post about the conference? Also, we've recently added Matt Glass (UC-Irvine LPS) to the list of authors. He should post as well...Matt.

While I was at the beach, I was getting a jump on some reading for my first-year seminar this fall. Right now, I'm finishing up Naming and Necessity. This makes about the third time I've read it, and I'm glad I'm re-reading it. I guess I should have picked up on this earlier, but I finally am realizing how important the distinction between epistemic possibility and metaphysical possibility is. I read Lewis's On the Plurality of Worlds before I read Naming and Necessity all the way through, so I was originally pretty loose in what I would allow into my space of metaphysical possibility. Kripke seemed a little too restrictive...I could not have been a duck (even if the possible world were populated with very intelligent ducks who functioned much like humans), cats could not have been demons. But, drawing the distinction between epistemic and metaphysical possibility, these restrictions seem not only tolerable, but intuitive. It is epistemically possible that cats are demons (we may find this out), but if cats are animals, then it is metaphysically necessary that cats are animals.

I have one worry. It's not a terribly big worry, but one nonetheless. I think I buy into Kripke's more restricted version of metaphysical possibility mainly because I buy into (for the most part) Kripke's views on language. And I get nervous when people draw metaphysical conclusions from considerations of language. I'm not sure why, but I do. Probably something to do with Putnam's whole "Brains in a Vat" argument.

So, I would like to read more about the EP/MP distinction. I know that Soames has a paper, that I'll get to at some point, called "Actually" where he discusses these issues (I think). What else might be good? Also, where can I find some good stuff on drawing metaphysical conclusions from considerations in language?