Friday, October 29, 2010

Evolution of Cognition Reading Group Meeting XVIII

 
Contact: rachael{dot}brown{at}anu{dot}edu{dot}au

Social and Political Philosophy meeting

When: Friday, 5 November, 2010 11.30am-1pm
Where: Coombs Seminar Room F (3233)
Reading: “Individualism: True and False” in Individualism and Economic Order by Frederick Hayek
Contact: Cavit.Hacihamdioglu@anu.edu.au

Mathematics Reading Group - Session 4

The next session will be Tuesday 16 November, 11 AM, Coombs Seminar Rm F.

The reading is Chapter 4, "Continuity" from Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis. Supplementary reading is Chapter 4, "Functional Limits and Continuity" from Abbott's Understanding Analysis. (The supplementary reading is especially useful for the section on discontinuities). Electronic copies available upon request.

The schedule for the remaining sessions is:
30/11 - Differentiation
7/12 - Integration
14/12 - Function spaces & uniform convergence

Contact: Stephan Kubicki (stephan.kubicki{at}anu.edu.au)

Formal Semantics Group - 3. Meeting

Next meeting: Friday 5. 11., 11am - 1pm.

Location: Tea balcony

Reading: Steven T. Kuhn: Quantifiers as Modal Operators
available at:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u16340vv37474804/fulltext.pdf

Contact: Clas.Weber@anu.edu.au

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Probability meeting

2pm Wednesday 3 November 2010, Coombs seminar room D

Carl Hoefer (2007). The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Sceptic's Guide to Objective Chance. Mind 116 (463):549-596.

This week we'll only discuss the first half of the paper (where the first half is defined as up to and including section 4.2 Examples).

The paper is available at:


Foundations seminar - meeting 3

The Material Objects foundations seminar will have its third meeting on Nov 2, 2pm, seminar room C, to discuss Sider's "The Argument from Vagueness".

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Practical Cognition -- meeting 4

UPDATE: This week's meeting has been postponed. Apologies for the inconvenience.

- - -

The next meeting will be at 2pm on Friday, October 29 on the Tea Room balcony.

We will continue discussing Susanna Schellenberg's "Action and Self-Location in Perception".

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Social and Political Philosophy meeting

When: Friday, 29th October, 2010 11.30am-1pm
Where: Coombs Seminar Room F (3233)
Reading: “Individualism: True and False” in Individualism and Economic Order by Frederick Hayek
Contact: Cavit.Hacihamdioglu@anu.edu.au

Foundations Seminar - meeting 2

The Material Objects foundations seminar will have its second meeting today (Oct 26, 2pm, seminar room C) to discuss van Inwagen's "The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts".

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Probability meeting

The probability reading group will meet at 4pm on Wednesday 27 October in Coombs seminar room E to discuss:

Christopher S. I. Mccurdy (1996). Humphrey's Paradox and the Interpretation of Inverse Conditional Propensities. Synthese 108 (1). Available via:

John

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Tip: Subscribing

A number of people have asked whether there is some way to get posts on this blog delivered to email. In reply, it may be worth trying out a good news reader for a little while, to see whether this need persists. Many like Google reader.

If you find that you really do want notifications delivered to your inbox, there seems to be many options available; one might for example consider http://www.feedmyinbox.com/ or this this add-on to Firefox.

You do not have to subscribe to notifications for all reading groups: you can subscribe only to post that have a certain label. As long as the conveners are careful to label all their posts, this should work well.

All you have to do is to give the following url to your feedreader (or to feedmyinbox.com etc).

http://anuphilrgs.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname

Obviusly, replace "labelname" with the actual name of the label you are interested in.

Practical Cognition -- meeting 3

The next meeting will be at 2pm on Friday, October 22 on the Tea Room balcony.

We will be discussing Susanna Schellenberg's "Action and Self-Location in Perception".

Monday, October 18, 2010

Probability reading group meeting

The next meeting will be at 12.30pm on Friday 22 October 2010 in Coombs seminar room A.

The reading is John Cusbert 'Crystal balls and admissibility' (temporarily) available here.

John Cusbert

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Foundations Seminar on Material Objects


This foundations seminar is open to all ANU graduate students and visiting graduate students. The topic is the metaphysics of material objects, and our focus will be the various pressures (vagueness, causation, arbitrariness, coincidence) that have led many metaphysicians to accept what seem to be radically revisionary conceptions of which kinds of material objects there are.
Meeting Time: Tuesdays, 2pm, from Oct 19 to Nov 23 (inclusive)
Location: Seminar Room C
Contact: Dan Korman, dzkorman at gmail dot com
The tentative reading list is: Lewis’s “Many, But Almost One”, van Inwagen’s “The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts”, Sosa’s “Existential Relativity”, Sider’s “The Argument from Vagueness”, Merricks’s “Epiphenomenalism and Eliminativism”, and Thomasson’s “Realism about Human Kinds”.

Ethics and International Public Policy reading group

The group aims to explore ethical dilemmas arising in international public policy. We plan to cover readings from a range of disciplines including moral and political theory, economics, international relations, decision theory, law, and international political economy.

We also encourage our regular members and occasional visitors to the ANU to distribute and discuss their work in progress with us. Members may also volunteer to make informal 15-minute presentations of thoughts-in-progress, followed by 45 minutes of discussion. Presentations of members' own work will have priority over published readings.

Participation in the group is open - new members are welcome. The group generally meets fortnightly on Tuesdays (12.30-2pm) in Coombs Seminar Room B.
For more information, contact Jonathan Pickering [jonathan.pickering [at] anu.edu.au].

Friday, October 15, 2010

Formal Semantics Group - 2. Meeting

Next meeting: Friday 29. 10., 11am - 1 pm.

Location: Tea balcony

Reading: W.V. Quine: Variables Explained Away



Contact: Clas.Weber@anu.edu.au

Mathematics Reading Group - Session 3

The third meeting of the Mathematics Reading Group is Tuesday 26 October, 11 AM, Coombs Seminar Room F.

The reading is Chapter 3, "Numerical Sequences and Series", from Walter Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis - but we'll only be looking at pages 47--58.

Supplementary reading is Chapter 2, "Sequences and Series", from Stephen Abbott's Understanding Analysis. (It's highly recommended that you read section 2.2 before starting on Rudin).

Shameless advertising: if you didn't know what the hell your maths teachers were on about with the epsilon-delta definition of limits, then this is the session to clear all that up!

Contact: Stephan Kubicki (stephan.kubicki{at}anu.edu.au)

Evo Cog RG XVII Postponed

The Evolution of Cognition RG meeting for today is cancelled due to the expected absence of a high number of regular attendees. The next meeting will take place next week as follows;

Evolution of Cognition Reading Group Meeting XVII

When: Friday, 22nd October, 2010 3-5pm
Where: Seminar Room E
Reading:

Rachael

Monday, October 11, 2010

Philosophy of probability reading group

This group meets most weeks to discuss a paper in the philosophy of probability. The focus is on recent work, and we're particularly keen to discuss participants' work.

There's no overriding sub-theme, but here are a few topics we've discussed recently:
  • Rationality constraints on credences
  • Probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities
  • Propensities
  • De se credences
  • Regularity and infinitesimal probabilities
  • The relationship between credence and objective probability
All are very welcome to attend (but be warned that the discussion can get fairly technical at times).

The meetings often occur on Wednesday at 2pm, but please check more recent posts for up-to-date information.

Contact: Wolfgang Schwarz, wo at sign umsu dot de

Social and Political Philosophy RG Next Meeting-29/10/10

When: Friday, 29th October, 2010 11.30am-1pm
Where: Coombs Seminar Room F (3233)
Reading: “Individualism: True and False” in Individualism and Economic Order by Frederick Hayek
Contact: Cavit.Hacihamdioglu@anu.edu.au

Formal Semantics Reading Group - Basic Information

The Formal Semantics Reading Group is a reading group that focuses on formal semantics. The idea is to read texts that deal with issues in formal semantics. The tentative time is Fridays 11am - 1pm on the tea balcony. Everybody interested is welcome to join.

Contact: Clas.Weber@anu.edu.au

Mathematics Reading Group - Meeting 2

The second meeting of the Mathematics Reading Group is Tuesday 12 October, 11 AM, Coombs Seminar Room F.

The reading is Chapter 2, "Basic Topology", from Walter Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis. (With a focus on the sections "Metric Spaces" and "Compact Sets").

Supplementary readings are Chapters 2 and 3, "Sequences and Series" and "Basic Topology of R" from Stephen Abbott's Understanding Analysis.

Contact: Stephan Kubicki (stephan.kubicki{at}anu.edu.au)

Mathematics Reading Group

The Mathematics Reading Group is intended for those who have not had a rigorous tertiary education in mathematics (or those who have, but a while ago) and want to brush up on their mathematical knowledge and competence. (Although, given the time constraints, we emphasise conceptual understanding over technique). The readings are from textbooks in central areas of mathematics. The first incarnation of this group worked through the basics of analysis; future incarnations of the group may study algebra, number theory, geometry. The aim is to make the group accessible to people with a wide variety of previous mathematical experience, so there are no specific prerequisites - just a willingness to work through proofs in some detail. We meet semi-regularly (roughly every two weeks). This group will not be running during the first semester of 2011.

Contact: Stephan Kubicki (stephan.kubicki{at}anu.edu.au)

Evolution of Cognition Reading Group Meeting XVII

When: Friday, 15th October, 2010 3-5pm
Where: Coombs Seminar Room E

Contact: Rachael Brown

Evolution Reading Group

The Evolution Reading Group is a weekly interdisciplinary reading group. It is comprised of students and academics from schools across the university including philosophy and biology. Readings for the meetings are drawn from behavioural ecology, comparative psychology, evolutionary theory and the philosophy of science. In the past there has been a particular focus upon the evolution of cognition. More recently we have turned to general philosophical issues in evolutionary theory. Members of the group take turns to suggest papers of interest to discuss.

Participation in the group is open and we welcome new members. Some prior understanding of basic evolutionary theory is recommended but not necessary. Along with being posted here, notices for this group are sent out to the evo.theory@anu.edu.au mailing list along with other information about evolution related events on campus. To join the mailing list go here.

Contact: rachael dot brown [that sign] anu dot edu dot au

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Social and Political Philosophy Reading Group

The Social and Political Philosophy Reading Group focuses on social and political philosophy. So far, we have read about theories of justice, rights, equality, responsibility, political liberalism, and the communitarian vs liberal debate. Postgraduates, academics, honour students, and visitors are welcome to join. Each participant nominates a reading for the week and we discuss it. We meet Fridays from 11.30am to 1.00pm in Seminar Room F (Coombs Room 3233)
Contact: Cavit.Hacihamdioglu@anu.edu.au

Practical Cognition

This is a reading group on knowledge, mind, and action -- "practical cognition", for lack of a better label. Topics include:
  • knowing how
  • skill
  • intelligence
  • capacities
  • abilities
  • etc.
Postgraduates, faculty, and visiting scholars working in all areas are warmly invited to attend.

Our first reading was John Bengson and Marc Moffett's "Two Conceptions of Mind and Action: Knowing How and the Philosophical Theory of Intelligence". Our second reading was John Maier's "The Agentive Modalities" (see also "Abilities"). Future meetings will discuss related issues, including recent and forthcoming work on perception and the capacity to act, rational dispositions, and the putative stakes-sensitivity of knowledge vis-a-vis action. Suggestions for future readings are encouraged; please send ideas to john.bengson@anu.edu.au.

Meetings are typically held on the tea balcony at 2pm on Fridays. Day/time/place may vary, and meetings may be held weekly, biweekly, or monthly, so stay tuned.

Contact: john.bengson@anu.edu.au

Formal Semantics Reading Group

Next meeting: Friday 15. 10., 11am - 1 pm.

Location: Tea balcony

Reading: A. Prior: Egocentric Logic



Contact: Clas.Weber@anu.edu.au

MacIntyre Reading Group Friday 15th October

On Friday 15th October, the MacIntyre Reading Group will be looking at chapters 9 and 10 of his Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. We will be meeting in the Milgate Seminar Room, Hope Building, from 9.00-11.00. We expoect to move on to the start of Dependent Rational Animals, on October 22nd - and would be delighted if anyone else wished then to join us.

Information etc from: Jeremy.Shearmur@anu.edu.au

Basic information about MacIntyre Reading Group

The MacIntyre Reading Group usually meets every Friday morning in the Milgate Seminar Room in the Hope Building, currently from 9.00-11.00.

We have, gradually, worked through After Virtue; Whose Justice, Which Rationality, and are currently towards the end of Three Rival Versions, and expect in a couple of weeks to start Dependent Rational Animals (we typically read and discuss a chapter each week). With this, the seminar is likely to end, although we may possibly: (i) continue meetings, for those who are interested, on essays from his two volumes of essays, or on his book on the University/Catholic Philosophy, and possibly even the recent colleaction of his early writings from when he was a Marxist; (ii) organize a mini-conference on his work. We'd be delighted if anyone would care to join us in any of this.

For information, contact: Jeremy.Shearmur@anu.edu.au