Philadelphia-Area High School Ethics Bowl

UPDATE: 8 December 2013

Congratulations to all the teams that took part in the ethics bowl.  A team from Cherry Hill High School East won the competition and will represent our region in the national competition in April 2014.  It's great that Villanova's Ethics Program, led by Dr. Mark Doorley, again organized the event and that so many volunteer judges and moderators made themselves available.
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Also, the second Philadelphia area High School Ethics Bowl will be held on December 7th, again hosted by Villanova University.  Contact me if you would like information on volunteering to help with the event (I was a judge last year and it was a great experience).

http://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/ethics/hsethicsbowl.html

GPPC 2013-2014 Program of Events

The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium 2013-2014 program is up on the website: http://www.thegppc.org/

Please check it out.  Looking at the fall schedule, I’d ask you to please make special note of November 16^th which is the date for our Public Issues event (see below). 

Save the Date

GPPC Public Affairs Symposium:

America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano and Public Philosophy in the U.S

Saturday, November 16^th, 2013 1pm – 4:30 pm

Free Library of Philadelphia Central Branch (Main Auditorium)

1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103   Phone: 215-686-5300

Panelists:

        Anita Allen, University of Pennsylvania

        Peter Catapano Editor, "The Stone," The New York Times

        Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto/New York University

        Carlin Romano, Ursinus College

Carlin Romano’s book, America the Philosophical, argues that philosophy, has a deep and wide role to play in American intellectual life and culture.  The degree to which it fulfills this role today, or should do so in the future, is a question which fits naturally into our long-running Public Issues Forum series.  A great panel of speakers will join us, and we hope you will participate as well. (Here is an essay by Carlin summarizing his thesis:http://chronicle.com/article/Is-America-Philosophical-/131884/ )

Russellian Monism and the Identity Theory of Properties

Here is a draft paper on a topic discussed a fair amount on this blog in the past.
Comments or suggestions are welcome.

Russellian Monism and the Identity Theory of Properties

[UPDATE: 6 Sept. 2013 - Very slightly revised from 2 Sept. version]

Here's the introduction:

Russellian Monism is an attractive approach to the mind/body problem. It promises to put both mental and physical phenomena on a common ontological ground. By providing a place in nature for the qualitative properties featured in conscious experience, it disarms prominent conceivability arguments against materialism. Russell’s approach can be strengthened by employing elements of a more contemporary metaphysical framework.  There is a particularly good fit with an account of the nature of properties set out by C.B. Martin and John Heil. Labeled the identity theory of properties, this view posits that properties are at once dispositional and qualitative.

This paper is organized as follows. In section one I offer an overview of Russell’s theory. In section two I briefly show how a key insight from Russell’s work has figured in contemporary debates in philosophy of mind. Section three takes a closer look at Russell’s metaphysics; this prepares the way for seeing how his theory might be modified in light of more recent work. Section four introduces the idea that the metaphysics of dispositional and categorical properties can play a role in a Russell-style account. Section five outlines the identity theory of properties and argues that its features can strengthen Russellian monism. In section six I consider objections to the modified theory, and discuss where it needs to be supplemented in order to more fully address the challenges of explaining mind.