As I'm writing this, I’m at the SeaTac airport waiting through a 10-hour delay for my flight to Ketchikan. And I don’t mind. I feel bad for the people who are inconvenienced by this mess, but I also like how the events of the day are causing people to open up to each other, strike up conversations with complete strangers, and have fun by seeing just how much good they can make out of the situation. I’ve been dashing about taking photos with my cell phone, and I’ll make a pretty collage of the chaos when I find the time.
For now, though, I’ll post different pictures: my photos from the 2006 BSPC. I have far fewer photos from this conference than I did from Mayhem (which required 6 web pages to post them), but I don’t mind: the better to post forthwith, my dear!
As the pictures reflect, the conference was fantastically fun! Here are a few of the highlights:
For me, the fun started before the BSPC did. I arrived in Bellingham over a week early (on July 22nd) to visit with the WWU profs. And I’m glad I gave myself some extra time: I was so glad to be back and to get to talk (and, in a couple cases, occasionally sing) with the profs on a regular basis again, even if just for a few weeks . . . Also, it was exciting to see some of the other people around Bellingham too. For instance, I was delighted to get to spend some time with Dan and Frances Howard-Snyder’s 6-year-old twin boys, Peter and William. I hadn’t seen them for almost a year, and so was a bit taken aback at how much they’d grown (they were three when I first met them).
I also got to see some people I didn’t expect to. For instance, a couple days before the conference, Ned Markosian, Hud Hudson and I headed to Fairhaven to have lunch with Kathrin Koslicki. Professor Koslicki was passing through Bellingham on her way to Alaska, where she’s currently travelling on her motorcycle and camping in various parts of the state. As if that’s not cool enough: she also just finished a book manuscript titled The Structure of Objects!
I also got to see Brett Hackett and Anne Greenfield, two friends from undergrad at WWU. They’ve been in Shanghai for the last year, teaching English to school children there (you can read about their experiences on their weblog). It was especially fun to be around them this time, because they were still adjusting to US culture after having acclimated to China, and they pointed out a lot of little things that surprised them about life here. Selfishly, I’m glad they’re back in the US -- it’ll be easier to visit them! They’re moving to Colorado this fall: Brett is starting Philosophy grad school at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Anne will be studying for her PhD in English in Denver.
There were a lot of WWU alumni at the BSPC, or around right before it. Kris McDaniel, Ryan Wasserman, Joshua Spencer, Neal Tognazzini, Christian Lee and I were all participating in the conference, and Brett, Anne, Ken and John were all in Bellingham ‘round BSPC time. And I got to see Bree Spencer again as well (I hadn’t seen her since the last BSPC). She’s doing some incredible stuff: she’ll be travelling to Ghana this fall, and is planning on living there for 3 to 6 months to help with humanitarian aid there. Then she plans to go to school to study human rights, and devote the rest of her life to making the world a better place. Maximally cool -- I’m especially excited because I suspect, from what I know about her values and strengths, that she will both be very good at it, and find it fulfilling.
I also hung out a bit with some non-WWU-affiliated BSPCers before the conference: Saturday July 30th, I met up with Karen Bennett, Brad Skow, Sarah Moss and Andy Egan for a 5 mile run in Seattle. It was one of the SeaFair events, and there were a lot of people there. In fact, that was part of the fun - for a significant chunk of the race, there were people lining the streets waiting for the parade that was to follow the runners. And a bunch of kiddos were standing in the road with their hands held out for high-fives (or something relevantly similar?) from us as we went past. They were impossible to resist -- especially some of the littlest ones, who looked slightly bewildered by the whole state of affairs. It was the first race I’ve ever been in (Anne, that Halloween dash doesn’t count -- we were trick-or-treating as we went!), and I enjoyed it very much. Of course, I was the slowest of the Philosophers, and almost the slowest simpliciter. (In fact, I was going so slowly that what I was doing doesn’t actually count as running!) But somehow, I’m not too worried. And, happily, there’s talk of this run becoming a regular part of the BSPC, so I can hope to be at least slightly faster in the future! I’m taking, uh, steps toward that already . . .
The conference itself was a blur of philosophy papers, philosophy discussions, and very little sleep. I had the pleasure of hearing about a variety of fascinating topics from many of the conference participants. A non-exhaustive list: contingent composition, general relativity, gunky time, justification, locations, many-one identity, Modality, necessary existence, perception, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind, quantifier variance, simplicity, testimony, two-dimensional semantics, and vagueness. Needless to say . . . :)
Of course, nothing is perfect: there was a bit of a scandal. I’ll leave the details for you to decipher from the photos. (There’s also the unfortunate fact that the ladybug was eventually taken from me, because I pet it so much that its spots rubbed off. My reaction to the stuffed animal makes me think that I need a dog. It also makes me think that I probably shouldn’t get a dog.)
As you can imagine, it was hard to resist staying out with the philosophers (especially when inanimate insects were involved). And . . . I didn’t resist very well: I always ended up staying out in spite of resisting. So by the end of the conference I was beginning to notice some negative effects of failing to get enough sleep. It was especially bad on Wednesday, since I’d gotten only two hours of sleep the night before. By dinnertime that night, I was exhausted. But I was also lucky: I went to dinner with Marc Moffett, John Bengson, Joshua Spencer and Christian Lee. And we talked about Modality the whole time. They said lots of exciting stuff, raising challenging points that I have absolutely no idea how to answer. And by the time we left the restaurant, I’d completely forgotten about sleep. That dinner ties for being my favourite part of the conference, and I am really, really grateful to them for it!!
I’m also grateful to Michael Glanzberg, for acts of supererogation the next afternoon. For recreation day, a group of about 18 of us went to Lopez island to go kayaking and look at wildlife and such. Professor Glanzberg shared a kayak with me, and told me about truth-value gaps (quick summary: there are none), the liar paradox, and logical pluralism, among other things. But that wasn’t the extent of his kindness: apparently I have trouble thinking and paddling at the same time, because often when there was something I didn’t understand, I put down the paddle while I thought. And there was a lot I didn’t understand. After the trip several other kayakers were mentioning blistered hands and sore shoulders, and I felt very guilty when I couldn’t relate in the least. But still . . . it was really fun! So I feel more grateful than guilty (though I still feel a significant amount of guilt). But also, I learned some stuff. For instance, I can (truthfully) say: the dinner on Lopez island that night was so good, kool-aid isn’t tasty!
The next day I drew my conference adventures to a close by hanging out with Joshua Brown, who told me about existence, conditionals, arguments for theism, constitution puzzles . . . the list continues. We also met up with professor Egan and chatted about Mereology, delusion, and ethical uncertainty. It was, I think, the perfect way to recover from the BSPC!
There was also some interesting non-Philosophy that day. In choosing where to go for lunch, J. D. K. was inclined toward getting sushi. And, since he’d spent over an hour the day before telling me about quantum jumps (which, while maybe not quite as nifty a topic as, say, the Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem, at least comes pretty close), I complied. So for the first time, I ate raw flesh. And . . . I liked it. Since then, I’ve been surprised. Sometimes it's expressed with this thought: “Isn’t it odd that, especially as a pescetarian, I’d never tried this popular way to eat fish?” Then the reasonable part of me kicks in and replies: “No, because it’s raw flesh.” Then I continue being surprised, though it’s surprise at my having liked it. (At least, until I forget the reasonable bit and the whole thing repeats.)
For the next week, I spent my time catching up on sleep, visiting with the WWU profs, doing a bit of work, hanging out at Lake Padden, and staying far, far away from bookstores. And the night before I left Bellingham I got to hang out with Karen Bennett, Andy Egan, Hud Hudson, Dan Howard-Snyder, Ned Markosian, Ryan Wasserman and . . . Kenny Easwarman! (He was passing through Bellingham heading north.) I was happy to get to see him again, and of course, I wasn’t entirely devastated when he shared his thoughts on the Indifference Principle and on non-classical logics (among other things). There was also a lot of non-Philosophy that our group discussed; for instance, we talked about teaching Philosophy. And about saving Philosophers from sharks. And . . .
So concluded my time in Bellingham. And, reaching the end of this post, I’m also reaching the end of my time at the airport (at least for today). Wish me luck getting home!
*** Update: I'm home, safe and sound (whatever that means!).
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