dgswaim

It's all in jest. A way to pass the time. No more, no less.

Congrats to all the Notre Dame acceptances! I suppose I'll have to live out my dreams vicariously through you...

Recent arguments surely count as existing within the history of philosophy, I'd say. As to Plantinga, I think I probably agree with you. Although, I don't think his work on evolution (particularly in "Where the Conflict Really Lies") is meant to be a knock-down against naturalism. I do make use of some of his work on the area to suggest that non-naturalists (such as myself) do indeed have some interesting conceptual questions to explore relative to contemporary science. I think, however, that there are better people doing similar work.

I would agree, except I never really thought of Descartes as really attempting to give a proof for the existence of God. As the Meditations go, I don't see his "proof for God" as very central to the text. Seems almost like it was thrown in there in a rather ad hoc way, almost as though he simply thought it in some sense obligatory. To be honest, I think he might have been a closet atheist.

So... today has been dreadfully boring. Given how slow things seem to be moving today, I thought maybe I would start a fun little opinion thread to pass the time. So here's the question: Of all of the famous arguments in the history of philosophy, which do you feel is the worst. I'm throwing a vote in for Anselm's version of the "Ontological Argument."

Though Mocha would, admittedly, be a pretty damn cool handle...

Did the adcoms decide to take a collective nap today?

I'd like to know if anyone has info on this too.

I know many, many, many people teaching in tenure track positions who received their PhDs from non-Leiter universities. They might not be teaching at the University of Super Important Research Stuff, but they are teaching philosophy and collecting a paycheck to talk about philosophy with students and other philosophers.

Looks like you drew first blood for the day. Congrats!

Hopefully this very quiet morning is not setting the trend for the day...

This almost certainly overstates the case.

A pain I wish that I knew....

Well, the professor that I mentioned (but will not name) did a Master's at Loyola and went on to get his PhD from Notre Dame. He also mentioned that a few MA students with whom he was acquainted went on to receive PhDs from Loyola. Another went to Syracuse, so on and etc. He reports that few had any problems sling-shotting into decent PhD programs.

If I can say anything positive about the stress caused by all of this waiting around for admissions results, it's that I'm working out more in order to control some amount of it (better health being the positive externality of stress management). If you're feeling the weight of the wait bearing down, I recommend lifting weights. I've found that it helps.

Condolences to the Arizona rejections.

I hate nature...

I know that neither Purdue or Illinois-UC have sent me anything yet... and I wish they would...

That's funny. Quite funny, actually.

Paltry, indeed

A piece of information that might be relevant to ianfaircloud's blog: I just remembered earlier today that Illinois-UC's online application had a bug in it that caused them to push their application deadline from the 10th of January to the 14th. This might have had some effect on their process and the projected date for initial notifications.

I'm not familiar with the authors you mention, but I think there are good works being produced by people in phil mind relative to the contributions of cognitive science. David Chalmers did a PhD in cognitive science, if I remember correctly. Patricia Churchland does a lot of work in cognitive science and neuroscience (she co-authored a work called "The Computational Brain" that is top-notch relative to its field). Douglas Hofstadter is a cognitive scientist who flirts with philosophy. Robert Kane has done some interesting stuff, as has Nancey Murphy. I think cognitive science provides some nice concepts to be explored by phil mind.

Hold up. 50% off my first purchase for shoes!? That's remarkable!

Agree.

Anyone out there have any idea round about when Purdue usually gets around to sending out initial notifications?