The Australasian Association of Philosophy conference in Sydney last week was superb. It was the best AAP I've been to, with high quality papers and a great atmosphere from start to finish. Congratulations to the organizers for a terrific job. The next meeting, here at ANU in July 2006, will have a hard act to follow.
I've put some photos online. The photos include a couple of shots of the philosophy joke contest at the banquet, compered somewhat chaotically by me, and won by Kenny Easwaran with a joke involving some ethicists, some decision theorists, and a train ticket. The contest also featured the unveiling of Charles Pigden's "Karen Sketch", featuring the new-style Australian philosophy department populated by Karens (and Aisling) instead of Bruces (and Michael).
I gave my paper on terminological disputes and got some excellent discussion both inside and outside the session. I've put the Powerpoint online here.
I'm a bit surprised to see that you don't even mention in your ppt questions of vagueness and ambiguity, since they were traditionally thought as the primary sources of verbal disputes (this was, for instance, Locke's and Hume's contention). Of course verbal disputes may rise even in absence of any vague expression, but still I think that a large class of verbal disputes is strictly connected to vagueness and ambiguity. Perhaps they are uninteresting cases, but it would be useful to investigate the relation, if there is any, between verbal disputes and so called 'faultless disagreements' that originate from vagueness.
Posted by: luca | July 13, 2005 at 08:13 PM