Peter Smith's Blog, page 137

Second and third intro logic lecture

I have been pretty surprised to find that over four hundred people not doing my elementary first year logic course for philosophers have downloaded the slides for the first lecture. So I've decided to keep uploading the lecture slides here for a while — though after a time-lag —  so there will be roughly two more lectures every week for a few weeks, or at least while download rates make it seem worthwhile. They aren't very exciting: but they do serve to keep the live show basically on message! (The slides as I use them of course reveal bullet points one at a time, but I've suppressed that in these early lectures.)

These next two lectures are the rest of my three introductory lectures before we get down to work on PL:

Lecture 2 (The counterexample technique)
Lecture 3 (Proofs: Divide and Rule)

If you want a bit more by way of elementary introduction at this level, read the first six chapters of my Intro. to Formal Logic (utterly splendid and amazingly cheap, it goes without saying: buy it — or at least ensure that your uni. library has the 2009 reprint)!

Comments and corrections welcome, of course.

First intro logic lecture

Here are the slides for the first logic lecture today for 1A Philosophy. (These were originally posted for those who were late/missed the first lecture: the slides will not be left online permanently.)

Heavens! —  45 people in the class, 445 downloads in a few days. Who would have guessed there would be so much interest in a very noddy intro logic lecture!

First logic lecture

Here are the slides for the first logic lecture today. (This is a one-off for those who missed the first lecture/were late. The slides will be here for three days and then gone …)

A proper bookshop is a lovesome thing …

You would think that Cambridge, of all places, could sustain an attractive general bookshop. But sadly not so. The University Press shop is quite nicely done, but of course only sells CUP books, so doesn't count. We are stuck with Waterstone's (a rather cavernous place, far too big to be comfortable, where we sometimes dash in to pick up "3 for 2″ newly paperbacked novels for holiday reading, but which is entirely uninviting for idle browsing), and with Heffers (which is now Blackwell's, and isn't bad for philosophy books, but — stuck in a nasty subterranean hole under part of Trinity — is equally uninviting for non-work browsing).

What I'd love is a proper shop like the London Review Bookshop, which is just the right size, not so large it daunts but still large enough to surprise and delight, which has bookshelves high enough to need step ladders (as every decent bookshop obviously ought), which has comfortable chairs to read in, has eclectic and enticing selections of books displayed on the tables, is evidently run by people who care … and has a proper coffee shop attached. Not yet another Costa-almost-tastes-like-Coffee Shop with horrible pastries, but an individual and idiosyncratic place with wonderful cakes and books and magazines around. It doesn't seem much to ask.

Math Overflow

This is a slightly embarrassing confession of benighted ignorance (until very recently), and a pointer for anyone who is still in the dark.

Quite some while ago I gave up looking at the sci.logic newsgroup: what was once a resource has become overwhelmed by the usual spam and porno links, interspersed with the occasional crank posting. Sci.math held out, it seemed, a bit longer but there's now too much crap, or questions from students wanting homework answers, to make it worth bothering with (...

C.D. Broad makes it to the SEP

I'm really pleased to see that a good piece on C.D. Broad has been added to the ever-more-wonderful Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

It has always seemed to me that Broad has been underrated (compared e.g. with Moore); and — leaving aside the special case of Ramsey — Broad remains in many ways the philosopher from the first half of the twentieth century whom I feel most in sympathy with. Some years ago, as an act of Cambridge piety, I wrote the entry on Broad for the surely misbegotten...

Flattery will get you nowhere: I want cash

I've just been asked to report on a proposal for a substantial grant from a rather wealthy grant-awarding body. "We will greatly value your expert opinion" etc. etc. Huh. I'm sure you will. Value it so much you aren't offering a penny for what would be most of a day's work to do properly.

I gave my usual six word response: "No proper fee, no proper report".

Of course, if the proposal had been bang on topics that I currently am tolerably up to speed on and from someone whose work I already know ...

Taking it slowly, #3

That isn't quite a picture of our house, though it is a bit of a losing battle against books piled in every room (and often dangerously on the stairs too …). They are tolerably organized in my study, not because I'm naturally tidy but because I know the aggravation involved if I can't lay my hands on a work book that I know I have somewhere. But elsewhere things are rather more haphazard. Why is Lichtenberg next to Wolf Hall, or the great Courtesans and Fishcakes snuggled up to a mildly...

Taking it slowly, #2

The new Hans Rausing Professor of HPS here, Hasok Chang is planning to run seminars in the mode of Peter Lipton's much admired institution — and the plan for the first term, is to look at the collection of essays Scientific Pluralism, edited by Stephen Kellert et al. I've been having a quick browse, to see if I will want to go along. Well, I think not. The book seems a lightning tour ranging over far too much: I don't find that kind of enterprise  likely to be of much value.

I'm sad to say...

Bowers & Wilkins MM-1

If the header for this post means absolutely nothing to you, then read no further. But a few people might be interested in my impressions of these classy desktop speakers. Are they worth the not inconsiderable expense?

A bit of background first. I recently re-organized my very small study at home and bought a new iMac. And I've found myself listening to music a lot through the surprisingly-not-too-awful speakers on the computer. (I should say that, for someone with something like a thousand...