Peter Smith's Blog, page 139

Field again

A few survivors are still battling through Field's desperately ill-written Saving Truth from Paradox in a reading group here. I think we are going to stop having got a reasonable sense of Field's positive proposals. I think it is fair to say he isn't carrying conviction! Clever, no doubt: but the techno-flash isn't generating philosophical insight. It falls to me to try to introduce the last session tomorrow and reach some kind of overview. I'm struggling, so I rather doubt that many of my...

Italian renaissance drawings

Andrea del Verrocchio, Head of a woman (detail), c. 1475.

To London today for the annual meeting of the Analysis Committee. The journal seems in cheering health (though it seems as if the now out-of-control "publish or perish" pressures are leading to almost absurd numbers of submissions).

Then, across the road from the Senate House to the British Museum. I'd clean forgotten that there is an exhibition of Italian renaissance drawings on there, some from the BM itself, some from the Uffizi.

So...

The end of the journey

The third double-CD has recently been released of Imogen Cooper's stunning journey through late Schubert in her QE Hall recitals in 2008 and 2009.

The first two pairs of disks got some extraordinarily warm reviews, and this too strikes me as just wonderful. Thoughtful, deep, utterly persuasive. And lyrically beautiful.

At the end of the second of the new disks she reaches the pinnacle — an amazing performance of D. 960.  I've already recordings of this sonata played by Schnabel, Richter twice, ...

The Bertrand Russell Professorship

In the official words of the Cambridge University Reporter,

The Council submits the following Graces to the Regent House. … (3) That the Professorship of Philosophy (1896) be retitled as the Bertrand Russell Professorship of Philosophy.

This means that when my colleague Simon Blackburn retires at the end of next academic year, his successor — and because we have raised funding for the chair, the post will indeed be filled, even in these straightened times — his successor will glory in a...

Galois enthusiasm

Heck, that's rather surprising! Over sixteen hundred and sixty people have now downloaded the notes on the Galois connection between syntax and semantics which I posted a link to here just a few days ago. Who knows why some pieces really hit the button and others seemingly provoke no interest at all?

(Now, c'mon guys, if you like the Galois piece, your students might just love my intro logic book, which I happened to be checking out today. It would be nice if that book were used some more...

Postcard from New Providence

Given that casinos aren't my thing and old Nassau half an hour away is hardly worth more than a short morning there's not much to do on New Providence but go to the nearby beach and then sit in the shade reading. But what's not to like about that? For the beach is stunning (and up this end of the island deserted too). And view from the deck is pretty good too …

The unrelenting heat is perhaps not exactly conducive to settling down to serious writing: but I've been enjoying reading quite a bit ...

Some recent (un)publications

In an idle moment (well, it is very hot here in the Bahamas!), I've put together a page of links to various bits of stuff from the last three years which were dashed off in the interstices of book-writing. Mildly cheering to see that I haven't been quite as idle as I thought I'd been. Enjoy!

The Liar expresses no proposition

A couple of posts ago, I expostulated about Field's over-hasty rejection of what I called the no-proposition response to the Liar. As it happens I found myself this morning reading (in the welcome shade of some pines at the top of a deserted beach on New Providence, if you must know) Dorothy Grover's 'How Significant is the Liar?', in the Beall/Armour-Garb collection Deflationism and Paradox. I found myself very much in sympathy with her general approach which is firmly in the no-proposition ...

The Galois connection between syntax and semantics (updated)

In his classic Dialectica paper `Adjointness in foundations' (1969), F. William Lawvere writes of `the familiar Galois connection between sets of axioms and classes of models, for a fixed [signature:]'.

But even if long familiar folklore to category theorists, the idea doesn't in fact seem to be that widely known. The ideas however are pretty enough, elementary enough, and illuminating enough to be worth rehearsing briskly in an accessible stand-alone form. Here's my attempt.

I wrote these...

The Galois connection between syntax and semantics

In his classic Dialectica paper `Adjointness in foundations' (1969), F. William Lawvere writes of `the familiar Galois connection between sets of axioms and classes of models, for a fixed [signature:]'.

But even if long familiar folklore to category theorists, the idea doesn't in fact seem to be that widely known. The ideas however are pretty enough, elementary enough, and illuminating enough to be worth rehearsing briskly in an accessible stand-alone form. Here's my attempt.

I wrote these...