Malte Willer

Beginning in Autumn 2010, I will be joining the philosophy department at the University of Chicago as an assistant professor. I am very excited about all this.

I got the good news that my article "Realizing What Might Be" is to appear in Philosophical Studies. The latest version of the paper is available in the Research section, and I will add the DOI as soon as it is assigned. The research section also has the abstract of the paper, but for the really impatient, here is the highlight reel:

• There is a logical link between conditionals and epistemic modals.
• The suppositional view of conditionals à la Edgington cannot account for this link.
• In contrast, the dynamic view of conditionals can account for this link.
• This is no mere coincidence: the dynamic view gets the fundamentals of hypothetical reasoning right, while the suppositional view gets them wrong.

UPDATE (2/18): The paper is now published online, DOI: 10.1007/s11098-010-9514-3.

There will be a (refereed) Symposium on my paper "New Dynamics for Epistemic Modality" at this year's Eastern APA meeting. Lisa Warenski will chair the session and Giacomo Sillari will deliver the comments. Giacomo has done some great research on issues that are immediately relevant for my work on epistemic modals, so I am sure I will learn a lot from his comments. Kickoff for the two-hour event is 11:15 on Wednesday December 30th. Here is the abstract of the talk:

A dynamic semantics for epistemically modalised sentences is an attractive alternative to the orthodox view that our best theory of meaning ascribes to such sentences truth-conditions relative to what is known. I will demonstrate that a dynamic story about might and must offers elegant explanations of a range of puzzling observations about epistemic modals. It provides a unifying treatment of disputes about epistemic modality and disputes about matters of fact while at the same time avoiding relativism or an overly weak pragmatics. It also explains why agents are sometimes agnostic about certain epistemic possibilities and why they sometimes accept must-statements even though they do not know the prejacent.

The material presented is taken from my paper "Dynamics of Epistemic Modality", which gives you the full version of my story about epistemic modals. A draft of the full story is available in the Research section.

The schedule for this year's UT grad conference has just gone online here. We will bring a bunch of great people into town, including David Barnett, Fred Dretske, Peter Railton, and Mark Schroeder as the keynote speakers (I know, I know: that is fantastic). Everybody is invited to join us. Kickoff for this three day event is April 17.

My paper "New Surprises for the Ramsey Test", forthcoming in Synthese, is now published online here. This makes me very happy. The good people from Springer did a great job at typesetting the paper and were very helpful with the corrections, so that made publishing this piece of work a thoroughly enjoyable experience!

I am going to present my shiny new paper "New Dynamics for Epistemic Modality" at the 9th NYU/Columbia Graduate Student Philosophy Conference. It is going to be a blast and I have never been to New York before, so I am very stoked about all this. A draft of the paper is on its way — in the meantime, here are the slides and the abstract of the talk:

A dynamic semantics for epistemically modalised sentences is an attractive alternative to the orthodox view that our best theory of meaning ascribes to such sentences truth-conditions relative to what is known. I will demonstrate that a dynamic story about might and must offers elegant explanations of a range of puzzling observations about epistemic modals. It provides a unifying treatment of disputes about epistemic modality and disputes about matters of fact while at the same time avoiding relativism or an overly weak pragmatics. It also explains why agents are sometimes agnostic about certain epistemic possibilities and why they sometimes accept must-statements even though they do not know the prejacent.

The joyful event takes place on March 7 and the keynote speaker is Karen Bennett, who already has a history of delivering keynotes at great graduate conferences (like this one).

UPDATE (3/14): Matt Moss, Adam See, Phil Lusson, and Erica Shuemer did a great job organising the conference, so a good time was had by all on March 7. As promised, a draft of the new paper is now available in the Research section.

It is going to be an exciting year and it all starts next week. Mark Sainsbury is organising this year's MLK conference, featuring papers and responses by UT philosophy graduate students (mostly first or second year of study). Of course, it takes place on MLK day (Monday 19th) and all are welcome. Here is the line-up:

9.30
Coffee, Rolls, etc

9.50-10.00
Welcome by Mark Sainsbury

10.00-11.00
Speaker: Steve James - Intentionalism
Respondent: Enrico Grube
Chair: Aidan McGlynn

11.15-12.15
Speaker: Ivan Hu - Supervenience and Anomalous Monism
Respondent: Kate Ritchie
Chair: Alex Grzankowski

12.15-1.15
Lunch

1.15-2.15
Presenter: Colleen Keating - Imagining Five Impossible Things
Respondent: Garrett Holmes
Chair: David Ivy

2.30-3.30
Speaker: Dave Frank - Game theory and Thomas Hobbes's Science of Ethics.
Respondent: Jeff Pote
Chair: Briggs Wright

3.45-4.45
Speaker: Renee Chechik - Sellars on theory, observation and philosophy
Respondent: Jeremy Evans
Chair: Bryan Pickel

5.00
Beer at Gabriel's