Projects

It's everyone's favorite game wherein I talk about things I want to get done in the medium to long term instead of actually contributing to the academic work which I need to get done today or this week.

1. I need to get a general familiarity with the major issues in metaphysics. The things I'm familiar with, I tend to know quite well, but I have huge holes. I think I'll read

Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Michael Loux. This should mostly provoke the response that I've seen this before, and I'm just jogging my memory.
Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings by Michael Loux. This should be a bit more novel.
The Bible by David Lewis.

After those, I'll probably hit up Jason for suggestions, and possibly look at the syllabus for his summer course.

2. Talking to one of the best prospective students this weekend in WashU, I realized that I'll probably have to shelve my thoughts about the Special Composition Question for a while (see Quotidiens). He didn't have any devastating objections, but spending a little bit of time fleshing the idea out with him led me to think that there are too many things I don't know to make a serious attempt at articulating my proposal at this point. Taking it as a conjecture that I'm aiming to prove might be a good way to focus my studies.

3. Study some logic. I realized on the plane ride home from St. Louis that I didn't remember the rules of passage (and correlatively the process of prenexing quantified statements). I also never really got anywhere in studying modal logic. If I don't want to take logic during my first semester in grad school, I might could need to do something about all this.