Midsouth Bound

I'm off to Midsouth this weekend, so don't expect me to blog after tonight until Sunday, at least. I'm presenting my paper on dreaming and imagination. (Side note: I've just discovered Colin McGinn's new book on imagination, which I find to be *extremely* exciting. He's apparently been working on a lot of the issues I've been thinking about over the past year or so. It even has two chapters on dreaming! I hadn't even heard about the book until Andrew mentioned it at the bar last night, and I rushed to the bookstore today to pick it up. Look for my thoughts on it soon on FBC.) But yeah, about this conference. It looks fun! It's my first "big" conference, where "big" means big enough to have parallel sessions, such that I have to choose which ones to go listen to (and I also have to compete with other speakers for my audience). Here's what I'm thinking about so far. This is more for me than for anybody else, so don't blame me if you read it and get bored. Session 1. Keynote Address. Henry Rosemont, "Individual Freedom versus Social Justice: A Confucian Meditation" Session 2. Gregory Gilson, "A Disjunctive Theory of Acting for a Reason". (I figure I may come away with something John might be interested in.) Session 3. Dina Garmong, "Virtue Ethics: a Building Without a Foundation?". (In addition to my general interest in ethics, I'm studying some virtue epistemology in Ernie Sosa's seminar this semester, so I'll be looking for points of relevance.) Session 4. Daniel Goldberg, "I Want My Beef! A Response to Singer". (I've actually never heard a philosophical defense of eating meat.) Session 5. Jonathan Ichikawa, "Fire and the Cogito: Dreams and Imaginings". (It'll probably be lame, but I guess I'll go anyway.) Session 6. Here's one I haven't made up my mind about. I'm looking at Robert Tapley, "Death Management: Physician Responsibility in Dealing with Dying Patients" and James Montmarquet, "Epistemic Virtue and Religious Experience". I'm leaning toward the latter, because of my current exploration of virtue epistemology, but we'll see. Session 7. This one I don't know about either. I'm going to have to read all these abstracts again, because none of the titles *really* seem to jump out as particular interests of mine. Session 8. Jonathan Weinberg, "Can Intuition Be Attacked Without Risking Skepticism?". Session 9. Garret Merriam, "Locke and Intellectual Property Rights". Session 10. Alastair Norcross, "Intentions, Character, and Consequentialism". (I've seen a lot of this material before, by taking Alastair's class at Rice. I'm pretty well convinced of his view, but I figure I'll give things another whirl, and hear comments and discussion.) Session 11. David Wiens, "Moral Selfhood, Moral Uncertainty, and Moral Inquiry". All subject to change, etc. Not that I'd expect anyone to particularly care.