http://www.apa-eastern.org
https://www.facebook.com/apaeastern
https://twitter.com/apaeastern

The website should be pretty useful as it stands. I hope it makes it clear how people can get involved with the “Get Involved” menu option, and most of the options includes online forms that people can fill out.

I hope to add a lot more functionality to the website so that it is an even more useful tool for APA members, but for now – I think this is a good start.

This is also something of an experiment with a new feature in Google Docs. I can now let people comment on a Google Doc without giving them editing access, and they can even comment without being logged in. I’m curious to see how this goes.

Here’s the abstract.

Abstract:
Skeptical Theists respond to the Problem of Evil by arguing that there may be goods that are beyond our understanding that might warrant a God in permitting horrendous evil. Because of this Skeptical Theists argue that we are not justified in believing the crucial premise in the Problem of Evil that maintains a God couldn’t have a justifying reason for the evil in this world. However, this strategy threatens to undermine any kind of reasoning about what a God would or wouldn’t do. Suppose you thought that God made a promise to do something good for you or humanity. For all you know, God might have a good reason to break that promise that is beyond your understanding. Call this the Reasoning About God Problem. In this paper, I offer two new versions of skeptical theism that avoid the Reasoning About God Problem.

I used to be sold on the idea that Skeptical Theism was a terrible way to respond to the Problem of Evil. It wasn’t until I started thinking more through how someone might respond to the Reasoning About God Problem (which I used to think was fatal) that these versions dawned on me. Now I think there is something along these lines that might be a viable response.

Here’s the paper. If you type comments on this document and you are not logged in, don’t forget to sign them so I know who you are and can thank you in the acknowledgments.

**SPOILER ALERT**

After several months the Grayson son Daniel fell in love with Amanda, and they get engaged. Meanwhile, Emily has come to town raising hell (posed as Amanda), and the Graysons are worried that she is out for revenge. At the engagement party, Daniel is shot. The Graysons believe (reasonably) that Amanda might have something to do with it (or was at least on the beach) the night Daniel was shot. They were even right about the person they thought was Amanda. She was on the beach. But they were also accidentally right about Amanda Clarke being on the beach that night, because she was posing as Emily.

So this looks like a case of justified true belief that Amanda was on the beach, but it’s not knowledge. Now I have to think about whether this has any interesting consequences for candidate attempts to solve the Gettier problem. I have some thoughts but I’m going to sit on them for a minute and think about this more.

Like many DePauw alumns, the GCB was a staple of my diet for four years. My wife, and I are such devoted fans of the GCB that she surprised me and my groomsmen (mostly DePauw alumn) by having a plate of GCBs delivered to our dressing room on our wedding day.

Since graduating I have been trying to recreate the GCB in our kitchen. One day, I got it down (Atleast, we think so). It’s not that difficult, but there are a couple of important steps to getting it just right. I’ve been meaning to post instructions for awhile, so other DePauw alumns can get nostalgic. But it seems particularly appropriate to share it now. Each time you make it, do so in remembrance of a great man who gave so much to his community.

And if you live in Greencastle, don’t make this…walk yourself down to Marvin’s and order the real thing.

Ingredients:

1. Ground Sirloin
   (1 lb will get you five patties)
   Shell out the extra pennies a pound the Sirloin, it’s worth it.
2. American Cheese
   I recommend slices of Land O’ Lakes Yellow Sharp American ordered from the deli. Don’t get the stuff that comes wrapped individually in plastic. It is an abomination.
3. Good Bakery Hoagie Roll
   This is pretty important. Don’t go with ordinary hamburger buns that you buy in the bread aisle. Walk yourself over to the Bakery section of the grocery and find some good fresh baked hoagie rolls. Sandwich rolls will suffice if they don’t have hoagie rolls, but the fresh baked, bakery bread is something you should not sacrifice on.
4. Butter (softened)
5. Garlic Salt
   (we’re doing this the Old School way, none of that parmesean/herb topping was introduced sometime after 2001)

Prep the Rolls with Butter

Before you start anything cut the rolls and smear softened butter top as best you can. You’ll want it to warm to room temperature while you do everything else. It’s okay if it’s a little cold, you’ll back later to smear it. This is important. The garlic goodness won’t be as pronounced without sufficient butter coverage.

Grill the Meat:

I grill these on a Foreman Grill for 4 minutes, but whatever your method the following is important: Cook it to about medium or medium well, even if you like a well-done burger. The magic of a good GCB is that you will bake these in the oven for awhile, which cooks up the meat even more. Cook it too much now, and you risk a dry, tough burger.

Final Prep

1. Put two grilled patties on the hoagie roll.
2. Top each with slice of cheese.
3. Smear that butter, again…good. Good coverage here is important.
4. Sprinkle buttered top generously with garlic salt
   You can always wipe away the excess with your finger, just like you did in college when Marvin’s over did it.

Bake: 350 for 7-10 minutes

Quality control from Marvin’s tended to vary on this one, and people were evenly divided on this. Some liked the buns a little overdone. If you’re in that camp, go 10 minutes. Some liked them so that the thinnest layer of the top of the bun was a just little crispy (or as I like to call – “perfect”). Go seven minutes.

But the reality here is, check it at 6, then 7, then 8 until you hit your desired level of done-ness.

Cheese Sauce

Remember dipping your GCB into the Marvin’s Cheese Sauce that came with the Fries? Wouldn’t it be great if you had some? Fortunately, the cheese you’re using awesome for melting into cheese sauce, and it’s easy to whip up while your GCBs are baking.

Rip up a few slices. Pour in about a tablespoon of milk (see right).

After a minute or two in the microwave, pull it out and stir it. It will look like this (bottom left), and you may be worried that you used too much milk. You may have, but give it another minute or two in the microwave, and stir again before deciding to add more cheese. You’ll probably end up with something like this (bottom right), which is perfect. Let it cool for a bit, and if it is still too soup, rip up another slice, microwave for a minute, and then stir.

 Bonus: Fries.

GCBs aren’t complete without fries. Do whatever you want for fries, but here’s what I do since I don’t have a good fryer. I peel a Russet Potato (per person) and cut it in 1/2 slices. Keeping the slices together, flip the potato and cut in 1/2 slices again. That will give you perfectly cut fries.

Fry as many as you can in about 1/4 of oil for on medium heat for about 3 minutes on both sides or until some of them start to turn golden brown. Stick those in the toaster oven (170 degrees) to stay warm and repeat until you have as many fries as you want. I fry mine up before making the GCBs and keep the warm in the toaster oven the entire time I’m making the GCBs. They’ll stay fresh and crisp, but will have just the right amount of sogginess – just like they’ve been sitting in a bag in the back of some delivery guy’s ’86 Buick.

That’s it. Enjoy!

1. Her Introduction
2. Better Technology, More Communication
3. What Can We Do About Diversity?
4. Making the Job Market Experience More Bearable
5. Supporting Tenure
6. Fighting for Non-Tenure Track Faculty
7. Advocating for Philosophy and Its Public Perception

These are thoughtful reflections on some of the pressing issues for philosophy, and they are well worth reading. They are very encouraging.

This year is my training year, and I will be working closely with Richard Bett (the current Secretary-Treasurer) to learn the ropes. I will take over in full starting in January 2014. The work I will do is actually pretty cool. In addition to typical secretary-treasurer duties, my responsibilities include overseeing the program committee for the Eastern Division conference and negotiating hotel contracts. I actually get to be very involved in the overall planning for the Eastern Conference. I will also on the governing board for the national organization.

I have a lot of ideas about how to improve the conference experience at the Eastern, as well as some ideas for the APA overall, but I’d really love to hear from other philosophers. I do follow a lot of the blog discussions about the APA, however, if you have ideas about improving the Eastern APA conference experience, don’t hesitate to send me an email.

Expect to see a lot more discussion from me here about what I’m up to in this new capacity.

But the site has undergone a major overhaul behind the scenes too. I just migrated to a different host provider, and now I will be able to do things with the site that I couldn’t do before. I’m looking forward to blogging more, and I’m looking forward to making some improvements to the look and functionality of the journal survey page. I’ll announce those changes as I make them over the coming months.

For now, I hope you enjoy the new look.

Also…we can pick ‘em!!! I just went through and tracked down all of our past research papers. Almost all of them are now in print, and in GREAT journals.

• Philosophical Studies (3 times!)
• Philosophical Quarterly
• Nous
• Philosophical Perspectives
• Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (which also won the $8,000 Young Scholar prize for that volume)
• Episteme

I’m not claiming we are causally responsible. The papers were all fantastic when first submitted, but why take chances? Put the final polish on that paper you’ve been working on, and get it to us by October 15!

Then I got kind of addicted to making them. Here are two of my favorites. One is a joke about Lewisian semantics for counterfactuals. The other is a joke about something Kripke says in Naming and Necessity.

The blank image is uploaded at memegenerator and anyone can recaption it – here’s the link