So, I attended my first ever meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA), Eastern Division, at Washington D.C. This is the huge yearly conference, where most of the job interviews of the US job market take place. I’m not in the market at the moment myself, as I still have two years of my 3-year postdoc left. But I decided to go since I was coming to the US anyway and I knew that a bunch of people whom I’ve met in NYC and elsewhere were going to be there. Of course, I was also a little bit curious about the APA, given all the recent (mostly negative) discussion in the blogosphere. Other than that I was there just to meet friends and listen to some talks really. By the way, it has just been announced that the Eastern APA meeting will be moved to January instead of late December. One of the issues that people have been complaining about is the inconvenient timing, so this is at least one improvement. Apparently this should be in effect by 2015 (due to hotel reservations).

Washington D. C.

I attended the infamous ‘Philosophy Smoker’ as well. Basically the idea is that hundreds of philosophers are stuck in one huge room, with a free bar, and departments (which are hiring) can rent tables in that room in order for the job candidates to feel awkward and compelled to attend another, ‘informal’ interview. I had no reason to do rounds in the tables, so my impression about what happens at them is a bit vague, but the event as a whole does seem very strange. I can appreciate the point of having a reception and providing an informal setting for socialising, but when the free bar consists of Bud and Bud Light, it’s a mystery to me why anyone would prefer it over a decent bar with actual seats… Well, I don’t feel that I got very good value for my $120 registration fee in that regard. More generally, the setting of the conference — a massive, fancy Marriott hotel — was peculiar. I’m used to attending conferences that take place at universities, not at posh, overpriced hotels. In theory such a location could be nice, if you can afford to stay at the hotel (I could not), but then you’re also stuck at the expensive hotel bar, as most people can’t be bothered to go look for anything nicer. The whole thing has an air of elitism about it.

Kit Fine

Fortunately there were some very interesting talks at the conference. Kit Fine’s dialectica lecture, a session with Peter van Inwagen and John Hawthorne, and a symposium on composition as identity are worth mentioning. Kit’s talk, which dealt with truthmaker semantics, was certainly the most interesting to me, although van Inwagen’s talk on relational vs. constitutive ontologies was also good. However, I could’ve gotten much more out of the talks if there had been some visual aids — all but one of the talks that I saw were lacking any kind of slides, and although many had a handout, there were generally not enough of them. This might appear to be a fault of the people giving talks, but no, apparently the Marriot charges extra for projection equipment, and the APA is presumably trying to make a profit by not proving any! This is absolutely outrageous to me, and just goes to show that the whole conference is a bit of a charade (I’m not even going to mention the registration problems…).

Peter van Inwagen & John Hawthorne

Well, despite all the shortcomings, I did enjoy the conference, mostly because I got a chance to see many familiar faces from my time at NYU last spring (in fact, there were much more people from the CUNY Graduate Center). It was also good to see what all the fuss is about, although I hope that if I ever enter the US job market, philosophy departments have abandoned interviews at the APA — it just can’t be a sensible way to do it.

Just briefly about Washington D.C. This was my first time there, and I didn’t really know what to expect. In general, I was positively surprised, as there are some nice restaurants and coffee shops etc. around, and the city has a good metro system and is quite easy to navigate. I also found a nice riverside trail for running, although I was only able to take advantage of it once before a flu virus incapacitated me. Unfortunately I had no time to visit any museums, but I am planning to make it back to D.C. at some point for the touristy stuff.

Cambridge promoted my Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume

Right now I’m settling in to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I’m spending the spring as a Visiting Scholar. More details here. Updates about my visit will follow in due course…