Previous installments: #1, #2, and #3.

Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan

Busy, busy, busy. I’ve got just over a month of my visit left, but I won’t be having much of a breather for the next couple of weeks at least. As you’ll know if you read my previous post, I was in Boise, Idaho last weekend for a conference. Tomorrow I’m heading to Chicago to visit an old friend who is doing a PhD there, and I’ve got pretty much all the rest of my weekenks booked after that as well.

The good news is that I have actually done some work. I gave a talk entitled ‘Essence and Modality Reconsidered’ at the NYU ‘Metaphysics Bootcamp’ the other day. Just a small audience, but we had a good discussion and the crazy view I’m developing on the reduction of modality to essence went down surprisingly well. I will do a post about this and upload the draft paper as well some time soon (although I realize I keep promising to do a dedicated philosophy post…), but I hope to make some revisions to the paper based on the feedback that I got before that. I’m also working — well, I should be working — on a paper on ‘The Epistemology of Essence’, since I’m supposed to give a talk with that title on May 6th at the department. In addition to these, I should do the index for my Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume, revise a paper that I wrote with a colleague of mine from Durham, referee a paper for Mind, start at least thinking about my talk at a conference in Tampere in June (on Hume and Humeanism) and preferably also revise a bunch of old drafts. One upside is that I did get an R&R (revise & resubmit) from a half decent journal recently and I’m waiting to hear about the fate of that paper.

Princeton campus

I’ve been attending seminars more or less regularly, including Hartry Field’s graduate seminar on Truth. It’s a little bit techincal for my taste (my interest in truth is more from the metaphysics point of view), but highly interesting nevertheless. Here at NYU it seems to be common to have people popping in to these seminars to sit in and contribute to the discussions — and I don’t mean just students. Yesterday we had Crispin Wright, John Haldane, and Stephen Schiffer! It’s of course great, but Stephen’s persistent comments meant that Hartry got through maybe only about one quarter of the material that he was intending to talk about, oh well! I also attended a big conference on truth at Princeton (partly just to check out the campus), which had some top speakers: Field, Paul Horwich, J. C. Beall, Tim Maudlin, Scott Soames, Michael Lynch, and others. I was only there for one day (it’s just a 1.5h train trip from NYC), but I’d say that it was worth going to — I was glad to meet Matti Eklund, as I’ve found his comments on the metametaphysics literature to be quite accurate (regarding the Carnap-Quine debate, or its (ir)relevance). Princeton campus is pretty nice, they’re clearly trying to go for the Oxbridge feel.

Angelica Kitchen -- This was a special chickpea-potato thingy of the day

It feels like ages ago already, but I had a visitor from the UK for a week and used the opportunity to do some touristy stuff, I also got do a bit of photography! I’ve been to the Guggenheim (great layout and nice gallery, but the exhibits start to get repetitive after a while — too much Kandinsky!), walked the Brooklyn Bridge (highly recommended, but try to do it when it’s not too busy) as well as the High Line in Chelsea, an old railroad turned into a sort of garden path above the streets (nice, but crowded and too short, although they are working on an extension), the Empire State Building (very expensive at $20, but you do get good views; go by night to avoid the crowds), the Financial District (nothing much there, but it’s an experience of sorts just to walk through it), and numerous vegan restaurants and bars with excellent beer selections. There remains a lot of museums to check out and I have a number of other touristy things on my list as well, so hopefully I will get a chance to do these things at some point. I’m also hoping to do some dedicated photo shoots to capture some of the architecture and Central Park etc.

Hippies use side door, and watch out for those loose women! Atlas Cafe

Maybe a word or two about the recent food & beer adventures is in order. I’ve tried out a bunch of new places, such as the tiny atmospheric raw vegan restaurant Quintessence in East Village, which was good if a bit expensive. I would especially recommend the chia seed pudding, which prompted myself and my date to buy some chia seeds from the shop next door; they’re quite nice if you soak them in soy/oat/hemp/almond milk overnight. Very nearby is Angelica Kitchen, which appears to be extremely popular (expect to wait). Excellent selection, excellent food, and a pretty nice interior — I’ll surely go again. I’ve also been to Franchia near the Empire State Building. It’s a Korean vegan restaurant. The price/quality was not quite as good as at some other places, but the service was good and it was a nice and quiet place to have dinner. Other places for mentioning are Atlas Cafe, which has an excellent selection of vegan bakery by Vegan Treats, and Sancturary T restaurant and tea house with perhaps the best teas in NYC (not cheap though!). But that’s not the end of it, I’ve still got at least ten or so vegan restaurants on my list that I’d like to check out!

Philosophy of drinking at d.b.a.!

As to the drinking side, two bars are highly recommended. Firstly d.b.a. with a decent selection of draught and bottled beers from all over, as well as good single malts and other liquors. It’s a great place, although the indoor space is tiny — this is really the place to go when the weather is good, as their beer garden and conservatory, hidden away in an inner courtyard, are lovely. Normally they have some real ales as well, but for some reason they haven’t been on when I’ve been there. The special mention has to go to The Ginger Man though, located in Midtown not far from the Empire State Building and the CUNY Grad Center. They have a stunning 70 draughts, two changing real ales, and a bunch of bottled beers on top of that, including some absolute rarities such as one of the beers by the tiny Norwegian brewery Haandbryggeriet — I’ve only seen their beers in one place before, namely Vanha Pankki (i.e. The Old Bank) in Turku, Finland. The Ginger Man also does their own beer called, unsurprisingly, The Ginger Man. It’s a nice mild bitter with hints of ginger, quite tasty! The place is pretty big, but very popular, it’s advised to go when it’s less busy, because you can really get some knowledgable service then. Also, you can get samplers (or ‘flights’, as they call them here)! For $12 you can choose four beers out of any of the 70 draughts (about a 1.5dl serving), which is a great deal really given that many of the beers are about $8-9 (and extremely strong!). I’ve had a few of those samplers there already. Two beers have been particularly memorable: Dogma by the the Scottish masters at BrewDog, and the Two Brothers Northwind Imperial Stout (from Chicago) — the Dogma is light in colour, but a complex, delicate mix of flavours, whereas the Northwind is an excellent strong stout, one of the driest I’ve ever had.

Three Philosophers, Ommegang brewery

One more beer deserves a mention simply because of its name: the Ommegang Three Philosophers (pictured). Ommegang is dedicated to Belgian style ales here in New York, but I believe it’s actually owned by Duvel. I bought a bottle of the Three Philosophers, and it does indeed taste like a typical Belgian ale. Nothing particularly surprising about it, but it is worth a try. Well, that’s enough about beer (although I suspect that I’ve lost most of the readers by now, sorry about that). I’m heading to the TAP New York beer festival at the end of the month, so I expect to sample some more great local beers soon!

(Yes, I’m still running too. And if you didn’t see my last race report, or didn’t check back later on, there’s a rather silly picture of me sprinting to the finish.)

Empire State Building towards Times Square

If you missed the first installment of my NYU Diaries, it’s here.

It’s coming to three weeks since I arrived, and I’ve barely had a breather. It’s not because I go out on a couple of nights each week, try to write several papers at the same time, attend seminars, or run record weekly mileage. But when you put all these things together, there’s not an awful lot of time to rest.

NYC Half Marathon -- lead group at mile 2

So, where to begin… Well, I’m probably running too much given other time constraints. This week I managed 70+ miles, or 113km, which is a new record for me. That included some speed work and double sessions, and also a little bit of cycling and core work at the gym. I got a good deal with the NYU gym, paying just over $100 for three month access. The facilities are much better than the ones in Helsinki and there’s even a pool at the gym (although I haven’t been swimming here — I really need to learn a proper technique first). As you’ll have noticed if you follow the blog, I also ran a 5k race recently. Today was dedicated to running-related matters as well; first I photographed the NYC half marathon, which was an awesome race with a great sprint finish from Mo Farah to win it. Then I explored the Hudson Riverside on a long 22 mile run, catching my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty on the way.

Regarding work, I had a good chat with Kit Fine this week and I’ve been slowly developing some crazy ideas that I have about the reduction of modality into essence. I’ve also been re-reading papers by Fabrice Correia and David Oderberg on these matters. I hesitate to go into the details as I’ve still got a lot to do, but I may do a dedicated post on this stuff at some point.

CCNY

NYU has Spring break this week, so there isn’t anything going on there, but I did attend a talk on the Mathematics of Abstraction by Roy Cook at the City College. He was basically defending neo-Logicism. It was interesting, if a bit too technical for me. I did buy Kit Fine’s Limits of Abstraction recently though, and I hope that by reading it I might get some more insight into abstraction principles.

I’ve continued to attend Kripke’s seminar on the contingent a priori. It’s a bit hit and miss and requires a lot of patience, but I think it’s worthwhile. If nothing else, I’ve started to collect some Kripke anecdotes. Perhaps I’ll share one: Kripke walks into the Kripke Center at CUNY where a few of us are checking the list of speakers for this Lewis conference (an impressive list, but I don’t think I can make it). We note that Kripke’s title is ‘TBA’ (although so is Hawthrone’s). Kripke’s comment: ‘Oh damn’. He had seemingly forgotten about the whole troublesome affair of being the keynote speaker.

One more work-related update: I’ve accepted an invitation to contribute to a special issue of the journal Humana.Mente. I’ve been asked to produce a commentary of Kathrin Koslicki’s 2008 OUP book, The Structure of Objects. The issue is called ‘Composition, Counterfactuals and Causation’ and edited by Roberto Ciuni, Massimiliano Carrara and Giorgio Lando. There is a call for papers for that issue, so if you have anything related to these topics, consider submitting! The deadline is July 30th 2011, and other invited contributors include Ned Hall, Ralf Busse, Henry Laycock, Andrea Bottani, Andrea Borghini and Giuliano Torrengo. The issue is mainly devoted to David Lewis’ work (a lot of Lewis stuff happening now), but the editors (very wisely) wanted to include something on Koslicki’s alternative, Aristotelian view on composition, which is where my commentary comes in. I look forward to working out the details of Koslicki’s view!

Columbus Circle

What else, huh? I’ve dived into NYC’s psy-trance scene and attended a party in Brooklyn last weekend. The music was good, the venue less so, but the people were very friendly, so I look forward to another party on the coming weekend. I also had the chance to sample NYC’s famous jazz scene the other day with a bunch of philosophers, at a club called Smalls. We arrived quite late, but just in time for the rather impressive improvisation session by random musicians who happened to be at the club. I’d love to catch another set some time, perhaps some fusion if I can find some, but these events are very expensive here.

I haven’t been eating out so much in order to save money, but I have discovered where the delicious vegan cakes available in a few places in NYC come from: Vegan Treats. I’ve heard that their vegan donuts are excellent as well, so I guess I need to keep running!

Ok, that’s too much text already, so I’ll sign off for now, but expect further updates soon! Next week a trip to Boston, and in just a few weeks the 13.1 NYC half marathon where I can finally test my fitness!

2010 was a rather stressful year for me with some insecurity about the future and most of all a feeling that I ought to move on after spending five years at Durham. This was especially prompted by a six week visit to Geneva in the end of 2009. Well, in the end I prevailed and secured a three year postdoc here in Helsinki — a project which was due to start in the beginning of 2011. I’ve now settled back in Helsinki and even bought a flat, so I hope that 2011 will be a bit more productive than 2010 was. 2011 will at least see the publication of my volume Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, which is almost finished and I’ve got a visit to NYU planned this Spring.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about 2010, so I’ve pulled some statistics about the year.

• ttahko.net
  The traffic to my website has increased steadily through 2010, although there was a slight dip towards the end of the year as I’ve been posting less on the blog. In any case, the number of visits was just below 50k, at 48999, peaking at 2595 unique visitors in September. The website received just over a million hits at 1052206 and used 12.83 GB of bandwidth. Top countries on the visitor list were US, Great Britain, Finland, Germany, Russia, Japan, Canada, China, the Netherlands and Italy. On the blog, my announcement concerning the Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume was the most popular post by far, at 1889 views. The top paper was the draft of my paper, ‘In Defence of Aristotelian Metaphysics’ for the mentioned volume with 429 downloads. An old paper on the a priori received 383 downloads and many others were downloaded hundreds of times as well. I hope that the website and the blog continue to interest a wide audience in 2011 (and do leave some comments as well!).
• Running
  If anything, 2010 was a year of running for me. I started more serious training in February 2010 when I got my first GPS-enabled sports watch and since then I’ve advanced to 200 mile months. My total running mileage for 2010 (since I got the watch) was 2755 km (or 1712 miles) with an average distance of 13.44 km for each run. The number of separate sessions was 205, so I’ve been running just under four days per week on average. I hope to increase each of these numbers considerably in 2011, with a target mileage of at least 2000 miles for the year. All this running took me just under 235 hours, so just under 10 full days of running! That makes an average speed of 11.7 km/h. Oh, and apparently I burnt 142,964 calories while I was at it… In terms of races, I ran eight official races plus seven Parkruns (i.e. less official races), including two half marathons and a marathon.
• Travelling
  I did an average amount of travelling in 2010, although any amount of flying is too much flying… I attended four or five conferences, which isn’t a huge number. I visited six different countries, which were, in addition to the UK and Finland, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Hungary. In addition I did some travelling in the UK. My trip to the Dolomites in Italy for some hiking was among the best, and a road trip in the West Country with my mates Lloyd and Pekka was very nice as well, but my most recent trip to Budapest over the New Year with Pekka may take the title of the best trip in 2010: the number of random alternative clubs in old ruined houses was something of a unique experience!
• Literature
  I can’t believe how few books I read in 2010. My list claims that I read only ten books from cover to cover, that includes War and Peace, which I’m still reading. Hopefully I can fit considerably more reading in this year. My favourite book of the year must’ve been Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics (see the link for my review).
• Photography
  I haven’t been shooting as much this year as I did the year before, mostly due to a lack of hill walks, which are my favourite photography opportunities. But I did go on a number of good hikes (with good weather) and I got some reasonable shots on my other travels as well. I’m just going to pick one shot as a favourite of 2010 (below), it’s from a hill walking week in Scotland, a panorama featuring the Five Sisters of Kintail.

The Five Sisters of Kintail

Snow covered trees in Seurasaari

I’ve seen a lot of people taking photos out there while I’ve been running, probably inspired by the silly amounts of snow. That reminded me about the distinct lack of use for my camera ever since last summer’s trip to the Dolomites in Italy. It was about time to go for a photo shoot. However, since I also wanted to get a run in, and since it was so bloody cold outside that walking anywhere with nice shooting opportunities was really out of the question, I decided to put on my running gear and jog around with my camera bag. Well, it was too cold to stop for any great lengths of time, around -20 degrees, but I did come home with 76 shots and a 15k run in the bag.

Sunset in Seurasaari

I took a couple of shots around Töölönlahti, which is an urban bay area quite close to where I live, and also one of my regular running routes. Most of the photos were taken in Seurasaari, a small island (with a bridge leading to it), turned into an outdoor museum, mainly for old buildings. It’s also a nice place to go for a walk and some people actually live there. Not so great for running in the winter though, since they don’t maintain the footpaths. Anyway, I think I got a few decent shots considering that I could hardly see through the viewfinder due to frost… See the rest of the shots in my Gallery. The results of this session start from number 16.

As it comes to running, I’ve been managing decent mileage. Most weeks have been around 50 miles, but it’s difficult to do any proper speedwork in the snowy and freezing conditions. I did a rather insane 22k run in -19 degrees on Christmas Eve, that was a bit painful. I have been on an indoor track twice in the recent weeks though and I think that I’ll try to go every now and then as it helps to get some speed back in the legs. Managed 3300m in the Cooper Test in one of these sessions. I might also hit the treadmill as I should get access to the Uni gym soon.

And work.. remains to be done. But more about that another time.

Another sunset shot in Seurasaari

The Duomo in Milan

I was recently on a week’s trip in Italy with my Finnish mate Pekka. We both flew to Milan where we stayed the first night, rented a car and drove to the Dolomites, which was the main purpose of the trip. We stayed in Trento, Bolzano, Feltre and Rifugio Tissi in the Civetta range, managed four nice days of hiking and then spent the final night in Verona. We had a brief look around Milan on the first day as well — I’ve heard many people say that Milan isn’t very nice, but we actually quite enjoyed it at least on this brief visit. We didn’t have time to check out all the corners of Verona, but it seemed rather small and quiet, apart from the central square. Verona might be worth visiting again though, so that one could actually see some of the sights.

Panorama from Monte Pez summit (2563m)

Photos from the trip are in the Italy album, which now contains new albums for Milan, Trento (only two photos though!) and The Dolomites. I further divided The Dolomites album into different areas, namely Alpe di Siusi, Alpi Feltrini and Civetta.

In general I really liked the Dolomites, as there are some very dramatic, sharp ridges, but that also means that it’s not very easy to do any summits, and indeed almost none of the paths take in summits. You can do some summits with the help of via ferratas, cable-assisted climbs. We were originally planning to have a go at some via ferratas, but never got around to buying the necessary gear (harness, helemt etc.) due to time constraints. One problem in the Dolomites appears to be the amount of traffic, the roads were rather clogged especially with Austrian and German tourists. Same goes for the paths, there were quite a few people doing the easier routes. On the second day we went to the very Southernmost Dolomites though, Alpi Feltrini, where we did a slightly more challenging route, and saw next to no people. I do think that I want to go to the Dolomites again, but I perhaps enjoyed the Alps of the Italian Gran Paradiso national park more, where we went last year for a couple of days.

Alpi Feltrini

We did the following routes:

• DAY 1 (Alpe di Siusi): 19.23km, 1101m height gain, 1102m height loss. (Garmin data)

A rather easy hike up to Monte Pez (2563m) from Compaccio. It’s easy to get so high when you start high! We set off quite late in the afternoon as we drove up from Trento and had to finish well before 7pm, as that’s when the last cable car went back down to Siusi where we had parked our car (you can’t drive up to Compaccio). It’s a lovely route and the views from M. Pez are great, but the route is a bit touristy and there are as much as four rifugios on the way. Rifugio Bolzano just below M. Pez summit is nicely situated though. Had a beer at one of the Rifugios on the way down.



Panorama of the Civetta range

• DAY 2 (Alpi Feltrini Loop): 24.81km, 2466m height gain, 2468m height loss. (Garmin data)

This is an awesome route! The guide book that I have suggests that it’s a 2-day route, but you can easily do it in a day. We actually only started around 1:30pm and still managed it, although it was a bit rushed at times. The way back down from Rifugio Boz is rather boring: just a very long zigzag, but the path is easy and fairly fast. There were a couple of trickier and cable-assisted bits along the route, but nothing very demanding. The best thing about this route was that it is very isolated compared to the rest of the Dolomites — we only saw a couple of people during the day. Some stunning views as well. It’s all the more interesting due to some old tales about devils and witchcraft in the area, and route includes places such as Piazza del Diavolo. The official route takes in a sidetrip to Bivacco Feltre as well, Pekka went ahead while I climbed up there and caught up with him.



Tissi summit shot

• DAY 3 (Circumnavigating the Civetta): 10.55km, 1183m height gain, 450m height loss. (Garmin data)

From Palafavera to Rifugio Tissi, where we spent the night. A very short walk on the first day of the Civetta trip, but it was nice to rest after the rather long one on the previous day. Lovely views at Lago Coldai above 2000m before Rifugio Tissi emerges on its cliff. Stunning landscape! This part of the route is quite busy as it’s part of the Alta Via 1, it’s also the easiest part of the trip around Civetta. Rifugio Tissi is highly recommended, the sunset from there was amazing. It’s really quite something else to spend the night at 2250m!

• DAY 4 (Circumnavigating the Civetta): 22.36km, 1770m heigth gain, 2489m height loss. (Garmin data)

Started the next day bright and early, we were walking before 8am. It was great to start right in the middle of the mountains. We came down quite a bit first before climbing back up to the highest point of the route, Forcella delle Sasse (2476m). Great views of Torre Trieste and Torre Venezia along the way. Then it was a scree slope down again and some contouring around the peaks towards Rifugio Coldai — there is a cable-assisted bit along the way, but it wasn’t very difficult. This part of the route, and especially the bit after Rif. Vazzoler, was much more isolated. We didn’t get great views of the Civetta (3220m) itself, as it was a bit cloudy. There are some via ferratas leading up there and it would’ve been great to have a go at one, but we never got around to getting the via ferrata gear. Oh well, this was a great route in any case!

So, a pretty good trip all in all!

Civetta in the evening sun