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!

I’ve been here in NYC a little under a week now, so I thought it’s time for a quick update. Briefly about the background: I’m a visiting scholar at NYU for three months from the beginning of March until the end of May. The visit is part of my Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher’s project, which commenced in the beginning of 2011. My visit is sponsored by Kit Fine and the purpose of my visit is to work on the interface between essence and modality.

I had no trouble getting into the country, although my 9h flight was 2.5h late. There was a further wait to the passport control, but after that everything was smooth. I was asked a couple of simple questions about the purpose of my visit and waved straight through. No one checked my bags either.

I’ve got a small room in a shared apartment on West 47th street on Manhattan, virtually next to Times Square. The place is very basic, but functional, and my flatmates seem easy to get along with. It’s not really worth posting any photos of the apartment, more important is its location; it’s very well connected in the heart of Manhattan. I can get to the philosophy department in about 10 minutes, and more importantly, I can jog to Central Park in less than that.

50 metres from my door, near Times Square

Every day has been pretty busy so far. The first two days I was hanging out with CUNY people, as a friend of mine is at CUNY. They seem like a great bunch. Already on the second day I got the philosophy aspect of the visit going on, by attending a seminar on the contingent a priori by one Saul Kripke. It’s a weekly seminar at CUNY and I will probably attend it while I’m here. The 2h hour session was a bit of a slow starter, but we did get into some interesting discussion about de re knowledge in the familiar example concerning Le Verrier, the planet Neptune, and the hypothetical planet Vulcan.

The next two days I spent at and around NYU. The philosophy department is downtown in very nice surroundings. It’s a lovely building, and it’s just incredible that the whole 6-storey building is dedicated to philosophy! I haven’t attended any NYU philosophy events yet, but there are plenty to choose from. The grad students have put together a ‘Metaphysics Boot Camp’, which is essentially a work in progress seminar; I hope to attend that next week. I did manage to have a chat with Kit Fine though and I look forward to working with him. I’m also considering of attending Hartry Field’s lecture series on Truth. Kit is teaching a metaphysics intro himself, which might be fun to attend as well, but the two lectures overlap.

NYU Philosophy Department

There are some great restaurants and bars around NYU, and I stumbled upon a nice tea place as well, called Argo Tea, on University Place. Stocked up with some Nilgiri and a thermos/brewing mug. If it weren’t for the need to be close to the Central Park for the purposes of running, I would rather live somewhere close to NYU. There are a lot of restaurants near my place as well, but the Times Square area is very touristy and quite main stream, so not so much to my liking. In contrast, I had lunch the other day at one of the many vegan restaurant in NYC, near the department. I found it via this great website that lists vegan/vegetarian restaurants in NYC. The place is called Red Bamboo, it’s at 140 West 4th Street. I had a Seitan sandwich (which you can have either with fries or salad, I chose the latter), but I was surprised how massive it was, and very tasty! The service and atmosphere were so great (or maybe it was the hot alternative-looking vegan waitress) that I decided to treat myself with a slice of vegan carrot cake as well, which was just as excellent. Will certainly have to go to this place again for dinner.

In general, NYC is clearly a heavenly place for food. It’s pretty good value, there’s so much choice that it’s actually difficult to even get your head around it (50+ dedicated vegan restaurants just on Manhattan, so it’s not so hard to be a vegan here!), and the quality of the food is unsurpassable. Strangely, the groceries in supermarkets are very expensive though, there is very little difference in cooking yourself or eating out at a cheap place in terms of price. Since the cooking facilities at my place aren’t great anyway, I think I will mainly eat out. Alcohol is not particularly cheap, although a little bit cheaper than in Helsinki. There’s a decent selection of local and imported beers in most places, but unfortunately it’s dominated by lager. Brooklyn lager, which you can get it Helsinki too, is a decent brew though, as is Yuengling, which claims to be America’s oldest brewery.

NYU Philosophy Department staircase

Yesterday I had a chance to sample NYC’s night life as well thanks to a friend who is also visiting NYU. We went to a club called Bunker in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — the famous area for alternative night life. This was also the first time I’ve ventured out of Manhattan so far. The place was surprisingly small and much too packed, but the music was ok: minimal trance/techno. Apparently it was some famous DJ. My friend wasn’t too impressed and it had been a rather long day already, but it was a nice night anyway, and I think I’ll give Williamsburg another chance at a later date.

A final comment about running in Central Park. I’ve been on two runs there so far, and I do like it, although it’s not quite as great as I expected. It will probably be nicer when the trees get some leaves and the weather gets warmer. In any case you can do a nice 10k loop around the park on a surfaced road of which one lane is dedicated for runners. Surprisingly, Central Park is actually rather hilly even though Manhattan is very flat. But it’s good for training. I had a good session yesterday: a 15k test run at my half marathon target race pace, 4:10min/km, which would give me a comfortable sub 1:30h half marathon. There’s just under a month until the New York 13.1 half marathon, so this was a good confidence booster. Before that I’ve got a 5k race booked in just a week’s time, and also a 10k race a week after the half marathon (you can stay up to date about my running by following this page. Unfortunately there aren’t many natural places to run in NYC, or at least on Manhattan, apart from Central Park. I’m planning a long run tomorrow though and I might see if the Riverside park next to Hudson river is a good area for running.

Well, it’s been less than a week and I already had this much stuff to report, so I better try to keep updating fairly frequently! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to visit some of the museums soon. I also hope to do some more photography in NYC, although it may be better to wait until the Spring kicks in properly before that — reports will follow!