Austere Realism book on MIT display

Here is the book Austere Realism, written by Terry Horgan and Matjaz Potrc, and displayed at a MIT bookstore in June 2009. Metaphysics mafia didn't intervene in this.

Wide assessment quote about the experiential world

T"In "The World of Qualia," Matjaž Potrč makes the case for the
intriguing claim that qualia -- construed as reflexive acts of
inner-directed awareness built into perceptual acts of outer-directed
awareness -- are "the cement of the experiential world" (114). The
argument is subtle, and Potrč leans heavily on an inadequately
explained distinction between the "experiential world" and the
"physical world." Presumably, his idea is that the experiential world
is the world as my thoughts and experiences represent it as being,
where these thoughts and experiences are taken as perceptual acts of
outer-directed awareness with reflexive acts of inner-directed
awareness (his qualia) built into them. The physical world, meanwhile,
is what my thoughts and experiences must correctly represent in order
to count as veridical. If this interpretation is fair, though, I do
not understand why qualia so understood count as the relevant sort of
cement, why thoughts and experiences need such a cement to unify them,
and why Potrč's qualia, which on his view are just another sort of act
of awareness, do not also need a cement of their own for unification."

This is the quote from the recent NPDR review of Edmond Wright The Case for Qualia MIT 2008 book. I thnik that the reviewer is right in requiring elaboration of the experiential world and physical world relation. This however I have dome at other occasions, by developing contextual assessment of truth as indirect correspondence. Reviewer's presupposing of truth as direct correspondence relation urges him to shift away from the dimension that indeed provides qualia as the cement of the experiential world. Abandoning his wide take on the situation allows a smooth reply to his worries.

The picture shows Terry Horgan in Slovenian countryside, June 2009. Terry agrees that we should use the notion of experiential world in our ongoing project.

Bled Epistemic Virtue and Value conference

Matjaz is cofounder of a series of prominent Bled conferences that exercise increasing influence in various fields of philosophical community. At this year's first week of June conference he presented a paper co-authored with Terry Horgan The Epistemic Relevance of Morphological Content. Many important epistemologists attended the conference, the most influential of these being Earnie Sosa who commented all papers. Wayne Riggs was an excellent organizer. Pictures show Terry and Matjaz doing their shtick at the Bled Kompas hotel and again them in company of David Henderson in Ljubljana. It was agreed that in two year's time there will be a Bled conference on Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom, again under Sosa and Wayne guidance. During their time together Matjaz and Terry also continued to sketch their next co-authored book with provisional title Morphological Content, Phenomenology and Semantic Holism. 

   What's next? Matjaz and Vojko's paper Meinongian Theory of Moral Judgments was accepted for August Rocky Mountain Ethics conference, with Beth Tropman as the commentator.

Dubrovnik Attention conference

Matjaz attended Dubrovnik The Philosophical Significance of Attention conference last week of May, organized by Declan Smithies. He presented a paper together with Terry Horgan, entitled Attention, Morphological Content and Epistemic Justification. Several prominent philosopher were present. Matjaz is depicted here in company of Charles Siewert. 

Dance and its phenomenology

On May 20th Nicole Speletic from New York performed a dance introduction and moving of the body explanation, comparing new with older styles of the artist dance. The session succeeded in University building and was organized by Vojko Strahovnik. Nicole, Matjaz and Vojko have a project to write a paper on phenomenology of dance, two preparatory drafts of which you can find at Matjaz domaca stran under clanki/articles. Nicole is spending some time in Slovenia. Drawing on the heritage of her roots she recently became a citizen of Slovenia. Congratulations, Nicole!